Random bits of my so-called life.

It isn’t yet the anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitz but it is November. Today the GG did a moomincabin drive-by and this is what the place looked like in the afternoon sun. I don’t think he went inside so dunno if any squoils have gotten down the chimney and died. And maybe don’t wanna know. It looks like all is well though.

It struck me that with all that sunlight hitting the west side of the building, you can tell the sun has moved way south and so is lower in the sky. I am rarely there at this time of year and when I am, it’s usually cloudy and we don’t STAY there because we have already closed it for the season. Not worth opening it up for a weekend, even in warm weather.

I ended up taking a “meeee” day today. I told my boss that and she heartily approved. It’s a slow week. A lot of folks are off for Diwali and others are burning up their use or lose vacay for the year, which is what I’m doing. I made this decision kind of late in the week and didn’t tell the GG because I didn’t want to be hounded to come up to Hoton Lake. Then I remembered that he is not at HL any more. He’s rustic camping in the yooperland. He has the Lyme Lounge so there’s water, heat, and cooking facilities but there are no showers. I do not camp without a shower in the morning and he doesn’t expect me to.

Amateur book reviewer here: I was thinking about how much I like Andy Weir’s books even though I don’t have the chops to keep up with all the math and science. I think it’s because he puts the math/science stuff in there so the true geeks can chew on it. But he is good at weaving a STORY around it so the rest of us get whatever we can get out of the geeky stuff without losing track of the plot and characters, etc. If that made any sense 🐽

P.S. I am good at math. For a long time I wavered between majoring in math or music in college. In the end I chose music and I do not regret it even though I never pursued a music career. I consider myself to be successful. I say that not to brag but to encourage young “creative types” and remind them that their talents, skills, and education are just as valuable as those of the “STEM” folks. Who are also important.

My Room being the Landfill Chitchen.

A beach urchin hiked part of the North Country Trail today. I think this brings her up to 100 miles. She was kind of expecting to do a 12 mile solo hike but ended up with a 19-mile hike shared with an identical twin Qtip Echo Chamber. She hiked ahead so as to commune with natural sounds.

There are a few reasons I have been avoiding Hoton Lake since the pandemic (I’ve spent one night there during a period of very low community transmission). 1) Breakthrough COVID is real and I don’t want to share air with people I don’t live with. 2) I do NOT do indoor restaurants for now. 3) I cannot stomach the Q-type polly-tickle talk (and yes it is) and I am taking a break from it. The Hoton Lake folks run the gamut of political views but if someone who subscribes to the former guy’s dog whistles is there, I do not wanna be.

One of the tropes I’ve been hearing is something like, “Biden is going to give every immigrant $500,000. Why can’t I get that too? I’ve been working my whole life yada yada yada.” Um, really? I don’t know how many people manage to cross the border every year. Legally or illegally. But I don’t in any way, shape, or form think our country is planning to do this. And how can Biden solely DECREE that it happen? It seems likely that he would need the support of congress. Um. He can’t even get the support of congress to pass a bill that might help legitimately needy United States citizens? And we have plenty of those. So what are y’all talking about? Whaaaat?

I finished Project Hail Mary and I LOVED the book AND the ending.

That’s me. I’m an outlier. Every single proposal I voted no on in yesterday’s election passed by a landslide. I was generally unhappy by the national trends as well but we won’t go there today because I continue to struggle to put words together to adequately convey my dismay about where our country seems to be going.

A friend of mine who did time on the school board a while back had a different take on our election and one I probably wouldn’t have thought of. Her take was, “Why did we have an election at all?” Elections are very expensive and this one was basically deciding, well, I forget her words but the gist of it was “council business”. For the most part anyway. Maybe these business items needed a vote but they could’ve waited.

There was also the ranked choice voting proposal and… After that discussion, I came across an article in the local online news, which noted that even though it passed, we can’t do anything with it because its ILLEGAL in our state. Really? So why did we put it on the ballot? “It was a symbolic vote,” said our mayor. SYMBOLIC? Really? I am NOT against the concept of ranked choice voting. I am intrigued by it. But I am FOR common sense so why not wait to put this and the other proposals on a ballot with other more pressing issues. Like electing [hopefully] different city council members… And a different mayor…

The pic is from November 1st – 2020. This year, in our neighborhood at least, hardly any leaves are down and there is still a LOT of green. We keep getting threatened with frost but it hasn’t happened yet. A BRIEF (like 20 second) snow shower happened yesterday afternoon but it was 40-something so I don’t even think the snow hit the ground. It is coming though. The UU posted pics from his Gaylord area home showing 11 inches. But that’s a snow belt.

To end on a positive note, NPR just reported that whale poop fertilizes the ocean, which helps krill.

Oriole came for a quick oil pan dropoff visit on Halloween afternoon and I grabbed this pic. And then had to stop Skeletor and Frooggy from driving off with her. Turned out Froooggggy was lurking behind Skeletor’s tree. He is a known joy-rider from waaaay back and I suspect Oriole is a lot more tempting ride than The POC (my old Island teal mini-van).

The GG is off on another boondoggle. He delayed his departure until this morning so he could vote. Before he left for the polls, I reminded nagged him about taking a mask. His initial response? “Do you think I’ll need one?” Well… I don’t know the rules but I have a hard time believing that the poll workers are turning unmasked voters away. But… Consider that those folks (who I’m sure ARE masked) are hanging around ALL DAY today interacting with the “unwashed” public. To me, this is not about any individual voter’s choice to cover their face or not. It is more about the safety of the poll workers. Our local workers are likely vaxxed but it is also a known fact that vaxxed people can catch and spread the virus. Poll workers are providing an essential service for not a whole lot of pay and we should respect their RIGHT to stay as safe as possible and not spread the virus to others.

My last in-person election was the March 2020 Michigan presidential primary. I always tried to be one of the first voters and I got there before the polls opened but I was not first. I remember NERVOUSLY standing in a line UNMASKED because we were not advised to wear masks at that time not to mention I had no clue where to GET a mask. We were all kind of keeping a three foot distance from each other. A random and arbitrary number but then so is six feet in my not so humble opinion. [delete complicated ruminations about HVAC systems and airflow]

That election was March 10 and I worked at Cubelandia as usual after voting. Two days later we were sent home to work and I’ve been here ever since. I later talked to an essential worker who had noticed COVID symptoms (thankfully mild ones) beginning on that election day. The virus was here then and probably had been for quite some time.

I am loving the book Project Hail Mary and my fave quote from today is: “Because Russians do things a certain way and it’s easier to work with them than to complain about it.” Indeed 🐽 🤣

A few weeks ago, I caught ‘lectric Jack projecting. On the Landfill ceiling. Last night he was reflecting. He was actually reflecting in triplicate but the third copy is too faint to show up in the pic.

The real excitement this weekend was not Halloween. The real excitement was that we schlepped all the way over to the Scrap Box and dumped off four paper grocery bags, each one packed full with more grocery bags. Pristine Plum Market bags from all the months I was exclusively doing curbside pickup. Also a plastic grocery bag of whine corks but those have been collecting since a few years before the pandemic.

I try to keep up with what the Scrap Box needs (and doesn’t need) and their drop-off hours but it can be tricky, especially during the pandemic and they are way over near Ypsi these days. But Saturday night they posted that they were LOW on whine corks and paper grocery bags. Even better, they were open to drop offs yesterday afternoon.

So we loaded up Cygnus with our treasures and yes, they were ecstatic to get our stuff. Mind you, this little expotition did not happen without a Mask War. I dutifully put a mask on before I even got outta the car. The GG? I don’t need no stinkin’ mask! Even though there were multiple signs at the entrance asking people to wear a mask. I told him to put the bags of bags DOWN and EXIT the store. I was in there for maybe 60 seconds tops. How hard is it to wear a little piece of cloth on your face for one minute?

I kept one partial bag of bags to package up stuff to drop off at Kiwanis. And what do people do with used whine corks you might ask? Lots of stuff. For one thing, there is a restaurant downtown (the Earle) that has whole walls made out of old corks. I’m pretty sure they don’t have to get their corks from the Scrap Box. They sell a lot of whine.

Yes, Skeletor landed right here in front of the Landfill. I don’t think he scared any trick-or-treaters. Rain and wind had blown in before I took this pic and they decamped to wherever.

Trick-or-treat here on the Planet Ann Arbor happens from 5-8 PM on Halloween. Usually no one shows up until about six. Today there were folks out just after five. I didn’t count the trick-or-treaters (I sometimes have) but it felt like they were coming out of the woodwork. For a while.

The neighbors to the south have been “partying” all weekend and they said the kids had been bugging them to go out since 3:30. That was about the time we were returning from a trip to the Scrap Box. More on that some other day. The [new] neighbors to the north (no children) were all set up with a table in their driveway and friends who came over to have fun handing out candy. I’m sure everyone was drinking. We certainly were.

Halloween customers have waxed and waned over the years. My first Halloween in this house we had quite a few trick-or-treaters and I was holding an 8-day-old baby. My mother was here. My dad had gone back to the yooperland to protect their house from whatever. Plenty of people were almost more interested in our newborn girl than candy. But not the kids of course.

For a number of years we got plenty of trick-or-treaters. Neighborhood kids who went to school with our kids, kids who got bused in, whatever.

And then there were a number of years when we didn’t seem to get many trick-or-treaters at all. I couldn’t figger why. Are they afraid of us old bags? Do they think we are handing out poisonous candy? Of course we are not doing that. I buy packaged snack size candy from the grocery store and the kids who do get our candy seem happy with it.

Tonight was different, almost like a new demographic has taken over. Until the wind came up and it started raining. Our last [late] customers were teenage girls with younger kids, probably siblings. The teenagers attend Skyline High, which didn’t exist when my kids went to high school.

So another Halloween is in the wraps. I bought a LOT of candy like I always do. We handed it out in handfuls like we always do. There’s still a lot left. I’m not sure what we’ll do with the candy. I do know that after Halloween is done we hit fast forward to Thanksgiving and xmas.

Oh, and we were not freaked out about meeting people unmasked for trick-or-treat but please remember that the pandemic is NOT over. We were meeting people outside and that works for me. I am glad we could all do trick-or-treat in a “normal” way this year. But I will still mask when I do have to go to the grocery store, etc. Too many breakthrough infections.

G’night, KW

I got to bed at my regular time last night. In addition to the Green Acres re-runs that lull me off to dreamland most nights, the neighbors were having a little party in their driveway, which is only a short distance from our bedroom window. No this did not bother me. I like to go to sleep with quiet talk and laughter in the background. They broke it up pretty quick anyway because little kids.

When I was a little kid and we still stayed at the Old Cabin in the summer, us cousins were put to bed in the back half of the living room, our beds enclosed by a system of curtains. It was comforting to hear the grownups talk in front of the fire as we were drifting off.

This afternoon our neighbors and some friends reconvened for a little more partying. This time they set up their bouncy house next to our front yard and I read Project Hail Mary to the sounds of little kids having fun. We didn’t have personal bouncy houses when the beach urchins were little. They only got to use them at the Haisley ice cream social or other little festivals. Tip Up Town maybe?

When the beach urchins were young, the neighbors on that side often took care of their grandchildren while their daughter went through cancer treatments and an ugly divorce. The kids even lived there for a year and attended Haisley. Since those kids were close in age to the beach urchins, they were all constantly banging in and out the door. I loved it (usually 🐽) and miss those days.

What was the most fun was when we got enough snow that the kids could sled in front of the grandparents’ house down into the street. That house is on a kind of a high spot in our mostly flat neighborhood so there’s a bit of a slope. I remember once when school was canceled the next day and we let ’em sled until well past their bed times. Good times.

The sun rose at 8:06 AM this morning. It rained cats and dogs all day. I am not complaining. I took a short version of my walk – it was a warm rain, which makes for good sleeping so I stayed in bed a wee bit longer than usual. Then before the sun rose, I drove out to the Jackson Road Meijer to pick up some Halloween xmas candy 🐽. Yes. The Halloween candy was totally gone and xmas candy was the only thing available. Another year I might’ve checked out another store. With the plague? I shoved my OCD into the corner and bought xmas candy. So what if it comes in red and green packaging?

The early morning was beautiful but in the end it was a pretty long slodgy day. Fridays are often quiet times at work. After years of doing a daily standup meeting *every* day, we have decided we can manage a meeting-free Friday. Of course, we can always call a meeting if we need to and someone did today but it didn’t have much to do with me so I just sat there on mute.

I found myself up to date on my current work assignments today so I ticked away at a back burner prodject until it was almost a reasonable quitting time. And then I shut down and started in on reading Hail Mary, which is by the author of The Martian. I have to psyche myself up a bit for his books, which I love but they are pretty intense. But also funny as a crutch.

We are not getting porterized tonight. I found myself a little relieved at that as I wasn’t really feeling up to it. I mean I am feeling *fine*, just a bit slodgy and was already thinking about proposing Virtual Oscar Tango for the evening. It was our “turn” to provide dinner and I had no ideas. And then last Friday was fun but when it was over, I got a Second Wind and didn’t get to bed until midnight, then had to drag myself outta the rack in time to get to the farmers market at seven which I can do but… So looking forward to bed a little closer to the usual hour tonight.

And that’s that. A boring day for sure. I hope yours was more exciting. Or maybe “fun” would be a better word. Exciting can go in a lot of different directions. Sayonara.

Or are they trying to pull my chain? I’m not sure which but the digital pitcher frame on my counter here all of a sudden has some additional pics on it. Fuglies of Hillary Clinton apparently picking her nose (hey, we ALL do it!). A Monica Lewinsky meme “I’m voting Republican, the Democrats left a bad taste in my mouth.” Mohammad bomb head. Somebody taking a knee. Sigh…

These are all sprinkled in amongst family and beach photoooos etc., and he’s dreaming if he thinks he’s gonna get my goat with them. I wish his polly-ticks aligned more with mine but I don’t really care what he thinks about what I think. I absolutely voted for Hillary. I didn’t think she was the best candidate but there ain’t no way in hell I was EVER gonna vote for the Orange Baboon. Most other Republicans were also off my list because of their nihilistic attitude toward anything that matters to me. The former guy’s chaotic “presidential” term and the murderous (yes) GQP COVID policies in general sealed the deal. If you want me to consider voting for Republican candidates, you will have to present people who actually care about people who aren’t in their family and don’t look like them. With no strings attached.

I don’t really think Monica would make a good presidential candidate but most of us have done stupid things when we were young. Most of us are lucky enough that no one remembers those things. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t aspire to be president anyway. But you never know. And if she does, she deserves the same consideration as any other candidate. After all, she is an American citizen and born here as far as I know.

Alas, I have to laugh remembering the summer of The Blue Dress. My old coot was starting to get up in years at that point and was very jaded about polly-ticks in general. My parents were probably still voting Republican and I’m sure they weren’t crazy about Clinton. And neither was I but probably not for the same reasons. Anyway, we were up at the moomin with the parents and it got so that every time The Blue Dress was mentioned on NPR (which was OFTEN), he would say “stick it”. Right in front of his young grandchildren. I found this hilarious. Not sure what they thought… I don’t really know but I think his commentary was more about the president’s behavior than Monica’s.

The photooo is not Hillary. It is an antique mannequin in the Landfill Dungeon wearing the fugliest mask on earth. Every time I go down there into that room, it makes me jump out of my skin 🎃🎃🎃

It was Radical Betty who I learned to freeze garbage from. This was during a period of time when the moominbeach folks took turns hauling the week’s garbage to The Dump. This was an actual dump, the old-fashioned kind where you could go to watch bears in the evening. My parental units frowned on dump bear watching but I went with friends a couple of times.

Anyway, Radical didn’t want whoever was making the dump run to have to smell HER garbage. Eventually I got to the point where we could go a week without filling up a kitchen bag of garbage and freezing it made sense because *I* didn’t want to smell the stinky stuff in my own chitchen.

When I was a young 20-something I once rode along with The Commander on a dump run. There are folks who think I didn’t get along with my mother but really I did and this seemed like a fun little trip. So we were driving along the shore road through the res and I was surprised that she missed the left turn onto Plantation Road (in the yooperland, “plantation” usually refers to stands of pine trees planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps). I didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything when she DID turn left onto the road up to the Spectacle Lake Overlook (in the pic).

As you might guess by the pic, the overlook is NOT a place to dump garbage although I’m sure plenty of people have throughout history. Nowadays you would be in plenty of hot water if the tribal police caught you dumping garbage off there.

Of course we didn’t dump our garbage off the overlook. We laughed uproariously at this ridiculous mistake, then drove down off the overlook and back to the dump to properly dump our garbage.

Nowadays Plantation Road still exists sorta if your GPS calls it that. But the dump is gone and Plantation Road no longer angles off to the left and up the hill to the dump. We informally call Plantation Road “The Road to Nowhere” now but it leads to a fancy tribal-built facility where you can dump Green Bags of garbage. Easiest garbage system ever. Inexpensive and EXTREMELY convenient, especially for seasonal residents or folks without a lot of garbage. Like us.

Data clumps? This is what I’ve been dealing with at TeleCublandia for the last two days (or weeks) and you do NOT wanna know except that it’s why I am blahgging about garbage two days in a row 🐽🐽🐽

P.S. A few years ago I learned that my beloved Lansing friend G freezes his stinky garbage too. It is a thing!

This song [YouTube link with an ad] came on the radio last night and the GG was just about beside himself with glee until… I reminded him that it is I, Garbage Woman, who manages the garbage here at the Landfill. And at the Moomin although UKW tried her darndest to usurp my position last summer. I loved it because one of the ways we are alike is we both do garbage. Green Bag Queens 🤣🤣🤣🧡🧡🧡

It’s not that I’m the only person who ever rolls the carts out to the curb around here although I try to beat him to it. I position them in particular places. It is meeee who figures out garbage-related routines. Things like… Freezing potentially stinky stuff until garbage day AND setting a phone alert to REMIND me to put it in the trash. And what goes in the recycle bin…

And it’s me who figures out how to get rid of all the stuff that doesn’t go in the recycle and SHOULDN’T go in the garbage but probably does at many domiciles. So there’s the Scrap Box, which takes a lot of things but very specific ones and I am WAAAAY overdue for a run down there with my billion pristine Plum bags from my curbside days and a few other things. There’s Kiwanis Thrift for almost anything on earth except toxic stuff. And there’s a place to take toxics too. I usually dump worn out crappy clothing into dumpsters dedicated to that purpose and I have my eye on a book drop-off service. Gotta check back and see if they accept engineering textbooks from the 1940s.

Anyway, I am forever being asked, “How do we get rid of this?” and I usually have the information at my fingertips within moments. Now. Do we act on that information? We’re working on it and we’ve been working on it on and off for the last 15 years at least.

The photoooo is from a garbage day in April 2020 and if I remember accurately it is graupel coming down – not snow – although Old Man Winter is certainly capable of throwing snowballs at us in April (and May) here.

I posted this pic on Facebook at the time and one of my more judgmental “friends” marveled at “all that garbage”. Well… Two of those carts are full of leaves and other bits of COMPOSTABLE yard waste. Then there’s a recycle cart that’s probably pretty full, given this was in April 2020… And then. Dun dun dun… The actual GARBAGE cart. Most weeks there’s a single bag of kitchen garbage. The last couple weeks there were two because the indoor garbage smelled so bad halfway through the week I had to take it outside. And that means wasting a garbage bag, which I hate but I do my best to keep any OCD tendencies over in the corner where they belong. Every other week or three, there’s an additional bag from the bathroom.

Cheers to all Garbage Women (and raccoons) and g’night!

P.S. The YouTube garbage song singers are John Prine and one of my faves Iris Dement[ed], who I HATED the first time I heard her in front and center seats at the Ark folk fest (it was LOUD) but quickly grew to appreciate her HUGE talent!

A piece of cake even in pouring rain. Of course, like other COVID Cowards, I voted absentee so I drove a half mile or so to Vet’s Park, got out of Cygnus, and dropped it into the box. The election isn’t until next week.

It is legal here in the Great Lake State to vote absentee any time for any reason. I have still been applying one election at a time but I’m thinking I might sign up to have all ballots mailed to me. If we ever get out of this blasted plague, I can then choose whether or not I want to use the absentee or walk to the polls, which are almost literally in my back yard. Except when I’m outta town…

Shhhh… Don’t tell my neighbor how I voted. There were four proposals and I knocked them all down, “socialist” [sarcasm] that I am 🐽 Why? Well, I am not an expert about understanding ballot language but it seemed like three of them would provide the city administrator (manager in some cities) more power to spend money without oversight. We run through these administrators as if they were a dime a dozen and I’m just not sure I trust them. Of course, I don’t particularly trust a lot of city council members either. I mean that in a generic way. I don’t (usually) have a vendetta against any particular person. It’s more that I question whether they know what they’re doing, especially when it comes to money.

The fourth proposal I had to think about a bit. Ranked choice voting. I am intrigued by the concept, from what little I’ve been able to grasp about how it works. Again. If it gets voted in, does that mean we immediately switch to it? I always want to ask about unintended consequences and whether they’ve been thought through. In this case, I don’t think so. I also think a huge majority of our voters don’t have a clue what ranked choice voting means. It’s hard enough to get people out to vote as it is. Throwing something complicated at them?

My neighbor? She works for the city in a climate sustainability management position. Yes, I live next door to a local “celebrity”. If you listen to local NPR stations sometimes they interview her. I really like her and her husband and their kid is a kick (as Radical Betty sometimes called people she enjoyed). I actually agree with her political positions. But not sure how we get there. I mean we would probably have to retool our house HVAC system and we won’t even talk about cars except to say that we don’t drive electric cars for really good reasons that involve 1) TOWING things and 2) THE YOOPERLAND!

So we’ll see where that all goes. DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a climate change denier. Aaaand lots of complicated unfinished thoughts about all that but I will move on for tonight. With any luck, I can maybe manage to steam some broccoli without burning it 🐽🐽🐽

This is what greeted me while waiting for my order at Sparrow Meats yesterday at 0-skunk-30.

Actually, I had already looked up when/where the game was. And that was a CHORE. They need to hire somebody like meeee (but not me) to do some user experience design. But I digress. I always go to the farmers market at 7:00 when it opens *anyway* but it’s definitely best to get down there early on a Football Saturday, especially when there’s a noon game.

I missed any football traffic there may have been because it hadn’t really gotten going yet. Driving home I did follow the slowest dump truck on earth most of the way up Miller. It f-i-n-a-l-l-y turned off up MMCB₂‘s street. It was still pitch black when I got home at like 7:30. By the end of the day I had totally forgotten about any football game.

I miss the days when “people” would run the football game on the TV. I am not a sports fan at all but I love the ambience of the game running along in the background of my life. We don’t seem to do that any more, something about a knee. Being one o’ them thar “socialists”, I guess I don’t understand.

Actually I am not a “socialist” at all (quick, define socialism!). Political platforms shift and I can’t stomach the crazy stuff the Repubs (GQP?) are into these days. I’m leaning toward using the term “pragmatist” to describe myself. Instead of squabbling about ideologies, let’s talk about the actual problems and proposed solutions. Is this solution a good idea? Can we afford it? If not, why not? If we can’t do it all right now in one fell swoop, are there ways we could make incremental changes toward a solution?

Take free community college for all as an EXAMPLE, just because it floated randomly in and out of my brain today. If we enacted such a law to go into effect TOMORROW, not only do I think our country can’t afford it, I think implementing it would be a royal disaster. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to work TOWARD it (or some sort of facsimile). To accomplish a major change like that, we need to start slowly, gathering requirements and thinking through a billion unintended consequences. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

And maybe we DON’T end up providing free community college to EVERYONE. I spent a few years taking community college classes and HAPPILY paying for them MYSELF! Why? Because I COULD! I think we should help people who need help if we can. Not everyone who is poor is lazy, etc. etc. But I also think those of us who CAN pay their own way without hardship SHOULD pay. Going off topic for a minute, for me, community college turned out to be a GREAT INVESTMENT!

So. I just randomly free-associated myself from football to polly-ticks. If you got lost in all of that you’re not alone. I’m right there with you. I’m gonna stop now because where will my brain go next? I do not know.

How time flies!

A few fun facts. I have two children. They are both girls (women nowadays). I WANTED them both to be girls. I KNEW they would both be girls. I was not surprised either time I heard, “It’s a girl!” I did not have an ultrasound with the first one. They were not yet ubiquitous for healthy pregnancies. I did with the second but although the tech offered to provide an opinion on the sex, we declined. I mean, I already knew, right? Don’t get me wrong, I’d’ve loved boys just as much but I was ultra happy with my girls. They also seemed to be happy to be girls and I can remember them ending more than one conversation about classmates (“others who are not girls”, as one of them would say) with a triumphant, “But WE are GIRLS!” Girl power.

For a while I pondered having a third child. In the end, I decided I didn’t want to go through it all again. In the long run it has worked out in that: 1) It was much easier for all of us to squeeze into our one bathroom “starter” house, especially during their teen years. 2) It is fewer people to squeeeeeeze into the moomincabin in the summer although we definitely bump up to the top of its capacity when we’re all there together. 3) I totally lucked out with both my girls in that they really never gave me one iota of serious trouble. Not because they were girls, because of who they are. Would we have produced a more challenging third child? I’ll never know.

So here’s the b-girl with her newborn sister. Can’t exactly tell but looks like the b-girl has a chocolate face. Or maybe a jam face. Nothing like getting your face all jammed up and walking up to your moom saying, “Want a kiss?” Baby sis is wearing her cute fishie onesie.

Girls/women or not, they ROCK! I love them and admire them greatly. Can I take credit for this? Naw, I just muddled through like most of us do, reinventing the wheel as I went. Well, except I did read to them ALL the time. Haha! They are sitting in the Reading Chair in the photoooo 🤣

Happy second pandemic birthday 🐽

If I can manage to string words together in any kind of sensible order. I’ve been (silently) struggling with other people’s vocabulary and sloppy writing all week. It’s okay. In this case, other people are paid to figure out how to make something work. IIIII get paid to write about it, sometimes after they duke it out, which they were doing this week. But my brain was soooo fried this afternoon that I wasn’t sure I could do a social engagement, especially since the GG was on the roto side of things and I am still COVID-nervous, I think for good reason. We visited our friends anyway and I disclaimed that I was “cranky” and I WAS CRANKY but we’ve known these folks long enough that they put up with me.

A while back I finished N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy and greatly enjoyed it although there were moments when I did NOT know what the heck was going on (this one may merit a re-read at some point). I call it sci-fi but amazingly enough I have seen it in the xword as fantasy. I suppose it could go either way.

After that I went into a totally different genre with Franzen’s Crossroads. I was a little nervous about starting this one. I guess I would call it a family “saga”, which isn’t my usual go-to genre and I have never read this author before. It was fine! The characters weren’t 100% lovable but they were interesting and believable enough. It revolves around a church youth group in the late 60s/early 70s (my generation). I am not at all religious and did NOT participate in such a group at my childhood church but it wasn’t terribly preachy. This is supposed to be the first of a trilogy and I’m looking forward to the next installment.

Bewilderment. I enjoyed Overstory and I enjoyed this one. But. I think sometimes authors try to tackle too many complicated issues at once without always knitting them together effectively. In this one it seemed to be mainly climate change and neurodiversity via a dad and his young son who are mourning the boy’s mother. A really good read but I struggled a bit thinking the adults in the boy’s life should have been better able to help him deal with his loss besides recommending psychotropic (right word?) drugs or encouraging him to take some not all that well thought out actions against climate change. And do some other sci-fi-ey type things that I won’t mention because spoilers. I know this is a terrible mini-review but that reflects that I still haven’t fully processed this book.

Cloud Cuckoo Land. Oh my god. I loved this one. I know some people aren’t crazy about this author’s books and I understand why. His structure can be a bit hard to follow until you get the “rhythm”. In this case, he alternated between three (four?) sets of characters with centuries and thousands/millions of miles between their settings. Nevertheless, this one became hard to put down fairly early on and I liked how the stories were resolved in the end, particularly for one character who had me just about cheering out loud.

I have now embarked on The Beekeeper of Aleppo, a totally different direction again. So far loving it.

Porterization with turkey and fixings tonight and so g’night from yer fav-o-rite crappy book blahgger. Oh and typos be damned.

What an interesting morning!

It was maybe a half hour before the time I usually drag myself outta the rack. It was pitch black and I thought I heard thunder in the distance. Okay. I got out of the Lyme Lounge to drivewayP and lightning lit up the clouds. I consulted a couple of weather apps. I thought about all the big trees in my yard and neighborhood. I thought about the two times a tree has fallen on The Landfill. I made the executive decision to retreat inside the Landfill.

My first alternate sleeping choice was the Green Couch but every time it thundered, the front window rattled. The thunder didn’t bother me but the rattling window drove me nuts. After about five minutes of that, I moved to one of the couches in the back room, opening the side doorwall on the way. I wanted to hear the rain and feel the air!

In the end there were a few loud booms but it wasn’t severe, it moved through pretty quickly, and we didn’t lose power. The rain and thunder lulled me back to a short but comfortable bit of sleep featuring NON-shoreline REM dreams for once. I missed my walk but I do NOT walk in lightning.

Sorry but that was about the most exciting thing that happened today. And BTW, that pic is NOT lightning. It is a Halloween themed light bulb 🎃🎃🎃

Actually for the last couple nights I’ve been sleeping in the Lyme Lounge with Softy and Turnstile (stuffed seal). Why am I sleeping in the Lyme Lounge? We have not been EXPOSED to COVID. That is to say that neither of us has shared air with anyone who has tested positive that we know of. But we’re being careful because the GG was at an event with a lot of people last weekend. Although there were strict attendance requirements, I know too many people lately who have gotten breakthrough cases and don’t know where they got them, likely young grandchildren in some cases, f*ck you delta. I don’t really think the GG is positive (and he feels fine!) but we’re being careful and he seems to be okay with that. He can be a bit cavalier 🐽

Thanks to UKW’s guidance around gathering at the moomin and Old Cabin last summer, I have home tests. They are adequate given that we aren’t traveling to Canananada or Europe or anywhere really, except in our own personal vee-hickles.

So yes, I do sometimes sleep with stuffed aminals. They were a huge part of my kids’ childhood. They both loved them. One of them identified with them so much that I learned to use them as communication tools in certain situations. If I really needed her to settle down or whatever, Chrissy the Police Mouse (for example) speaking in a cute little squeaky voice was much more effective than WAAA WAA WAA from moom.

This could also backfire. Take the case of Froooggy who wreaked so much havoc that the GG banished him to the Landfill Dungeon for a few years.

When Froooggy was eventually sprung, the beach urchins were in college and he became my constant companion during the years I was traveling to deal/help with end-of-life issues for my parents, brother, and “favorite” aunt. When I got the call that my brother was probably going to die that day, I got a half mile away from The Landfill before I realized I had Froggy but not my purse 🐽

Favorite is in quotes because I loved ALL of my aunts but I always had a special kind of connection with Radical Betty. I know I am not the only person who felt that way about her 🧡🧡🧡

Three years ago yesterday I arrived at Cubelandia at the exact moment a flock of geese took off on their southward journey. Aaaannnd I had enough of my wits about me to get a pic!

I have no idea how many goose flocks our business park supported SUPPORTS! I am not there but the geese did not leave with me. Many geese stay throughout the winter.

Three years ago today? I arrived to see this spectacular sunrise. I didn’t have to scramble to get this shot.

It was so much fun to have my very own parking place all those years. I mean it wasn’t ASSIGNED to me in any kind of official way like my dad, who had a name plate marking his spot. (I still have the plate at the moomin.) It was just that nobody else ever parked back in the row I parked in except for the occasional birder might park over there. Great birding spot.

Here at the Landfill I don’t get my own spot unless I’m the only one here. Otherwise we are constantly jockeying vee-hickles around. At least we only own two vee-hickles these days. Plus the Lyme Lounge which only lives here part time. It was a lot worse back when we had three or four (yes, really) to deal with. I know people who have downsized the number of vee-hickles they own to one, especially during the pandemic. I applaud them but it won’t happen here.

That’s about all my over-fried brain can come up with today. It was a looooong (but fun) workday and it was 70 degrees at the end of it so I hung out in the back yard for a bit reading my current book Cloud Cuckoo Land, which I am greatly enjoying. This won’t be the last day I’ll be able to hang out back there but our days are numbered as we count down to EDT.

I’ll have to do a boooook blaaaahg soon.
Sayonara, KW

When I took this pic, I thought I was taking a photo of a roadside memorial. And you can see that but what I decided I liked most about the photo was the lace of leaves in front of the cornfield or whatever that is. Also, I then had moments of remorse (if that’s the right word) for taking the picture at all. It felt a little voyeuristic somehow, taking a picture of someone else’s loved one’s memorial from a car accident.

To back up, it was Sunday morning and it was GORGEOUS and my chores were largely done and jazzzzz was about to come on the radio and Cygnus and I had a Mission! That mission was to drive Lima Center Road from its southern endpoint to its northern. (I did not actually go all the way to the south end because Pleasant Lake is in the way). We have a lot of lovely back roads in the county and the terrain changes between flat and twisty turny up and down glacial stuff. Lima Center Road was my focus for the day. It’s mostly flat but there is one particularly pretty place where there’s a double bend in the road that navigates around a creek.

There were a lot of photo ops on this little boondoggle but when I am driving solo, I get past those ops toooo fast, even at a very slow speed and I am not calibrated to back up and stop.

Then there is the whole sun-dappled thing. Someday I may figger out how to capture the sun shining through the woods. Even driving is a bit difficult because it’s hard enough to see deer on the side of the road when the light is a little flatter.

Another time, when approaching this double bend, there was a CHICKEN in the middle of the road (there’s a farm there). The chicken did not seem to care that a vee-hickle was approaching and I had to shift down to slow-as-she-goes so as not to hit it. I didn’t hit it.

This boring little story could end here but it didn’t. Alas, I received complaints that I took “my” car out on dirt roads and heeeee will have to wash it. Cygnus belongs to both of us but the intention is that I’ll drive her the most. I was a bit nonplussed that someone was trying to tell me where I could drive 💩 Not sure what that was all about but the GG has driven me down some truly scary roads in our time together and I don’t think Lima Center Road on a sunny day compares to a utility goat path near Gaylord. In a snowstorm…

Except I posted this one on Instagram and an Insty friend noticed that the guy on the right buying apples could possibly be her brother. Who lives here on The Planet Ann Arbor and who I know… Small world.

I’m not friends with her on Instagram because I know her brother. I found her because she and wanderfacts were friends and I figgered out by her yooperland posts that she was my friend’s sister. And then I friended her. I *am* friends with her brother on Instagram. I don’t know if it’s her brother or not and I’m not sure she can tell either. I was not focused on people’s faces on that quick dark pandemic seven AM trip. I’m sure he’s capable of getting to the market at that early hour but I don’t know if it’s his habit. But still, small world, online or off.

I was especially good friends with her brother’s first wife Paula, who died quite unexpectedly in 2004. It was in December and it was one of the darkest, fugliest weeks I can remember. One of the beach urchins was friends with their daughter and between that and play rehearsals, Senora (her language teacher) called me to say she had sent my kid home. She wasn’t sick, just exhausted. When I made the official absence call, I got someone really rude who insinuated that I was covering up for some sort of delinquency. Um, no, she’s been with her friend whose mother just died, jeebus. This was not typical of that school so there must’ve been an office sub. When I followed up with Senora, she was also nonplussed and reminded me that my kid was a straight-A senior student.

Paula and I worked together on the youth theatre guild our kids belonged to. I LOVED the guild and the GIFTED executive/artistic director but SHE and various PARENTS could sometimes drive me around the bend. Paula and I shared a certain “wry” sense of humor and we would often get into email exchanges about whatever backstage drama was going on at the moment and she would literally have me falling out of my chair laughing. Miss her and will never forget her.