Random bits of my so-called life.

…it only encourages them.

Oh yes. Some of the raunchiest behavior, not to mention humor, in the band. I know. I rode on many a band bus back in the day. Exaggerated body function noises and crude language, etc. One particularly memorable, uh, memory:

[male] trombone player to cute [male] trombone player: I’d like to be a woman for a week with you.

This stuff didn’t really bother me. Actually in my youth I thought it was funny. I grew up with a couple older male cousins who could be just about as raunchy as any trombone player I knew. Also, growing up on the south side of Sault Ste. Siberia, my then BFF Ping and I were constantly fighting “wars” with the boyz in the neighborhood. There were the four W boyz who learned to throw rocks as soon as they learned to walk and the I dunno how many L kids who lived in what The Comm probably called “squalor” and (maybe?) once stole my brother’s bike? (Whoever stole it, The Comm got it back.) And others.

So my brother was a trombone player and he fit right in with all that stuff. Our older male cousins probably had an influence on him too. Trumpet players were usually too full of themselves to succumb to raunchy behavior. “Yeah, I play a little trumpet”, I once heard one say. Ugghhh. Tuba players were a whole ‘nother thing. There weren’t usually enough of them to, uh, “organize” but think donut down the horn kinda thing.

Hey, there are stereotypes about every instrument including mine (the flute). Mine might be almost an uber stereotype but I *own* it but we’ll go there some other day.

My brother was a good trombone player. He got into jazz in high school and continued it into college, playing in a highly acclaimed jazz ensemble at Michigan Tech, where he got an engineering degree. His jazz group traveled and Jamaica was a yearly destination. I only know the inside poop about trombone section behavior from his stories although I also witnessed it in my own groups. I’m sure I didn’t hear all his stories and those I did hear are not really blahggable although most o’ that stuff is legal nowadays.

My brother became a successful automotive engineer but he never stopped playing the trombone as long as he lived. And he was always *buying* trombones. I remember when Craig’s List was a new thing, he would go and meet people in parking lots to buy trombones. I was kinda freaked out about this at first and then my brain reality-checked me. He’s buying TROMBONES! These people are his TRIBE. They’re probably meeting in these parking lots making raunchy trombone guy jokes as they’re doing their transactions.

So this happened. Not today. It was a few five years ago and no it didn’t hit my house. It fell across the sidewalk that leads through the Deep Dark Scary Woods into the schoolyard. I heard it from inside my house and I’m the fourth house down the block. It’s a good story but maybe one for another day.

What I’m cranky about is that according to Next Door Neighbor (which I have mixed feelings about), people are using the city’s “fix-it” app to tattle on their neighbors for not clearing their sidewalks of snow “immediately” (I think 24 hours is the time limit). This results in big fines for the “offenders”, many of whom are actually shoveling but apparently not doing a picture perfect job.

I am a long-time early morning walker and I totally agree that people should be clearing their sidewalks AND putting down some kind of de-icer. I wear ice cleats now but over the years, I have fallen a couple times. Both times, I was galumphing along on what seemed like “grippy” snow, then suddenly encountered a sidewalk pane with a slick coating of ice hidden under the snow. Ka-whomp! What hit me? I revisited those locations under cover of dark and stealth salted them.

It’s always been possible to report people for poor snow removal but now that all it takes is a click or a tap, I think it’s too easy to do. I also don’t think the clickers and the tappers are thinking their actions through. There are any number of good reasons why a neighbor of any age might not be able to keep up with perfect clearing. I dunno why we can’t relax a bit and give them some slack, especially in this stay-home pandemic winter. I mean, it often takes DAYS for the city to plow the STREETS.

Also, most of us in the older Planet Ann Arbor neighborhoods don’t have a whole lot of sidewalk to shovel. Why not just shovel your NEIGHBOR’S walk if you suspect they aren’t simply being neglectful? Back in the day when we had older neighbors, I did that a few times just for the joy of being outside in the dark under the stars, throwing snow around. BTW, they were well capable of doing their own snow but they were entranced and gave us WHINE!

I have used the fix-it app once. It had nothing to do with winter precipitation, except that the tree in the pic fell during an ice storm. No one was injured in that incident and the city came out directly to tape it off and then clean it up. But. The street light that keeps the vampires and werewolves away went out and didn’t come back on. A few months later, I learned about the fix-it app, took a pic of the street light pole’s serial number and filed a fix-it request. In about a week the light was back on!

I think that kind of thing is a GOOD use of the fix-it app. Tattling on neighbors about imperfect snow removal? Not so much. It’s winter and this is the Great Lake State and we have to pull together! I bet neighbors are helping neighbors in Texas.

There’s a lot of talk about what’s going down in Texas right now. One of the threads of conversation that I am pretty tired of at this point is how bad Texas folk are at driving in snow and ice. Nothing is ever simple. For one thing, not everyone who lives in Texas was born there. I think quite a few have migrated there from places further north where winters include plenty of snow and ice.

For those who do NOT know how to drive on snow and ice, why are we denigrating them? Of COURSE they don’t have winter driving experience. What are we supposed to do? Send all the southerners up to the Great Lake State for a 2-week winter driving course during their driver’s ed training? Who’s gonna pay for it? The gubmint? Come on and cut these folks some slack. Big pileups or small, people are dying. As a native Michigander, I *do* have winter driving experience. Maybe because of that experience, I prefer to stay off the roads in snow and ice.

I do not have anything approaching extensive knowledge about power grids. Obviously Texas’s grid is not handling the conditions down there. I know there are a lot of hard-working hands-on folks down there who are up to their ears and risking COVID exposure to get the grid working again. Unfortunately there also seems to be a lot of finger pointing. Wind power. The Green New Deal (which last I looked did NOT magically happen with Biden’s inauguration). You name it. The Colorado City TX mayor resigned after an inflammatory social media post that callously told people they were on their own (google it). Yes to a certain extent we are ALL responsible for our own welfare during disasters (not to mention helping out our neighbors) but come on. We do pay taxes in part to support infrastructure and anyway, how did that a-hole get elected in the first place. MAGA idiot probably catering to MAGA idiots? Sigh. Can we get rid of the mean-ness?

So, what ever happened to Infrastructure Week anyway? We kept hearing about that throughout the campaign and early years of the Trumpian Bombasty. I mean, he built a wall (or claimed to). Was that his infrastructure plan? I don’t get how the small expansions/repairs he made to the existing wall (that Mexico did NOT pay for) help all of the Texans caught in the weather/infrastructure debacle going down right now? I cannot fathom.

I randomly came across this Twitter thread today. I dunno if it’s totally true but it cracked me up. If you are not one o’ them thar “socialists” like me, you may not wanna click that link. P.S. I am NOT a socialist.

Yes, we have a big ice p*nis stalagmite in our back yard. I think that pipe thingy above it drips water. So much for G-rated blahg, roight?

I am spoiled now that The Pensioner has a yooper-sized snowblower. We “inherited” my dad’s yooper-sized blower after The Comm joined the Ryerson party bote in the sky but we “donated” that one to the cFam “group home” at Hoton Lake. A few years later, I “bought” this one for TP for xmas. I mean he picked it out and bought it — in October — and I “gave” it to him for xmas, after it had already been used at least once.

I used to do most of the shoveling around here, especially when he was still gainfully employed. I actually enjoyed it. I’m kind of amazed at how much I don’t miss it. In fact, today I actually had to complain a bit about a glitch! There was no path to the compost heap! He ALWAYS blows a path to the compost heap. I mean, I couldda put my boots on and trudged out there. But it’s a lot easier to just throw on my sandals and walk a cleared path. I did wear boots for my 0-skunk-30 this morning. I was out before most people had a chance to clear their sidewalks so I was trudging.

Y’all don’t really wanna know about my work much but today had its minor successes. The main one being that I was BANGING MY BRAIN against an obtuse description in our defect/change tracking system. I was on the verge of asking a Stupid Question. I know. I know. There are no Stupid Questions and I am not afraid to ask Stupid Questions. But before I ask, I like to dredge up as much background information as possible. So I was dredging today and I found a document written by my retired colleague W1.5, who worked for YEARS on our legacy system, which doesn’t exist any more. Bingo! I didn’t get a definitive answer out of this but I think I know how to ask an intelligent question, or at least a less-stupid one.

I miss W1.5. He was one of the first people I met when I went to Cubelandia to meet with the LSCHP for my STUDENT INTERNSHIP interview. I was nervous as all getout but when I met W1.5 and a few other folks who were my age or older, I felt like I had maybe found a home. W1.5 was doing something at the command line on his computer. I have NEVER worked at the command line at Cubelandia but I did in my childhood job at That Darn EPA.

So, the GG did go out and blow a path to the compost heap and then, just to be all mavericky or whatever, he cut a path right through the front yard. I posted this photooo on FB and tagged the GG so all of his fans (and he has them) could send him some love and they are doing that.

Oh yeah. What did the snowman do when he heard the snowblower coming? This is a G-rated (mostly) blahg so y’all will have to remember our old childhood joke or manufacture yer own.

Love y’all, KW

Here you can see at least a few of the sequins on my bomber hat. I am TERRIBLE at selfies (I even own a stick) but I managed this one. I think it was on a Friday afternoon as I was getting ready to schlep down to the Oscar Tango to meet the crew for dinner. It was 2014, the Polar Vortex winter. You know the one, when Canananada got drunk and….

A huge snowstorm began that New Year’s Day and the local road departments never really got caught up with clearing that stuff before more snow came down. And down. And down. Forever. The roads were snow-covered on top of a loverly ice base ALL WINTER!

I chose to work from home that January 2 and it turned out that was a good thing because the parking lot at Cubelandia had not been plowed and almost everyone who drove over there got stuck. When the plows finally came, people had to go out and push cars around so the plows could actually clear snow. The Benevolent Despot apparently bellowed his frustration with something like, “If people are gonna drive over here just to push a bunch of cars around, I don’t see why we don’t all work from home.” Here it is 2021 and we are working from home. Permanently.

The hat has a story in that it is a gift from The Commander on one of her last xmases. The story involves differences between my mother’s and my taste in clothing, etc. She spent my childhood years trying her best to dress me “elegantly”. I don’t really like to dress “elegantly”. In one grade school memory, we were choosing between two dresses for me. We ended up with a elegant plain blue shift kind of thing instead of the beautiful blue flowered full-skirted, puff-sleeved number that I preferred.

Of course as I went through my teen years I began choosing my own outfits more and more plus I LEARNED TO SEW (‘nother day). I’m not sure she was ever all that happy with my garish taste but we co-existed well.

And then, the fall before that penultimate xmas, I was up in Siberia and we were in Barishes and there was *my* black sparkly bomber hat! I was in love. She peered at the garishly sequined hat and she peered at me and asked, “Do you really like that hat?” Yes, yes, I do. And so when I was opening xmas presents, there it was! Oddly enough, I didn’t actually wear it for a year or so, not sure why. And then one day I put it on and walked forth in confidence. I got umpteen bazillion compliments about it. Now I wish I had two or three of that hat.

Love y’all and miss The Comm,
KW

What’d I tell y’all yesterday about how my winter outerwear fashion choices haven’t really changed since I was eight. Black bomber hat – you can’t see the silver sequins in this pic – over a little black balaclava, thin but warm. Patagonia polartech jacket and long gray wool skirt over whatever layers. The sunglasses were just plain funny. They were my only purchase besides grocks and booze when we went to our cousin’s wedding out on Lopez Island. Despite all the snow, this outfit was overkill for the weather. It was warm and all that snow was starting to melt by the time of day this photooo was taken.

So it is Valentine’s Day. We don’t really celebrate it in any big way but it is my late mother-in-law’s birthday. So happy heavenly birthday to the Beautiful Sally. I am not religious but the cFam practiced Catholicism (some still do and the GG can fake it if he wants to) and I’m sure heaven is where Sally is.

Okay, a year ago, we were not really thinking about COVID. It was Friday and our friends of porterization suggested a deviation from our usual habit of walking to meet them at various downtown Planet Ann Arbor restaurants. We drove down to Clinton for a special Valentine’s Day dinner put on by the new owners of a historic hotel. I remember my boss asking me what I was doing for Vday and I rather sheepishly reported that we were doing something sorta romantic. We were actually meeting FACE TO FACE IN A CONFERENCE ROOM AT CUBELANDIA that day.

So it was all fine except for the part where we discovered how NANNY Mooon Yooonit gets if somebody doesn’t put their seatbelt on. I mean everyone was TRYING to get their seatbelt on but there was a wee bit of difficulty in the back seat that went on for a while and Mooon Yooonit went absolutely NUTS. Ding ding ding ding ding ding dingity dingity ding. Eventually it got sorted out and Mooon Yooonit shut up.

It was just a few days more than a year ago that we spent our annual long weekend with our North Country Trail buddies in the DNR lodge at Tahquamenon. The coronavirus was in the back of our minds (at least MY mind) but nobody was talking about it. There we were, sharing space, eating together, going to the Tahquamenon Falls Brewery Den of Iniquity. Little did we know what was lurking.

I remember sitting there in the Den, which was jam packed as always and we were all packed around a table. Yeah, just pull up a chair, we’ll squeeze you in! I was sitting next to a Canadian woman who lives near Gros Cap, across from Iroquois Point at the mouth of the St. Marys River. I said, “I can see your house from my cabin” and LEANED IN to show her a pic. Of course I can’t really see her house but I have been looking out from our family beach at the Gros Cap land formation my whole life.

We didn’t do the DNR lodge weekend this year because you know. The GG went up to meet with some DNR folks. I HOPE they are all masked and distancing appropriately. Hiking by itself is a low-risk activity that I don’t worry about. He is staying at the Driftwood with his other half and they are no doubt carpooling. I am forever nervous about these kinds of arrangements. I don’t think they quite get the fact that the coronavirus doesn’t give a flying you-know-what that they were once womb-mates. To the virus, a human is a human is a human, identical DNA or not. But despite the fact that the Twinz are not particularly aligned with me in a political sense, they do comply with “the rules” although the GG often pretends he’s gonna do risky stuff or tries to goad me to do risky stuff just to push my buttons.

This is one of my fave pics ever. The Comm, me, and the Engineer at Tahq. I think I was about eight. It totally cracks me up that nowadays I wear an almost identical winter outfit. Except that now it’s mostly black, sometimes with some sparkly bits.

Oh, not me although there were some times today when I wanted to. I won’t describe my workday except to say that Amazon Woman and I were online again this afternoon strategizing. She apologized for somebody running some kind of power tool in her house (she had a house built a couple years ago and is in the process of customizing various things). I couldn’t hear the power tool. My background noise was Trump yelling and screaming. She couldn’t hear that.

She has not been watching the SECOND impeachment trial. I have not been watching it either (I don’t really watch TV) but I usually have National Petroleum Radio on so I have been HEARING it at least when I actively listen to it. Make no mistake, I think the Orange Baboon will NOT be convicted. On the one hand, I am amazed at his lawyers’ idiocy (except it doesn’t really matter because he’s not gonna get convicted anyway). But yesterday the Dems played videos of Trump telling his “base” they needed to “fight”. Today, the “defense” strung together mini-clips of various senators and reps using the word “fight”. Over and over again… Difference? “Fighting” for help for disadvantaged people (who more often than not legitimately need help) is not the same as inciting insurrection. But whatever.

On the other hand, there are a LOT of incompetent lawyers out there, including the two who were hired to viciously harass me and my family after The Commander died. But you’d think tRump could afford better lawyers than the person who hired my family’s tormentors could. In the end, those lawyers didn’t do anything positive for their client, not that I could figger out. tRump’s lawyers are nothing more than theatre and bad theatre at that. But so what? He won’t be convicted.

Anyway, the top pic is of a large suspension bridge. I’ll let y’all guess which one. I didn’t take it. I’m on the Planet Ann Arbor. I did Plum Market curbside today and we have enough snow in the street that Ninja alerted me that her traction control system was activated. The bottom pic is the Twinz of Terror, who took the pic. Aren’t they cute with their Stormy Cromer hats and COVID hair? At least the GG (on the left) has COVID hair.

Another day, another dollar. I received the first pic from a beach urchin this afternoon. I know the elephants but I didn’t really process that they were driving a stick shift and not one that I recognized. The accompanying text message was an advance warning that a beach urchin was coming over in an hour or so to use the Landfill printer. Oh, okay, she’s printing her taxes, I thought. Fine. We’ll be masked.

I had a War Meeting with Amazon Woman scheduled during the time of printer usage. We are ramping up our next web app release and need to be on the same page regarding some slippery functionality and the vocabulary that will keep Mr. Bear from freaking out, aka it’s a REQUIREMENTS meeting, NOT a DESIGN meeting. Don’t ask me to ‘splain that. Jeebus.

It was all good. I figgered the beach urchin would come in, print something and leave and it wouldn’t interrupt my meeting in any significant way although I did mention to AW that my daughter would be stopping by.

And then… This brilliant orange entity pulled in to my driveway. I was expecting a dirty old green thing. This wildly disrupted our meeting and not because I suddenly disappeared behind a cat filter. I started yelling, “OMG, she has a new car!” AW asked if I wanted to call her back and yes, yes, yes, I did although I only needed a few minutes to suit up enough to go outside and take a pic.

This is not my story to tell but I have been on the periphery of it throughout the winter so I’m gonna tell my side of it. A car search has been going on for a while and I have (happily) been on the receiving end of umpteen gazillion text messages with links to Subaru and Honda cars. I have followed enough links that Facebook now regularly serves up Subaru ads alongside my timeline or whatever it is.

It is hard to buy your first vee-hickle (her previous ones were hand-me-downs from us). When I bought mine, my dad and brother – both bigtime car guys – were actively involved. Nowadays I let the GG pick out the vee-hickle and do the bizness end. He knows my rules. No American car companies. My experience with American companies is that the cars become problematical much earlier than Japanese. And most Japanese cars are made in the USA so I’m not sure they are taking jobs away from American workers. But that’s kinda beside the point.

This vee-hickle was previously named Betty. It may acquire a new name but since Radical Betty was my dad’s sister, my mom’s best friend, and a wonderful aunt to two generations of nieces and nephews, I believe it is a positive omen that this was its name.

I was talking about an ice storm drive yesterday and I will tell that story today. This pic is not from that story. I don’t have any pics from that story. I’m not even sure I had a viable camera then but even if I did, I wouldn’t have been using it because I was white knuckle driving on a four hour trip to the yooperland.

I was in college at Moo-U and I was driving a crappy old Pinto Wagon that my parents gave me when they were done with it. It was a 3-speed manual REAR-WHEEL DRIVE and basically green but rusty as all getout and was starting to develop various “issues” although nothing bad happened on this trip.

Spring break was coming up and the weather at Moo-U was gorgeous! Who was thinking about ice storms? Oh Michigan, you are so fickle in the spring. I drove north on a Wednesday. I couldda gone up the day before but my flute prof had scheduled a meeting to establish a new chapter of what he hoped would become a state-wide organization. I wanted to attend it. On Wednesday morning. He knew where I was going for spring break and I was one of his faves. He CAUTIONED ME not to drive in bad weather and said it would be fine if I missed the meeting. Oh, I’ll be okay, I’m a yooper, said I. Famous last words.

I started out on Wednesday morning and for quite a while, it was just “rain”. Or so I thought. I fergit exactly where I was when it turned into glare ice but all of a sudden people were fishtailing all over the place. I probably did too but I am blocking that and somehow we all got under control. For I can’t remember how many miles, we all drove maybe 25 mph tops. It was REALLY BAD. Somewhere south of Gaylord, my driver’s side veeeeendsheeeeld viper disintegrated. Could I see? Sorta?

Gaylord has always been a busy crossroads but it is crazy busy nowadays and I’m not sure if the old Standard gas station is just off the freeway now or not. They were always GREAT back in the day so I limped into their station, got some gas and asked if they had a veeeeendsheeeeld viper replacement for my crappy old car. Not only did they HAVE ONE, they cheerfully replaced it for the price of the part. I think I paid something like seven dollars or so.

I also found a pay phone in Gaylord and called my parents. The Commander said, “GET A HOTEL ROOM!” I didn’t. It was dark the rest of my trip and the ice had changed to snow. It was a little less dicey so although I didn’t drive the speed limit (55 at the time) I could get up to about 50 but every time somebody tried to pass me, I slowed down to 40 or 45 and got as far to the right as I could. When I got home, my “little” brother (who was in college at MTU in the Keweenaw) called to say he was on his way home so then the parents had to worry about him. He made it safely also (in his vintage VW bug, also a family artifact). He was a better snow/ice driver than I was or at least braver (or more foolhardy) about it.

In the pic is the first vee-hickle I bought NEW, a 1979 Ford Fiesta. The pic is in MAY 1984. The GG and I had driven to the cFam Hoton Lake cabin for a weekend. This is what we encountered on our way home on Sunday morning. The older beach urchin was a few months on the way and we had our house purchase in the works. When we went back up to Hoton Lake a week later, we had closed on the house and I got a bit sunburned. Baby was born in October as scheduled.

We haven’t had BIG SNOW yet this year in the SE Great Lake State. Don’t get me wrong. There’s still plenty of time for that. But to date, I have worn my winter BOOTS exactly ONCE and I probably didn’t really need them that day. Mostly I wear a pair of Keen sandals with YakTrax attached. I am not wearing these sandals over bare feet. I wear tights and smartwool socks and my feet have been warm in 10 degree weather.

We are getting temperatures in the teens this week and I continue to be amazed at all the people who walk by my “office” aka the Green Couch without hats. How can y’all stand to be out in 11 degrees with your head and ears uncovered? Nobody cares about what your hair looks like especially during COVID. And this isn’t about the old wives’ tales where going outside in the cold with wet hair makes people sick. That doesn’t make people sick. Viruses make people sick. I love the feeling of having my head and neck enclosed in my smartwool balaclava with my bomber hat on top of that when it gets too cold, like it has this week. I wear my balaclava even when the temp is in the 30s. Because I am a woman and also wear skirts when I walk, I don’t think I freak anyone out.

I don’t think my balaclava is good as a MASK so I keep a MASK in my jacket pocket on the rare chance that I may have to be close to another person on my 0-skunk-30 walks. But I don’t usually because on the 1% chance that I actually see another person, we are easily able to socially distance. Occasionally that means I have to galumph off the sidewalk into the street or schoolyard to avoid someone but that is a rare occurrence at 0-skunk-30.

I don’t really want Big Snow this year. I don’t have to drive anywhere except for curbside pickup so I am cool. I have to worry (because I am a MOM) about my adult child who lives out in a glacial area of the county with crazy driving conditions even in the summer. But as an adult, she and her partner are handling it and guess I should just chill out.

I remember when my parents did that with me, when I drove from college to the yooperland in a frickin’ ice storm and made it safely. Some day I might talk about that.

So this is the other pic I took on our foray out into Washtenaw County yesterday. This time I made the GG back up and get into exactly the right position to get the signs in their entirety. I was a wee bit nervous that the folks in the farmhouse might notice us and come out a-shootin’ but we were undisturbed. And yes, I am exaggerating.

I posted this on Instagram yesterday along with a STRONG DISCLAIMER that I am NOT a Trump fan. A young friend noticed the irony (is that the right word?) about jobs and mobs, comparing it to January 6, 2020. And yes, that’s one of the main reasons I took the pic. Because I STILL don’t know why people continue to support Trump. Again. He does not care about anyone in this country except HIMSELF (and maybe Ivanka).

A month or so out from the Great Deplatforming, a lot of us are breathing a lot easier. I don’t really ever have much trouble sleeping. I do sometimes wake up at that Batscope Hour and struggle to get back to sleep. But I made peace with that many years ago. What I hated in the Trumpian era was waking up when it was TIME to wake up. I would check weather and email and then I would flip over to Twitter. Jeebus! Who did he name-call? How many times did he call himself the best president ever? Who did he faaaaarrr? A classic bully with a worldwide platform.

Why did I follow his Twitter feed? Because it felt like my civic duty to keep track of all the crapola he tweeted. Maybe I couldn’t do anything about his nutsy-ness but I knew that we HAD TO GET THIS ASSHOLE OUT! In the end I didn’t convince any of my own speshul Trumpers (I tried) but enough others were apparently convinced that he is out. Thanks y’all!

Once again and this time I’m shouting it from Lady Liberty. I grew up in a family that voted republican. Trump is not the kind of republican my parents voted for and what the republican party is turning into does not reflect my parents’ values. Aside from that, Lady Liberty says that not wearing a mask during a pandemic is NOT exercising freedom. It is endangering other people’s lives. I know. She told me.

Love y’all but please please please wear a mask,
KW

Putt-putting along out in the county in Mooon Yooonit, slow as she goes. I love trees like this, especially in the winter when you can see their bones. Oak? I dunno. I know red pine and white pine and a few others, tamarack, etc.

My yooperland granddaddy (Grandberry) once took a bunch of us kids on a walk down the old overgrown two-track to the Three Sisters (three similar sized red pine trees in a row) when we were very small and taught us the difference between red and white pines – number of needles, bark, etc. I’ve never been much of a naturalist but I remember those lessons clear as a bell. I think my mouse has some of the same DNA as her great-granddaddy. Also her great uncle Austin from the Commander’s side of the fam. He kept things like owls in the refrigerator as a kid and grew up to run the Great Lake State DNR.

Anyway, there was one of these trees (in the pic) over at Cubelandia and I swear every time I drove home from work I wanted to take a photo. 13 years and never did. Yes I could drive over there now, after all it’s a Pittsfield Township public street. Somehow I lack motivation for that. My long and lovely sojourn of being physically located over there is over and we’re off into a new age.

Today I saw this tree. We slowed waaaay down and I grabbed this pic. As I was taking it, I realized there was a streak of windshield glare or reflection or whatever you want to call it. I *could* have gotten OUT OF THE CAR and taken a better one without the glare. For whatever reason, I didn’t think of it. For about a split-second, I was thinking it wasn’t worth posting anywhere. Then I got hold of myself! Hey, KW, OWN this! Call it a flying saucer and you are good to go!

Grandberry? My yooper granddaddy was a legendary blueberry picker. Once when I was a young teenager, he returned from a berry picking trip and Radical Betty (Grandberry’s daughter) and some other ladies in her generation were, well, a little bit lit from a weeee bit of Day Drinking. Yee hee hee. Radical Betty looked at his haul and said, “Look at all the strawdaddies Grandberry has picked!” I’m a little puzzled by this thinking back on it because I know of no big wild strawberry patches up there. Blueberries, yes, and he knew where they were, including on our land. Anyway, we all laughed uproariously. Except probably Grandberry, who was a teetotaler.

So, I went to move a chicken from the freezer to the refrigimatator today so it would be thawed so the Master Chef could grill it tomorrow. It wasn’t there. Um, hmmm… Well.

COVID chicken that I am, I am finding it almost IMPOSSIBLE to keep the GG on the same level of lockdown I keep myself on. There are trips to Kroger to get beer and stuff for FlaMan and “sandwich thins” for himself. There are endless trips to hardware stores and occasional forays over to REI to drop off North Country Trail propaganda and “look around”.

As the pandemic wears on albeit with a few pinpoints of light out there in the darkness, I have loosened my attempted restrictions on him a wee bit despite many misgivings. If he’s walking to downtown, I “let” him set foot into Kerrytown to get the chickens he likes to grill and lamb stew meat and swordfish scallopini or whatever we have a hankering for. He does comply with masking as I think most people on the Planet Ann Arbor do. Although today, when he walked down to get the chicken he didn’t get the other day, he had an encounter somewhere in the area with an unmasked predator. There are sometimes shady characters near the Main/Miller intersection. But he moved past the guy without engaging.

Vaccine? Yes but not easy to get for now. It’s okay. I am not an essential worker. My parents are long dead so I don’t have to deal with them. BTW thank god they didn’t have to live through this crapola. I am a privileged person with a job I can telecommute to and I have the resources to order groceries, etc. whenever I want and from wherever (yer taaaarrred o’ hearin’ all that).

Essential workers NEED to be first in line and I consider TEACHERS and GROCERY/RETAIL WORKERS to be just as essential as health care workers. They are up front and center with the public. I don’t understand why the in-person school issue has been politicized as a frickin’ union issue. Teachers fear for their lives and their unions SHOULD be supporting them. That’s not a party politics issue to me. It is life and death. My mom was a teacher goddammit and so glad she lived into her 90s without being taken out by a student breathing on her.

I did a nice curbside pickup at Plum this morning and then Argus Farm Stop delivered a bunch of stuff later on. Rainbow carrots and a ton of spinach and beautiful little red onions and Lotus Farms goat cheese spread and Roos Roast Lobster Butter Love coffee beans and asparagus-filled ravioli and Uncle Peter’s pasties and and and I fergit what else. I haven’t ordered from Argus since before xmas but that’s mainly because I needed to have a Come To Jesus meeting with my pandemic grocery stash.

So the lamb stew meat the GG DID buy the day he didn’t buy a chicken (he was SUPPOSED to buy lamb stew meat so that was cool) is simmering with rainbow carrots and some onions and some dried cherries that aren’t in my vintage Sunset recipe book but were on my counter so what the heck.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. I had a meeting so I finally had to shut the door between the GG’s Upstairs Lair and my office the room the Green Couch is in. And then there was a loooooong trip to the hardware store and finally a bunch of bumping and banging noises emanating from the Landfill Dungeon.

Finally at the end of the day I asked. WHAT were you doing all afternoon? Fixing the bote motor. Well… Which bote motor? We have TWO putt-putt motorbotes at the moomincabin (and some canoes and all kinds of kayaks). One of them “belonged” to my brother or so they say. My parents paid for it. Or at least the motor? I cannot keep all this stuff straight. It’s better than Hoton Lake where my late father-in-law used to say, “Some men have 50-foot botes. I have 50 feet of bote.” One of those botes migrated to the moomincabin and joined my brother’s (or parents’?) motorbote.

All I know is that one of our motorbotes is tippier than the other upon entry and exit and if you have decided to go commando, as I do at certain times of day, you are at risk of flashing everyone in sight if you make an ungraceful exit. TMI? 🐽🐽🐽 Good thing it’s a “private” beach and I’m married to the only person who saw.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this bote motor is a major bane of my existence but it was a nit for a while after my brother died because for a while it resided in my back living room, which is not a good place for a bote motor. Then again, when my aunt Radical Betty married Dcuk after WWII, their first wedding anniversary gift purchase was a bote motor.

I lost my train of thought but I also beat back some crapola that is better not expressed on the internet. Apparently the motor tipped over last summer and this cowling got damaged. And now it is fixed.

On a tangent, the radio was just playing “They’re Coming to Take Me Away Ha ha”. Jeebus. Memories of walking home from junior high with my friend Helen singing that at the top of our lungs, laughing uproariously. And then there was the day we were walking around in the biggest rainstorm on earth and there was mud EVERWHERE and we were singing a song of our own making. Mudmen mudmen mudmen mudmen. Mudmen Mudmen all day long. Etc. And laughing uproariously. We were so silly and we had so much fun.

I got to the door in time to yell to the UPS guy delivering my fancy crab meat from Luke’s Lobster that WE HAVE AN ICE RINK HERE SO BE CAREFUL.

Our Ice Rink is a very localized one. It occurs just outside our front door, off our porch. The drainpipe from the gutter drips snow melt when the weather warms up and it collects on the driveway and FREEZES INTO A FLAT SHEET OF GLARE ICE. An ice rink. In general, the sidewalks around here are dry at the moment. At least they were this morning. It is snowing to beat the band tonight.

I am an Ice Engineer after a lifetime of living in the Great Lake State. What works the best is that after you have cleared your sidewalk, you throw some salt down on whatever is left. This [usually, see caveat] prevents your sidewalk from turning into an ice rink. If you do not throw some kind of EFFECTIVE de-icer down on your sidewalk, whatever is left will re-freeze and turn into an ice rink. Skates anyone? Caveat: If there’s an ice storm none of this applies.

Throwing salt on an ice rink doesn’t really work all that well. I think both the GG and I have thrown salt on the rink in the pic twice. I started thinking maybe sand would work better? I mean if we put enough sand on it, at least it might provide more traction because the salt just seems to be melting little holes in the ice without getting rid of the whole goddamn rink. He kvetched about that at first, like then we would be schlepping sand into the house. But then he went over to Vet’s Park to get some sand, etc. Where my brain was going with the whole tracking sand into the house thing was that people are ALWAYS tracking sand into the moomincabin in the summer and we just deal with it…

I am sometimes the Ice Police too although I have never turned in a neighbor as much as I may have wanted to. I *have* stealth salted people’s sidewalks from time to time. If you ever see a totally black (small b) figure in a balaclava and long skirt out by your sidewalk in the dark of winter, it’s me and you know you’ve violated my rules (and probably the Planet Ann Arbor’s too). But I won’t turn you in.

I know nothing! I love the late John Banner, don’t you? Sergeant Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes. Mr. Golden Sun must be working his magic on me because more often than not, I am now making it through Green Acres reruns plus the first rerun of Hogan’s Heroes. Do not get me wrong. I love the darkness surrounding the winter solstice and thrive on it in some ways but I am sometimes a wee bit sluggish for a while after xmas.

Plus I never know what the heck my job will throw at me from day to day. Brain-twisting puzzles or mind-numbing html updates. This week it was mostly the former with a brief respite into the latter. Except that I do have an agonizing html task on my plate. I mean, I can easily do html. I just need to figger out how to “restructure” (or whatever) a particularly nasty, organically grown page in our hi-fi prototype. I can do it. I think. But not today.

So I randomly came across this pic. It is my kitch before the 2014 gut. Isn’t it loverly? Not. I think this reno was done in the 70s. We were so happy to be able to buy a REAL HOUSE in 1982 that we lived with this kitchen for… 32 years. It’s okay, the so-called bones are pretty good and I love the neighborhood.

Finally we hired Certified Kitchen Lady and she helped us do a redesign. She and her team guided us through gutting the wholly old crapola kitch and installing everything new. I loved CKL. We never had a disagreement and the only time I was nervous dealing with her was when I had to kinda push her into believing that I REAAAALLLY wanted teal blue tile. I think she was wondering if I might regret it? Nope. And neither did she and they even entered my little kitch into a contest. It didn’t win but oh, well. It’s just a little galley kitch after all🧡

And then there was Jerry the carpenter (“Jerry is a genius” – the GG) who somehow extricated “Mouse” off the wall from where Mouse wrote her name there at the age of 2-1/2. It is intact and framed now.

P.S. We bought Gretchen Gertrude (double-oven stove) a few years before we renovated the kitch. A story for another day.

I had some thoughts of posting about groundhog day but then I thought, “We’re living groundhog day”. (I am not the first person to say this.) But maybe I do have a few things to say after all. The last time I lived groundhog day was the last few months of The Commander’s life when I spent a surreal period of time “stuck” in Sault Ste. Siberia, schlepping up and down the escarpment in my YakTraks with two laptops in my backpack (I did have a car there with me) and listening to the song of her oxygen musheen.

I do like to note that groundhog day is a cross-quarter day, being half-way between a solstice and an equinox. And it means that “winter” is half over although we are predicted to get our coldest weather so far soon and who knows how long it’ll last. Probably until May as per usual. I don’t think I’ll watch the Bill Murray movie [again]🐽

Yesterday a facebook friend posted her new rescue dog playing with its birthday Lampchop toy. Its xmas Lambchop toy is already shredded. I looked over at Gertrude and yes, there was my childhood dog Tigger’s favorite toy sitting on top. It doesn’t have a name that I remember but it still squeaks. Who knows why it has lasted so long. My parents always said that Tigger had a “soft” mouth, whatever that means. I do remember her playfully shaking the cat’s head around – the cat didn’t seem to mind – but she did not like the cabin milkman or our friend Kev. Oh no no no. I don’t think she ever seriously tried to bite anyone except maybe for the kids who came through the yard and hit her on the head with geography books. She was chained the months we lived in town. That would probably horrify today’s responsible dog owners but that was a different era. And she ran free without so much as a collar summers at the moomincabin. Which would also horrify… … … Again, a different era.

It turned out I was a one dog woman. We got Tigger when I was five. She was a stray puppy who turned up at my dad’s boss’s back door and they knew we were looking for a dog. I was TERRIFIED of dogs and my parents thought it would help and it did. After approximately eight hours, I was totally in love with her. I wanted to name her Goldie but my aunt Bubs’s suggestion of Tigger prevailed. As bouncy as she was, that was a much better name. Goldie? Really, KW?

I have not been afraid of dogs since, at least not categorically. I do appreciate dogs that have responsible owners because I do NOT like them to jump up on me while their owner stands around simpering, “He’s friendly”. But nowadays, at least on the Planet Ann Arbor, most owners I encounter are pretty good at controlling their animals.

Anyway, as an adult I knew I didn’t want to have to look after a dog. Kids were more than enough for me. I did spend a fair amount of time tending my brother’s dogs when he left them with me and our parents at the moomincabin. He had between one and three at any given time. I loved them but he allowed them to do some things that made The Commander cringe – getting up on the couch being the main thing. Tigger wasn’t even allowed in our Superior Street living room, shabby as it was.

So here is Tigger hanging out in the driveway of our shabby old Superior Street home with our VW bug. I must have better pics of Tig somewhere…

I cheated on this one. I was not present and therefore did not take the pic. I mean, I can’t exactly put a bunch of courthouses in the Landfill, roight? So I have to make do with photos. The GG and one of his girlfriends were down hiking in O-haaa-oh for a long weekend and he got this pic of the Miami County courthouse in Troy. At least I *think* it is the courthouse. Some kind of government building anyway.

This marks the first photo I have “tweaked” in Affinity Photo. I clicked a colorful button and it amped up the flat grays and browns in the original pic just a wee bit. In PhotoShop, command-shift-b did that kind of thing. Right? Or am I losing my PhotoShop muscle memory already?

A few weeks ago we drove past a fancy courthouse in Napoleon. Henry County, O-haaa-oh. We were wheeling around like crazy and I didn’t get a pic. The GG said, “We’ll get one on Monday and it’ll be sunnier”. Alas, we didn’t get one on Monday because we returned to the Great Lake State on the I75 Snowbird Geezerway and it was NOT sunny. Okay, Napoleon can be a day trip some nice future weekend day. Kinda like going to Indiana without any moonshine.

I hate when counties update their courthouses with modern buildings. Chippewa County (quite a few years ago now) renovated the original buildings of both the courthouse and the old federal building down by Brady Park. I *think* I remember it being the post office back when I was very small.

I do remember when the 1st National Bank (dad and granddaddy’s) was in an old building down on Portage, kitty corner from rival Sault Savings Bank. Dad’s bank building is long gone and has been an empty lot next to the Alpha Bar forever. I remember when the new modern bank got built up Ashmun Street a couple blocks. Boy oh boy, was that a fancy place. I remember a cute kid-sized teller booth and a ticker-tape musheen and blonde wood everywhere and a metallic gold-suited Santa Claus at fancy xmas parties where us kids got cookies and punch and the grown-ups had cocktails and yee-hawed.

I am way off into tangent-land so here’s one more. I was partners with my friend Miles in 10th grade chemistry. I haven’t seen him in many years but when we did occasionally bump into each other, he always remembered when he dripped hydrochloric acid on my leg, an imaginary event. Miles was very smart if not very academically focused and in a convo with Mr. T., he asked an off the wall question and Mr. T. told him not to go off on tangents. Which cracked me up.

Tangentially yours,
KW

That’s about where I am today. It’s a great improvement over last Sunday but that’s all I will say about that. First world problems.

It’s the end of January and I actually kind of pulled myself out of whatever wee winter mini-funk I’ve been in and did some relatively serious chores. Cleaned one of Gertrude’s ovens (I cleaned the other one a few weeks ago or so). Mopped floors. I do this stuff fairly frequently anyway except for the ovens which are MOSTLY used on low to heat up leftovers. Not a whole lotta messy cooking going on around here.

The Guru pointed me to Affinity Photo as a Photoshop replacement and although I have barely scratched the surface of what it can do, I can tell it will waaaaaay more than cover my meager needs. For $25 or something (I got it on a half-off sale). When I bought Adobe Creative Suite a gazillion years ago, the full price was something like $3000. Because I was a student, I got it for $300. Now it’s a subscription. Anyway, thanks to the Guru for steering me to Affinity!

Shoveling? Just barely. We got MAYBE an inch overnight. It was supposed to continue throughout the day but didn’t. But I did my civic duty by pushing a shovel around for a few minutes and throwing a little salt down. I think the salt would’ve done the job without the shovel. I used to do almost all the shoveling here but after the GG retaaaarred, he pretty much took it over and upgraded our equipment with the addition of a snow-thrower, a yooper-sized one at that. I have [conveniently] not bothered to learn how to use it. I’ve never learned to use a lawnmower either. Long boring story there.

After all that and some other chores, I settled down to re-read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Except it’s only sort of a trilogy. There are seven books now with the addition of two sequels and two prequels. Given that he started expanding the series in the early 1980s, I may have been semi-aware that there were more but I was toiling away at my Childhood Career and creating new human beings around then and more likely to be reading things like Mouse’s Train Ride or The Dreaded Cat Family Book [not its real title]. It’s interesting revisiting this old sci-fi stuff in many ways. I’ll save most of those for some other day but I was about half-way through the first book (302 pages on my phone) when I started wondering why there weren’t any female characters. One finally makes a fleeting appearance on page 233 and a second possibly more substantial one comes in a page or so later. I’m not kvetching about this. It was a different era and it was what it was. I am curious about whether the later additions to the series will include more female characters.

P.S. I remember very little about the Foundation trilogy 🐽🐽🐽