Random bits of my so-called life.

Yesterday the GG helped our our mouse finish her 2025 100 miles of hiking on the North Country Trail. I think they did a lot of road walking because I have seen this boot before and I think it is on a roadside. I hate road walks but whatever it takes. They had to walk out to this boot and back.

They had lunch in Albion on the way home. Fun fact: my Uncle Don did undergrad at Albion College (and then med school at uMich). My daughters could have actually gotten some kind of discounted tuition at Albion because their great uncle went to school there in the Jurassic Age (go figger). They chose Kalamazoo College instead. It’s okay, With financial aid, we could afford it and it was a great college. So is Albion.

I had a slow day. I am having a slow bit of time. People seem to be worried about me but as a “Finnelson” I will phoenix outta this. It’s what Finnelsons do and I have done it a few times before. I’m just reorganizing myself. I need time and space. Please please please give that to me. It’s much less to do with job loss (a blip with a shit ton of severance pay) than friend loss (Sari). And it’s a goddamn dark fugly time of year.

One thing I am NOT gonna do is jump off the Mackinac Bridge. For the second time in a week or so, the bridge closed today because a suicidal person parked their car and stepped over the rail. Thank the gods, this person was encouraged to step back across the rail onto the bridge and was taken to safety. I cannot actually imagine jumping off the Big Mac but apparently it happens quite frequently and most people don’t hear about it.

But I am okay and cooked turkey “tetrahedron” while kitchen dancing to whatever was on the radio and then we watched Svengoolie, who was playing a nutso vintage movie about robots and the GG fell asleep during that and I sent a pic of that to the beach urchins but will not post it here. I wasn’t sure if he would wake up in a reasonable time for bed but then I heard P-ing noises coming from the bathroom. I was told that was TMI and maybe it is.

This year I asked for (and received) a little piece of the Mackinac Bridge grate. The bridge was completed in 1957 and in 2017 they started replacing the grate in the middle two lanes of the bridge bit by bit.

At first they were selling great big grate pieces like too big to fit in your house but after a while they started selling little pieces like this. The other problem was that you could only get them by going to the bridge IN PERSON and while we traverse the bridge frequently, we never seem to be there at the right time. Somehow I got it into my head to try Etsy and VOILA! Of course, enterprising people who live a bit closer to the bridge have been scooping up grate pieces when they are available and they are ALL OVER ETSY. So I bought a couple pieces for the beach urchins and put it on my own xmas list with a note to check Etsy.

This is what I was gifted with. It isn’t the best pic given our dark crappy rainy ice storm winter day but there is an atomic rabbit who arrived with the grate and some fugly landfill crapola in the background just to keep it real.

In turn, I found a cool albeit dangerous looking knife made out of retired Mackinac Bridge grate steel for the GG. It was forged by a Michigan craftsman who included a hand-written note. There was even a reference to a bible verse. Although I am not religious at all, I am always happy to support small businesses and this all just about brought me to tears. Embiggen it because it is gorgeous.

I don’t think I will make a habit of collecting retired Mackinac Bridge grate fragments or knives made out of their steel but it was important to me to own a little piece of the bridge and I knew the GG would like the knife. I have vague memories of taking ferries across the Straits of Mackinac on our trips to see our Detroit grandparents and other down-state relatives. My dad and I would walk up to the upper ferry deck and he and I would walk around in the dark with our hands in our pockets. I also remember us traveling across the bridge the first day it opened and have a little card commemorating that event. These cards were handed out blank by the toll booth personnel (they were really busy) and my mom filled ours out. Dad, Mom, me, and my 3-month-old brother. I am the only one of us left.

So another xmas is a wrap. We had six people this year. Our dining table extends enough to fit six people but the surrounding space isn’t really all that big so we hung out in the back room with football (silenced) on the TV and music in many languages on the pod. A lot of it Celtic but not all. A couple of fireplace whisperers fed the faaaaar and all was well.

This is the Solo stove the GG asked for and I provided. I’ve had my eye on these stoves for a while now. They keep flying by on facebook and they look really cool but I didn’t explore them because 1) I will not click on a facebook ad to buy ANYTHING and 2) I wasn’t really sure the GG might want one. It turns out his ID twin has one and the GG likes it. Still, I did not click on a facebook ad. I went straight to the company site in my browser and ordered it from there. I am surprised at how big it is and not sure which vee-hickle he is gonna squeeze it into. But that’s his problem, as long as the vee-hickle is not Cygnus because she is mine and I hate when she is filled up with crapola.

Oh yeah. I got a BATTERY! I am laughing about this because there is a facebook meme about how your wife never forgets the year you gifted her a MOP. Well. I have never received a MOP but the GG and I have a long history of giving each other vacuum cleaners. Happily received. Yes really. This year I asked for a Dyson cordless vac. We have two already (we have a lot of vacs) but there are battery issues with each, some of them our errors. So what did he get me? A BATTERY for a Dyson cordless. Am I happy? Yes, unless it doesn’t charge properly. If it doesn’t, a Dyson cordless will be on my bday (January) list. Unless I just get out there and order my own.

Merry merry if you celebrate xmas and cheers to a wonderful day if you don’t.

Will there be an ice storm tomorrow morning? Time will tell.

The solstice pig is at the mouse house and it’s her photo, not mine. We are a few days beyond the winter solstice. That means sunrise is still late and getting a bit later every day but sunset is also getting later. I don’t totally understand the rules. I enjoy the dark at both ends of the day but this year, I am kind of surviving. Don’t worry, I am okay. Or will be.

I am kind of phoning xmas in this year. I have gifts for people but a few of them are still not wrapped. But I’ll get there. And there might be a couple of surprise gifts. Ya nevah know.

For tomorrow, I have mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts ready to go into the hopper. And cranberries and stuffing. I was gonna make Chex Mix this afternoon but out of the bazillion bottles of condiments in the refrigimitator, Worchestershire sauce was scarce so my mouse is bringing some over tomorrow. It’s December and I am still somehow in the throes of the annual “combinding” of the moomincabin condiments with the Landfill condiments. Another topic for another day. We have a couple of chickens to grill tomorrow and I need to remind the GG that I bought some fancy little oranges that we can stuff them with. Because we don’t stuff birds with actual stuffing. That’s a separate dish.

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At some point during the cFam xmas party last night, I realized that I didn’t know where mouse and the racc were. Oh, said Little Cat Z, they said an Irish goodbye. I’d never heard that term before (even though I have a significant amount of Irish DNA) but it means they sneaked out without saying goodbye to anyone (or at least most people).

This was a-okay with me!!!! When we and our next door cousins leave the moominbeach our usual way of saying “we’re out” is to honk a master salute as we are driving out. Long goodbyes have always driven me crazy. Some (but not all) of the cFam are prone to looooong goodbyes. The GG always says trying to leave FlaMan’s place is like talkin’ to Colombo, an old TV detective, and that’s kinda what happened yesterday when we were trying to leave his apartment.

Years and years ago when my beach urchins were very young, we were trying to leave the cFam grandparents’ condo in Crazy Old Florida to return to the Great White North. We had a breakfast plan at I fergit which fast food restaurant. We were in the in-law’s driveway trying to leave and I didn’t feel like we were ever gonna get outta there. I loved my in-laws but they segued into recommendations about various restaurants we should go to instead of our fast food choice. Nope. We wanna get outta Dodge and head north. I love Florida but when it’s time to go back north, it’s time.

The funny thing was that whatever that restaurant was, I LOVED the women at the window. I HATED the food. Oh well. It did get us outta Dodge.

P.S. The pic is scarves that our lovely nephew Flec (not his real name) uses to juggle. He is a fantastic juggler among many other things and the scarves are very handy when you are working with very young children, like the ones who were at yesterday’s party, including his daughter. We have some good people in our family(ies). I always have a good time talking to Flec.

I *think* this photoooo is pretty okay to post. It shows a few people at the annual cFam xmas party but definitely not everyone who attended and those shown are not easily identifiable although my daughters and the racc are in the middle, back in the background. But I’ve got nothin’ else for a pic today.

Getting there was a bit of an odyssey though. FlaMan was missing some items in his apartment and we had to drive NORTH from where the party was to deal with that and deliver some food. We had Little Cat Z with us for that little excursion and she was of great help. Although we spent most of the time in the living room watching Gunsmoke reruns. Gunsmoke is actually not a bad show as long as the volume is down and you aren’t streaming it from someplace that inserts five minutes of ads every fifteen minutes. When we got there, FlaMan was in a deep sleep and a sweet FlaMan whisperer was in his apartment doing some cleanup chores. She was calling both him and the GG “babe” if memory is accurate. Eventually at least some of his missing items were found and LCZ heated up a frozen dinner for him. Alas, he wasn’t really in a good place to go to the party. Which was kind of a good thing because we’d’ve had to drive him home again, adding 20-30 minutes to *our* trip home. Oh don’t worry, he was okay, just not in the mood to party. After an hour and a half at his place, I was ready for some whine.

My modus operandi for these parties has become to sit at the kitchen table with the Lady of Linden (it’s at her house) and let people come around and talk to me. So that is what I did. Like many families these days, our family is a bit politically divided but after a while some of the younger folk migrated to the table and we had a meeting of minds about our current government. They know what I’m all about. I also had some good (and polite) discussions with some of those who disagree with my views. There was even some laughter about Trump/MAGA hats at some point. Throughout all of it, the little kids romped around like wild Indians, oblivious to politics. Siblings and cousins and second cousins. I didn’t manage to count how many people were there.

Posted this pic before. It is my grandaddy serving a couple of young girls at the 1st National Bank of Sault Ste. Marie children’s teller window. My granddaddy was the bank president and I was probably a toddler around this time. Grandaddy was very kind to children but I’ve been told not so much to people not paying their loans.

My dad ended up being the bank president later on so I am the daughter and granddaughter of bankers. Their small-town bank got swallowed up by various holding companies, ending in PNC, which a lot of people might know about?

The main Planet Ann Arbor PNC branch closed recently, which meant that a whole bunch of people had to close out their safe deposit boxes. I’d had to do this a couple of times already, when our neighborhood Maple Village branch closed and when the Sault Ste. Siberia bank branch closed. That was the bank that I grew up in and my late parents had a huge safe deposit box with all kinds of crazy stuff in it. When we went up there, the bank folks couldn’t even open it for a while but they finally managed that and at the end of it all, the current bank branch manager (who happened to live next door to my mother’s house) said, “There are pictures of your dad and granddaddy in the basement. Do you want them?” Of course.

So. Banker’s daughter/granddaughter. Did I grow up rich? We weren’t rich or poor. I was often told (by my mother) that we were poor but we weren’t really. Just that a banking job does not always automatically mean a huge salary. We could afford what we needed but we were also very frugal. We were in a prominent family for whatever that’s worth. I had and still have mixed feelings about that although make no mistake I LOVE my family. They are good people.

As an adult, it kinda cracks me up that… 1) I always loved to do non-profit treasury jobs. Counting and organizing big piles of cash, coins, and checks and taking it all to the bank to deposit was fun fun fun for me. 2) It cracks me up that the adult career that I FELL into (after age 50) was fintech (online banking) systems analyst. I often wonder what my dad and granddaddy would have thought about that. Granddaddy died before computer technology and dad struggled when the bank started adopting it back in the Jurassic Age. So I’ll never know.

This photo kinda reminds me of the Hundreds of Beavers movie that the GG and I watched last March or whenever. It’s kind of a cult fave. We were porterized last night at their house. I kept looking at the GG across the room in this hat with its topknot. Nobody else was wearing a hat like this. To be fair, I BOUGHT him this hat. From Eddie Bauer or someplace.

We were trying to watch Svengoolie tonight but they’ve changed Svengoolie’s format and I have not been a fan of the more recent movies. They are too long and boring. It was a vampire thing tonight and that’s okay except that it took a helluva long time to get to the crux of the matter. I mean, when I was a young teenager and we had a f*cking outhouse (without a light) at the moomincabin, I dealt with vampires out there all the time. And werewolves and something can’t remember the name of that I made up. I was NOT in a fancy house in a fancy nightgown with big curving staircases and whatever else. I started to nod off so here I am trying write a coherent blahg entry.

It was a long sorta fugly day and the The GG kept wanting to go for a ride and I was like nooo, but then then we got most of the xmas gifts sorted out and I finally said, okay let’s go and so we did and here we are. He is in the bedroom watching football and I am headed there shortly.

I kinda hate the song Have Yourself a Merry Little xmas but that’s kinda what’s in my head now. And since I can carry a tune and have a decent voice (soprano or mezzo soprano), it isn’t really all that bad.

G’night, KW.

The Grinch seems to be everywhere this year. This is my cousin’s drink last night. Her husband over at Regenaxe has a better pic and lists the ingredients. I didn’t blahg yesterday because we met up with them and npJane a bit on the late side (for us) over on the other side of town. It was really fun but I was kind of done at the end of it all.

The Grinch seems to be everywhere this year. A children’s event at the Cozy Corners in Barbeau and a friend’s doggie daycare and the JKL Bahweting School and I dunno where else. I gather that the dogs were pretty nervous about the Grinch until they realized he was one of their beloved (female) caretakers dressed up in green. Dogs have a keen sense of who people are and what they smell like. I know because my brother’s dogs definitely trusted me. I was “Anne-Mom” and The Commander was “GrrMom”.

We have been calling one of my cousins the Grinch since we were all in high school or thereabouts. We were not all in high school at the same time as there is a 20 year cousin-y age spread but the Grinch and I are three years apart and have always been close. I’m not entirely sure how that nickname got started although there a few theories. But it stuck, at least within the fam. Most people he deals with know him by his first name, which is NOT Mike, which is what I grew up calling him. Go figger.

His mom was my aunt Radical Betty and as an Air Force family they lived all over the place. When Radical Betty and Duke retired to the yooperland, down the beach from us on family land, the Grinch ended up there too. He is a bit eccentric (aren’t we all?) but he turned into a construction worker who has a successful drywall business and employs a lot of folks in the area. I won’t talk about them (these days I don’t know most of them) but if y’all ever need a drywall bucket, I can probably get you one for free. With luck, an empty one.

Skeletor on the couch below the TV is not the problem. I do not get why people like the person on the TV screen. I just do not. I don’t even think Skeletor likes him although he has at times had to endure wearing a f*cking MAGA hat. Skeletor, I feel your pain.

I have wrapping paper “upshairs” but probably have to buy more. I don’t really want to buy more wrapping paper at all but…

We are trying to figger out xmas dinner… I don’t think we are grilling duck this year. And that’s okay. Maybe we’ll do a couple of chickens instead. Well see. I’m gonna let Little Cat Z help me figger out the menu. Maybe we’ll grill some blasted duck breasts for my blasted birthday in January,

Little Cat Z ran into the GG and our friend ValJ at Kerrytown today. I was hoping they met in a No Politics Zone. I dunno if that exactly happened but they did apparently talk for 45 minutes or so, therefore it might’ve been okay. I do NOT agree with the GG when it comes to politics. I am much more aligned with ValJ and his wife, who is a longtime friend of mine. They are the parents of Mouse’s friend Lairi the Rake and own yooperland beach property although theirs is on Lake Michigan, not Superior.

That’s probably how this post will be. Why? Well, because I went to my friend Sari’s funeral today. I got to know her when our kids were in middle/high school. Little Cat Z was pretty good friends with two of her daughters and I think they were in the same alternative middle school advisory. Was it called an advisory? I think so.

Around that time, I was HONORED to be invited to meet up with some of the other middle school moms and Sari was one of them, as well as Marci, for coffee/breakfast at Cafe Zola downtown. As time went on and kids got older, our group eroded as a lot of the moms went back to work. Including me eventually although my bosses the LSCHP and then Amazon Woman always encouraged me (and others) to keep up with non-work friendships and family. Always family. But Sari and Marci and I continued to meet all these years. We did change locations to Barry Bagels and then zoom (because covid).

So this funeral was at a synagogue. Will we know anyone there? I am a Celtic pagan type person but I grew up going to Sunday School so I can navigate mainstream protestant churches and even Catholic churches. Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak anyone? My husband’s childhood church. But I rarely go into religious establishments and haven’t for years. So I had a bit of social anxiety about going to a synagogue, even though I knew people would welcome me and of course they did. The GG was maybe one of the few men that didn’t have a yarmulke on but probably there were others. I don’t think anyone probably wore a Batman yarmulke like the LSCHP used to often wear at work.

Anyway we were walking in deciding where to sit and yo-ho-ho, there was Marci and her husband and their wonderful son and Marci said, “Do you want to sit with us?” Yes yes yes. Of course we do.

And the rest of it was what it was and after the pallbearers took the casket out (I didn’t even notice the casket and don’t think it was open, thank you very much) the rest of us were allowed to leave. We got in the car and LCZ asked who was hungry. I was. So we went to Casey’s Tavern.

I am not very much inclined to decorate xmas trees in general and this holiday season has not been the easiest one. The GG came home today and he, mouse, and the racc lightly decorated the tree. I am happy that every single blasted ornament is not on the tree. Lightly decorated is good.

I am happy that the angel my great aunt Elizabeth gave me as a small child tops the tree. One of the first xmases in the landfill, the GG accidentally shot her wand off sonehow. I was really pissed off at the time but he has pretty much made sure what is left of her tops the tree ever since. There were a lot of questions about where some of the other ornaments came from. I loved my step grandmother Bolette dearly (mom’s bio mom died way before I was born). Bolette did a lot of wonderful things in her life but making xmas ornaments was not one of them. The Commander made some really cool (and simple) ornaments.

Little Cat Z cooked a wonderful chicken dinner while people were decorating the tree and I was just kind of bumbling around feeling somewhat pitiful. Don’t worry. I’ll get over that. Losing a job at this stage of life is a blip. Losing a friend is not. Losing both is challenging. But onward.

Seva is a veggie restaurant that has been around Ann Arbor forever. It was downtown forever. We went there frequently. We even got my meat eating dad to go there. We also took him to Mountain Jack’s for steaks. When he ate lunch at Seva he would eat an egg salad sandwich with a chocolate frappe.

I have so many memories from that place. One was Little Cat Z sitting in my lap. She was maybe eight months old. Radical Betty was with us and talked about LCZ’s blueberry eyes, a lot like mine. “Mama, I don’t have some sharp eyes, I have some blue ones.” Yes.

Seva moved out to the Westgate shopping center and I just didn’t go there for a long time. I don’t even know why. It just didn’t seem right that it wasn’t downtown any more. And covid. My mouse suggested it yesterday but I thought I wanted a turkey naan at Sessions. We went to Sessions but I didn’t end up getting a turkey naan. But Seva stuck into my head and so today that’s what LCZ and I did. And although I will always miss the downtown Seva, they have done a good job with this and we will be back.

First, I am not sure I should be posting this pic at all. I mean the Uncly Uncle probably doesn’t care if his mug is in the pic but he might not want his grandson in there. It’s a few years ago though so I’m guessing it might be okay now? If it isn’t, I will happily take it down. He’s still a kid in this pic. He is a heartbreaker looking teenager now.

My mouse and the racc took such good care of me today (and the racc became an uncle!}. They collected me in Oriole and took me out to lunch, moved the carts up to the top of the driveway, and cleaned up some crappy iceola in the driveway.

And then there was the news that my blahggy friend Margaret and my cousin Jay met up for lunch! They are both in the PACNW and this was so cool. Jay blogs but not as frequently as Margaret and I. But I loved this!

Okay, I think I am done for tonight.

I guess I can blahg about this since her family has published her obit. A LONG time friend of mine died this week. Yesterday, I think. I am not even sure if I can go on with this. This day has been harder for me than the days my brother, father, aunt Radical Betty, and mother died. All of those times, I was taking care of people. Driving people to and from the yooperland. I did all that without even thinking much about what the hell I was doing.

Today I was watching from the sidelines. A woman with four children and five grandchildren. She has been my friend for something like 25 years. She renovated her house to accommodate her husband’s disabled sister and partner. I wonder who is gonna take care of all those people. I know it will work out but still. Goddamn I will miss this mensch. She called me a mensch first. I didn’t even know what that meant at the time (I am not Jewish) but I have since owned it even though I don’t think I really deserve it.

I am okay with all of this. My mouse came over to have a ‘hattan with me and we are probably meeting for lunch tomorrow. Mouse checked in with me first about my friend, having heard about it from a friend of hers on facebook. I already knew.

But life goes on here on the Ice Road Asteroid and I had to deal with taking my garbage/recycle carts out this afternoon. YakTrax? Yes. This is the mess of ice cement at the end of my driveway. Maybe it’ll melt someday (lol).

Love y’all, KW

I knew there would be slow days coming and I am working to deal with them. Not always easy though.

The GG and I set up the xmas tree yesterday. My job is to stabilize it while he screws in the stuff in the stand at the bottom. I always put a little pair of glubs on and stand there until it is stable.

So the tree is set up and actually there are now lights on it. I think he wants me to put ornaments on it. I’ve never been crazy about that job so we’ll see what I get done while he is outta town. It’s too much randomness for meeeeeee to figger out where to put ornaments.

I have grokkery and xmas errands to run tomorrow and this weekend so I am hoping there isn’t too much goddamn ice. Umpteen bazillion trucks came up and down the street today plowing and salting and whatever. This is not the usual thing so we’ll see how it works.

A facebook friend posted a video of driving down “my” road at the moomincabin the other day taking pics of turkeys. I was like, THAT’S *MY* ROAD! As you might be able to see from the screenshot, he even identified the area.

I have been facebook friends with this person (we’ll just call him Mushy) for years. I don’t think I have ever met him in person but he went to my high school five years ahead of me. I recognized his name when he friend-requested me and in accordance with my loose rules about accepting facebook friend requests I accepted his. I figured he knew some of my older cousins and my uncle probably delivered him.

And yes, my uncle did deliver him (and about a billion other babies) and not only that, after a bit of facebook interaction last night, he ‘fessed up to walking my cousin Susie home “up Prospect Street” from junior high or high school or whatever to home. Did he have a crush on her? I will never really know. Susie was very popular (unlike me) but also very particular about who she hung around with and that’s about all I know about that. I was just a little kid in those days although I had big crushes on boys and I mean local boys, not The Beatles. Like Paul McCartney would ever wanna hook up with me? Not a chance so why bother.

I am not at all freaked out about “Mushy” driving down our moominbeach road. He and I do not agree about politics at all so I don’t interact with his political posts. But then I don’t agree with my husband about politics either. What I have encountered about Mushy is that even though he doesn’t know me personally, he remembers my family with much love and on the off-chance I have responded to stuff he has posted and have been trolled, he ALWAYS shuts the trolls down. Fast. No. This woman’s family is wonderful. And we pretty much are.

So if he wants to drive down the moominbeach road, I am fine with it. Just don’t hit the turkeys, which he is not doing.

Today did not start out very auspiciously. Why? Moooon Yoooonit would not start. Why not? Because “someone” did not successfully close the back gate all the way and the battery discharged. Thankfully Cygnus handily jumped her and all was well. I did not have to deal with any of this except to watch it out the window and chuckle a bit.

This is not the first care package I’ve ever received from one of my sisters-in-law. This one is from The Lady of Linden (and the Lord) and it marks my “retirement”. Of course, y’all know I didn’t get a chance to officially retire. I was laid off. I lied about that on facebook but I won’t lie about it on my boring blahg of blather. It was okay. It was time and I was gonna retire in the next six months anyway. My status is such that I could even get re-hired at the company if there was a job that was a good fit. Some people have taken that route over the years but I won’t be one of them. I am done and happily so.

For a while I was wondering if I would “beat out” The Lady of Linden, like who would retire first? But she has beaten me (i.e., she still has a job) and I am very happy for her. Totally different job situation, not Corporate America like me, more like family business. In Corporate America, layoffs happen and as I think I have said before, I knew that going in. In fact, when I was permanently hired, I’m pretty sure the laptop I was assigned belonged to someone who was laid off. Even though I don’t think I exactly replaced him, I have always felt a bit bad about it and hope he has done well in life. I KNOW who is replacing me and I am HAPPY for him. We were fast friends from the moment we met (he is a kayaker for one thing) and probably needs the job more than I do although I think he is totally afloat and nowhere near destitute. If only some of the old fossils in the damn government would give up their jobs to younger generations. It’s time.

So once the GG got Mooon Yooonit going this morning, he drove up to FlaMan’s place and the Lady of Linden got him to meet her in the area so she could pass off this loverly care package for meeeee. I got lucky in terms of sisters-in-law, the GG’s sisters (four) and his brothers’ wives (two). I miss The Beautiful Suzie. She was extra special to me and died waaaay too young.

Sam came over wearing a party skirt so I had to put one on too. The GG drove us over to Sessions in Cygnus X-1 for a loverly lunch and after that, dropped us off at the Plum Market to get a few things for dinner.

First of all, Kathy was in the entry way when we arrived. We only had a couple of things on our list and I usually do the uScan but I saw that Joyce was running a cash register so I went through her lane and introduced her to my BFF Sam. Sam and I were both wearing party skirts and it turned out that Joyce was also wearing a party skirt. The pic is only Sam and me but I kinda wish I had been together enough to make a pic with all three of us in party skirts. Somehow somebody alerted mouse that her moom was in the store so she met us in the checkout line.

I have been going through Joyce’s line since long before my mouse worked at that plum. Joyce “bullied” me into making my Plum app work on my phone, which turned out to be a life-saver when the pandemic hit. When my mouse started working there, Joyce figured out she was my daughter. She had noticed that my mouse seemed to know what she was doing right off the bat. She made the guess that it was because mouse used to work at the Plum on the other side of town, which was correct.

Anyway, we put lamb stew and garlic bread and salad together tonight and both of my local beach urchins came over for dinner. They hung out with Sam in the chitchen (gabbling about umbellifers among other things) while me and the GG and jcb hung out in the back room. I am so happy that my adult daughters love Sam so much that they come over to meet and gabble with her. I wish Hotlanta wasn’t so far away but we did make it work this weekend.