Actually, I have a bone to pick with the use of the phrase “up north”, even though I find myself using it more often than I’d like to admit, at least in casual conversation, as in, “I’m going up north this weekend.” I never knew that the phrase “up north” existed until I went to college and almost everybody was from somewhere in megalopolis and they always referred to anywhere north of, oh, I dunno, Saginaw, as “up north”. People like me were pretty much considered to be hicks. Other college kids didn’t quite get that I didn’t grow up anywhere near a farm or that my family was educated or that we traveled frequently to various places in and around megalopolis to visit relatives and shop and go to museums and even certain Big-10 football games. We won’t go into the games I played with people’s minds once I figured out that they thought I was some kind of northern hillbilly chick. (Oh,don’t take me toooo seriously about that…)

I am older now and I know better and, oh boy, I am trying hard to erase the snootiness of my youth and recover whatever northern hillbilly hickness I might have ever picked up over there on the streets of southside Sault Ste. Siberia. I used to actually be a pretty darn good athlete as a grade school kid. I could beat all the boys that challenged me at running, jumping, bi-cycling, and even a few ball games! But I don’t really remember any hickness there. People were just working as hard as they could to raise their children, like we all do.

I still have a hard time telling people down here on the Planet Ann Arbor that I’m going “up north”. When I was a kid, going to the moomincabin was called “going out to the cabin”. North? We were going west. About seven miles as the crow flies, 10-15 by road. We moved out there for the whole summer and Grandroobly could easily drive in to work every day. Now? Well. It’s even more complicated, since I hooked up with the GG and his huge family and their cabin at Houghton Lake. Because sometimes going “up north” means going to Houghton Lake and sometimes it means going to the moomincabin. And sometimes it means both. And most people don’t understand the concept of owning two cabins, so they get confused (me too, confound it!). But we do have ownership in two cabins, and the folks I work with are pretty darn quick (despite being the “geriatric” team) and they have learned to ask, “Are you going to Houghton Lake or the Upper Peninsula?” They get it and I love them!

So, not everybody was “up” north this weekend, but the GG and the UU and TBL and TMOTB/CMOH (hope I got that right) were at Houghton Lake. And the GG went north from there to the UP, where he will work on trail maintenance with his wonderful North Country Trail friends. And hang out with The Commander. My mother, as you might know.

And I am here at the Landfill on the Planet Ann Arbor because I have one o’ them thar jobs to go to this week. It is a good job and I can work from home and sometimes do. But it has been hard for me to get up to the moominbeach as often as I would like to for the last few years. I am lucky that the GG gets along with The Commander as well as he does.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 19th, 2010 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.