Start of summer MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Good Memorial Day, everyone! I’ve been on the phone all day, with two more long conversations ahead. I don’t know how many family can keep generating so much news during lockdown. I just wish more of it were good.

Lessee, summer memories. Back then we could roam the neighborhood, as long as we were home for dinner. The neighborhood was packed with kids, so there was always someone to play with. There was a little mom and pop store a block away, and 7¢ was enough to get a Popsicle to split with a friend. Moms had the magic ability to whack one on the counter edge and split it into perfect halves. The big excitement was what flavors would be in stock that day.

When it got hot enough, we’d run through the sprinkler. The first couple runs through required courage and a lot of squealing.

Watermelon had seeds then, and we always hoped one of the seeds spit on the lawn would grow into a vine. Farm kids, we weren’t.

Dad] used to take us to Strutzel’s for a frosty stein of root beer. It was only open in summer. I’m sure I’m not the only Chicagoland kid with fond memories of Strutzel’s. Best root beer anywhere. Or we’d go to Cock Robin for ice cream cones. Their ice cream scoops produced cubes, not globes. The Mr. Softy truck rolled through the neighborhood twice daily. Hey, I’ll get a vanilla and you get a chocolate, and we’ll make them “kiss” so we each get a taste of the other’s.

And lightening bugs! Winged magic.

Such good memories. Thanks, Mooooom!

22

Oh, man, I can’t wait till firefly season.

They have fireflies in Michigan, right? Please say they do.

Whaddabout if you eat the fresh meatloaf now, instead of freezing this and thawing that?

23

Howdy Y’all! Turned out to be a not so bad day, so we spent a little quality time at the cee-mint pond. Then we came in and et up the leftovers for sup. We are now all showered and chillaxin’ in the great indoors. Looks like tboomers could show up in a little while. Fine by me, I am inside and dry.

Cookie you are the same age as my oldest brother. Just thought you should know that. :smiley:

Nellie we should be gettin’ local watermelons in a couple of weeks. YUM! Lurve ice cold watermelon! Sometimes we adulterate a smaller one. Double yum!

24

When I was four my parents moved from Michigan to Florida and bought a house just up the street from my aunt and uncle and their three kids. Most summers, as soon as school was out the mothers would load all the kids into my Dad’s 57 Chevy station wagon and head for Michigan. The menfolk, being men, had to stay behind and work.

We would spend the entire summer until time for school to start at my grandparent’s farm. The farmhouse predated the [un]Civil war and didn’t have indoor plumbing at that time, unless you counted the pump next to the sink in the kitchen. There was an out house out back, but it was a fancy one. Two holes! Gramma said she wasn’t having no bathroom inside her house! I remember how pissed she was when my uncle installed one anyway. :smiley:
We kids would run wild through the woods behind the house, or during picking season, we’d join the migrant workers and pick cherries in the orchard next door for 25 cents a bucket and walk down to the old store (about 1/2 mile) in town to spend our hard earned cash.
Good times. :smiley:

The weather guessers said we were heading into a week of warm sunny weather here, so natcherly it rained. :dubious: We went out and scrubbed the deck furniture anyway. Not much else happening here today. I should go to the store, but prolly not.
Mañana.

I found my stash of watermelon seeds from the yellow fleshed watermelon I saved a couple of years ago and planted a couple in small pots to see if they’re still viable. If they sprout I’ll plant them over at the little house and see how that works out. Hope so. Those melons tasted like watermelon is supposed to taste.

Have a good week, y’all

25

I got so caught up in reminiscing, I neglected to say a few things:

swampy, your 50% chance of apocalypse remark gave me a badly-needed chuckle. And I’m with you on the watermelon. We often got ours at a wonderful produce stand owned by a guy who grew what he sold. That was luscious watermelon. If seedless watermelon had been a thing back then, I’d never have stopped eating it. Yum.

Does anyone eat salt on watermelon? I’m not a fan and would like this explained.

hippie, I am outraged by that soccer scam. And it does seem like a scam. Is there anywhere you could report this?

Sari, I hope you can get the pups into the vet without too much delay. Maybe you could have a little coming of age party for Echo with her dog park chums. :slight_smile:

shoe, I know some parts of Michigan get fireflies. The firefly population has really dwindled since my childhood. I don’t know why, but they’re not nearly as thick back in the midwest as they were even 30 years ago. Hope you get to catch a few!

26

metal mouse, you may be stuck with Sweet Home Alibammy this year travelwise. :slight_smile:

swampy,like you, I never had to go to school on my birthday, but it was because it fell over Christmas break.

[COLOR=“Purple”]shoe[color], yes, they do have fireflies in Michigan, only they call ‘em lightnin’ bugs. :smiley:

Growing up, summers meant working on the truck farm but staying at the lake. We usually spent a week in Wisconsin or northern Michigan and took a couple of trips to King’s Island and/or Cedar Point amusement parks. Another week was spent up at my maternal grandparents’ farm with the aunts and cousins butchering chickens for everyone’s freezer, along with riding dirt bikes and heading down to the lake where they lived in the late afternoon. After supper, we’d pull out instruments and do a little pickin’ and grinnin’ on the front porch. The family reunion was in July and involved swimming for some, bowling for others, a softball game and more music.

Some of this continued into adulthood, but I miss having natural lakes locally.

I irked half a day today and was very productive. I didn’t have to play 101 questions from the old bat, I got out into the warehouse, where only about half of the guys were irking to verify a couple of counts while there was equipment available. I was going to ride this afternoon, but there were some ominous clouds , so I took Nelson to the dog ark instead. He had about a half an hour to play with a lab / hound mix pup before the rain began.

Stay healthy y’all!

27

Because we had meatloaf 2 days ago and there’s still some leftover in the fridge. Plus meatloaf needs to sit so the flavors blend. Truth.

For all that it’s a holiday, we got mail today - my new phone was delivered! So I’m working on setting it up. I’m still thinking about switching to TracFone service - I can get more that I get from AT&T for similar money. But I need to burn off my AT&T balance, so I’ll do more research.

Meanwhile, day is done. I’m about to assume the chill position.

28

So you must be about a year older than me. I signed up right at the end of July 1974 and I was 19. Don’t ever go to South Carolina in August.

29

nellie

It was all over the news media a couple of weeks ago. I do not know the status at this point but I can’t imagine anyone trusting this organization and signing up for any more seasons. I don’t really have a dog in the fight but I hate to see hardworking people and their children cheated.

30

hippy, we (the local soccer league) charge about $110 for a season and about $45 of that goes toward the uniforms. So kids with uniforms that still fit get in for $55. And like I noted, if they paid for the spring, they get a free pass to play this fall (we hope). But there is costs for a ‘travel’ league, like referees, field equipment, uniforms, coach training…

Cookie, that was quite an adventure. Great summer memories indeed!

FCM, so what’s wrong with meatloaf every third day??? :cool::p;)

Red, you grew up in Ohio? So did I.

nellie, Purp, did you ever try and catch them in a jar? (fireflies that is). And we had them in abundance in Ohio, so I guess you’ll find a few in Michigan.

Napped some this afternoon and Mickey D’s took care of dinner, so just some interneetin’ this evening to pass the time.

Everyone take care now.

31

I dealt with TracFone roughly 15 years ago, and my blood pressure STILL goes up at the memory of the atrociously bad “customer service”. I highly recommend against them. I’ve been getting along well with Boost since I was migrated from Virgin Mobile.

Got home to DH having a pissy-fit about a disagreement with his computer. Did have a decent-ish supply forage on the way home, with nice goodies in Walmart’s “we made too much” bakery rack. Currently nomming roasted garlic naan while I figure out an actual meal or semblance of. Meat sections are still not in good shape, and Lysol-type products are still not to be had if you’re not there when the store opens (grump). Paper goods are recovering, though.

One triumph: hand sanitizer gel in 8oz pump bottles in the wild at Winco!

32

Howdy all. I made some chicken wings today and they were good but maybe a little too hot even though the sauce was labeled medium.

I took **BuddyBoy ** to the doggie park and a man showed up with four little Chihuahua type doggies. He took them into the tennis court that is separated from the little dog park by a fence. They all barked for a while then sort of played through the fence. I think if we catch them there again they can all be together in the little dog side. After a short time Buddy had stopped barking and there is very little danger they could hurt each other. I hope.

Hubby sounds so much better. Tomorrow he will have a biopsy and maybe he can come home on Wed. I sure do miss him. The thought of them snipping a piece of his heart out is terrifying but I guess it’s routine. I think I will go to irk tomorrow for a while. I need to finish up and turn in the safe haven hotels list.

Our highway is going to finally open on June 1st. There is still no word on my job starting up again but I hope they wait a couple weeks to see any affect of the highway opening. I am without a doubt a little nervous about the entire thing.

Mooommmm, Maybe I can meet your ship and show y’all around a bit, have lunch or a drink. I know you won’t have much time.

HAPPY NEW WEEK.

33

Made burgers and N.O.T. wedges. Note to self: Do not use the grill pan indoors.

34

I shot up a carload of 620 film in my trusty Brownie Hawkeye camera. Unfortunately, most of the animals appeared as very small brown spots in the distance. :smiley:

Man, I got a lot of use out of that camera all the way until high school, when my parents took pity on me and bought me a 35mm for my photography class.

35

MetalMouse, I did! With holes in the lid, naturally. Mystery of mysteries, they vanished by the next morning! They must have crawled out the holes, I thought. Wrong. When I grew up, Mom said she felt sorry for the poor things, so after I fell asleep, she’d liberate them. :slight_smile:

MORE bad news today. This is getting old. I’m hoping no bad news tomorrow.

36

heres my weekend also posted this in the rant page :

here’s my fucked up Sunday… it didn’t start out that way but here we go

my aunt is one of these people that when she has a social occasion with the “golden family” she starts prepping the day before which irks me because I know its just a special performance so she can get a pat on the head

Well about 5 pm is when things took a shit …

Well We’d forgotten that the gifted Omaha steaks (and yes they were as a good as advertised) we were having today was eaten up a month or two a ago so there were much swearing and gnashing of teeth … Well she has a target card and target was having a holiday sale so she decided to go there

But my aunt has two flaws 1. she cant do almost anything socially alone… I don’t know why but shell wait days and weeks to go to the store because "I hate going by my self " and 2 her refusal to learn how to use anything technological beyond pressing the off and on button

Well both of these foibles came back to bite her in the ass because she will not learn how to use uber on her phone … .when she wants to use it I do it on the PC for her

Well since she didn’t want to go by herself she invited her frenemy who has a host of “quirks” that could fill up a pit thread by themselves but it’s her neurological condition that plays in yesterdays fiasco

So she comes over and I order uber for them to go to target and right after the ride is confirmed my PC does a windows update that takes about 2 in a half hours… meaning I can’t use the PC for the ride home … so there waiting in target which is being overly careful and is just an uncomfortable place to shop atm

Well, aunts friend goes outside to wait for her since she’s done shopping and getting nasty looks from staff for “hanging around” but doesn’t realize once your out you can’t go back inside … and I’m trying to download uber on the tablet so I can call for the ride home … after uber gets over technical difficulties it downloads …

now remember what I said about my aunt’s refusal to do anything technical because its too hard? well she can’t/won’t find the message with the uber code on it so I can open the uber account and call for a ride … but she figures her friend will help so she goes outside to find her and friend isn’t there …

now whats alarming is friend has a problem where she gets dizzy and passes out where ever shes standing and since aunt is worried she’s running around the store looking for her because security guard said she didn’t see her leave … and aunts now outside looking for her and can’t find her and it’s been an hour since shes last seen her

So aunt decides she walked home and does the same thing … it’s about a mile in a half and shes loaded up with groceries … took her about an hour 20 to get home but the kicker? apparently, while she was waiting for my aunt the security who said she hadn’t seen her leave … warned her about loitering and friend tried to argue and hang around but security guard threatened shed call the police if she was still there when she looked again so she went home on her own

well aunt called me to call friends hubby and let him know what’s up and while I was talking to him she walked through their door

So aunt gets home and is in a bad mood all evening while we’re getting everything shiny and the bbq grill cleaned her and friend hash out what happened this morning

But the funny thing is when I had uber resent the code to verify the account is hers on her phone it works perfectly … so yeah Sunday sucked … today was pretty good the golden family was only very mildly obnoxious and the food was good so it was pleasant today…

37

Morning, mumpers! I kind of forgot it was Monday yesterday with all the drama going on in UK politics. It was a public holiday here too, so a nice bonus to the weekend. Not that I did very much with my extra day off, just laundry and hoovering because it was necessary. I did consider mopping the kitchen, hall and bathroom but decided that could wait for another day.

My new fridge-freezer is being delivered on Friday so I have to work out where to put the freezer contents on Thursday so I can defrost the current unit before it’s removed for recycling by the people delivering the new one. We have a small chest freezer that will take the frozen meat, so it’ll be cool-bags and cardboard boxes for the other stuff. It’s mostly fruit and veg with a few leftover portions of meals so nothing much to worry about there. The fridge stuff can go in a box with ice and newspaper to keep it fresh until the new fridge has sat for a few hours and then gets switched on.

Such excitement!

38

Another short night, tho uninterrupted. I had a hard time falling asleep - it was around 1 when I finally crashed - and I woke for FCD’s 5AM meds. So, yeah, tahred.

I ordered a cover for my new phone. It’s going to be an adjustment. The flip phone tucked easily into my back pocket making only a small bump on my butt. My new one is a phoenix 4 from LG - it’ll hang out of the pocket, so I’ll need another way to carry it. It can live in my purse when I’m out of the house, but I don’t know how I’ll carry it around during the day. Will I have to start wearing a fanny pack??? :eek: I refuse to walk around with it in hand all the time.

**Butters **- assuming the cruise does, in fact, happen, I do hope we can meet up in KW. We’ll be there on Sunday, Feb 21 from 11 - 6. As the time gets closer, we’ll see what we can work out. Hope we can connect and I can add you to the list of Mumpers I Have Met! :smiley:

**Nettie **- I think my mom had TracFone for a while, but she lives in a dead zone for most cell providers, so I can’t gauge by her experience. I’ll be doing research into various providers to figure out what’s the best deal for me. Worst case, I stay with the plan I have, since it’s served me well and it’s cheap.

I’m hoping to get some work done outside today. I need to reroute some garden fencing and I want to clear the leaves out of the ditches out front. Beyond that, who knows? That’s the nice thing about retirement - no schedule, no pressure, no biggie. :smiley:

Happy Tuesday!

39

Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN 'Tis 72 Amurrkin out and cloudy with a predicted high of 79 along with rain/tstorms/apocalypse. We shall see. Since we were slugs yestiddy, today we must needs spiff da cave a bit and laundry needs to be laundered. We shall grill the poke tenderloin I scored for sup. Side matter TBD.

Now I need more caffeine and rumbly tummy wants sustenance. Then, onward into the day. Rah.

Happy Tuesday Y’all!

40

Morning all. About 6 hours sleep due to nappage yesterday, we’ll see what today brings. Nothing much on the schedule, so may do some cleaning up about the house and environs. Only supposed to get to 76F today (it hit 91F yesterday) and rain possible this evening through tomorrow.

shady, you sure you can’t sell your family story to a reality TV show producer? sounds a lot more interesting than the Kardashians…

Boo fae, had to look up what the latest British political drama was (we have a fair amount of it here, as you know, to keep us entertained). It’s the Cummings business, right? And congrats on the new fridge.

nellie, also had to punch holes in the lid, and we (IIRC) also practiced ‘capture and release’. Fun times.

cookie, never had a Hawkeye, but like many, I have a bundle of old Brownie pictures around the place.

OK, now need a Big Bowl O’Cheerios to start my day. Take care all.