Now with even less editing and more words!!! in Normal entries

I freaked my daughter out, an accident I assure you though no assurances are asked and I would assure you to take my assurances with a grain of salt, a lemon and a shot of mescal. I’d advise you to skip the assurance and salt too, lemon and mescal, however, are lovely in the heat of the noonday sun.

I was on my way to my weekly head shrinking and I texted a brief text, using real English (which involves typing back over auto correct which, for instance, will change otter into ought to and vice versa, awfully dang cute except that a noun is a noun and so on and so forth) as opposed to chat speak. It was something like; Don’t need quick response, on way to shrink, cool if I go north 20 through 23?

I guess she tried calling me back immediately. Twice. When there was no answer (I turn down the ringer when I go places) she called my mom and asked her what was wrong. I used to fancy the idea of a nanny cam for my dogs. I had an old time answering machine (we called it regular time back in the day, or, rather, just an answering machine) and I’d sometimes call Herschel during the work day because the old machines would record your voice outloud in real time. Oh. Wait. I called because I thought it was funny, it was funny because he could hear my voice in real time. I imagined him cocking his head at the machine like the dog in the old Victorola advertisements. I would have liked to have seen, hence the idea of a nanny cam. My mom answering a phone has the same amusement level.

She wakes up looks around for the ringing and sometimes gets to the phone in time and insists everyone mumbles on the phone. She wasn’t quite sure how to answer my daughters inquiry, even without the head cocking and mumbling.

I assume the daughter thought I was going to be admitted to a psych ward in the UP (upper peninsula for y’all in the other forty nine or elsewhere). Later, when I had returned and heard the tale I texted back the verbose version. See she’s coming out here because she promised my mom to rearranged and clean the house when she moved back to Oregon. She’s been planning this for two years, actively for one. She’ll be here the 19th. She booked a room for her party and for my mom. When I told the shrink that he asked if there was trouble between the daughter and I. What? I says in my whatiest what voice. He queried less than queerly why she didn’t book me a room. Because I’m a grown ass man was my first thought, then I had to think back. I asked her not to. She offered again a month or two back. I still wasn’t sure if I was planning on hanging out in the house anyhow.

A whole lot of misunderstanding went into that little non event.

I’m used to referring to the guy as my faux shrink. The GF and I have gotten around to calling him either Tues or FC for faux Canadian. The first time she called him a faux Canadian I told her he was a real Canadian. She said she was joking, I said me too. Many jokes fail. It’s kind of funny. Every Canadian I’ve run into in the health care system here says, the moment I complain about the health care system here, ‘I’m Canadian’. I understand completely. I’ve considered that line myself. You can’t tell if someone is Canadian just by looking at them. And that accent that Americans use to sound Canadian? It’s sort of like the accent black comedians use to sound white; stupid and without aboot it falls apart. It’s sort of like using a bad French accent and calling that Canadian. Most of Canada doesn’t speak French any better than you. It’d be like doing an American accent by a poor imitation of Louisiana creole. Don’t get me wrong, I love Montreal and New Orleans, but if you wanted a job in Vancouver, Miami or Los Angeles, Spanish would come in more handy than French. If you learned French in High School you still wouldn’t know what the fuck they were saying in New Orleans and the French equivalent of aboot wouldn’t do you any good in Montreal.

I was going to go to Sault Ste Marie, despite the name there isn’t much French spoken there either, but the place I had stayed last time could only give me one day, so I’m going to St. Ignace. They speak UP in St. Ignace. It sounds a hell of a lot like Minnesota from the movie Fargo. In the actual town of Fargo they speak American and Canadian. Fargo is where the bad guys were heading in the movie, they never made it.

The French were in that area long before English puritans. They traded and trapped and preached and generally got along with the tribes that lived there. That’s why so much of the great lake states have towns with either tribal or French names and Saints. The French evangelists were mostly priests, catholic priests. And whereas Catholics don’t own saints exclusively, the puritans were not saint kind of Christians. It borders on idolatry to have fancy craven images of martyrs all over the place. To have them hewn of precious metals is idolatry mixed in with vanity and pride. Puritans had very palin unadorned sticks up there asses and tried hard not to draw attention to said sticks.

As long as I don’t need to show a passport I might just tell them in St. Ignace that I’m a Canadian. In Sault Ste Marie they just assume anybody could be a Canadian at any moment. There is a Sault ste marie in Ontario a short ferry ride from Sault Ste Marie in the UP. I’m almost positive that on a daily basis, at least in the summer, many a drunk has woke wondering which sault ste marie they are in. The trick is if you look north and see the Canadian Sault you aren’t in Canada. If you have to look south across the water you are in Canada. In either case beer, a raw egg and tabasco will remid you what you had for dinner the night before. Do not attempt to say aboot.

In American speak we usually abbreviate saint without the silent e. We also usually spell Soo without the silent ault, or like Sue which does kind of have a silent e. The faux Canadian when I asked if he’d ever been kept referring to the area as the Soo. It’s quaint and a lot of us almost elderly from MI, NY and Ontario used to refer to the area that way. Though a lot of us have been there.

There’s a song by the Violent femmes, one of which, I believe, is a Canadian, and another, I think, might be from Wisconsin, which, for all practical purposes could be Minnesota. The song, not one of their popular ones, goes something like; I got girl troubles up the ass, don’t tell me no jokes cause I ain’t going to laugh, girl troubles, up the ass. I’m not really sure what the song is about exactly, except for the obvious bit about girl troubles up the ass which I assume is figurative and speaks to quantity. It’s not a catchy song. Me, I don’t have girl troubles up the ass, but the waters have been choppy (if nobody wants me mixing metaphors they should stop putting them in the blender). The choppy waters have a bit to do with having less girl troubles than I should. If that doesn’t make any sense to you imagine how little it makes to me. I also have some kind of splinter in my thumb.

I kind of like St. Ignace. It’s not much of a place in the off seasons. It caters to the tourist trade. I’m sure there must be another place that launchs ferries to Mackinac Island, but I’ve never taken one from anywhere but St. Ignace. It sits right on the bottom of the UP and is the first exit north from the Mackinac bridge. They sell fudge and ferry tickets and I think there is a casino up there too. It’s where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet. It’s pretty. When I bitch about or aboot Michigan boring the pants off of me, I’m not including the UP. I don’t get up there near enough.