Where did they live? My grandparents had a dairy farm near Alexandria, MN. My great-grandfather worked in the mines in Minnesota (I think) to raise the money to bring his wife over from Finland.
Neat. Yeah, the iron mines in MN were a pretty big deal around the turn of the last century. My Finnish ancestors lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in Skandia township, mostly. My grandfather worked in the copper mines near Marquette for a while, but eventually he bought my grandmother's father's farm, and they settled down there to raise rutabagas. Grandma worked in MN as a teacher for a little while. In Finland, MN, 6-8 miles inland from Lake Superior. I nabbed a t-shirt from a co-op there when I did the Lake Superior circle tour a few years back.
job~ma for Erin and Jars DH.
Jars, you only shouted 'arses!' a couple of times with us, and we found it, you, DH, and the kitten utterly charming and fabulous.
For those who want both xkcd maps in the same place, I have slaved and slaved for you: [link] vs. [link]
Oh, did I not mention that I couldn't leave the tampon wrapper in the trash? I had to sneak down in the dead of night and put it in the outside trash can like it was contraband.
I'm completely gobsmacked. Do me a favor. Email her this and record her reaction when she sees it.
When I was a teenager, I really didn't know you weren't supposed to flush tampons, and I was VERY private about the whole thing.
My family wasn't -- god know, my mom had such awful issues about her periods that it was all out in the open, but I was so mortified by the whole deal that I didn't even tell my parents I had started for a year. I just filched my mom's tampons from under the sink.
So of course the toilet got blocked, and it was a tampon, and my dad had to deliver a "Don't flush tampons" speech, and I was DED of the blush.
And then when I was about 14, the dog dragged a pair of panties out from my room, and chewed the crotch out. My dad found those, too. Embarrassing lecture #2.
How do people survive adolescence?! So. Touchy!
Jars, you only shouted 'arses!' a couple of times with us, and we found it, you, DH, and the kitten utterly charming and fabulous.
Oh, you.
Super secret message -
Your cheque is in the post.
Plumbers. And experience. Esp. if you use the supermaxisupernova-sucking tampons.
That's not the only toilet I've seen clogged by a tampon.
Yeah, you're really not supposed to flush tampons. Clog-o-riffic.
My friends who are sea-faring type people are very anti-flushing too. They all have stories about tampons getting caught in their wetsuits etc.
