The Leaning Cow

This morning when I started the car the light digital number that indicates the temperature outside said 7; I did not expect this. Or maybe it said 4 – cold can have an effect on the brain and short-term memory. The mind chanting ooh, it’s cold, ooh it’s cold, ooh, it’s cold, ooh, it’s cold sort of sops up all the short-term memory cells for those moments.

Sydney and I waited in the cold car in the cold driveway for Summer to come out and then we dropped her off at school and then we went to the fairgrounds, although it the back of my mind I was thinking, “Ooh, it’s cold.” I thought Sydney should just be out for just a short spell at the fairgrounds and when I opened the door and he got out, he stopped in his tracks. Then, he took off on an exploration. On impulse I took a pictures of the cold morning and the exhaust documenting it and then I got back in the car and realized I had left the door open while I was outside.

Cold morning.

Cold in the rear.

Stupid.

I suddenly realized I couldn’t see Sydney anywhere; I panicked, thinking he might have a heart attack in the cold. I got out again and scanned the area and, then, there he was, trotting along. I honked the horn to remind the cold dog the car was waiting, but he still had things to sniff . . . and mark. Finally, finally, he came up to the car and got in the back door I was holding open for him. Then I turned and looked and saw that once again I had left the front door open.

The folks at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse are shaking their heads at me and making me stay away from the firestove so I won’t soak up all the heat. They believe it will teach me a lesson. Fortunately, Foo tossed me a bar towel with which to warm my feet. She has a soft heart, dontcha know.

This afternoon I thought I’d go on record with my psychic power and announce that the Colts would lose, but I didn’t. Of course, I was right. Summer is growling/crying and I am just sad to be vindicated.

RATS

I got up to take Alison back to work after being off for a while to deal with her mother’s stroke. It was colder than I expected – in the teens. Still, this is early February in Northern Indiana so there’s no reason to be surprised, just a reason to be cold. The car’s auto operation of the heating up process doesn’t direct air at the windshield immediately because that air would be COLD. As usual, after a while, the blower came on strong and there was a strong smell of skunk all the way out the hospital and a good part of the way back. It is my fervent hope that the smell did indeed dissipate and that my nose did not give out; I don’t want to have a deja vu moment when I get back in the car.

When Sydney got skunked last time, he had apparently harassed the skunk under the car because his head got a direct hit and the bottom of the car reeked for days. Oh, that was fun – shampooed/skunky dog in the car interior and skunk smell coming out of the vents. Sheesh, Sydney. Not a good memory if you visit it too closely. That episode was followed by weeks of panic whenever he went out at night again. Sydney’s out?? Oh, no.

Yes, it IS cold this morning – I just had to slip my shoes off because the leather was giving off the retained cold into my feet and not outward into the room. I have them pulled up under a small blankie now . . .  oh, yes, hmmmm, good. Hey, my nose is still cold as well. Now that I have realized it, I am having trouble getting it out of my mind and think I will snuggle down in this little corner with a nice comforter all around me and pulled up over my nose.

This storm had forecasters talking about Washington D.C. being buried in snow; as of yesterday morning the forecasts and radar showed  the mass in Indiana dissipating just north of Indianapolis and Ohio was to be cut in half horizontally as well. But it slid a little north and gobbled us up in the nor’eastern driven winds and wet snow. I guess Washington is still in blizzard conditions today and Der Bingle says he heard on the radio that folks there were clearing grocery shelves of bread, milk and Super Bowl beer.

We don’t have much snow this morning but last night that snow riding in 35-40 mile gusts made driving bad. Der Bingle, who thought he would have an easy trip up last night spent about twice as much time as normal getting here. He said it wasn’t the worse weather he had travelled in, but it was close. Cars were off the road all along the way. Robert and Alison were coming from Cincinnati and they were really caught. At first I let them know I had told them so as they travelled up I-74; I had said the Ohio River Valley is going to be a mess, a mess, I say. I’m nice that way.

As Alison called from the interstate to report on the number of slide-offs and wrecks, I told her they should drive out of it north of Indianapolis; I was wrong. She called from that area and talked for 29 minutes in a play-by-play account of cars they were seeing in ditches and median strips. I kept thinking I wanted her to hang up because I didn’t want to be an audio witness to their car sliding. She did hang up and they did get home okay.

So did Der Bingle who got here about 10:30 pm and tossed my cold Hot Head Burritos in my lap. You know, when they are cold like that you can tear a hole in the foil and just stick your face into the flour wrapping and bite right through to the rice and beef and cheese and sauce. I’m sure Der Bingle was impressed as he watched me do that while he sat a wee bit away taking off his gloves. Yes, yes. I got the burrito unwrapped before he got his hands ungloved. Impressive, no?

He talked about the trip and I just went munch, munch and munch. This is where getting toward old age and far into marriage works out – imagine doing that on a first date. Well, even I shuddered at the thought.

I have worn glasses since I counted my age in single digits, and folks, that’s a heck of a long time ago. I clean my glasses, oh, about . . . well, I can’t remember the last time actually. Sometimes something major will splash in the kitchen and I will wipe them off. Other than that, I just keep looking through them; I think most people who started wearing glasses as a kid have adapted this way. Now, Der Bingle, he came to glasses later in life and often times I find myself thinking, “Oh my gosh, he’s cleaning his glasses again for crying out loud.” If he catches a glimpse of my lenses in a certain light, he reacts as if I am wearing a sludge of mud, manure and plague germs. Sometimes he even grabs them and cleans them. He shows disgust.

I think he is a glasses wimp.

But, this morning, I have to admit I was reading and started to wonder if I were having a stroke because I was having trouble maintaining focus. Finally, I did take my glasses off and looked at them from a distance greater than an inch. There were tiny spots all over the lenses; yes, just tiny peepholes between the spots. Obviously, my eyes were shifting from peephole to peephole. Or, I should say, my eye, since I rarely voluntarily look out of my left.

So, perhaps, Der Bingle, I do need to clean my glasses . . . with Windex even. I may get around to it in a couple of hours or so. Or maybe I could just use this soft shirt here. And, really, I probably only need to do the right lens.

Oh, by the way, have you ever wondered if a town has had both a Minnetonka factory and a Mini-Tonka factory? What if the deliveries got mixed up and they started turning out steel moccasins? And kids had to play with little leather trucks with beads on them?

Oh, dear, the guys here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse think it’s time for me to have another “treatment” in the Tabasco Room. Sort of shock therapy.

ALERT    ALERT   ALERT    ALERT ALERT    ALERT   ALERT    ALERT – -  PHOTO NOT FOR SQUEAMISH

I turned on the TV this morning to get a fix on what the local station was saying about the weather, my main question being: Is the snow still going south of us. And what they said and what the weather site indicated had blended together in my head when my ears picked up some talk about necks. It seems if a woman’s neck is over 13 inches around, she is more likely to suffer heart problems. I knew I did not have a long attractive neck; I knew though that my head did not sit directly on my shoulders – I did have a neck and it didn’t seem to me to be huge. Wrong. It is over 13 inches. I suppose Summer would say it goes along with my fat head. I am going into the Foo Bar for a stiff morning bracer. For Heavens Sake, isn’t it enough to have to worry about keeping a stiff upper lip, now it’s “keep a skinny neck” too.

I also have stubby fingers which are another harbinger of ill-health genetically, not to mention are sort of not elegant looking. Well, maybe it will work out because I suppose my stubby fingers will fit around those reedy little 13 and less inch necks. Why, yes they do . . . I actually measured. I did.

Here’s a house not far from me being torn down for parking space and/or green space. I was driving back from the fairgrounds with Sydney when I saw a big yellow machine eating a house. Soooo, I grabbed my camera, flipped on the video mode and took some movies. This one shows the chimney coming down. As I looked into the house, I saw a solid wooden panel door still on its hinges and remarked I was surprised that it had not been salvaged. The new owner said he had had someone go through on Saturday who had told him there was nothing worth salvaging . . . solid wood paneled doors? Oh, I think there might have been a market, especially right down the street at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse.

And here is the end – a hole in the ground.

I am wandering from thought to thought about possible things to do – not doing anything, mind you. Just moving from spot to spot in my goal-less mood. My mouth, however, wants to eat; I am not hungry, but my mouth wants to eat – turkey sandwiches. And I can’t eat them slowly; I gobble them down. Oh, I punned; it was accidental.

We had a two-hour delay this morning. Only the Noble County schools did, for some reason, and for a reason that totally eluded Summer only West Noble closed. Sydney and I had a two-hour delay getting to the fairgrounds this morning and it was still snowing when we were out there. Then we came home and watched The Blue Max because we turned on the TV and there it was and for some reason we felt like watching. So we did. James Mason was in it, but for some reason today we did not feel the wave of revulsion we usually feel when we see him.

We had a good day -  a little more than we planned, but we made it. Straggled off the train at 10:38 p.m and got home a bit after 11. I lay down and the next thing I knew it was light outside. LIGHT!

Here are a couple of pictures, which come to think of it, may indicate the part about getting back was just an illusion.

AJ and Summer sitting over Chicago and Der Bingle looking out at us.

Oh, look . . . they’re getting so much smaller.

Tomorrow at this time, some of us will be on a train – a real life Amtrak train – on the way toward Chicago. We are just going and coming back on one day for the heck of it and for younger eyes to see the big city. We are hoping to go to the Sears skydeck during a non-cloudy period, but given that there is a new GLASS floor, maybe clouds would be better. Some people are envisioning AmeliaJake gluing suction cups to her hands and feet and inching out onto the glass support.

I will never live down the time in West Chester when I froze like a flattened squirrel on the garage roof.  Fortunately for me, that was before the day of little digital cameras and cameras in cell phones – heck, even cell phones. The latter is probably good because there were no calls . . .”Hey, I’m out here looking at AJ up on the garage roof . . . Ooooooh, you should see her . . . Sticking to it and shaking at the same time . . .  ”

I am surprised no one has thought of paying the folks who live there now to allow filming of a “dramatization” of the actual event