Before I left, I caught a shot of them pulling a tapeworm cyst from someone’s brain; it was horrible and I can see it in my mind’s eye. Last night I had terrible nightmares and given the last hour, maybe I’ll just stay up all night. That’s an even better idea now that Animal Planet is showing a raft being capsized by a hippo in a croc-invested river.

Disgusted, I put my head down on a pillow and thought, “Oh, Puh-lease.” Robert took her to school and I stayed in the ball of tired despair that comes from being reminded of the unbeatable, annoying and stupid things that are not satisfied to psychically beat you in points, but beat you up and down.

Last week Summer came home and said the school wasn’t going to have the Wednesday delay anymore; I am not stupid – I looked at her and her grin and guessed they had changed it to another day. Oh, yeah, I was right. Now we are going to have Collaboration Monday. Of course. Monday. I suppose they feel it eases you into the week. No, it does not. It introduces you to the week with a nod to starting out with a salute to the idea that the week is something to groan about. To start out by delaying and throwing everything out of whack.

I’m sure this little fiasco of a schedule blip is because someone needed something on a resume as a progressive program. But like many little stepping stones needlessly thrown down by people, it remains to trip us up.

So now, today, I am going to be complaining to all the guys stopping in at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. Hey! Guess what?? I turned my own key. They will probably walk in, take one look at me and mouth, “Oh, Puh-lease.”

The whole thing was lop-sided. It took me about three years to pick up the saw, however, because, gosh, it’s a tree. Today I did it.

And then I dragged some of the trimmings to the curb. Cameron dragged the rest. Alison looked out and exclaimed, “There’s a tree on the parkway!” Well . . . sort of. We will plant some ground cover when we figure out what would look okay. Maybe a bed of spikes:

We started out on a trip to Crate & Barrel today and we wound up going to more places; sometimes we were lost and sometimes we were not. It is part of the road trip adventure for folks 60+. We feel okay about knowing mostly where we were and in is interesting to look on Google Maps and see where we actually were when we didn’t know it at the time. Well, we knew the general vicinity of where we were at all times – at least we knew we had not crossed any state lines.

Here is an intersection where we stopped for gas when we were not really certain as to how far off course we were in our meandering around what was we intended to be Northern Cincinnati. The street sign out there says “Avenue of Champions”; unfortunately we had not had our Wheaties that morning and our guardian angel had already alerted the emergency squad.

The picture below is cropped so you can’t see my gnomeness in its full glory. (Joan, I’ll email you the full picture.)

Gnomy AJ, Joan and Steve.

The best part of the day was getting to see my good friend Joan and the dicey part was sitting across the table from Der Bingle at Mimi’s when he received his order . . . liver and onions. It was under the heading of “Comfort Foods” but, personally, I think that was a little private joke of Mimi’s. I didn’t watch him eat it, but I think knowing what was going on affected me adversely. I started to get a headache and then had the distinct urge to get up and grab the man across the aisle who was being really loud and ripping his fat, bald head off.*  So I took aspirin and Tylenol and came home and sucked down a Diet Coke.

The atmosphere at Mimi’s.

*Der Bingle says this is a personality trait I share with Maxwoo.

Sitting there in the camping chair is Arctos, Great Polar Bear of the North, resident emeritus of the Ohio Redoubt. After I got my stuff in, we hung out for a while and then he held down the fort while Der Bingle and I went to the mall and then on to Hot Head Burrito, where I got a burrito and a big nacho thing. I came home and ate the big nacho thing and didn’t have room for the burrito right then but have already had some bites this morning – and I am craving more, more and more.

Perhaps I should add a burrito line at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. Say, you know those 6-foot submarine sandwiches? I am imagining a 6-foot HHB burrito. But, wait, call in now and we can double it – 12 feet of taco meat and cheese and onions and rice and pinto beans and corn and tomatoes and sour cream.

I need to calm down.

I took it one home and followed the directions to open a corner of the lid. So I tore the box open and looked for the saran wrap type covering I expected to find on the usual little blackish microwave dish. Aha, there was a surprise – no saran wrap stuff, no dish. I saw a frozen thin slab, so I picked it up in disbelief and leaned it against the box and photographed it.

Now you may be wondering how I got such an intact picture of the box when I had no idea of taking one until I had seen the slab inside. Well, guess what? I bought two. Auuuuugggggghhhhhhh.

But here’s a twist that has some of my pals at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse staring at me – I came in remarking that after having watched tons of crime shows on Cable TV about domestic murder, I had suddenly realized how fortunate I am. I  have never, ever even had a passing idea that Der Bingle might “do away with me”.   I have taken it for granted that I would not be found drowned in a bathtub “accident” or crumpled at the bottom of the basement stairs. Well, I have thought about being crumpled at the bottom of basement stairs, but not because I was pushed or a step was sawed and weakened or whatever.

Rose – Oh, that is Rose below. Rose is one of our sweetheart patrons who is a comfort to everyone.

Rose asked me outright, “Why would you even think about this?” Well, I don’t know; it just popped into my head. And, of course, I don’t let things pop right out. No, I have to crawl all over them and go oooooh and ahhhhh and poke here and there. I make Rose sigh and order sassafras to her iced green tea when I get like this. But she keeps coming back because she is, well, Rose.

This current traipsing into the thought processes of AmeliaJake apparently gave her pause because she stopped sipping her tea and said actually she had never worried about being found with her seams ripped open. See, Rose likes me.

Now, I have a trash bag of processed paper. And I feel better as if “the cold” has taken  a solar plexus punch. However . . . there is this matter of income and property taxes and car titles and oh, gosh, lots of stuff.

Ah-Choo