I’ve had the respiratory flu (I think) with a touch of gastric symptoms for about two weeks now. I don’t feel so bad anymore, but when I sit down and happen to be tilting one way or the other, I wind up in nap phase. I don’t know that I can say I am tired or sleepy, but just that  – poof – there I am dozing away. It was 10 this morning when my cell phone jolted me awake. I call my mother every morning around nine every morning and evening. This morning, I had my usual 8:30 am conversation with my neighbor (She’s 90 and lives alone) across the street and thought, “Oh, I’ll just wait a few minutes to call Mother.” That didn’t work.

I’ve been lucky and haven’t had flu bouts in recent years, and darn it, the year I do have it they won’t allow human subjects in high school science experiments. My grandson could have used me, instead of those beans.  We could have done coughing videos relating to the timed dosage of cough syrup (some of which was pretty cool by the way) and a series of “hair-do” pictures.

I just thought of something; we have the boy watch old movies to further his cultural education and the last one was “Arsenic and Old Lace”. Okay, going for a caffeine fix.

My father died eight years ago; I suppose he felt tired for some time before he fessed up to being pretty ill, but he did not allow he might have the flu until January 8th. We took him to the hospital on January 15th, supposedly for rehydration. I remember watching his feet go down the back steps of the deck – me on one side of him, my daughter-in-law, a nurse, on the other. I thought maybe he wouldn’t be coming home. He didn’t. He died on February 10th and we buried him on the 14th. My youngest son had come back when he was ill because we thought he would have many good days and some months or so. One semester of college didn’t seem that important at that time.

I don’t know how we got started doing it but he and I would really form a bond with these bears we would see in GoodWill; it just seemed we had to bring them home. I don’t know about Quentin, but I didn’t want them to be just material and stuffing. I guess I wanted them for a little while to be real. I needed them to be real because if they could be real in my mind, other things could. Actually, I never really thought that, and didn’t much think it now. it just seemed okay coming out on the keyboard. Looking back, I think Quentin knew I needed something soft and comforting and innocent. Maybe we both did.

As we – but mostly it was me – started getting a pile of these bears, we noticed some of them were exactly alike except for color and label. We referred to them as “the fam” , adopting the phrase from the movie “What About Bob.” At least that’s where I think we first latched onto it – Bill Murrary and “the fam”.

We gave them names and so we wouldn’t forget we stuck their names on their butts with masking tape.

This bear is Demonesque. We pretty much went with the first impression thing, so I don’ t know that he is. I will say that in the last years, he has nothing mischievous.

Maybe it is time to pull the masking tape off and send him back to GoodWill.

I don’t like housekeeping and I wind up being  behind the eight ball most of the time.  It is my reputation and fine, okay. Or not fine, but I live with it and so do others because I have some redeeming features. There may not be many, but there are some. Anyway, I have decided to be as painless as possible about getting things in order while giving myself little gold stars I can look back on.

It did not occur to me to take a picture of a cluttered room and then one of it cleaned.  Overwhelming. I am going to try pictures of small areas, and I guess in the after picture, you will just have to take my word for it I have not moved the stuff four or five feet to other side.

Here is my first picture:  

Will I even be able to fulfill the first attempt of this plan? Do not hold your breath.

They send me these catalogues, but I don’t look at them . . . because I scope out the website daily. I love it when they have 30 to 40 dollar shams on sale for $1.50, not to mention all the other sale stuff. But, now I am thinking of paying (gasp) full price for some clothes for summer. To justify this, I will have to go back to my habit of changing my clothes in regard to what I am doing. Well, that’s not so bad. I’m going to look now and pick some stuff out . . . and then maybe I’ll head over to LL Bean. I feel like it should be a rose and yellow year – not together though. I think I have been a red and navy person my whole life long – it’s just so darn practical. Well, we’ll see; we’ll see. On the other hand, I’m always up for khaki – especially when it’s vintage (safari days) Banana Republic. Hey, better check ebay for “found in the attic” goodies.

Ghurka – that’s another ebay search.

As far as my feet are concerned, I already have my beach trekkers.

Into the Wild – That’s a Redbox movie – one dollar a night rental. I got it without knowing anything about it and my husband said it was supposed to be fairly good. It was about a young man who graduates from college – Emory – and heads off on a “tramp – vagabond – hobo” adventure without telling anyone where he is or if he is alive. I believe, according to the narration provided by his sister, he was sending his parents a message. Were they really so bad they deserved that? Is anyone ever so bad they deserve to be left with a big unknown that goes to sleep with you and then lets you wake up for a moment unawares until it says, “Remember me.”

My grandfather was 50 when my mother was born and so we have sort of a chronologically skipped generation in our family. His name was John Shimp and he had a sister Elizabeth who married Floyd Skirvin and moved to Oklahoma. She had three little boys and one day – one very hot day – two of them turned up missing. She ran all the way out into the prairie to find her husband and then collapsed and died of heat stroke. I don’t know if if my grandfather was in the group of her brothers who went out to bring her body back to Sturgis for burial or not.

She’s there in the 1910 census (her first name was Sarah after her mother) with her husband and three boys, Earl and Glen and Ross; she is not in the 1920 census. In that census, they are back with their dad’s folks in Michigan.

Anyway, I have heard that story all my life as a warning about exerting in the heat, just as I cannot remember being cautioned about rusty nails, since an ancestor in another family branch hit his foot with an axe and wound up dying of lockjaw.

I’ve read about it; I’ve seen it in movies; I’ve seen it demonstrated in a classroom – now there’s an iffy use for tax/tuition money. The idea is to list the pros of a decision or action on in one column and the cons in another. The reason for it is obvious; it’s commonsense. I suppose a lot of people don’t do it because they don’t want to see written out in front of their face the truth of the matter. They have this really stupid urge to jump into the fire our of their warm frying pan and they don’t want to have another hurdle between them and doing what they want to do.

However, this afternoon, I sat down and made two columns in my mind: people who are in my life and people who are gone. Now that’s a heck of a thing to have staring you in the face.

I very much like the smell of wood smoke – the kind that comes from a fireplace or a woodstove. I like the smell of newly-washed hands. I enjoy the smell of candles as long as they are not the sweet, cloying smells of some artificial contrived wannabe classy salon. I do not like the smell of little old ladies, unless it is the cleanliness of soap and the clean fresh clothes. That last sentence is an odd one – one that I might have edited out at another time. But, heck, live with it; it’s true.