My noble profile.

Okay, Anya and Shane, here is the initiation rite into the Q club. Run fast through the two trees in the foreground and keep going STRAIGHT really fast. hahahahahahahahahahaha.

Okay, Quentin, I had AJ (otherwise known as your mom) take some pictures of me and our old stomping grounds . . . just so you wouldn’t forget me. (I’m good, aren’t I? AJ taught me.)

Here I am at the corral.

The sky in front of the house.

More grounds de la fair.

At the tree you planted. It’s grown.

The tree de la tulip.

Zee big tall spruce. Jake, he has been giving me the Frenchie lessons . . . heh, heh.

Gaze upon my handsomeness, you little cute babyface.

Happy Halloween to you . . . I will zend you more pictures zoon, my little Q.

Summer dreamed I was a giant spider spinning an orange goo web and killing “higher up” people; I didn’t kill her because she was my alibi, but she said she was getting nervous when she woke up. Alison dreamed I bought giant bananas at the grocery. I don’t remember dreaming – I guess I had subcontracted myself out.

“I’m all right, but call me when you get a chance.” Mother, on the phone while I showered. It could have been anything from the cat being run over to a meteorite landing in the yard. It was: Her cousin who is one year younger died this morning. She had severe stomach pains, was operated on and died following surgery. I believe it was an anuerysm. Mother said she had just talked with her last week. Then she said that it seemed like all the cousins were turning 80 and dying and not living into their 90’s as their parents had done.

I don’t even want to speculate about the coming days . . .

So it is here – frost, the kind you have to scape off your windshield if you have not garaged it. Summer and I discovered it this morning and while I got the defroster going, she ran for a scraper. She couldn’t find one, so she improvised. Soon we were looking at each other through a little cleared spot in the windshield. Tomorrow I will go out early to start the car. I hope I remember.

I didn’t have frost on the pumpkin because I have not yet carved one. Perhaps on the day of Halloween I will buy discounted ones and make a pumpkin totem pole. No, I did that when I was a teenager and it was more work than than I had anticipated. Those were the days, though, when I would just push on through a project until it was completed. I don’t like to do that anymore. Once I built a Christmas fantasy castle out of tiny marshmellows and little candies; Mother and I have been looking for the pattern of it for years and can’t find it. (We think some mice in the attic ate the original.) I enjoyed making that castle, on the big oak table that was my grandfather’s in the room of the house where the morris chair sits – the chair in which they lay my mother on the day she was born.

There was the smell of the house in the air – woodsmoke and sun-dried quilts.

Cabela’s Bargain Basement –

Unfortunately they have sold out of sleeping bags, but still have the hammock that hangs between front and back seats.

I have a friend who is 91 (and a half). Yesterday her daughter gave me this from her home which is being sold.

A beautiful cruet . . . and still beautiful, still the same. But time passes for the hands that hold it – cruel, it almost seems.

The last chili someone – who shall remain nameless – made was extremely good. This batch has my lips and mouth burning 10 minutes after I ate it . . . and my spoon is greasy. I will know when someone reads this because I will get the cold shoulder and chilly reception. Right now I am going to see if they need a “Hot Lips” for the local MASH revival.