Monthly Archives: April 2009

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Bathroom stalls without walls

I spent last night with weird dreams and nightmares. Normally, I would call being in a bathroom in a mom and pop restaurant that had two stalls and the walls slide away and then fall down a nightmare, but I also dreamed of snakes and people thinking it was funny to chase me with snakes. Two guys tried to scale down the outside of a building as I watched from a window; I don’t know what they were trying to get away from – it could not have been snakes or I would have been the first one out.

As usual, I came into the PBC&R and recounted all this to Early Sam who needs his shot of caffeine and life sustaining peanut butter at the crack of dawn. Early Sam, as usual, pulled out his hearing aids when he saw me coming and just occasionally nodded.

Oh, did I tell you the snakes were kept in a cell with bars; why no one thought they would not just slither out between them in beyond me. But. come to think of it, I was standing there looking at the bars, hoping some man would close the cell door quickly, and I didn’t yell, “You idiots” and start to run.

You can see now why the bathroom stall wall fiasco didn’t faze me too much.

The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Help wanted at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

As you may have noticed, some of our regular crowd at the PBC&R has decided to move on (defect) to the Ohio Redoubt of the West Facing Cave, and so we have had to put out a help wanted sign. So far, we have interviewed two candidates:

Number 1:

jakie-all

jakie-face

With a Yale resume, he says he is willing to bus tables or discuss the global economic condition in relation to the price of tea in china cups.

Number 2:

somebody-all

somebody-closer

This applicant listed Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca as a reference. He has helped in kitchen, particularly with spices and likes to be on hand as thyme goes by.

The interviews are being conducted by our counselor, although some call her consigliere, Maxwoo.

*****

The West Facing Cave chronicled life with bears and friends in San Diego; unfortunately, circumstances rendered it necessary to be be removed and efforts were begun to transfer posts to The Westward Facing Cave. However, it wasn’t the same and remained undone. Here are three posts, though, that should be remembered.

To Absent Companions

Papa Bear is Gone (A personal and heartfelt reflection  written following receiving the news in the morning while in Georgia, rearranging schedule, flying back to San Diego and returning to apartment.)

Bears Take an Iowa Road Trip

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

We’ll see . . .we’ll see

The weather site tells me it is to be sunny today and tomorrow, with temperatures of 63 and 69. Maybe. It would be nice . . . on the other hand I have become somewhat accustomed to looking out the window and thinking it is cold and raining and might as well watch a movie and warm my feet by the firestove heater. See, a few days ago I was in the mood to go outside and perk things up and now I have been reminded of the comfort of cozy. I know I will feel cheerful out there raking and picking up. I just have to get it started. We’ll see.

UPDATE:

Took Summer to school; she complained of the seatbelt being stuck. Then Sydney and I went to the fairgrounds and he complained of nothing in the chilly sun of morning dew. We came home and went throuh the backyard to the porch so we could pick up a couple pieces of egregious trash – one was a windblown, rain-soaked, orange trash bag box. Another was a split open Diet Cheerwine can that I had stuck in a snowbank to chill, forgotten about and only remembered when the wind of the past couple of days dug it out from where it was under shrubs. That little fellow didn’t just pop his tab, he split his pants from top to bottom, and, alas, the cheerwine is gone . . . maybe to give the grass a boost.

And now the seatbelt is unstuck and Sydney is sleeping on the end of the sofa and I am going to go shower for a trip to Wal-Mart – auggghhhhh –  and the grocery store and then a jaunt over to the nursing home. I feel cheerful; I like that.

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

The word “cute” and elderly people

Now this is a personal opinion and I know that a lot of folks who do this thing I find infuriating do not mean it in a demeaning and insulting manner, BUT I cannot abide hearing elderly people described as cute. Babies can be cute; puppies can be cute; and, okay, young kids in the first couple of grades can be cute. After that, it sounds as if the people being referred to as “cute” are laughable as they conduct themselves as typical people doing normal things.  An old man and his wife walking down a hall after almost 70 years of marriage: “Oh, aren’t they cute?” And always the little chuckle laugh. A woman referring to her parents: “Aren’t they the cutest couple?” Auuuuggggggghhhhhhhhh.

Endearing is a good word. So is charming.

To me, it sounds as if  “cute” elderly people are being lessened. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

This is not what I expected

I am somewhat of a patsy for the “what are you” quizzes and so I took the “what leader?” are you and “what movie are you?” sections. I am not going to tell you what leader I am. The quizzes allow you to choose how many questions to answer: 9, 18, 27 or 45. On the movie one, I first answered 18 and discovered I was


Then when I answered with 45 questions, I am

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Lessons from Waurika Snake Hunt

1 Comment

No, I didn’t go. We drew straws at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse to see who would get to go experience a part of Americana; I didn’t get the short straw – nobody did. We looked on the floor and everywhere but we couldn’t find it – turns out Emmy Sue didn’t include one. She said she was afraid AJ (that would be me) would draw it and everyone would have to spend the weekend picking her up off the floor from her dead faint and then waiting on her hand and foot until she got some spunk back.

But, anyway, I took a quick look to see if anyone had written about the goings-on and found this little gem of information telling you what to do  about snakes in sleeping bags, running into snake dens and being surrounded by snakes. What dreams may come tonight, I don’t even want to imagine. Here are some interesting sections  from the article:


A handler crawled into a sleeping bag and then maybe 30 snakes were herded into the bottom of the bag around his feet. The bag was then zipped up as the handler remained deathly still. (I don’t know if the person writing this deliberately chose the adverb “deadly” or not – I suppose it just came to him.)

“Snakes will only strike when they are hungry or afraid,” said Mike Darrow, one of the handlers, but not the one in the bag. (No, the handler in the bag was being deathly still, remember?)  “So don’t panic. If you’re in the wild, always take someone with you so that if this ever happens your friend can help you.”  (Maybe you should carry a bag of MacMouse sandwiches to toss at any snakes you see . . . and it would probably be good if you didn’t point at them and do a Dirty Harry impersonation. “So how about it, snake, do you feel lucky?”)

Lonnie Ybarra, the one who was in the bag, slowly used his hands to lift his upper body off the ground and then delicately dragged his feet inch by inch out of the bag.

“You have to pretend your legs are paralyzed,” Darrow said. “Don’t ever set your sleeping bag up until it’s time to go to bed because of the possibility of snakes crawling in.”

The handlers also demonstrated what to do if one meets a snake in the wild on a camping trip, hike or other activity.

“Don’t run in the opposite direction because of the possibility of running into a large snake den,” Darrow said. “Dens have been known to have 300 to 350 snakes inside at a time.” (And what is the “opposite” direction? It seems to me if you turned around and ran the way you had come you would know there wasn’t a snake den that way. Or maybe they mean don’t run in the direction the snake was coming from.)

And if one becomes surrounded by rattlesnakes, staying calm is a key to avoiding being bitten, he said.

Then taking off a hat or a jacket and using it as a broom to slowly clear a path inch by inch is one way to escape as the snakes will strike at the hat or jacket rather than the feet that are moving into the cleared space, Darrow said. (Actually, surround by rattlesnakes is an image that had not occurred to me until this article. I always thought of meeting a snake not being surrounded by them. But now I guess my horizons of imagination have been broadened.)

Uh, I hope they held the Easter Egg hunt somewhere else . . .



Just Me - AmeliaJake

Power to the AmeliaJake

Apple has sent me a new magnetic power cord and all I have to do is send the defective one back. I checked it one last time to make certain it was not working, and it wasn’t. I have 10 days to return it or Apple will charge me for the replacement. So, I have already packed it up and am just about ready to pull off the sticker that will reveal the “return label” and tomorrow I will send it on its way. Right now, my little MacBook is making little noises that sound like ooooooh and aaaaahhhhhh and oh yeah as the power flows through the sacred wire to its innards. Oddly enough, I find myself making little humming noises such as mmmmmmmm and ahhhhhhhh  and mmm mmm mmm.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Parkview Noble Hospital Needle Workers

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We had some excitement this weekend. Saturday, around one, I got a call that my dear friend and former neighbor, Kathryn,  was in the ER at the local hospital. I grabbed my daughter-in-law, a nurse, ran upstairs and threw on decent clothes so the staff wouldn’t think I was some bum and headed over to the hospital.

She was in one of the big rooms, lying there in the center on a gurney and hooked up to monitors. She would not mind my saying she was there because she had just slumped to the floor while pushing Emory’s wheelchair down to lunch. Somehow, the wheelchair then fell on top of her.  I guess it was a fairly chaotic few minutes at the nursing home while the staff came running.

It was quiet there in the ER room, though. I was on one side and Alison was on the other, watching the cardiac monitor, which was, frankly, somewhat chaotic itself. She said, “Maybe someone should call the minister.” Alison asked her if she was frightened and she calmly replied, “No, what will be, will be. I’m just sorry this happened on Easter weekend.”

Then the beats evened out, grew regular and steady. We went upstairs to a room where she was again hooked into telemetry. We thought she’d be staying at least a day or two. But she bounced back and on Easter afternoon, I took her back to the nursing home and Emory, who had been pacing the hall in his wheelchair. He said, “We’ve got to stick together and not get separated again.”

We took back with us more than she had brought in the ambulance. She had a new knitted lap robe and a shawl, made by the Parkview Noble Hospital Needle Workers. On the tag, as you can see, it says “made for you with loving hands and caring hearts.” I remember a church in Gano, Ohio and a stained glass window that read “willing workers”; I once wrote an article about it. “Wiling workers” is a phrase that has stuck with me, making me feel the touch of  the best in people.

I took these pictures with my cell phone and in this one, you can see the colors of the yarn, the card and the hospital bedrail. I had intended to crop the picture to show just the colors, but then decided that the bedrail emphasized the kind purpose of the needle workers efforts.

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