Later this morning I’m heading over the the nursing home to see Kathryn and then, early this afternoon, I am taking my head in to have the hair worked on and the roots colored. We are having a long learning curve with the shades my hair is turning. The sun is changing the color; washing it is changing the color; sneezing may be changing the color – all those little dye-let molecules taking the fast train out of town.

But, hey, that’s no reason not to go back in and stick my head in another vat of chemicals. Life may or may not be a cabaret, but my head is getting a little honky-tonky.

This morning I awoke at a little before six and got up to have some nice, quiet daylight time to myself. As I pushed stuff here and there to make room for me on my corner of the porch sofa, I turned and saw Cameron (new name Buck) staring at me from the double doorway that leads to the living room. He was grinning and he sat down and talked to me for 75-90 minutes . . . Oh, he’s BACK!

***

Much later. Let me add this: When Buck and I left the porch, he looked at Sydney stretched out on the floor and waiting to be petted. And he talked about wanting to keep the memory of Sydney looking like that in his “square head” forever.

I have two tall plants in the left portion of my kitchen sink. Ah, Der Bingle, you did not know this. Well, the day I bought the tomato plants I also saw these two tall green things with purplish, skinny, lilac-like flowers on them . . . and I got them. They are in the sink – oh, I wrote that already.

I thought I knew where I would plant them, but now I don’t. The instructions, which I did not read until I got home, tell about a hole three times the size of the containers they are in. THREE TIMES. And you have to make a berm around the stalk so that you get a moat effect.

Actually, I think they look fine in the sink. They reach up all the way to the soffit. Maybe if I remove them from their containers and just plant them in the sink . . .

It would be as if I were getting a head start on the History Channel’s Life After People.

My friends at the nursing home are having a bad time and of the two, only one truly knows it and she remains holding things together, hour after hour. I wonder if when you get so old, you somehow come to take things as they come, or if that is the way she has always been. I think I would be overwhelmed. The soon to be 96 -year-0ld gentleman is having a personality change – more confused, testy, not sleeping as much and getting somewhat hands-on in his frustration.

I was there yesterday, having been kept away on family business for a little over a week. I came with Planter’s Whole Cashews with sea salt, a new favorite of Kathryn’s and mine. In fact, I think I ate about a third of the last can she had. I sat beside her on the bed and she said, “I suppose you’ve heard about Iva . . ” Well, I hadn’t; I just don’t look at the local paper that much any more. Iva is her daughters mother-in-law and she died early this week. She was 91, a classy lady who dressed to the nines and just a few months ago was worrying about getting to the License Bureau in time to renew hers.

Well, that is the course of life, parents dying before children.

However, Kathryn’s daughter and her husband have another matter: Their daughter who was diagnosed with leukemia when she was nine – about three decades ago – and went through chemotherapy that left deficits, two bouts of breast cancer and a scare a couple of years ago with lumps in her salivary glands . . . found a new lump in some remaining breast tissue. The doctor came in and told them it was cancer again, They are worried that it has spread.

And Kathryn is there in the nursing home, dealing with all this alone – going about the minutes of the day. I don’t know how she does it. She has to shout into the ear of her husband and . . . he thinks it is his sister who has died. They have weathered so  much together, but now the storm is all around just her, rather than them.  He is part of the storm.

I told her I will try to come every other day, even  if I can manage at times only 15 minutes or so. She tells me: “Oh, that is so much driving for you.” Actually, it is a gift to me to be able to be in the presence of  her strength and grace. I am humbled by her bearing.

I was sitting here a few minutes ago working on thinking . . . about what I could talk myself into doing today that would be productive while “Married Life” with Pierce Brosnan aired in the background. It’s a period piece from back when cars where big and made from metal . . . and men wore vests. It is about plotted murder, which I suppose is called premeditated. Then as the dialogue moved along, I heard this line: The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold. Oh, yes, how many times have Der Bingle and I quoted that line? Over decades, I guess. I waited for the following clause: And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; it never came, but that’s all right. Somewhere in a make-believe place where people drive big cars with big, big steering wheels, The Destruction of Sennacherib pops up in conversation.

I’m sending Bob over to the bookshelves so we can refresh ourselves on the verses. We could look on the Internet, but it’s Byron, dontcha know. But, just in case he falls on the ladder, I peeked HERE and you can take a glimpse at this:

Yes, it is getting close to 80 degrees HEAT and it is a little humid. I have not minded this cool start to June, although I would have a preferred some more sunny days. But now it is going to be in the 80’s and sunny.  I hope I am not jinxing myself into a summer such as we had two years ago when the temperature and humidity were both in the high nineties and I was convinced I was going to melt.

Aha, Cameron has come out to the porch. So far he is Mr. I’ll Sleep until Long after Noon and then Get up and be Active when Everyone else is Quieting down. Aha, he left. Could it have been the Grandma Stare of Are you Kidding Me?

Oh dear, now Alison has just come out to say she broke a little glass . . . that looked sort of like a pitcher.

YIKES! That is Cameron’s crystal find at the GoodWill.  Oh, she’s up to her eyeballs in trouble now.

And, me? Well, I’m feeling whimsical and thinking of what was one of my favorite songs many years ago:

04 Say, Has Anyone Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose

But I don’t know if this will play on other computers. Well, at least the title is there. Then, of course, there is another favorite:

20 Hello Love

Maybe I’ll just put my moccasins on and dance. Everybody here at the cafe, let’s have a lively, good time. Maybe even . . .

3-52 The Stein Song

Oh, just hand me that megaphone

Before I can personally remember it, I sucked my thumb and ran my fingers over the satin on the blanket’s edge when I napped and/or went to bed at night.  By the time I can remember it, there were no naps – because I gave them up unreasonably early as far as my mother was concerned. She got even, though; by her own admission, she says I was put to bed “with the chickens”.  I had my own revenge – I lay in there and sang for a long time and I have never been able to carry a tune.

At some time, in the before I can remember time, my dad gave the satin one of his made-up names: it was my “feeler”.  (Iodine, by the way was, “red stuff” and once I remember telling a playmate who had a cut that she needed red stuff . . . and she looked as me as if I were daft and I didn’t know why.)

Since I sucked my left thumb, leaving my right hand free to do things as I went through the day, at night the feeler was always between the fingers on my right hand. However, as I grew older and eventually gave up sucking my thumb, I switched the feeler to my left hand. And somewhere along the line, I discovered a feeler didn’t have to be attached to a blanket – satin was in lots of places. Why ribbons were made of satin; lots of stuff was trimmed with satin. I found myself running my fingers over it all – even the slick thread in the brocade pattern of a chair.

Once, when I was writing for a paper in Cincinnati, I did a story on the ballet and part of the pack of information contained an invitation to a fundraiser, and that invitation was a paper ballet slipper laced with a pink ribbon. As I was going to sleep one night, my husband noticed the pink ribbon laced between my fingers. He made a reference to addiction and said that, yes, the first ribbons they hand out free and then they start to charge. I could see myself committing crimes to get the money for my ribbons and it was a scary thought – and I’d have to go cold turkey if I was caught and jailed. It’s numbers, not ribbons, on prison jumpsuits.

So if I wind up in prison, please, somebody, bake me a cake with a ribbon in it.

The temperature in in the high 60’s and the humidity is 88%; I’ve been out doing some chores before the rain/storms that have been predicted for three days get here – and the morning is cloudy. Now, I’ve just finished looking at weather.com to see what the radar looks like and when the rain/storm conditions will arrive. Well, today is supposed to have a high of 72 and be mostly sunny – sooner or later. I am not seeing this sun, but then again we have only had sprinkles of rain.

Well, at least I got the trash chore done . . . and now, I think – I mean I really think – I ought to go take a shower. Or as we say here in the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse, a wash-up.