Monthly Archives: January 2010

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Good

I just sneezed and it felt good and I feel better and it was just a small ah-choo, not one of my famous “blow the little pig’s house down” sneezes. I had a restless night with nightmares and brief awakenings and then an early final awakening and a lie in bed period while waiting for dawn. I didn’t make dawn; I gave up and got up and grabbed a coke/diet coke, aspirin, a peanut butter foldover and my computer. I sat here looking at the news thinking many judgmental thoughts and had a good idea this was going to be a grumpy AJ day.

And then I sneezed. My spirits lifted. I know you can cry out stress chemicals, but can you sneeze them out? Probably not; more than likely I sneezed out part of some evil magic spell. Some things are just so obvious – like hitting your aching thighs with an antique meat tenderizer to simulate a massage.

I’m just spitting out these words to cover the fact I am faced with washing my hair for the first time since it was cut on Friday in a layered bob. When the stylist dried it and curled it, it looked so vibrant and sophisticated. I am concerned my attempts will end up in a mutt look. Well, having confessed, here I go to do the deed.

The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

I glued my finger to the super glue tube

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The title could be the post; it is a concise little story. Dirt was in the vicinity- think potting soil – when I glued my hand to the tube so I also glued it to dirt. When I wiggled the tube away from my hand, I thought well, good. I then decided to work on the dirt and managed to pull off a chickenpox-sized piece of skin. I left the rest of the dirt on and went to tell my tale to Summer, who mentioned the time she glued one hand to a super glue container and then in trying to get it off, glued the other hand on as well. I told her I did not remember this and she allowed she had been sort of embarrassed and took care of it on her own – by banging the container against some counter until it popped off. I did not want to explore this technique or even learn the details . . . and now I am wondering about the other Summer adventures that remain secret. Just wondering, you realize; I don’t want to know.

***

This morning we’re going to have a meeting at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse about forming a union so we won’t have to pay taxes on our insurance. Of course,  we will move the PBC to Nevada while we are organizing our little group. It is starting to seem like this country needs a partisan group, a resistance, a Free America movement. In fact the code name for the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse may have to be “Rick’s Cafe American” and we’ll need to teach Lydia to play As Time Goes By.

As Oldsmobile would phrase it – This isn’t our forefather’s American.

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Unfortunate coincidental timing

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Okay, a few days ago I WROTE a little post about heading back into The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse . . . and I sort of got on my old theme of  HOW I CANNOT STAND THAT MAN  (JB) and then I clicked on a news page and saw that his mother had died at 92. I felt bad – not tacky and insensitive because I really didn’t know about her death, but groany kind of bad anyway. So, I still can’t stand that man, but I do regret the timing. Especially since I was going to write about going into the PBC&R and finding they had rented the place out for a Joe Biden Townhall Meeting sort of thing – I don’t know, something about needing to rev up the place since I had left them in the lurch. That would have been tacky. Elmer tried to help by suggesting we put black bunting around the I Can’t Stand Joe Biden poster, but I didn’t think that would cut it. Oops, did I fall a bit into my little scenario of Joe Biden and the cafe? I just sort of tripped a little, okay.

I suppose I need a moratorium. Thirty days?

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Here’s what I got . . . and now I want MORE

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Crate & Barrel. Wait a minute, this is not all I got; I left a wee bit more, but not much at all and I left some at the Ohio Redoubt.

I think these are great and the price . . . yea!

Page reference is HERE.

And I got one of these for me.

Thank goodness for open stock. Read about them HERE. I like my glass a lot. A whole lot. Maybe I should write on it what I have put on my scissors – “Touch and Die”.

Look at THIS LINK to see these glasses – I bought one.

The cute high ball one.

Then you can look at THESE and read about the two taller ones I got.

Okay, I’m bored doing this; I wasn’t when I started, but I am now – bored, that is. So I will just do the happy dance and song about open stock at Crate & Barrel. Can you hear my tap shoes and my singing? You are soooo lucky.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Quick trip to Cincinnati

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Alison’s mother suffered a stroke Monday night and so this morning, I drove her down to her sister’s in Cincinnati. It was a long trip with I-75 squeezing three narrow lanes between abutments in a construction zone that stretched through Dayton and a good part of the way to Cincinnati. In this part of the Ohio River Valley, settlements and streets followed the ridge lines and it is often quite possible to not know where you are.  I wasn’t real certain where I was when we left I-75 to get to Alison’s sister’s house, but, yes, I-74 did lead to Montana which led to Boudinot which led to the street her sister lives on. It’s just there were many intersections and often a four lane street would become a two lane with parking lanes. So, while watching the street signs I had to make certain I didn’t whomp right into a parked car. It’s not like they were lined up – just here and there. Little signs announced parking lane when it occurred.

Then when I backed out of the driveway, I did get lost. I had no idea where I was and was very tired with squinty little eyes so I adopted a driving style known as “go with the lights and the flow” and eventually I saw the downtown skyline of the city. I knew I had not crossed the Ohio River  so I was somewhat concerned but as I flowed along I found myself crossing a valley filled with railroad tracks.

Do you know that the downtown streets in this old river city are very narrow? Yes, they are. A lot are one way. I knew I-71 had to be out there somewhere and just a little north of Mount Adams I caught up with it. I could have just followed it to 275 and then 75 but I thought, “I know there is a Crate & Barrel here and I can do this without wrecking the car.” And I did.  That lifted my spirits a lot.

I decided I’d stop by my friend Joan’s house but she wasn’t there so I called her phone and left a message to look on her patio where I had written my name in the snow. This pretty much convinces me that if you are born a little odd, you are probably going to die that way. I guess I could have left a note stuck on the door – but the snow thing . . . it was so AmeliaJake. You know once Joan was riding in the passenger seat and looked out her window and asked if the double yellow line was supposed to be on her side? Yeah, I think we were lost then too.

Then I took the wrong exit on 675 and re-enacted a previous Fairborn excursion just like the one we had in the dark of night coming back from Kings Island and my duel with death on the Diamondback, followed by the unceremonious hurling on White Water Canyon.

I am now sitting on the sofa in the Ohio Redoubt with my feet on the coffee table and I am drinking Coke and Diet Coke in my new Krosno Made in Poland glass. I also have a Made in Mexico and Made in Turkey glass. Maybe next time I go there, I will get a collection of many countries – but not China – China is scary. Oh, by the way, this was a really upscale Crate & Barrel – I sort of felt like a frump going in and coming out, but I got my stuff  so HA! The San Diego store was more casual – it cried for you to come in and buy mismatched glasses.

I wonder if my rambling is an extension of my tendency to get vaguely lost in certain areas. I mean I am not really ever LOST; I’m just a little not certain of the GPS coordinates sometimes. I am pausing to think about this. Maybe I’ll get an aspirin as well.

The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Whoa, what’s going on here

Just this morning, this very morning, I decided I should stick my head into The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse and get things revved up. The last time I had been in, everyone was sort of depressed, dontcha know. I went in through the back door, and a distinct murmur from The Foo Bar caught my attention. I peeked in. Most of the stools were filled and behind the bar – behind the bar – sat Foo with a toothpick between her lips, a green eyeshade on her head and  cards in her hand.  I thought I heard someone say, “Hit me.”

Foo saw me first and inclined her head toward an empty stool; I headed right for the swinging half door to go behind the bar and she met me there. “No patrons behind the bar,” she says. “Foo,” I said, “this is me, AmeliaJake.” And I tapped my foot and gave her a look. She shrugged and told me I hadn’t been around for a while and she had an “easement”.

I lifted up her eyeshade, looked right in her eyes and told her she was playing 21 and running a gambling parlor and she told me I was right. So I plucked the toothpick right out of her mouth. It is hard for Foo to look put out

but she managed to alter this sweet face into a pout. “You left me playing sudoku; I had to move on.” I told her I had expected she would sort of stay the same, waiting for me as the dust gathered and she informed me that wasn’t how the real world worked.

“Well, I am back,” I said, “and we are stopping this nonsense right now. No more 21 and no more of that.” I pointed at the wall.

“My slot machines??? You want me to get rid of my slot machines????

Yes, yes and yes.

“And I suppose my merger with Donald the T is out, too?”

You got it, kid.

I sharpened her sudoku pencil and gave her a slug of sparkling grape juice and she looked up with her sweet face and asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve been in the cafe yet?”

The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

So, we need a few dust cloths

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I’ve alluded a couple of times to the state of affairs at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse; well, more specifically to the echoes I hear that whisper, “Where have you gone, AmeliaJake?” I think I’ve answered a couple of times to the tune of “Why, I’m right here.” But, then, we all know I can’t carry a tune. The truth is I’ve been a ghost there; I think I’ve been choosing to be a ghost of the present and future because, well,  I’ve learned things change and I’ve been sad and I’m worried about this being a trend.

So, the tables have grown dusty and Lydia isn’t playing ragtime on the piano and Cletus and Arnold just sit in the corner with their faces in old newspapers – their rocking chairs balanced at the point of rock solid ‘still’. Grover doesn’t come anymore to check in on The Foo Bar, where he got his start. And, Foo? She’s sitting on a stool behind the bar with  a sudoku book and a stubby pencil and no pencil sharpener. I guess when dullness reaches the point of nothing left but the wood casing, no more squares will be filled in and she’ll just sit there with her elbows on the bar and her little, round, flat-topped head in her hands.

Oh, and the WE STILL CAN’T STAND JOE BIDEN poster has fallen out of the window and gathers it own dust on the floor.

Where have you gone, AmeliaJake?

I don’t know. Mother’s gone and for the first time in ten years I didn’t buy a special book for Daddy’s Christmas present – one to sit on the table by his chair will all the others. This year there was no inscription: Christmas 2009 . . . I’ll always love you, Daddy. But I haven’t gone where Mother and Daddy have gone. I’ve been somewhere else. A place where I’ve felt sorry for myself for the mistakes I’ve made and a place where I feel everything is getting ready to be gone.

I think if I stay here in this little space between before and after, I will ultimately find I have been carried into the “after” anyway and will regret just allowing myself to be moved along, making the mistake of omission all the way. And, to tell you the truth, I miss the sound of Lydia’s red piano and Foo’s disgruntled exclamations of “What? How can there be two “4’s” in this block of my sudoku.” I miss the guys quickly hiding their wi-fi connected computers behind quaint small town newspapers when strangers come in looking for “quaint.”

And I miss exclaiming,  I CAN’T STAND THAT JOE BIDEN. So, maybe the first thing I dust off will be that poster – and maybe I’ll draw a moustache on his smug, arrogant face that lurks beneath the hair plugs. Did I mention that I can’t stand that man.

Maybe I’ll even hang a bell on the door. Right now I’m going to go have Foo mix me up a “cure”; I think she updated it to Coke, Diet Coke and fast acting crystal Bayer aspirin. Maybe I’ll have her use shaved ice. No, I think I’ll stick with crushed. Then maybe a bite of a foldover.

Has anyone seen the megaphone for the Rudy Vallee sing-alongs?  Let’s get those rafters ringing – we’ll just shake off the dust.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

This came a week ago

Oh, about the time LZP broke his arm, he sent this picture of his daughter, his oldest child and our niece – well, she and Der Bingle share the DNA, but I’m proud to be her aunt. It came through on my email when we were grappling with getting Der Bingle re-established in Fairborn and then getting the school schedule going again. So, I’m late in sharing it.

This is Miss Jody Vance and the apple of her dad’s eye:

LZP says, “I really think it captures her spirit and sense of rascalism.”

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Oh, the agony of waiting for the announcement

I could not rehash this yesterday; my nerves, they were shot. Shot, I tell you, like zee leetle people who are near Clouseau when he takes his gun out. In fact, I think I am still feeling some of the aftereffects. It started Thursday night when some schools starting announcing delays; the name ran along the bottom og the tv screen and East Noble was not one of them.

Oh, the moaning and wailing and flailing. Could not this school announce so little heads could fall asleep on pillows that need not be disturbed until two hours later than normal? the morning came and sill East Noble was not on the list . . . and then it was for a delay. Immediately the intense watching began for a closing announcement. At 8:10 when all hope was abandoned DeKalb County closed, DeKalb Eastern Closed, East Allen Closed and then there it was East Noble Closed. The screaming screech from upstairs was deafening. Suddenly those who had been giving the TV evil looks of death were cheerful.

The rest of us were limp. And then I did the unthinkable: I suggested we re-enact the response to the broadcasted list. I meant the happiness that followed the East Noble Closed segment. Summer decided to re-do the pain-filled minutes that began when Adams appeared on the screen.

Oh, they’re not going to close  . . .  oh no oh no oh no . ..  oh, Central Noble isn’t closed . . . they never close . . . Grandma you jinxed us . . . why aren’t they closing? Oh, God, this is the worse day of my life. Oh, DeKalb . . . they closed . . . panting, whining sounds of despair . . . they won’t clo . . . SCREAM.

It can be scary here.

Especially when someone walks to where the celebration is and says, “Oh, Summer, the newscaster just said the typist made a mistake; East Noble is still on a delay.” Of course, only a fool would say that.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Getting snow

Snow was predicted for today and some people assumed there would be a two-hour delay; no snow came until about 9 and it came from the south. Now schools to the south are starting to close early. I do not want to know what my grandchildren are thinking at this time. Noble County Council on Aging closed but I suppose the school corporation thinks, hey the kids are young, they can take it. Anyway, I hope Cameron and Summer have learned not to count their flakes until they fall.