With the dumpster in the driveway crying out, “Feed me; feed me.” , I felt compelled to go to the attic yesterday and throw a lot of stuff down. (What the heck is the correct punctuation for that sentence anyway?) After I had cleared out a lot of attic stuff, I felt pretty good; this morning I feel pretty achy. The backs of my legs especially. Then this morning was the first DST weekday morning and I felt drugged – and not with the kind of drugs that help the aches.

A couple of the folks at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse here have suggested that the cure is the hair of the dog that bit me, i.e., more filling of the dumpster. Well, you “couple of folks” , suppose you take your foldovers, open them up and fold them back over your noses. Obviously, I seem not to be in a cheery little mood. Especially since I watched a show titled “Hoarding: Buried Alive” last night and am now looking suspiciously at my stuff sitting here and there and on top of the first here and there.

Ack! I am staring at Cletus, one of the original “couple of folks”  . . . and I know he is about to ask if I got a big enough dumpster. Yes, he stage whispered it to his companion, Floyd. And they are snickering. I don’t care if they have twinkles in their eyes, next time they are going to have super glue in their foldovers.

I ordered a clean-up dumpster and moved a lot of wood to make a place for it, but the guys missed my sign for where it was to go and put it someplace else. That someplace else would be the place we park the third car when Der Bingle is here. So I went out and moved more wood to make a spot to park and put plastic trash cans to protect the car in case anyone forgets my warning: Back into my car and I will kill you.

I moved that wood the old-fashioned way – one piece at a time.

Pacing yourself is good when you are moving wood; I find taking the long route from place one to place two provides a moderation to the exercise. It takes longer but bit by bit, log by log it gets done. Do you know you can find a lot of gunk under a woodpile? Especially if it is one that wasn’t completely racked because of weather and life’s complications. Muddy gunk. I must admit, though, that muddy gunk is better than the half-frozen gunk that you find when the temperature does not climb into the 50’s. I was lucky these past two days; we had warm temps and so I dealt with muddy shoes and not  a fallen-on rear end.

I also threw stuff into the dumpster. Oddly enough, when I am standing in muddy gunk, holding a log, I don’t feel this great sentimental attachment to the things that show up in the driveway area. Not a whit of nostalgia; I just chuck it in. The one thing about where they placed the dumpster is that it is not far from the second story windows of this big ole room that is chock-a-block with stuff. I’m betting I can get pretty good at tossing stuff out of the window and hitting the dumpster. Of course, I am handicapped by the fact that the windows crank out and in the open position they are 90 degrees out in the middle of the window. The old windows in the other part of the house crank out to the side and give you wider egress. Of course, with the window in the middle, there is less chance of falling out. Things balance out, I suppose.

We do have some characters here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse, though, and there might be an unwanted balance between dumpster chukking and dumpster diving. Oh, well.

I am having trouble getting going this morning. I could have done it, after all I got up and took Alison to work and came home and started the process to get Summer moving. However, I was informed it was Collaboration Wednesday; that, apparently is the new – or newly-used – name for the damned 30 minute delay Wednesday.

Disgusted, I put my head down on a pillow and thought, “Oh, Puh-lease.” Robert took her to school and I stayed in the ball of tired despair that comes from being reminded of the unbeatable, annoying and stupid things that are not satisfied to psychically beat you in points, but beat you up and down.

Last week Summer came home and said the school wasn’t going to have the Wednesday delay anymore; I am not stupid – I looked at her and her grin and guessed they had changed it to another day. Oh, yeah, I was right. Now we are going to have Collaboration Monday. Of course. Monday. I suppose they feel it eases you into the week. No, it does not. It introduces you to the week with a nod to starting out with a salute to the idea that the week is something to groan about. To start out by delaying and throwing everything out of whack.

I’m sure this little fiasco of a schedule blip is because someone needed something on a resume as a progressive program. But like many little stepping stones needlessly thrown down by people, it remains to trip us up.

So now, today, I am going to be complaining to all the guys stopping in at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. Hey! Guess what?? I turned my own key. They will probably walk in, take one look at me and mouth, “Oh, Puh-lease.”

Today was climb up on the stepladder, which was leaning against the blue spruce tree trunk, and saw off some of the lower branches. It needed to be done; the tree towers over the house, but the bottom was looking ragged. The air conditioner sits right beside it and the driveway is on the other side and as time passed, the branches next to the air conditioner dried out and died and fell off. The branches by the driveway tried to encroach upon the passageway of the cars and there was confrontation. For awhile on that side, we pruned. But pruning a drooping blue spruce branch sort of results in a pom-pom type bottom.

The whole thing was lop-sided. It took me about three years to pick up the saw, however, because, gosh, it’s a tree. Today I did it.

And then I dragged some of the trimmings to the curb. Cameron dragged the rest. Alison looked out and exclaimed, “There’s a tree on the parkway!” Well . . . sort of. We will plant some ground cover when we figure out what would look okay. Maybe a bed of spikes:

(I, the amazing AmeliaJake, was tired last night, so this morning I am going to put a capital “A” on my amazing and correct typos. I have also actually downloaded pictures . . . and found out, by the way, I am a gnome.)

We started out on a trip to Crate & Barrel today and we wound up going to more places; sometimes we were lost and sometimes we were not. It is part of the road trip adventure for folks 60+. We feel okay about knowing mostly where we were and in is interesting to look on Google Maps and see where we actually were when we didn’t know it at the time. Well, we knew the general vicinity of where we were at all times – at least we knew we had not crossed any state lines.

Here is an intersection where we stopped for gas when we were not really certain as to how far off course we were in our meandering around what was we intended to be Northern Cincinnati. The street sign out there says “Avenue of Champions”; unfortunately we had not had our Wheaties that morning and our guardian angel had already alerted the emergency squad.

The picture below is cropped so you can’t see my gnomeness in its full glory. (Joan, I’ll email you the full picture.)

Gnomy AJ, Joan and Steve.

The best part of the day was getting to see my good friend Joan and the dicey part was sitting across the table from Der Bingle at Mimi’s when he received his order . . . liver and onions. It was under the heading of “Comfort Foods” but, personally, I think that was a little private joke of Mimi’s. I didn’t watch him eat it, but I think knowing what was going on affected me adversely. I started to get a headache and then had the distinct urge to get up and grab the man across the aisle who was being really loud and ripping his fat, bald head off.*  So I took aspirin and Tylenol and came home and sucked down a Diet Coke.

The atmosphere at Mimi’s.

*Der Bingle says this is a personality trait I share with Maxwoo.

Today I was walking down the frozen food aisle at the grocery when I noticed a sale of quick microwave little meals. I am so partial to meatloaf and there was Michelina’s face and the suggestion, “Let Mama feed you” and I succumbed.

I took it one home and followed the directions to open a corner of the lid. So I tore the box open and looked for the saran wrap type covering I expected to find on the usual little blackish microwave dish. Aha, there was a surprise – no saran wrap stuff, no dish. I saw a frozen thin slab, so I picked it up in disbelief and leaned it against the box and photographed it.

Now you may be wondering how I got such an intact picture of the box when I had no idea of taking one until I had seen the slab inside. Well, guess what? I bought two. Auuuuugggggghhhhhhh.