Not that I am Sleeping Beauty, not that I have been asleep at all these past two days. Nor have I been sick. I suppose it was a blah period when it came to the computer. I get that way every now and then. I still wrote posts . . . in my head. You know, I have been doing that all of my life, long before there were computers. There’s not really a point to this – other than the nice thing about the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse is I don’t have to open it up myself every day.  The denizens do that: Rose and Lydia and Woo and Foo and E4 and Rose’s apprentice, who looks like Meryl Streep. Oh, I just referred to my dear friends as denizens. I’d better check the definition to make certain I am not going to get smacked.

Ah, the definition on the handy dandy desktop of this computer is, shall we say, less “cute” than I thought. I’m checking another source, say Merriam-Webster:

Definition of DENIZEN

Mother was someone who did not enjoy life; she fretted about every little thing and, frankly, she made me nervous. I don’t suppose she wanted to be that way, and maybe she wasn’t when I wasn’t around – although I am pretty certain about the not enjoying life thing. Maybe if everything had always been perfect in her mind, she would have liked life. Ironically, I think it was only in her final few years that she drew closer to the position of maybe she wanted to stay around and not miss out on what was in the future.

I don’t say this to complain, honestly. It is just a matter of fact.

Yesterday when I was mowing, I caught the very edge of a large, strong tarp that was covering one of the woodpiles. I’ve been successful at avoiding it all season and I was surprised when it happened. The mower made an awful sound and the engine stopped. I thought, “Oh, crap.” And, I think I remember a wisp of a thought in the deep recesses of my brain – Thank God Mother’s dead.  Otherwise the sky would have been falling.

I got it started and drove forward and of course the tarp followed me; I backed up, it stayed with me. Suddenly, in some dimension I knew we were joined at birth. I drove into the shade, got off and found a utility knife and pliers and put myself prone on the ground by the blades. The utility knife was hopelessly dull; the tarp was twisted all around  . . . and I was enjoying myself.

I had been at her grave earlier yesterday and remember saying “I’m sorry, Mother.” And I am. Sorry, I guess, for being me.

I’m not sorry I enjoyed the little incident and the comic story possibilities I could see as I lay there tugging and twisting on the ground . . . but I do feel a little guilty about it. I shouldn’t have hit the tarp; but I did. And I have to admit I am glad I won’t hear, “Don’t suck up the tarp” the next time I mow – although somewhere in my mind I will.

Mother did a lot for me, but I wish we could have just once made lemonade.

I have to go up to the bank in Sturgis today and then out to work in grass and dirt and grime. I guess that means I’ll start out dressed okay and change into beat-up old cargo shorts and a safari shirt doused in mosquito repellent. I want to make this change as easy as possible so I’m thinking skirt, cotton knit shirt under a larger, left-open safari shirt.

COWTIPPING ANONYMOUS popped into my head.  You know my blue shirt I got from LZP? The one in a post below. It’s not a loud color and the cowtipping thing isn’t in flashing neon.

In the bank? In my mother’s bank? Oh, that settles it; Mother was a character to say the least. I have a legacy to carry on – a destiny to fulfill.

Yes, the tipped cow it is.

Woo Hoo for us – the temperature is low and the sky is clear. The air is refreshing. Football weather is what we in the old Midwest call it. Crisp and uplifting. I also think of it as “go back to school” weather because we started later all those years ago and even with some hot days, more often than not, the mornings would be chilly in a good way. I think fall weather all year round would not be bad at all.

Wow, a boring weather paragraph. Actually, it is sort of a contentment paragraph. Soon, I will start thinking about raking, however, and that is another matter. That is a subject of fall navigation requiring an experienced skipper, one who can keep a fluid accounting of energies, leaf pattern falling, expected rain, wind and whatever. Sometimes I go for the wait until the last leaf has fallen and then push them onto tarps and make almost endless trips to the curb to construct the Leaf Siege Wall.  Or I will try the quick rake a day to keep the leaf drifts away. I usually get behind on that, though. Since we  can’t burn leaves here in town, you don’t have a great reward waiting for you after heavy-duty raking hours. Bummer.

That part about putting the leaves on the curb? Guess what happens then. The city machines sometimes EAT your curb. So most people push the leaves past the curb into the street. I do that. I do that fast. I pull the tarp out, fold it over a bit and run back into the yard and behind the house. Of course, once it is done, they know there was a perpetration of a leaf crime, but at least there are no direct witnesses.

Ack! Forty-five years??? Yes, 45 – come next year. It was 1966 just yesterday. I just know it was.

When they announced the 40th Class Reunion, I started thinking about being past middle age. Now. it is for sure. And so I repeat, ACK.

At the end of the email about next year’s reunion, there was mention of 33 classmates who had passed away, and the note that 10 of them had been in the last 10 years. ( Five in 2009 and one in 2010 – so far.) My younger son called about something and I was telling him I was somewhat pre-occupied because I was looking at obituaries of people my age. I don’t think I said it just that way; I think I talked about looking on the Internet at “dead people” who could be me.

I remember looking at a picture and asking, “Who is that old man?” and then realizing it is Joe (I guarantee it) Namath. Hey, I remember when “Get Smart” was on TV with Don Adams – and the guy that sat next to me in English was going to have his brother record it because there was some school function going on. HA! Record? He meant to record the audio – VCR’s were a long time away.

Oh, well, I guess I’ll go get my bunny slippers and put on my Maxine robe.

Look what came for my birthday. Just look. Isn’t it wonderful? Yes, it is.

I will handwash this so gently. I’d wear it today to Indianapolis, but I’m not going to be getting out of the car – other than to order a hamburger and do the rest stop thing.

Cow tipping shirt’s are this girl’s best friend.

SIGH . . . Now Robert has the green snot virus and so I will be taking Alison down to Options Treatment Center to pick up Colin. Der Bingle, who showed up last night (with Hot Headed Burritos) volunteered to go but I think it is best that I let him stay here with Summer while I go. I have the experience . . . Oh, it’s not that I have been there before; it is that I have ridden for extended hours with the person of two personalities – the incredible talking machine and – snap your fingers – the living corpse. I fully expect to be pulled over sometime by a policeman wondering about the “head lolling on the headrest with mouth hanging open” body.

I am going dressed in clean and totally wrinkled linen clothes; I can’t see the point of ironing only to get in a car with a seatbelt for about, oh, six hours total. I do appreciate the idea of being clean, though.

I may wear my little black sketcher shoes that are the beach trekkers and have mesh as a majority of the body. Kind of makes me think of those black fishnet stockings my dancing teacher wore when I was in kindergarten, only these are just shoe-level.  I  remember asking my mother and other people why the teacher wore those criss-cross black thread stockings and I don’t think I got an answer. Think of it, though;  you walk a five year old who was born in 1948 into a room where a woman has on these things. I had never seen such a thing before. I think I was a lion for my first recital – a pastel green one with curtain tassels for my mane and stuffed ears on my hood/hat. We must have been doing The Wizard of Oz. There were three lions, the other two were yellow. That’s about all I remember, other than somersaults across part of the stage.

I keep my iphoto pictures in the little iphoto file until, boom, something grabs me and screams, “You will never get these uploaded for printing for Christmas or whatever! You are a procrastinating jerk!” Even that has worked lately. This morning, however, I got my email and there was an upload message from Kodak and the next thing you know I’ve updated my upload plug-in and have started the almost never-ending task. I think there are thousands. I am on picture 52 of my first 202 item chunk.

Of course, I never organize my stuff in iphoto, often don’t even throw away photos in the trash that are somebody’s thumb so when it all gets to Kodak, it is a stampede; my photos do not go marching in with titles and dates and instructions. Woo-Hoo . . . #79 now.

It is raining outside and dreary so maybe I will light an oil lamp for ambiance while I use this fancy technology.

#91 now.

My typing fingers just blurted that out. The hallmark of a late summer cold/respiratory flu. Just what you wanted to live with – well, I guess it’s better than dying with it – and it moves around inside you. And last night I just watched Monsters Within Me and that wasn’t wise because for some reason, the tiny things you need a microscope to see were enlarged via technology into perfectly visible tri-cuspid mouthed creatures. IN YOUR EYE. EATING  YOUR BRAIN.

Then it was DARK when I took Alison to work – no more of those nice summer mornings filled with sunlight.  Auuuuggggghhhhhhh. Both dogs insisted on coming and when we got to the hospital entrance, they saw a lady walking and went into barkfest mode. That includes hopping from front to back to front, and in Shane’s case, thunking his head against the glass because I don’t believe he truly understands transparent, but solid windows.

I used an old alarm clock of my mother’s because I had given mine to Cameron and discovered that she probably didn’t use it as an alarm clock anymore – because it won’t shut off. It will only snooze. To get it to stop fully, I will have to unplug it and reset the time. (Or I could take the cover off and look at what’s not working and completely break it.)

I am almost in a mood for Green Spam.