I did more cleaning yesterday – in an uncharacteristic rut, I guess. Or maybe I didn’t clean and when people come over and gasp, “I thought you were cleaning,” I will say that I had but the dogs and kids went wild and oh, well, this is what it is back to.

Then I went to the store and got a call that Alison, who was working her shift at the hospital, had succumbed to low potassium again and was in the ER. Of course, this day was the one that Colin had come back for a fall break visit.

It occurred to me to walk over to the walk-in freezer area and tell them I needed an emergency suspended animation . . . but I went home instead.

And this morning Summer has just come over to say, “I need socks.”

Shoot, I can’t let the sleeping like the dead be at the forefront. I have better things to share, such as the teepee incense burner and the different wood-scented incense logs Der Bingle sent me. And the embarrassing part about the “holder” wood.

But I need to take pictures and do some other stuff first. Actually, I need to pull everything off my old computer onto an external drive first; yes, I’ve been procrastinating. But, by God, this morning I am going to do it . . . assuming I can find the cables now.

Well, later.

Last night I could not get to sleep. I mean I really couldn’t get to anything even involving relaxed. I was as tight as a spring and my mind was running in circles. Do you remember Peter Finch in Network? “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Yes, that Peter Finch. I was probably beyond that.

So I decided to get up and walk into the kitchen. I guess I figured it was a good place to go since I was stewing and at the point of boiling over, only to return to a simmer to keep the cycle going. I got something to drink and some aspirin and came back and lay down.

I lay in a fetal-contracted near ball – my legs pulled up as far as they could go. When you are 62 years from fetalism, you are more an oval.

And it dawned at me at 2:30 in this early morning that this probably wasn’t going to work. So I rolled over and stretched out flat on my back with my hands on my midriff. I probably looked like a mummy. I lay there breathing slowly and telling all my muscles to just feel gravity. I felt better; enough better that I started to wonder about the hands on the midriff position.

“Do I want to be in a coffin with my hands like that? Would down at my side feel more comfortable?” I tried it and I wasn’t sure. So I went from on position to the other, asking myself  optometrist-like questions:  Number one or number two?  Want to try it again?

I was experimenting with a third modification – arms by my sides with the forearms elevated slightly on something soft when I did drop off to sleep.  That’s what I like about puzzles – you start focusing on all the variables and “poof”  your mind eases.

I guess the sleep was in the details.

I have gotten in my head that I want some balsam incense and so I looked on the internet and, of course, there was Amazon.com offering some from Paine’s. I wanted to check it out so I went to Paine’s site. It turned out to be minimal and didn’t have a “contact us” link, so I guess you can’t get there from here. Did I mention they were located in Maine?

To tell the truth, I was headed back to order from Amazon or another site when I saw listed in products – the dog, not for sale.

I looked HERE and decided to order from Paine’s. Chalk one up for Josie.

Photo from Paine’s website.

It’s a basement; it’s not really a cellar. You go down the stairs and reach a landing: Go right and you are into the paneled section with the fireplace and TV and other stuff; Go left and you enter The Bunker, which used to be known as The Cement Room. Mother got creative down there, you see. The Bunker has a definite Scott House ambiance. Gee, I just remembered – when I was very little, I used to say, “Up to the Scott House.” Well, that was a long time ago. But now it is in my mind again. We’ll see for how long.

But, back to The Bunker part of the basement. One of the rooms on that side is paneled and carpeted and has a drop ceiling. Fitting around the boundaries of this room is a space the shape of Oklahoma. Coming off of what would be the east side of Oklahoma if you were looking at a map are the furnace room and the fruit cellar. I know, I don’t know why we don’t call it the fruit basement. I like the fruit cellar, probably because it has floor to ceiling beadboard cabinet doors. The furnace room isn’t half-bad either; it’s square and the furnace is fairly small these days. Oklahoma and the furnace room are painted in sage with light peach here and there; we have a puzzle-working table next to the furnace and chairs, old cabinets, a TV, an old upright radio, a table, a refrigerator, a freezer and a footstool that has a Raggedy Ann face on it (GoodWill) in the Oklahoma section.

Well, yesterday I cleaned some down there. And I emptied out the chest freezer that is over by the panhandle of Oklahoma. When I get near the bottom, I have to climb up on a step stool and then lean over. Actually, that lets me just barely reach stuff and I wound up straddling the front wall of the freezer this time. I felt a little more comfortable that way; one time when I was leaning over, I teetered on the wall, like an upside down “V”. It could have been bad.

I also sucked cobwebs. With a vacuum, of  course. That was probably obvious but knowing I had been upside down in a freezer might have had you wondering about my mind.

I also went to Wal-Mart. I’m looking at that sentence now and chuckling. Maybe I should be worried about my mind.

I looked at my email and there was an offer from Land’s End for convertible pants. This morning I tripped over the inner cuff of one leg of my convertible pants and smacked right onto the floor. I told Der Bingle, who called while I was still vibrating from the impact, that I would never buy another pair of convertible pants. But here they were On the Counter and the price of five pair was less than I had paid for the pair I had on – my favorites, except for the tripping thing. I looked at the picture and realized they had added tabs on the inner sides of the legs as well. YES!! There is one consideration: The colors are orange and pink. So next summer while I work outside in my pants that roll up and have many pockets, I will be known as pink butt or orange butt.

It has been sunny out all afternoon and Summer and I have been admitting that we are bored. We don’t know why. Grilling would have been nice but we’re not that hungry. Cameron and his folks are taking Colin back this afternoon; Cameron said, “I get to read my Kindle in the car and also we will stop for food.”

On Friday, when they went to get him, Der Bingle, Summer and I did grill out and then had a firepit fire. There was some activity other than eating and watching flames. Summer buried Shane in leaves and we all threw the Wubba for him. One of us threw it so high it went on the roof and caught in the high gutter. Fortunately, he has others and I guess the roofers will toss it down. It was the red one, a fairly new and good squeaker; could there have been subconscious intent?

Here’s Shane in the leaves:

And here are the leaves that are still on one tree:

We don’t throw the leopard/giraffe Wubba now because not even  Shane can find it too well.

And, finally, the fire:

Yeah, it was dying down.

Yes, I did. I decided at 8:36 that I would go and changed clothes and found socks – which is not an easy task given that the sock thief (Summer) stalks my cache all the time, no matter how I try to hide it. I will probably be out on the street corner with a bell and a sign that says SOCKS FOR THE NEEDY.

So I get there and I have to say I thought the pickings were somewhat slim this year; usually they have tons of old kitchen utensils but not this time. I did score on some good cloth napkins, all ironed and ready to go and  four dish towels, embroidered with four days of the week.  The price was 4/1 dollar. Guess missing three days made a big difference to them. That reminds me I once had underwear with the day of the week written on it when I was little. I think I was smart enough to realize in a pinch I didn’t have to take the designations as written in stone. I don’t think I panicked if my drawer had Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday in it and it was Tuesday.

I also picked up some rustic fishing lures and stuff to use for Christmas decorations and a framed embroidered cloth that says:

The most beautiful

things in the world

are not seen or touched.

They are felt with the heart.

The lady at the checkout table timidly asked, “Is three dollars too much?” My total came to $10 and I gave them a $20 and designated the change for a donation.

Oh, I got three old hymnals for 25¢ a piece.

I just confirmed that Trinity Methodist Church is having its fall rummage sale tomorrow at nine, with bag day on Saturday.  I have spent a good deal of my recent time announcing that things must go around here – too much clutter. I have just spent two days at Mother’s going through odds and ends and found, among other things, my Great-Great Aunt Sara’s high school diploma from before the turn of the century – the last one.  I found it in the sewing bench that came with the sewing machine my Great-Great  Uncle Jesse gave my grandmother when she graduated from the same high school in 1900.

I found the booklet that came with my Terri Lee Doll. You know I think I thought that doll was boring but I figured I was expected to play with it. I vaguely remember making it hop along the floor as if it were walking and then thinking, “Okay, now what?” As I was leaving, I tossed a heavy iron pot made for cooking on top of a wood stove into my trunk.

I am sitting here looking at boxes of stuff I have carted to the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. Do I want to go to a rummage sale?

But what if there is something there that is an unfound treasure? What then, huh?

For all the comic remarks we have made about lovable old Shane and his quirks, he certainly showed how well he could learn yesterday. We have been working with the whistle and on the way up to Mother’s, he barked at a couple of cars and I whistled and said, “NO” and then told him good boy when he stopped. On the way home he barked at no one, nada, zilch. While we were out back I introduced him to quick little tweets with his name following. And he came. Repeatedly.

People here think I was cruel when I only took Shane and left Sydney here. They  remarked that well, he’s old, what does it matter if he overdoes and dies. In my mind, a dog will push and push himself to please, to do the activities he has always done. He’s almost blind, deaf and is the equivalent of a 93 1/2 year old man – if you go by doggie years. He fights pancreatitis and he’s not nimble anymore. I can’t pretend this isn’t the case and let him be uncomfortable trying to keep up.

There are many movies we have watched together on this porch, me with my eyes on the TV and he with his head in a pillow on the other end of the sofa. He’s there now as I am typing. He makes Shane stay away from me at night; he sleeps by me. When he eats, I sit with him – and it’s roast or chicken and rice, with dog food mixed in for vitamins.

And, besides, when Shane was doing well with the whistle, he took a minute to roll in the tall grass . . . and I drove home with a non-barking dog that smelled like the barnyard. All windows were down. You know, senior citizens can only take so much of the elementary group.