I suppose Mother cut this out when I was writing some articles for a little paper – The Kendallville Mall – here.

We talk about physics and the things we don’t know – the God discussion, for one. The Hereafter discussion, for another. Oh, a lot a things. A lot of time I go with what comforts me and what I think should be, as I guess the closing line of this article indicates.

UPDATE . . . for information and for fixing my errors.

Sydney is quiet today but getting around and even stuck his head in the treat box. Given the icy conditions, I am going to call the vet rather than take Sydney out into the cold and  maybe ultimately, a ditch. Thanks for the good wishes.

I  am thinking Sydney is having small strokes because he seems so out of it and weak and then over the course of several hours recovers significantly. I don’t know, though. I will be taking him tomorrow at 9:15 am so the vet can have a look see. Last night he spent over five hours in the same position under the table and it appeared to take him some time to figure out how to maneuver his body out, even with help from Der Bingle. He sleep slept deeply until one, and then, according to Der Bingle” looked out of it. Then the former latter stood up and the latter former stole his big ole leather chair and we started thinking, “He’s coming back.”

Raggedy Anns are lining up to be his pillow.

I’ve got to get some app to block me from watching SyFy in real life. I was just sitting here earlier this afternoon and information came in the sound wave of Der Bingle’s voice: “There’s a snake marathon on SyFy. Auuuuggggghhhhh. Why, why, why do i watch these movies?

These three images have been sitting around on my desktop for a couple of weeks now and if I don’t do something they are probably going to get a lawyer and claim an easement or, worse yet, file for homestead status. I can hear the argument now: Look at this disorganized desktop; we can improve our area in two years, maybe even start to grow virtual corn and build a virtual log cabin.

I am nipping that in the bud and reassigning them to a mission on this particular post. They will even have their own permalink. What more can they ask? Oh, never mind, let’s not go down that path.

Interesting book, heh? Just makes you want to find an easy chair in Barnes & Noble. No, I really don’t want to be disrespectful about this book. My Great Great Aunt Sara sent it to me from London when I was two. I know that’s too young for me to read, but she knew my daddy would read it to me. She was at our house during my first summer and it was her second husband that kept saying he guessed he’d have some more of “that salty ice cream.” If you really want to reference this, it’s in the post about her first husband, Sherman Malcolm.

Another mention is in this POST that also includes a picture of the Christmas card that looks like bloomers, which No. 2 gave Sara.

But back to the book.

And here’s the inscription in the penmanship she learned in the 19th century.

I don’t think I ever realized how lucky I was. I took so many things for granted.

If you haven’t read the post below, nevermind.

If you have, I went ahead and looked for more information on Raz’s snakebit dogs and found it here at this LINK.

Here are a few excerpts:

Sometimes the thoughts in my head are like dominoes. This morning I inadvertently clicked on an ad about Australia on a news page. Australia ; the floods in Queensland,  the book The Thornbirds, sheep, border collies, the Crocodile Hunter, dangerous snakes, dangerous snakes in suburbs . . .

I searched for articles about deadly snakes turning up in suburban yards during droughts and floods; I didn’t want to search for them being there all the time because  sooner of later it would probably lead to my being afraid to look at a picture of the Sydney Opera House.

I happened upon an animal forum by following a link about two Jack Russell Terriers being bitten by a red-bellied snake in the Sydney suburbs. Raz was the poster and I clicked down through the first postings to see if the dogs made it. Only there were side plots. Information on levels of creatine after the bites. Methods to discourage snakes from entering lawns – herbs, special fencing, etc. Stories about near snakebites, snakebites, other animal’s snake encounter stories. Responses from snake advocates. The story about shooting a brown snake in a house and taking out the guitar as well.

And, interspersed with all this were updates on “the boys” who were transferred from one vet hospital to a bigger one. That got me wondering – different level trauma centers for snakebit animals? The dogs got some anti-venom at the first hospital – a 30 minute breakneck speed ride away. The creatine level was 200+ – at the max the test could read there.  And 200+ was not good.

Raz waited for news from the specialized hospital that had more sensitive equipment and other posters offered sympathy and good wishes and information about how to deal with snakes in backyards. The first results were something like 2,000 and 4,000. Later they would climb into the double-digit thousand category. However, the dogs did pull through, although their muscles were weakened and they huffed and puffed at every exertion.

I read more posts about recuperation problems and more snake precautions. Then the boys starting have necrosis around the area of the bites. By this time there were some posts about what to do if your dog sees a snake – do not call his name, it will distract him – and about protected species and more dog vs. snake stories.

Then, after 17 pages of posts, the thread stopped. I don’t know the ultimate outcome for the dogs; I don’t know what they decided to do about treating fence lines – one of the treatments was supposed to affect snakes in a matter that would anesthetize them . . . maybe in neighbors’ yards. It would cost the neighbors $25 each to extend the protection to the outside of their fence lines, a sum they didn’t want to pay.

There, you know as much as I do, with the exception of the detailed anti-snake procedures . . . and, actually, they are an amorphous mass of suggestions in my mind. What I have retained is the “always have a shovel handy” advice and don’t go barefoot.

But, I have not learned any lesson – I know what I am going to do. I am going to put in a few search words and try to find out what happened to Raz’s dogs. Probably, because I have a dogged personality.

SIGH . . . .

Or Mega Ultra – whatever they are called. I worked all day today – well, most of it  – doing more of that dratted cleaning. The vitamins must have really kicked in because I did basement stairs, a good chunk of the basement, the vestibule, scraped melting ice here and there on driveway corners, stomped trash, sorted through a couple of toy boxes, vacuumed in the basement, started a fire in the basement and made food for others.

At the end of this – and it was after sundown – I decided it was not the work I do that makes me tired, but the work other people make but do not do that wears me out. So I first decided I was going to rub their noses in the “clean” but after awhile thought, “I don’t think that will have the same effect as rubbing someone’s nose is the proverbial ‘IT‘.” I am going to think about it some more.

And while I am thinking, I am going to wonder why I did all this on Celebrate Kookiness Day. Vitamins maybe would give me more energy, but it should be energy not earmarked for anything in particular. Perhaps since my general thought processes are in relation to – well, the sort of typical ones – kooky, I would have to do something unkooky for it to qualify as kooky for me. I believe there may be smoke and mirrors in my MacBook here.

And where there’s smoke, there’s firefox. Hahahahahahahahahaha. Oh, that was a lame little AmeliaJake funny.

I am waiting for my GNC Women’s Ultra Mega vitamin to kick in. That’s why I am sitting here. Because I have decided this morning to let the vitamin do the work, rather than my will. It is a green oblong vitamin, sort of large and, actually, you are supposed to take two a day – and I usually do, just not at the same time. I do think they are good for me and I think they have a positive effect. However, this morning I would like for the vitamin to step out of the background and get a little limelight time.

Boost me up, Big Greenie. Do you need a pep talk? Okay, how about I read you the list of your ingredients? That’s too long; I’ll just hold the back of the bottle up to the computer camera and let you have a “look-see”. I actually did that – and held it there while I stared at the purple and white of the front of the bottle. It was just a restful thing to do and I had to grin at myself.

Grinning is good – it tricks my brain into upbeat thoughts. Of course, now that I wrote that, I suppose my brain has wised-up. But now I am grinning ans silently chuckling and I think the forces of positive grinning may win out. Especially since I have a wide grin now and my cheeks are starting to hurt from the workout.

I believe kookiness gets a bad rap in general. However, it may be a good quirk that has to come naturally. I’m not at all sure pretended kookiness will work – there is probably an embarrassment factor that negates even a try in some people. BUT NOT ME.

I am so enthused now I am going to proclaim Kookiness Day. Say, celebratory methods should prove interesting – as long as they don’t get me in jail or the asylum. First thing, I’ve got to get my buddies here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse to start decorating and getting the music going.

It just occurred to me that maybe I got distracted and over-vitamined myself. Oh well, what’s done is done. Where’s my pointy party hat?

When  we went through our pantry, we reached way up high and way to the back and found a dusty bag of Paul Newman’s popcorn. So I made it the old-fashioned way, using a regular pan. Summer was fascinated; she wanted it to pop all over the floor. What was that supposedly smart girl thinking? I put oil in the bottom of a large Revere saucepan and threw in five kernels and we all waited for them to pop. Then, while Summer was responding with surprise that they actually had,, I tossed in a lot of popcorn and hoped that my memory would flick onto automatic.

The lid started to push up and so I let it overflow into a waiting pan, then again . . . and again. Nothing caught fire; nothing burned. Summer sampled it and said, “It needs butter.” I told her we had to melt it over low heat – that we used to have midget skillets we used for that purpose. I added that the making of popcorn used to be “an event” – part of the watching of a special TV show, From there, I  went on to tell her that one night a week, a network showed a full-length movie.

That little piece of information hit her forehead and bounced back at me; it was just too primitive to penetrate. Once she tried to process the fact that at one time there was no cable, no videos and no dvds. And, of course, no video games. It was not pretty, watching the thoughts about such a thing percolate behind her eyes. I think her brain almost ground to a halt as a robotic “impossible for life to exist in such a situation” refrain kept popping up.

I don’t remember if we had to hit her with a remote to jar her into a functioning mode or not. We are careful now. I try to ease into talking about such things as a group of us sitting around in the summer, sipping iced tea and reading our own copies of the same novel. I took it for granted that you read instructions or bathroom signs, but that reading was something done with books.

Oh, I started this with the intent of posting this picture of a popper we had when I was a kid. So here it is.