I have mentioned The Tender Bar before. Yesterday I looked at the forward and thought some about it and then today I read that part again.

I like the way this man expresses ideas and I like the way he sees things. I need this in what I read and I need to read such things as this. Like I used to. I need to have hands reaching down to me and saying, “Be a little better.” I want to be nudged every day to see that higher ground. I don’t know if I am returning to myself or just moving on; I would hope that I am returning to myself to select  some of the best parts of me and moving forward with them.

Der Bingle’s nephew (LZP’s son) is getting married next year and I thought I’d share the heads up notice that came in the mail. I wonder if the couple has any idea that LZP might arrange gnomes for ushers and insist the bride carry a bouquet of dandelions?

Seriously, I present The Couple:

The colonoscopy is over and I am home, thinking of watching a movie. They say my doctor gives optimal sedation and it was not unpleasant at all. Plus they had warm blankets.

Well, while waiting for my butt exam tomorrow,  I decided to get off my butt and go see Mrs. Feller at the nursing home. Her birthday is on the 23rd and she will be 94. She asked about Sydney and Shane and I told her Shane was up to his old tricks – digging holes.  For a couple of years  I was really nurturing my grass in the back yard . . . and my hostas. The hostas are now ghost holes and will new ones will be replanted behind a little fence I am putting up. The grass, well it was the first casualty, I filled in the holes this fall and put some grass seed out (I think) and hoped winter would give me run at it.

HA!

Not only do I have no grass and three holes, Shane has decided to plant a Wubba to see what happens. Or, perhaps, when you trip because of the hole, he will run up and say, “Since you are already down, would you mind throwing that Wubba right there by you?”

This picture will also be posted on www.keepingsanewithshane.blogspot.com along with the others we have taken to help Quentin stay abreast of his dog’s boarding school days here.

I have my prep stuff I need to start drinking this afternoon and my laxative pills – six of them, all a once. I have Jell-O; I have clear sodas and Crystal Lite Packets, I rented two films from Redbox and happened across a copy of  Wolfen – not the best movie made but the first one we watched almost three decades ago on our new VCR. The book is quite a bit different because you can do a species such as werewolves more easily in writing than in film. Well, unless you’re Jack Nicholson and he was quite convincing.  Albert Finney was in Wolfen, but he wasn’t one of them. The movie was more Albert Finney vs. The Great Furry Things.

Enough of that.

I watched an episode of Fatal Attractions last evening about 1) a lady who kept venomous snakes in her trailer home and got bitten by her Gaboon Viper and died and 2) a man who kept cobras and was also bitten but was saved when his neighbor returned something he had borrowed and found him. Then I dreamed and woke up in an anxiety attack involving really scary and tense situations that I don’t remember now. I would guess that dreams can take werewolves and snakes and do all sorts of things with them that film and language can’t even begin to encompass. I do remember thinking I was concerned about going back to sleep.

I am not supposed to remember my experience with the actual colonoscopy. I wonder, though, if on following visits to the hospital, I will suddenly spread my arms and legs like a cat when I approach the door. Of course, the automatic sliding doors could make that interesting. A news photo wouldn’t do it justice; they would have to use the film option. YouTube, here I come.

Ah, there was a lovely sunrise this morning – but that’s not my mood today. I’m having my hair trimmed and colored today and then tomorrow I’m on the clear liquid diet, followed by the massive laxative treatment in the evening. All in preparation for Colonoscopy Day. I can’t truly say that the hair deal has anything to do with the colonoscopy directly, but I don’t care.

I JUST DELETED A PUNNING SENTENCE! So, you see, I have some standards . . . I just have to watch out that I don’t trip on them.

My mother was born in October; Jack had been born the previous January. They lived across the road from each other did not remember a time when they were not friends. When Jack was six and ready to go to school, Mother was about a month short of reaching that school age number. The story is she put her foot down and said if Jack was going to school, she was also. My grandfather knew a fellow on the school board and he said to send her and if she couldn’t cut it, she could try again the following year.

Well, she cut it okay and graduated with Jack in 1944.

When she died in October of ’09, he sent a very nice message in a card. I stuck it in with some other correspondence and couldn’t find it again until today. I’m glad I did and I’m going to share it with you.