While I worked today, I was just my normal dwarf self, plodding along. I only call myself a dwarf because I am short and others sometimes make jokes. Actually, I guess I think of myself as a munchkin – but then they were played by dwarves so it must all be semantics.

I don’t know why whistling – both the concept and the not doing it – popped into my head. Maybe it is because I feel like whistling now that I am showered and moisturized and sitting. Whatever.

This morning, as soon as I had delivered Cameron to school, I gathered up gas cans and filled them and then I filled the mower. I went slowly because I had the predicted high of 89 stuck in my head. It was only 80 at the time (felt like 83) but that 89 was intimidating – considering we had a fire for warmth  just a few days ago.

After a bracer of pink lemonade,  I went upstairs and pulled stuff out of closets and pre-sorted it and folded things that weren’t folded but were looming in hulking piles. About four hours, I’d say. Do you know that gathering up hangers that have colonized the storage closet floor can be very tedious?

Do you know that when you sit in the entrance to a closet and pull stuff out and put it behind you, you often find yourself walled into said closet? In my case I fell forward in a flop and then moved across the expanse like a swimmer in jell-o.

I did take a break in the de-hoarding  of the closet and other spaces to be the Goddess of Cool Air and hooked up the portable air-conditioner in the southwest room that heats up so much despite double-paned windows and thermal curtains. It was so much anything to do with the goodness of the Goddess’ heart, but that the modem and airport are in that room.

This is a boring post – but I just had to boast. About all that working.

Of course, there is tomorrow and Mother’s yard and, uh, deciding how to arrange the stuff that fell in the keep category.

Time to do my boasting dance . . .  hop, leap and reach for the sky, twirl while coming down, do several knee high steps, a little skip, maybe hula like an Aztec. Oops, I’m losing it  . . .

Okay, this morning I am not getting ready to go someplace or recovering from having been some place or slouching with an ebook on my tummy. So, I guess I am back. I do not know if I am ready to be back. But here I seem to be.

I haven’t been up to see it, but Der Bingle tells me a tree was uprooted just up the street during a spell of high wind yesterday afternoon. I don’t know if we had a microburst or strong straight-line winds, but the tree is down. It was confusing: the tornado siren went off when it looked clear, and all we could see on weather.com was a line of storms in Goshen; later wind passed through very fast, followed by pouring rain.

I have trouble keeping in mind that it is Monday, the 30th. Der Bingle came on Thursday night instead of Friday which first made me think Friday was Saturday, and that would be in line for today to feel like Tuesday. Only it feels like Sunday. Maybe because Friday, Saturday and Sunday were sort of one continuous Saturday cookout for the carnivores here.

Then I missed the Indianapolis 500 because when I was little, I believe the rule was the race was not held on Sunday, period. If Memorial Day fell on Sunday, it was on the 31st. So today in the 30th, but there is no race so it must be Sunday. I guess I breathed in too much grill smoke.

It is dawning on me that perhaps I am not “back” as I indicated in the title. I am hovering somewhere around it . . . I think . . . maybe.

I didn’t think I’d like it but I have not been writing because I’ve been reading books. Sort of The Bookworm Returneth.

G.W. & Sarah Grismore; daughters Maude and Eva. AJ’s great-grandparents and aunts.

Thank goodness for bellytops. That is what my laptop is now. I am like a board of lumber resting against the sofa: my head is on the back rest; my knees are locked and my heels are on the floor at an angle. The laptop is sort of balanced on my  belly. Of course, my little hands have to reach up like claws to type but nothing is perfect.

Yesterday I plugged the address in Attica into the GPS and headed out. It was okay until I turned at Hwy. 24; the GPS lady had wanted me to go farther on I-69. She kept telling me to make a U-turn. I thought she was bluffing and would recalculate the course. No. I looked at the screen on the phone and saw writing so at a stoplight, I looked. It read, “This GPS session has been terminated.”

So I made her wait . . . and then 30 minutes later reentered the address and she agreed to tell me where to go.

This morning I was not going to go to Indianapolis to Crate & Barrel but I decided I had spent the gas money to go this far south, so why not. I put C&B in the GPS. Now, because they have been working on I-465 for years, I figured missing sections of roadway would be taken into account. She told me to take an exit that was not there so I took the next one. Then she told me to make a U-turn and I thought, well, maybe the ramp on the other side is open. No. There was nothing there.

So I turned around again and headed into Speedway and she absolutely refused to do anything but tell me to turn around. I turned her off for a while. On the way out of Keystone Mall (and, by the way, I did not yield to the temptation to visit the Apple Store), I put Fort Wayne in the GPS so I could have guidance finding the right entrance ramp.

Ha. Something didn’t take and she tried to get me to go back to Keystone Mall. I got on I-465 all by myself but the signs were down and it started to rain AGAIN and I missed the turn to I-69 and had to turn around (my own idea) at 56th Street.

We didn’t speak for the rest of the trip. I just leaned her up against the console and let her look out the passenger window.

One month ago today Jody passed away. And this evening, LZP walked out back and on her magnolia bush was one bloom.

Glenda and I are watching TV with a tornado warning scrolling across the top. Can you see us waving from the side door.?

We ate dinner at the Possum Trot and then Glenda drove us home in a torrential rainstorm.

Glenda says, “Hey.” I told her to; it was a trick “hey” but she’s nice would have said hi anyway.

She says if the need arises, she’ll get me up to go to the basement. This is the fourth storm system of the day. The first I encountered on the way down and thought that the hail was going to break my windshield – really. The second was at lunch with Sue and her husband Marshall, Ann, Glenda and the three ladies’ brother Duane.

The third was after the trip to Kingman Fraternal Cemetery (of which I have pictures) and now this green, yellow and red abstract art project.

Oh, yeah, Robert called and there is a limb down over the driveway.

I woke up; it was dark. I thought my watch said four; a blink later it was ten after five. I don’t know – maybe I read the watch wrong the first time, or perhaps I had a mini-snooze. No harm done since I did get up when it was dark and therefore early enough to get ready to go to Kingman with flowers for Daddy and Miss Alice.

I’m meeting my cousins, all of us granddaughters of Byron and Nellie Grismore and we’re going to put flowers on the graves of our grandparents and great-grandparents. The old people. Not so old in terms of the Earth, but if you think in a generational sense . . . yeah, the old people.

Yesterday, I took off and flowered two cemeteries and then mowed the Scott lawn – at least a huge part of it. It was necessary. The mowers had been in the shop and the rain and humidity were a great cheering section for anything green. IT WAS A JUNGLE OUT THERE!

Right now I am going to go over to Google maps to review the trip plan. In this state, Indiana, all roads lead to Indianapolis, so you have to be creative in going other places. I think I will use GPS in places where roads blend with other roads and then peel off in their own identity again. I like it when the voice says . . . Calculating new route. She’s going to have a nervous breakdown today.

My first stop will be in Attica to meet up with Susie, Glenda and Ann. It’s on Highway 41. Then we’ll travel south to Kingman to the cemetery – it’s just a wee bit off of Highway 41. I have a vague memory of my dad telling me how his father used to take the kids out to watch the engineers build it way back then.

Usually, a lot of fields are full of yellow mustard blooms this time of year. That is not too interesting, but it is really pleasant to see when thoughts are about people loved and gone. Perhaps it will be my “Rosebud”; some young whipper-snapper doctor will pronounce time of death and ask, “What did she say at the end? . . . . fields of yellow mustard blooms?”

I do hope I am getting ahead of myself here.

Well, I have fallen down on the Keeping Sane with Shane blog and the FOS (Friends of Shane) is letting me know it. So I am going to post two pictures over there. And I will post a picture here of me sitting in an imaginary corner.