We mowed on Wednesday afternoon – WEDNESDAY – and guess what? Yes, we had to mow again today. Three of us rotating on tractors and Someone is complaining of a sore butt. Some people used kukris to slash at weeds because, dontcha know, using a Gurkha knife is way better than using a weedeater or a hedge trimmer. And all of us got really hot.

We sat in the shade and cooked out on the Weber and I have to say I definitely prefer charcoal to gas. I made about 26 hamburgers yesterday out of very good meat and we cooked half on gas last night and today when we cooked the others on charcoal, I was surprised I had forgotten the difference in taste. The Weber burgers were much better – in my peanut butter biased opinion.

Of course, today whenever Der Bingle smiled, we had to suppress a grin because he lost a crown yesterday and it is in the left front. Or more to the point, it is not in the left front. There is a hole there. He whistles when he talks and says he feels like . . . well, never mind what he says.

Hotness is due tomorrow as well; I’m calling it hotness because that describes it better than heat. Heat can be comforting; hotness seldom is. We were surrounded by sultry hotness. No jungle drums, though, so we don’t have the makings of an Indiana AmeliaJake movie. I’ve got the hat for it, though, if we ever do.

I didn’t have bad dreams last night; I had them after I snuggled back down at twenty minutes to seven this morning. I don’t remember much about these dreams that occurred like the snippets of movies you see in a series of trailers.

I do remember having a limp in the middle of a seemingly abandoned wide Main Street in some town – a main street with secretive buildings with no windows except the one that I suspected was a funeral parlor. Usually I say funeral home, but thinking of those windows with red velvet curtains, funeral parlor came to my mind.

I also recall walking inside a tall building with shiny floors and firemen. In my dream I thought, “What if I couldn’t see and the floor just ended?” Poof, it did. I could see all of a sudden that I was standing at the very, very edge of where the floor ended and a vast chasm opened.

So, I fell on my back – SAFE!!! – until I decided to scoot my body closer to the hole to test my courage, or would that be stupidity?

Shane is shedding, not just a hair here and there and everywhere; it is a cotton ball shedding. I vacuumed the living room yesterday and when I reached the end at which I finished and looked back at the end at which I had started . . . yes, a new crop of cotton balls.

They are not tumbling weed cotton balls because they stick to stuff, and not just carpets. We are wearing fur clothes here and not by choice. We have combed and bathed Shane and still he sheds.

One thing makes him feel better about his condition – being scratched. One would almost think he is milking it.

Yes, we had no internet today – until now, when we do have it, but it is already four. Summer could not track her ebay packages and was distraught. We saved the situation by looking it up using a phone.

Well, I guess we will go take the paper bags off our heads now that we are not hyperventilating every 15 minutes.
But . . . But . . . What if it happens again?

I opened my mail this morning and saw this from LZP:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say a Des Moines woman has been assaulted with a bratwurst at her home.

It wasn’t bold and it wasn’t red; I did that so that you would be used to the flash of red in the paragraph below.

Authorities say a Des Moines woman has been assaulted with a bratwurst at her home.

Sixty-three-year-old Connie Jones told police that she got into an argument with 31-year-old Tajuana Banks.
Jones says Banks yelled profanities at her, then picked up a bratwurst and threw it at Jones. It struck her chest. A police report says there were grease marks on Jones’ clothing.

To give credit where credit is due, this paragraph came from HERE.

CSI should be able to shine on this case.

Using Google images as a place where suspects might lurk, we wonder if the alleged crime arose in the heat of the moment . . .

Or was it the product of premeditation?

Then again, the perp might have had an accomplice.

Or, perhaps, it was just some wild and crazy brat.

I was going to write about this earlier, but I forgot. Then just now I remembered.

Last week Der Bingle remarked that he had heard an old Roger Miller song on the radio. And he mentioned the title. What I heard was not quite right since I have apparently entered that phase of life when “time” sounds like “dime” to some folks, momentarily turning someone asking, “Got the time?” into a panhandler.

I did not hear “You can’t Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd”; I heard “You can’t rope sheep in a buffalo herd.” Frankly, I think it’s a better title – enigmatic and all that. And even though I downloaded it from itunes, I have attuned myself to hear rope sheep. I like it that way. How about ewe? ACK!!! Newfie made me say that.

Someone in our family is taking a summer class that involves reading and grammar and vocab. That reading includes poetry and literature. So, every now and then, Someone walks up, plops down beside me and says, “Grandma . . . ” She gets me started on one certain poem and then leaves and I go from poem to poem to poem because she has poked a spot in my brain that likes the sound of thoughts.

Time passes quickly when this happens and now I must make up a couple of hours of work:

I must strive to shut down this computer;

I must seek the vacuum;

I must find the vacuum and the vacuum bags;

And I must not yield to the temptation to blow it off.

***

Indeed, I must suck it up.

On this day every year, I begin a month of being one year younger than Der Bingle. Yes, it is his birthday. He has had others . . .  chortle, chortle, giggle, smirk. Oh wait, what is it with the smirking? I must not forget that soon I will be adding one more to my tally of “other birthdays.”

He is in Fairborn at the Ohio Redoubt and I am here so we will have a cake probably this weekend – or maybe a couple of twinkies with some candles on them. Don’t visualize that; I did and it is daunting – the  twinkies would look like porcupines. So just strike that thought from the record.

I have no nifty internet card, nor even a Weebles birthday video. It’s our modus operandi; birthdays are low key here.

But, Der Bingle, just because I don’t do much with the day, doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate all the years.

Happy Birthday from AmeliaJake.

Many moons ago, as in something like over 120, LZP sent a Peeps album to me because Der Bingle had this thing about Peeps. Summer liked it – especially one song – and played it over and over. Then one day, the purple disc disappeared.

I was talking about that to LZP just now and I looked at the peeps site where you can make your own Peep character and that nudged me to actually look at itunes. For some crazy reason, I bought about two and a half minutes of the past here at the PBC&R.

If you are lucky, it won’t play.

01 Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep

I think I had to go to the bathroom, now that I go over it in my mind. Yes, I think that woke me. Oh, yes! Now, I fully remember. I heard the clock – it did the 16 chime thing, but no hour bong thing. So I bounded to the clock – yes, bounded – hoping against hope that the bonger had not stopped at three or four – and fumbled with the key for several seconds, my fingers as sleepy as my eyes.

I stuck the key in all three holes and wound and when I started on the third one, the clock started to bong, even though I was still winding. SIX TIMES!!!!!

I know it is odd to say, but I think it was fortuitous I drank all that iced tea before bedtime. I was afraid I would have to do the darn coordinate the bonging and correct hour thing again. But luck was with me.

Oh, the adrenaline of it all has worn off . . . so I guess I’ll snuggle down for just a little while.