Okay, Der Bingle and folks who live with me: DO NOT PANIC. This is not a flares out AmeliaJake day; this is an OKAY, I’M HANDLING THIS  day. That means no snide remarks, no growling, no complaining . . . just dealing with getting the washer fixed and the issues that problem brought to the forefront. Such as the state of the laundry room.

I am dealing with fuzz and overloaded shelves and gunky soap scum and I’m not taking any pictures to blog – before or after. And because I have to stack things in the kitchen, I am tackling that room too.

I’m thinking of it as dealing with the nation’s economic practices. It may be therapeutic for me. Tough decisions for staying and tossing, getting into hidden corners . . .

To be Continued

It came today because I added four dollars to the cost for shipping and it took less than 24 hours to be delivered. Why? Well, my father always said, “I never could teach you patience” and because I wanted to be able to have it up and working before Der Bingle gets here Friday evening.

I had the idea I would have to do all this registering stuff and transferring from my computer, but no, it came with ALL THAT DONE. My granddaughter – when she was four or so – thought Amazon. com was Amazing.com. I’m beginning to think she was right.

So today I did true Kindle reading; it is a little different from reading on my laptop, but I think it is just a matter of adjusting from one format to another. I guess this device will do other things and I will experiment with that later.

Maybe I’ll sign up for the New Yorker on it; it’s supposed to be cheap, but until I let my subscription run out I was getting it for between $25 and $36  a year. I would hold out renewing until they hit their rock bottom price; I think I just didn’t renew a couple of years ago because at the crucial moment, I got irked with some article or attitude.

Der Bingle pointed out that your Kindle will read to you. Okay, I have never liked to be read to and reminded him of that and he pointed out well . . .  there might be a time . . . when . . .  uh . . .  infirmity . . .  and all that.

So  . . .  well . . . okay.

I heard rumors that Cameron was riding with his grandpa down I-75 connected through 3G to news stories . . . but, then again, I get carsick. My folks used to take a coffee can with us and to this day, I do not drink coffee and hurry past shops where it is sold.

So, maybe the being read to thing is not the bad option I assumed it would be – as long as the reader doesn’t act – just the words, please, nice and clean and non-committal.

I don’t write much about politics here – other than the “I can’t stand Joe Biden” refrain, but I want to say something now. I don’t have to say it; I want to say it. I’m being perfectly honest about that.

I am disgusted by President Obama announcing if people don’t do what he wants, there will be a reprisal. Saying it loud and clear to hit the headlines and reach those people who made it through the Depression and the war and worked.

I think that’s being a mean bully.

I once lived in John Boehner’s congressional district; I lived there before and after he was elected. My husband and I were invited to meet him at one of his first appearances at our neighbors’ home. I asked him a question – just like a real Washington reporter.

He said if he got to Washington, he planned on not just sitting around. Well, he didn’t.

I hope now he can stand up to the switchblade threat of Give me your money or the little lady gets it.

I have decided to go Full-Kindle. Yes, I know. But I suspected this would come, just as I gave up all my protestations about not being able to write without the pencil in my hand, connecting me intimately with the paper.

I have read so much more with the Kindle for Mac application on board, and overall I feel better. I would not be surprised if, for me, reading crosses the brain/mind barrier and does –  for lack of a better, more accurate term – good things.

Once I had started reading on my laptop, it only made sense to transfer to a device geared to that specific purpose. As Der Bingle  indicated, toting  a thousand dollar machine chock-full of files and applications around  just so you can read isn’t too bright.

Oh shoot, I just saw myself as a stick figure with a light bulb head . . . that transformed into a stick figure with a new-fangled light bulb head – you know the ones that coil around. Maybe I would be a log figure . . .

Well, I didn’t expect to start the morning by grinning because of a light bulb, but there you go.

I have a very small backyard, which is good as far as mowing is concerned, but not good for growing tomatoes – especially after we moved the tall wooded fence to incorporate the small entirety of it. And definitely tree growth decreased sunlight. One early year Der Bingle planted “a whole lot of” tomato plants and I developed canker sores from eating so many – then production went downhill and then we gave up.

Dandelions started to flourish and slowly I built up a definite enmity toward the modern yellow peril; they were, I think, unaware of the one way feud until I turned to chemical warfare. Then it got serious, evolving into outright hostilities and alliances and double triple secret double agents. That’s where the Iowa gnomes came in; they sided with  the dandelions. LZP was the Supreme Allied Commander of the Gnome Foreign Legion and  . . . hey, I’ve told this story before & I’ll tell it again next spring, so never mind.

Okay, back to tomatoes. I can’t grow them; LZP can – and does so with vigor . . . and some secret compost recipe. He told Der Bingle they were chest high and I scoffed. Propaganda! I knew it, just plain old propaganda.

So here comes this picture:

Yes, so they are chest high; we argue LZP is short. I also asked the guys here at the PBC & R if they thought this little blue giant looked like someone with a master’s degree. I asked, see, because I was myself green with envy.
Der Bingle called about then and I told him about the photo and he checked his email and after a moment, declared LZP had evolved and was now a garden gnome. Or he said something to that effect. And I said, “Of course, I just didn’t recognize him without his pointy red hat.”
Since it is late, I am not going to venture into Photoshop to draw one.
***
Joe & Sloane

Joe & Sam (the tall and lanky gnome)

I will use an alias here so no one, nobody at all, will know of whom I speak. Someone wants to earn money and comes to me frequently with the question, “Got any jobs for me?” After I have corrected the grammar, I launch into my spiel about Someone being old enough now to get to know the nitty-gritty jobs, and the need to do them competently.

We are negotiating about longterm jobs, such as scraping, priming and painting the garage door, but today she wanted a relatively quick job. I asked if she wanted to clean a toilet. You know, get down there with her head next to the bowl, reaching around and spraying and wiping the sides and the little bolt covers – not to mention the toilet bowl gel and the brush. Well, she agreed.

She called me to inspect her work and I pointed out a couple of spots she had missed and she took it not as criticism but as instruction and used about 30 seconds more scrubbing power – so I gave her a tip along with her wages. I made certain to point out the tip was for her attitude.

She went out into the hall and, heck, I decided I needed to go to the bathroom. So I locked the door and proceeded to do so. I hear a voice – Someone’s voice: What are you doing in there?

I told her.

Then I heard a tormented “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I almost felt sorry for Someone.

I have something to have fun with – not to be good at necessarily, but to have a good time learning maybe a wee bit. Makes my brain feel good and lifts my spirits.

Der Bingle’s birthday is toward the end of this month and LZP is, I think, trying to soften the blow of him waking up and hitting his head on the big number 63. (I’ll make it bold but I’m not going to fool around actually making it

BIG

because that usually fouls up the post.  Oh, well, never mind.)

So, LZP, put together a treat package for Der Bingle that included a John’s grocery shirt and hat and glass and a bottle of mead from said store.

Now, there was a potential problem: Two Moo took a real shining to everything:

She declared the mead would hit the spot:

But her sense of right and wrong prompted her to let Der Bingle head back to the Ohio Redoubt with everything.
But that wasn’t all that was in the box. No, other stuff too:

Yeah, Two Moon just realized she should have gone with him for the week.

I have started the clock – put my little ear right up to the darn thing to make certain it was ticking – and now . . . I wait. You are waiting with me.

Here we go:
16 chimes.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine . . . . YES!!!!!

I can rest more easily now, knowing that had this been something to do with a spaceship and controls gone bad, I would have managed to get the ship to slingshot around the moon and head back to earth. Of course, then there would be the landing part. Okay, let me think of another analogy . . . It may take awhile.

I have this clock that belonged to my grandmother; it chimes – big bongs on the hour and 4 little ones on the quarter hour, 8 on the half hour, 12 on the three quarter hour and 16 on the hour. At noon and midnight, 12 big bongs follow 16 little chimes.

Of late the bongs don’t match the hour and so after a couple of weeks of avoiding spending time manually rotating the minute hand and waiting through much chiming and bonging, I stopped the clock just before it would hit 9 bongs at midnight. Now I have this task of remembering to start it up in about 20 minutes.

I am going to try and just keep it at the front of my mind, but already my thoughts want to go off and think about writing a book because Nine Bongs at Midnight seems like a title begging for a book and the movie, of course.

I didn’t think about the sound of Nine Bongs at Midnight until it just slipped out via my fingers onto the computer screen. It’s a sign, isn’t it?