Cameron has been reluctant to be near a camera in the past because he was overweight – which sort of means he fit in his genes. HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHA cough,cough. Okay, moving on.

He has been exercising and dieting and today he let me get a picture:

I’m working on getting a smile.

In the big scheme of things, it is not that dramatic a thing – this going up into the attic on repaired steps, but in my little world, it is a landmark. It is a project continuing. Today I enlisted two helpers and bucket-brigaded boxes up to  place for non-Christmas storage.  What the occupants of the boxes do while they are up there is okay with me, as long as they clean up after themselves. Let the bells jingle! Let the nuts crack! Let neckties that play a Christmas tune when squeezed play away. (Maybe, the batteries will wear out.) It’s a live and let live world in the attic.

What was uplifting was the downward spiral of collapsed old boxes as I tossed them down to the lobby on their way to the trash. Ah, the lobby, you wonder. This is it in a nutshell: The house was enlarged and what was the fourth bedroom became a room that linked the original hall to a new bedroom and a large room over the garage. It’s a crossroads. It needs a skylight because it’s too much like an imagined windowless waiting room in some KGB days, although it doesn’t have a lone lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. It has a lone light fixture.

Back to the jettisoned collapsed boxes: It is a tiny nod to order.

I am ignoring the fact this is a post of unordered paragraphs that ramble off on their own. Too much, too fast might prove to be dangerous to my health.

I just had a bunch of little adventures – tiny adventures. Not even adventures,  just random bits of activity. I went and paid property taxes. On the way, I saw gas was at $3.22, but didn’t stop because I had a lot in my tank and decided hacking my cough in the chill wasn’t a good trade off for a couple of gallons. Maybe on the way back, I thought. I also figured by the time I got back home, the price would have gone up. My luck, dontcha know?

Indeed, when I passed the station again, the price was still $3.22 so I went around the block and pulled in. I put my card in the slot and the price popped up to be $3.19. I turned and watched the big sign change numbers. Woo-Hoo. Three cents.

My luck was three cents – not a lottery win – just three cents. Then I coughed and decided maybe my original win was not getting pneumonia and the ‘three cents times the number of gallons’ was the change left over in my winnings once I had redeemed my “Get Out of Pneumonia” card.

However, not to be too impressed with the good luck thing,  I must keep in my mind that a young bank officer informed me the lockbox from which I had retrieved my mother’s will following her death wasn’t accessible to me because they had no proof my father was dead and that my key (smirk, smirk) wasn’t a lock box key. To placate me, he tried it and by gosh and hold onto your pants, it worked. But he couldn’t use his matching one because . . . my father wasn’t listed as dead.

Actually, I guess there was a little adventure in my day.  It is probably what will be start of “The Lock Box Saga”, volume to be determine of the Nancy Drew series.

Sympathy. Oh, I crave it. Two nights ago it felt as if my ears were going to explode from pain and pressure . . . and my throat was raw. Red, ugly raw. I was chilled. I probably had these symptoms worse than anyone else in the whole world. For two mornings now I have ratcheted myself into a sitting position taken cold remedies. Slowly, slowly, the symptoms abate – although a cough rips my throat out and causes my chest muscles to scream. I probably look like this:

A few years ago I started noticing pictures of new, bald (except sometimes with downy wisps of hair) girl babies wearing a headband.  The bands sported bows and fake flowers on a spot on the headband, usually off to the side of the forehead.
Like this:

This picture comes from The Simple Little Things, a site that focuses on baby accessories.

I went looking for a picture to illustrate what I was writing about and, instead of choosing one at random, was drawn to the name: The Simple Little Things – probably because of the soothing song, Little Things Mean a Lot.

Anyway, my point, which has been totally obscured by this preamble, is that to me a headband on a bald baby looks odd. Maybe it is because I am of an older generation, or it might have something to do with just plain personal preference.

It doesn’t have anything to do with the actual attractiveness of a baby; I’m just not used to it. On the other hand, I think similar version are fetching on girls that are a little bit older . . . and have hair.

Maybe I am just not into bald.

In all fairness, I have to say that I might look better with a big ole flower or bow stuck right on the front of my face, as in covering it. I could be a walking azalea – heaven knows the rest of me looks like a bush

I’m not going to link to the man in the banana suit. Too lazy, I guess; but I have to take a minute to link to THIS SITE that Der Bingle came across.

Here’s one of the pictures:

And, oh heck, here’s the Banana Man, after all:

You can find a lot 99¢ books at the Kindle store and a lot of them are OK by me; sometimes such books are actually  a bracelet  of well-written vignettes joined together with weak links or draw everything together in an Oh, never mind  they somehow lived happily ever after last chapter. So what if there are loose ends . . . this is fiction, people.

However, I have actually paid for a couple that were disasters. Sometimes they have an  interesting “preview” chapter, but it serves as bait for a plot involving perfect people and complete villains who resemble political figures of the day. It is so obvious it is spit written venom.

I haven’t rated any books on the Kindle page yet, but if I do, I’d better force myself to let  72 hours pass first so I don’t write, “Oh, yeah? Well, yo momma.”

Okay, I’m done.

I’m not talking about the cold outside; I’m talking about my little respiratory system. Yes, the symptoms set in last night and I slept under numerous blankets with my head propped up to relieve the pressure in my ear. This morning I scrounged a couple of Alka-Seltzer Orange Zest cold tablets and I am feeling a bit better.

It was just a couple of days ago I wrote about being lax about bundling up for this mild winter and going out with no socks on, not to mention thin moccasins.  Now, probably, there is no connection, but my father would be giving me a look from which I would infer that maybe I helped the cold virus along. I did have to put my feet on a heater to warm them back up . . .

There’s a lesson here, but I haven’t been able to assimilate it into my personality for 63 years. Maybe it is time to pay some attention to common sense axioms – Oh, like not touching an electric switch with wet hands . . .

Big Sap gets Big Zap is not a good local headline to think about.

Now, please excuse me while I wipe my nose.

The post right below this one – that’s what I’m talking about. My buddies here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse made me. They gave me that black-eyed stare. Rose, of course, looked at me as if to say, “Surely, she hasn’t lost her big HOO out of HOOSIER. Surely, she won’t let us down.”

So out I went and I wore a coat and a headband and gloves and moccasins without socks. I opened the front door to start the engine . . . and Shane jumped in. I sighed, contemplating a trip to the fairgrounds. Then I opened the truck and can you say “very, very lucky”? Not only were the cans not frozen, they were only at the slush stage; a little warming and all will be well.

But then I had to contend with Shane. To fairground or not? I would have to clear the outside of the car off and he would want me to get out and throw his Wubba . . . but I had no socks on. So I told Shane he could go later. Now, this is where I am ashamed. You know that part about going out with only moccasins? My father would have been quietly disgusted with me; I knew that and I did it anyway. BUT when the dog asked to go to the fairgrounds, I told him I had no socks. Please don’t tell Rose about this. I will carry my personal guilt all day long as it is. I’m sorry, Daddy, you are right; and I’m sorry Shane.

I already goofed up this morning with the gloves. I pulled one on my left hand and waited until I had started the car to put the other on the right. I thought, “OH, RATS, I’VE GOT TWO LEFTS.”  No, that wasn’t it; I had put the right glove on my left hand.

Normally, that’s not so bad at all for Indiana and February and winter, but this year has been mild. So instead of being happy that it’s above zero and savoring the relative warmth, I am contemplating taking a look in my truck at a couple of 12 packs of sodas. Now, usually in winter I do not keep soda in my trunk, but this year has made me soft. My regular course of action would have been to bring it into the back vestibule, put it against the wall shared with the kitchen and cover it with a tarp. Only rarely would I look at the weather prediction and bring it inside; a couple of times I forgot and we had a few  exciting “booms” out there.

If I am very, very lucky, the cans will just be frozen inside; very lucky would be cans frozen with bottoms bulging. Okay, there is no just lucky; I guess I consider myself sort of lucky in this situation if exploded cans are contained within the poofed-out carton. At the worst, I can scoop out the totally frozen slush. But you have to that while you are standing in the cold: it doesn’t work when it warms up. That sounds obvious, but it is easy to think “warm up a little bit” and, no, you don’t want to think that because if you don’t have the gumption to freeze your butt at the moment, you won’t find yourself going out later.

So, I am putting on warm pants and maybe even a coat and going out to assess the situation. Well, maybe in just a little bit. Soon. Yes. . . definitely soon.