I remember mentioning that I had gone longer at NOT winning a Solitaire game at the nursing home than Mrs. Feller could ever remember for anyone – and she’s 96.

Well, Friday I had to stop at the drug store on the way over to see her and realized I had forgotten my cards, so I bought a new deck. Dorothy, her tablemate, said this new deck would surely be lucky, BUT I still didn’t win. I said I’d play one last game and this is how it dealt out:

But, wait, it gets better. This is how it played out:

We decided to quit on that game and they ate their supper – sort of. It was a losing deal – cold chicken pot pie.

Der Bingle and I, along with Summer for a few suggestions, are looking at samples of colors for the fence and the shed. In other words, we may be talking about the same subject as my last post – a train wreck. Summer thinks solid bright orange would be good. Well, that way I could put on my orange pants and have my picture taken as the “half lady”.

There’s the deciding, then the prepping, then the actual painting . . . and finally, the watching the paint dry phase. Oh, I think I skipped the part about scrubbing AmeliaJake clean.

I found the clippings below and scanned them into my computer; I think I’m going to have to do a better job of it, but for right now, I’ll let them serve.

Anna Wisler Olney was the much younger sister of Wesley Wisler, my great-grandfather. His daughter, Anna’s niece – but only a few years junior in age, was Jessie Wisler Shimp, my grandmother. Grandma was supposed to go with them that day but my mother told me that something came up and Grandma couldn’t go. Mother said she remembered Grandma walking out to the car to tell them when they stopped by. Later, people came by the house because they assumed Grandma had also been injured/killed.

Anna’s sister, Sara Jane, mentioned as a survivor was my infamous Great Aunt Sara who went to IU, married a travelling Encyclopedia Brittanica salesman, and once rode to town sitting with her head out of the window of a Buick because her hat wouldn’t fit inside.

The crossing at which they were killed is the one just south of my house on Riley Street. Mother said that Ed Olney had one of the first new automatic shift cars and they thought that might have had something to do with the accident.

I looked at what I wrote last night. So, I might be in a snit? Now to harness Snit Power . . . I’ll probably need investors.

UPDATE:

Aha! The idea of Snit Power has opened a door in my brain that is stuffed full of images of possible “Just Might Work” scenarios. And then there is that initial literal image of a field dotted with Giant AmeliaJake SnitMills. Okay, so that is nowhere near possibly working, but it looks cool in my mind. More likely are a series of teach yourself to snit AmeliaJake-style book, complete with illustrations of levels of looks of death and hints on how to make your words stun guns and/or cattle prods.

I could even scientifically bear out my intuitive snit power with experiments at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. Charts and graphs and footnotes.

HEY! THIS DOOR IS STUCK. WAIT A MINUTE . . . AM I LOCKED OUT OF MY OWN PLACE??? SOPHIE?? FOO?? LYDIA!?!.

I’m not talking big picture here – neurosis, psychosis, phobia, etc. I’m talking just plan old moods. I think I’m in a sad phase and it is pissing me off. I mean it really is. Here it is June, the month when the days get longer and longer and dawn comes early with the promise of those long days. June, the month I wait for, the month with that poem we all had to recite as sophomores . . And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, in ever, come perfect days . . Yes. Yes. Yes. June. And I am feeling the tug of sadness, despair, remorse and anguish; what incredible timing.

So I’m going to take the next two plus weeks of days-getting-longer before the tide turns and I am going to wring the daylights out of them. Everything else can just get out of my way. I’m going to take some life out of these days and I’m going to be aware of doing it.

Now that doesn’t mean I’m not going to carry my end; it means if no one’s on the other end, I’m chopping my personal end off and going on alone.

I guess that’s plain enough. Well, there may be lose ends . . . like exactly where does that downer mood go while I plunge ahead? Do I put it under the bed in a box? Hey, already I almost hit a pitfall. To Hell with where it goes.

I’m going to bed; daybreak will be here in just a few hours and I want to be ready.

Light night I talked about signs of cold congestion NOT getting the best of me today. HA! That was just TALK. My hypochondriac genes are in full force this morning and while Der Bingle was sick over the week-end, I am languishing on my death bed.

Quentin’s sinus surgery a couple of weeks ago – a procedure; my throbbing snot-filled nose – a catastrophe.

Perhaps I exaggerate; but it appears to help to splat the screen of this laptop with whining. Splat may not have been the best word, but somehow it just popped right to my fingers. But,of course, improvement may also have something to do with gravity since I am now in an upright position, physically, if not morally.

In all truth I have long suspected the Jews have had the right idea with the Wailing Wall; it helps to get emotion out. I know that a cold is not worthy of wailing emotion; neither is Abraham Lincoln’s stubbed toe. So I believe I am going to designate a place – and it probably should be mobile – as a Whimpering Wall. I doubt it will actually be a wall – more likely a symbolic one . . . I’m thinking two big Kleenex stretched out in front of my face.

Oh, I’m not splayed out on a bed, moaning my head off; I’m not even sitting somewhere with my head in my hands. What I am is sore-throated and coughing stuff halfway up that feels like when it makes it all the way it will be green. I’ve been giving myself the Alka-Seltzer Zesty Orange Cold treatment, along with lots of liquids and wrapping up in puffy throws to discourage the goosebumply chills. By the way, if you bunch up part of a puffy throw it makes a great pillow substitute and props your head at just the right angle for Kindle reading.

For the past hour, I’ve been feeling really depressed, harboring-rather than actually thinking-worrisome thoughts about who is going to keep things going if I just decide to lie here forever. My spirits seem to be better now – I think I’ll be up in the morning and take a stab at the day – maybe making a big list of necessary duties . . . not the least of which is making sure that the dog has fresh water.

I believe Kendallville is setting off fireworks tonight to celebrate 150 years of existence; I hear booms through my earphones and Shane is barking. He barked last night at the thunder storms. I have not been in a celebratory frame of mind of late when it comes to public gatherings. I think I felt more connected to the settling of this country when I carefully mowed around the rose bushes that were transported from New York about 150 years ago and replanted in the newly-cleared soil around a house in LaGrange County. They bloom a deep crimson rose and fade in stages to white. I suppose it would behoove me to add some rose food to the soil around them – see, I got ceremonial with the behoove thingie.

And now I am going to shut up and just let my mind wander wherever it wants to go and take whatever forks in the road it may find; and yet, I suspect that it will sooner or later wind up right back here.