I have been having trouble with my cell phone lately – the battery charge would last about an hour and then the phone would turn itself off. I got an email from Der Bingle which said, “Get a new battery or get a new phone.” Of course, I managed to get a new phone – an iphone. It is a sleek black thing in a white sturdy case called an Otter Box. They tell me a truck can run over it. It looks clunky. My granddaughter noticed the big box lying on the table by me and remarked about a new phone. And then she decided it couldn’t be because it was so big. I assured her there was a black sleek thing inside . . . and we both kind of looked at each other.

It does look as if I am carrying around a handheld game set. BUT they tell me it is waterproof  – I guess as much as it can be. Being safe from wet hands and sweat is a good deal for me, since when I am out with noisy things, I like to have it next to me so I can feel the vibration. But here is my embarrassing problem. You don’t have to brace yourself for graphic content because there is none. That has been a bit of a problem to me, actually, but no need to go into that angst.

I am extremely flat-chested. I mean really, really flat-chested. Still, I could get away with sticking my old phone into what we call my “baby bras”  – frankly, I might as well put something there. Now, though, with this big clunky box, I don’t think that’s going to work . . . Maybe I can tell people it’s my pacemaker/defibrillator.

Holy Moses. We felt as if March would never end and then it did, but it feels as if it sucked time out of the following months. There must have been some paranormal event going on. Or, now that I think of it, the world was supposed to end in 2012 and maybe it did in a way. Perhaps time has changed – you know, some minutes are longer than others. I wonder if people ran faster race times in March?

I can definitely tell it it mid-summer, though; I can hear it. One of the seasonal events in our house is when a dog gets bitten by some insect and constantly digs at it with his little front teeth. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw,  gnaw,  gnaw, gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. No matter what you do to ease it, no matter how much flea and tick medicine you have applied, it happens: the forever gnawing.

I remember Miss Alice gnawed on her front foreleg. She was living with my folks then and they did everything possible for her. She went to the vet, got a medicated bandage that the vet sprayed with a substance to make her not chew it . . . My mother looked in the backseat when they were near home and SHE HAD BITTEN IT OFF.

I heard Shane this morning doing IT.  Somehow I think time is going to feel as it did in March . . . and the gnawing will never end.

There are times when I type, type, type, type with stories and grumbling reflections (emoos) and then times when I funk out. That’s what the situation is now; my fingers have not fallen off. I think this month is turning into a funk out month. Actually, were my mood on a menu, I would call it the Funk Out entree with Run Around like a Chicken with its Head Cut off on the side. I’d probably have room for The Sky is Falling dessert. This might be due to my approaching official Senior Citizen birthday, or maybe it is just random AmeliaJake brain chemical action. I was thinking that 60 never looked so good until now, but it occurs to me that if I live five more years, I will be thinking that 65 never looked so good.

I think I will go into the Foo Bar and just sit back and emoo.

We here at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse just thought a tree split apart in a high wind and came down, crashing into junipers and grazing the porch. Well, it did, but as it turns out we can say, as I did above: WE WERE DERECHO-ED!!!!

The view in the last post showed the forest effect across the yard to the porch. The photo below highlights the “rip that tree apart” aspect of the wind.

I was upstairs in the room over the garage and it was very hot outside . . . and humid. Suddenly rain started and about two minutes later I heard the sound of wood splitting; I could see leaves blowing between my house and the neighbors. When I came downstairs, I noticed that maple leaves were hanging on branches outside the porch, but the tree that is out there is a tulip tree. I couldn’t see anything through the greenery and the wind and rain were blowing horizontally.

Then it calmed and I went outside and was not too calm . . .

I am now looking for a paper bag to put over my mouth and nose, because I am pulling a Trunko.

It started out humid and it stayed humid. I didn’t realize the temperature would climb to 86 however and decided to sneak in some mowing. Do you know that pushing even a light-weight electric mower in 86 degrees can be really sapping when the humidity is really high as far as Indiana is concerned. It was like mowing in a greenhouse, but I kept thinking it was cooler and I was only feeling really hot because it was so humid.

I was almost done when I realized my muscles were extremely tired, but I thought, Hey, you can finish this because the pleasure of only having a wee bit left will give you a second wind. Had I thought about it, I would have realized I wasn’t winded, but weak. I rested for a while and then finished and dragged the mower to the garage. And then I drank and sweated and sweated and drank some more.

I think I learned a lesson. Gator-Ade is my friend and I am not as young as I used to be. I also learned that sweated through clothing can be quite cold when you go into air-conditioning.

Maybe I should look into keeping sheep on the yard – with a goat to eat the trash people throw from the sidewalk.

Well, I think there are some pictures of people hugging a carved wooden moose, but maybe I’m not remembering correctly. However, this is probably why he went to Grand Forks:

LZP’s message: Here is Joe and his diploma from Leadership school and his award for being top of the class.

Of course, hugging a wooden moose sounds cool to me. Did you know that mooses were formed from all the moos left in the air by cows? I don’t know why the “e” was added – probably to differentiate the plural moo sound from the newly formed animals. This is probably one of the crazy spikes mentioned in the last post.

Many of the house windows are covered with condensation and stepping outside was not unlike going into a bathroom where someone has showered. Thunderstorms are predicted to be possible this afternoon. This, of course, tells me that the grass is going to get longer today. Actually, everything out there seems really green and the air is still; did I wake up in The Day of the Triffids?

This summer the act of watching the grass grow is not so much of a challenge; I am now caught up in waiting for the tomatoes to turn red. Shouldn’t I have some red cherry tomatoes by now? I don’t remember. I did get them in late, remembering that last year Der Bingle and I experienced a warm early spring day and stuck plants in and I spent a month running out and covering them at night. If I could think of a plot, I could write a book and call it Tucking in the Tomatoes. It probably wouldn’t need a plot with that title; it would be a nostalgic memoir sort of thing. Then there would be the movie with a famous, award-winning, beloved older actress.

Perhaps I should have titled this: AmeliaJake’s Brain Reporting Fog. Fog with Spikes of Crazy is more like it. Ack . . . another book title.

I thought I’d be mixed up about days of the week for a while because of the Fourth of July, but I have had time to regain my bearings, and not only do I know it is Monday, I am aware it is Monday MORNING – a pivotal time. Will I summon a bunch of gumption and get moving and change my life and save the world or will I lounge around and set a lazy tone for the rest of the week? Oh, my goodness, if only test questions had been this easy.

My daughter-in-law often says that she is two people – competent at work and a klutz at home, for instance sucking up the dog’s tail in the vacuum cleaner wand.

I’ve written about the vacuum cleaner part . . .  and the part when she dropped the sink spray hose in the garbage disposal and we heard WANG WANG WANG WHAP.

A  lot of people have written about the job part, nursing, and here’s one of them: