The plumber did not come yesterday; this is understandable – emergencies happen. But as I finally got word in the afternoon, I growled at people and slunk off to be by myself. So today we are doing Plumber Day again. Yesterday, I wore a stained shirt so if I had to step in for anything to help with anything unsavory, I would be prepared. I have to get another one for today – not that that is a difficult task given my wardrobe.

Let’s see – something in the crockpot so people can be fed; that portends the question that will be presented more than once today: crockpot stuff or peanut butter?

The driveway being a one lane snow ravine with a spur, I am going to park the car elsewhere and with all this snow the only possibility is  the old IGA lot about a block away. Yesterday, I was able to take advantage of a doctor’s office that was closed on Wednesday.

I see the truth of this post is simple: SOME DAYS YOU JUST REALLY WANT TO BITCH. This seems to be one of my days. You know, I may just skip the crockpot food and choose the question: Peanut butter or nothing?

I’d say I’m on quite a roll today.

Louise turned away when she read “Harold” on the cop’s lips. She wasn’t curious enough about anything to do with Chablis the Dog to chance being made aware of anything more of Harold. Already the night of his accident was renewing itself in her conscious mind.

She turned and leaned against the door and her eyes fell on her nightmare, only lately she had begun to realize it was no nightmare. It was real; it was not going to change. The past was not going to change. Chablis the Dog pitied her; others blamed her and that was all there was to it. And she thought, “How did this happen?” She had thought that a lot in her life. And she knew the answer. She had made a mistake. And the mistake was her being her.

For some reason she herself did not understand, she had felt for so long deep inside that it could not be real. If she railed against this nightmare long enough, it would end. She would gulp in the fresh air of the time before. That would not assure anything would be different, however, but, oh, how she wanted that moment.

The one in front of her was not the beginning of it; she knew this, just as she knew the one before was not the beginning. Neither one could be assigned blame. She figured that if that were the case, she herself, the one before the one before wasn’t really to blame. It had just happened – those things that came together to make her her.

It was fascinating in truth, but the cards are only dealt once. There is no throwing in of a hand, no light-hearted laughter at her momentary bad luck, no luxury of being fascinated.

Harold had realized it a long, long time ago.

She remembered when had bought the boots; she had never thought about them being a danger, of getting caught on something. They had just looked uncomfortable. He made a habit of wearing them; he kept them polished. Once when she was just staring ahead at nothing in a waiting room, she realized she had focused on the heel on one boot; it had distinct markings on it, as if it had been wedged in something, then pulled loose. And then she was seeing the lamp on the table and the rack of magazines and who knows what she thought of next.

But she thought of those boots – of that particular boot, with its particular marking – within an instant of learning of his accident on the tracks. The heel caught; the train was coming. And, then, for Harold it was over.

It was quite a to-do and all the time she really knew. And she never once blamed him. She understood.

How could anyone stand to open the door each day and see a rug woven to look like cockroaches crawling at you? Before that it has been mambas hanging from vines. It was that damn fake guru in college who had started it – told her the was to overcome her fears was to face them. To create them in her mind and embrace them and overcome them.

Only it had all gone wrong; she couldn’t visualize and keep it in her mind, so she hired rug makers to sit at their looms and bring her fears to her. But she couldn’t overcome them, nor could she overcome the need to try.

Then suddenly she noticed something on the cockroaches: it was another broken heel, only this one was from a woman’s shoe. But how? She had no shoes with spike heels this high. It was odd – the only woman she knew who wore bright green very high heels was Chablis. The dog whined in front of her, begging for its newly found plaything back.

Today I am to have two new toilets installed, I realized it’s Lincoln’s birthday and then remembered it is also take out the trash night. I suppose that sentence says something about my life, but I don’t want to know.

I am bummed, waking up to find Tom Brokaw has cancer; not only have I always liked him, but this news points out this is a slippery slope we, the children of  The Greatest Generation, are standing on.

I have often remarked that no one really bothers you when you are mowing grass; I think the same holds true of shoveling snow. And sometimes that’s good – the silence, the stillness, looking at crystal air through wisps of hair held in front of your face by a blue, fur-trimmed trapper hat that has slipped a bit.

I just started typing this stream of consciousness non-story because I  felt it was time to clear out my brain. Just open all the doors and let the clutter fall out. Oops, there went 2+2; well, darn. I suppose I will have to sift through some of this debris on my keyboard before I totally empty the trash.

Yesterday, East Noble had no delay and there is not one today; it seems a little odd. Not bad . . . for me; just unusual.

****

What a difference and hour or so can make. Possible cabin fever and the urge to hibernate just awhile ago and now my blood is boiling. I heard through the grapevine that a teacher is saying that when schools close, kids don’t eat BECAUSE THE PARENTS DEPEND ON THE SCHOOL TO FEED THEM. I should not be surprised; for a couple of years in the summertime I have been driving my the local elementary school and seeing a free lunch sign for the summer months.

I am not advocating that these children do without food; I am saying that many of the people who are remarking on it are the continuing generations of those who encouraged government policies that have resulted in people expecting the government to take care of them.

The police cruiser pulled into Chablis’ driveway  the morning after she had missed two days of work; two officers, both in uniform and both not unknown to Chablis, who had tended bar off and on at the local cop hangout for quite a few years. These guys were not a mis-matched pair, but a temporary one – an older mentoring officer and a rookie, though not so much a rookie that he hadn’t traded quips with Chablis over coffee and doughnuts on his before shift snack and beers when he had come off a patrol, stake-out, domestic abuse call or your basic police whatever. They probably give miscellaneous stuff a number, but I’m not in the know. I’m lucky to be fairly certain of my 10-20.

But there they were, on the front stoop, waiting for someone to open the door. Someone did, only it was not Chablis, who had been known to take unauthorized vacations from work from time to time. The truck driver came to the door and spoke through the crack.

“Yeah?’

“Sir, we’re here to inquire about your wife, she’s . . . ” Although Officer Hughes had started out comfidently, his voice faded as  Chablis’ husband opened the door fully, revealing he was stark naked.

Brian Holman took a pull on his Mountain Dew, “She’s not here, hasn’t been for the past two days. Can’t you see her car’s gone. I figured she was out on a job.”

Trying to look in Brian’s eyes, and only in his eyes, Officer Hughes managed, “A job?” before his partner, grinning at the rookie’s red face, asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re not going away, are you?” Brian stated more than asked and motioned them inside while he reached for a pair of pants hanging over a chair. Louise, who had been watching from across the street, could clearly see that he was putting the pants on without underwear. That’s all she saw because right then Officer Hughes (Hughie to his friends) closed the door.

Louise did not know what had been said because, unlike the officers, she had not been staring at the truck driver’s eyes or lips. Then the door opened and the officers left. They were still dressed and so she concentrated on reading their lips, as skill learned from watching countless Drive-In movies from the roof of her parents trailer out on Butter Bluff.

“Now, what would a nice looking fellow like this guy be marrying Chablis the Dog?” Hughie asked.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Tom White, Hughie’s partner muttered,” Old Chablis ain’t so bad when you’ve have about six beers and you keep remembering how sweet she was when you puked all over the counter . . .”

“You hurled on Chablis?!!” Hughie was incredulous. Tom had a reputation of being able to hold his liquor far better than his gun.

“It was a long time ago,” Tom started, “back right after we’d found Harold out on the railroad tracks.”

I’m not good at telling made up stories; Der Bingle can do it, but mine have no cleverness to them. So this is not a story; this is just me typing non-true fact-like things into sentences and seeing where they go. At this point, I am about ready to begin with See Spot run, but I believe that has been done before and, besides, Spot’s name never was Spot. Unless you count what we called him before we gave him a name, and then, that’s shaky, because Jane had a problem saying the letter “s” and called him Pot.

For awhile we all called him Pot. Then we called him Harry and Harry doesn’t run a lot. Harry tears around like a dervish and he barks. Harry is not the most popular dog in the neighborhood; he is also not the most unpopular dog. That would be Chablis who is ugly and human. One older man saw her sitting on her porch steps one day and growled, “What a dog!” to a much young man – a teenager in fact.  He thought the expression was coolly retro and, thus, Chablis the Dog appeared in whispered comments – some less whispered than others.

Then the whispering stopped because Chablis got married to a truck driver. No one expected it; for 15 years, Chablis had been living alone in the corner house on Horace Street and then all of a sudden there was this 40-year-old woman and her 35 year old truck driver husband living there. It was unsettling, although lots of people who hadn’t done more than nod when necessary, were suddenly bringing her little token wedding gifts.

Chablis may have been ugly, but she wasn’t stupid and she knew darn well everyone who had looked down on her before were now sniffing around to find out the who what where when and, of course, why. She lied to everyone, altering details as they do in spy stories to ferret out who is the mole, or in this case, the biggest gossip. The mole had always been on Chablis’ right cheek – the facial one. But that is neither here nor there; well, it is there, but it’s not important to the story, which this is not.

This is simply a long, drawn out way to get around to mentioning that the police came to the corner house on Horace Street the Wednesday after Chablis had not shown up for work for two days.

I know a little bit about writing and I know a little bit about Theodore Roosevelt. The latter part of that sentence could be misleading: compared to the average person today, I probably know quite a bit about Roosevelt; compared to scholars, I don’t know much at all. I do know that I admired him enough to name my son Quentin after his youngest son who was killed as an aviator in WWI.

Candice Millard’s book about the exploration of the River of Doubt (now Roosevelt River) is excellently done and highlights other outstanding members of the group, as well as highlighting the outstanding effort put forth by even the most unknown and uneducated workers who packed the mules, set up the camps, fought the rapids and, like Roosevelt, gave their all.

It reads as easily  as a very good fiction book, almost as if the spirits of great authors gathered to help guide Millard’s choice of words, knowing this story and these men deserved the very best.

And the best includes not just the things that worked out.  Roosevelt’s second son, Kermit, accompanied his father on this trip. In writing this book, Millard, touches on the business of what is in our stars.

Roosevelt did the best he could, but he was lucky to have inherited  crucial aspects to enable that to happen. He had a brother who obviously came from the same stock, the exact same gene pool, and yet Elliot was plagued with personal attributes that led to a dissolute life of alcoholism and irresponsibility – among other things, he fathered a child by one of the household maids. Theodore had to have him institutionalized for a while, and when Elliot died at a relatively  young age, Theodore sobbed over his body, remembering the golden youth that once had been, but got derailed.

Genes. Roosevelt saw the same ability in his son Kermit that he had seen in Elliot, and he also saw the same tendencies toward introspection and black depression. He strove to guide Kermit, who excelled when he had a physically challenging mission to accomplish, but who languished at the matter-of-factness of day-to-day life that involved offices and a roof over his head and a regular bed to sleep in at night.

Genes: Theodore Roosevelt wanted his children to pull their weight, not be afraid of trying, to challenge themselves, to be responsible. Yet, Roosevelt, when faced with his first wife’s  and mother’s death on the same day and the prospect of raising a newborn daughter – Alice Roosevelt Longworth – took off for the vigorous trials of the west, leaving the child to the care of his sister.  He said black care could not stay close to a fast rider – or something like that. But, he had that option financially. The question is: did he have that option morally? I don’t know. In a way, instead of facing the days of sameness and the forging of a bond between father and motherless daughter, he opted for, shall we harken back to Kermit and say the idea of a mission of hard physical work?

Why am I going into all of this? I suppose because occasionally I think about it; how ironic things can be. Like beauty being a matter of millimeters, so personalities and character are determined by one enzyme here, one there, one synapse too long or too short or just right. Strengths and weaknesses that cancel each other out – or with a catalyst spell disaster.

Well, anyway, one way or another, The River of Doubt reveals part of a lifespan of a man who turned out more than okay and reveals it with skill; another well-schooled writer might have attempted the task and got it technically right. Fortunately, genes came together to give Candice Millard the talent to get everything, in the vernacular of Little Red Riding Hood, just right.

We wound up with over five inches of new snow yesterday and I faced the fact first thing this morning  – in my boots, pants, big red coat, blue trapper hat, gloves, aspirin and shovel. I now have a chute, canyon, whatever you want to call it in the distance of the driveway from the sidewalk to where I can actually reach the plowed street.

I myself have now wound up with no boots, no big red coat, no blue trapper hat, no gloves, no shovel and no pants – outer ones that is. Actually I also have no socks. I am all propped up in a warm cozy corner feeling very pleased with myself. I know it’ s Sunday,  especially a day when I should cultivate humble feelings, but I am bursting beyond that with the Woo Hoo of the scooped out driveway. With all that I took off, I did add a fuzzy Aleve I found in my pocket to my actual body where, I am hoping, it will make getting up to hunt for new pants something I might consider.

The Creation Museum is located just south of Cincinnati and I remember some talk about it being built before we left the area. A few years ago, people in Ligonier, Indiana tried to turn an old factory into another Creation Museum and because I was writing for a small paper at the time, I was asked to research it and write an article. In doing that, I checked back with the website for the museum in Cincinnati.

Now, there have been headlines about a debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. In renewed curiosity about the Creation Museum, I went back to their website and while reading through one description, came upon this sentence:

Several parts of the museum, including the stunning forty-foot high portico with its cliff wall and floor-to-ceiling glass windows, flaunt open spaces and remarkable designs.

Flaunt?

Flaunt seems off-key to me, so I typed it in Google search and this is the first thing that came up:

Wouldn’t “highlight” or “spotlight” be a better choice than flaunt?

I know it’s a small thing, a really small thing, but what is it they say? Oh, The devil is in the details.

We are in the negative temperature digits and we have a wind chill somewhere in the negative 20’s. Most schools are on a two hour delay, although Fort Wayne Community Schools have closed. I think the kids may have gone two days this week, but maybe only once. So the question is this: Will the area schools stay with the delay or close?

The plows have been working constantly, but there are a lot of rural roads that buses must use and every intersection corner is piled high with snow towers.  They have missed so many days, everything is totally our of whack with schedules for graduation  and summer jobs for kids already. Finally, it is Friday and the physical plants at the school have not been revved up for heat for a couple of days.

So, will they call a closing? I’m thinking not. I think they are going to go, which means I am going to have to thread a needle getting the car out of the driveway and I am going to have to listen to Summer “make remarks” all the way to the high school. (Which some of you will realize I am happy to be experiencing.)

UPDATE: I hear stomping around  – we are still a GO. If the decision to close because of weather is not clear cut, the procedure is to go to a 2 hour delay at 6 am and by 8 am, make the call if they are going to close. It is 7:43 am and in the next quarter hour, they will start to fall like dominoes or NOT. And then it will get grumpy like you wouldn’t believe.

UPDATE: CLOSED, CLOSED, CLOSED.