I have one hard-boiled egg colored light-green. There are 17 uncolored hard-boiled eggs. Somehow I got caught up in watching the Da Vinci Code with Summer and Cameron and by evening was left in the kitchen with 18 eggs. I made up one of the dyes . . . and thought it was boring to do alone. So, come tomorrow, maybe we will use more of the dyes. One year, Summer decided to color the deviled eggs; it was not a good experience for me. I had to close my eyes to eat them.

It’s 10:30 pm and, my gosh, it’s past my bedtime. But maybe I’ll just read a little . . .

My iphone was in my hand before the thought was truly formulated in my mind. My mother was not one for people flaunting their housework, so to speak, and she had her only little Sarah Eileen Grismore crusade against organized and competitive Monday washing. Given her age and  locale in a small village, that was she came to know Monday’s activity when a girl.

That is not to say that Mother did not like the smell of sun-dried clothes; she really appreciated it and I will often throw a pillow case outside to quickly soak up some sun. She did not, however, like to see clotheslines sited prominently in yards where everyone could see them without trying. It also irked her to remember a neighbor who literally trotted on Wash Monday to get her clothes out first. I don’t know when Grandma washed, but I think it was more flexible, taking into consideration what she had planned to do, what she wanted to do, how she felt and the, uh, Indiana weather.

All this is just churning around in my memory as half story/half the atmosphere of those years with Mother.  I find myself grinning without any specific incident in mind – and at times, grimacing. You know, the kind of remark that stretches out: “Yes, Mother . . . does it really matter . . . Can we just not talk about it this time?” Well, no, if Mother wanted to talk about it, we were going to talk about it.

In later years, going on a car trip through the countryside – especially the Amish countryside – on a Monday was not what you wanted to do.

On the other hand, when Der Bingle and I lived in Homeowners Association suburbs, she was irate to read through the rules, including the one about hanging washing outside. Good God, did these people have no true class? Pretending clothes on a line was uncouth was a slap in the face of all our pioneer ancestors.

See, I’m still churning – so let’s get to the butter. I live in a small town –  in the thick of it, warts and all and I opened my front door to see laundry on the line across the street. Actually, they have no backyard because it is a corner house, and on a busy street. I suppose at first she would have rolled her eyes and then decided that, hey, it was towels and people were going to be scruffed up after baths that night in the scent of rough sunshine instead of the fragrance of dryer sheets. She would probably have adapted her views to have negative feelings about “more sophisticated people” driving by. Now, if it had been underwear . . . Well . . . I . . . don’t . . . know.

This has been on the wall in the informal eating area of my kitchen between two windows, and then I started on my painting marathon. I took it upstairs and leaned it against a coffee table in the sitting room. Today, as I was sitting in that room, trying to decide what to declutter, I looked over and decided I’d just pull my iphone out of my pocket and take a picture.

It’s not the best picture, but it’s the way it looked this morning with the light pouring in from the bank of windows on the southern wall.

I wrote a whining post, but it’s part of being human and then I looked at the dashboard and saw the announcement that an update was available for WordPress and would I please UPDATE NOW. They nag. But I sighed and updated and then they wanted to tell me how much better some things were. It drives me crazy that they don’t grasp the fact that content is the most important thing, but then after my recent posts, perhaps they feel I need bells and whistles.

Yeah, I know it’s not right, but I feel as if I just want to sit down and read off a list of complaints – kind of the type that have been festering for awhile. I feel somewhat pathetic, but it’s not too upsetting a feeling. Actually maybe it’s a version of a two-year old’s tantrum – it ain’t pretty, but it gets out a lot of stress hormones.

I had a nightmare when I fell asleep reading this evening. I woke up really upset and thinking it was a shaky start to the day; I then looked at the clock and saw that I had been asleep about an hour and I have the whole night looming ahead.

I have already forgotten what the dream was about but am not anxious to to back to sleep – WHAT IF THE MONSTERS ARE STILL THERE??!! Maybe I had a bad dream because I was just in a pissy mood earlier, ready to explode all over people. Had I been a user of the  “count to 10” technique, I would have had to adapt it to count to a million . . . and then some.

I was definitely a FEE FI FO FUM-er and I decided I should just remove myself to a solitary place. Maybe it has something to do with my little brain cells firing like crazy when they sensed the white of my eyes.  Ah, I see the mixed up rhetoric of my nightmare is still with me; this does not bode well . . . for me abed in my abode.

Oh, Lordy, I sense it’s going to be quite a night.

  BABO

What do you expect a whimsical person to say? Well, whatever, it might be, you can compare it to what you are reading right now, because I am a WP. I would not say I am certified, but I believe there is a consensus that I fall in that category. Nuts and bolts people have no understanding of and really no tolerance for whimsical souls. I don’t know why this is, but I firmly appreciate them, even though they do not feel the same about me. I appreciate them because they are quite happy to do the paint-by-number aspects of society – the minding the P’s and Q’s rules – the keeping the “box” spiffed up. After all, it gives us WP’s a place to run and jump into when our thinking outside the box needs, shall we say, re-thinking.

Yes, we dedicated WP’s find the Nuts and Bolters lacking; ironically, they tend to think we WP’s are “not all there.”

There is a covering of snow on the ground, although the roads are just wet, and in some places, already dry. It is 26 degrees and we are going to warm up to 36 today. I suppose if I were to wear an Easter bonnet, it would be a fur trapper’s hat.

I have decided to wait a bit before writing more . . . oh, just because.

LATER

Well, my little beanbags, I don’t know if waiting helped my mood or not, but since I am still here, I think I may have managed to find a little oomph. And, as I sort of quoted to someone yesterday: Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough. (Theodore Roosevelt) Of course, the problem with quoting famous people is that although it sounds good, it may not be all that accurate. I wonder if in the realm of grief, despair and black care, if they can’t zoom on ahead and be waiting for you when you finally have to stop. Then, again, Roosevelt was a true hero and I don’t think he ever stopped.

That’s probably not true. I remember he also said, “To feel that one has inspired a boy to conduct that has resulted in his death, has a pretty serious side for a father.”

I think I need more oomph, or more directed oomph. I need to focus some oomph on not going fast but standing firm. Obviously, this is some sort of ridiculous do it yourself psychiatric couch session that is confusing this patient. I guess sometimes they are right when they say: Do not try this at home.

I feel as if I had a lousy day today, although really it’s not like I fell out of a hammock and broke my foot or anything. I did get a Whooping Cough/Tetanus booster shot – I wonder if a side effect is feeling mopey . . . and like I want to punch faces?