I’m in Ohio; I’ve been having some side effects from Cipro; I’ve been doing other things. But I am not dead as of this typing and so that is not the reason for the long silence. I have been playing Words With Friends with someone, but that is not the reason either. There is no reason.

There is a reason as to why I got myself in a bad spot in the WWF game – and it involves the dead. I hate putting it like that; let’s say it involves the influence of my late father.

I was stacking a word and it would only work with SHI* or SHIP. The second choice left an opening for my opponent. The first choice, obviously scatological, was fairly safe, but not from the voice in my head that said, “I don’t believe a lady would do that.” Now, let me tell you, I have adapted to this new game that lets you try out a word without risking a challenge and accepts slang and foreign words and words that are followed in the dictionary provided by the information that said word is a valid word but no definition is available. As I remarked to someone: This is not my Daddy’s Scrabble.

But I couldn’t play SHI*; I can’t even type it here. I could have just abandoned the whole thing, but I believe it was for quite a few points and I was greedy. I figured it was early in the game so I went with SHIP, although it left a good opening for my opponent.

She didn’t need it; she made a brilliant placement move of QUID and there sat my “s” in SHIP. I had drawn yucky letters and couldn’t add MATE or PED to SHIP. So it is still open. Of course, the SHI* word would have taken the same “s” but I couldn’t play it and if I had really listened to my dad about not being greedy, I would have let the unwise SHIP go as well.

So now I am sitting here feeling dumb and greedy about SHIP . . . but ladylike. And that’s why I’m looking at the game and thinking, “Oh, DRAT.”

I have purchased many gifts from Shutterfly, always waiting for their special deals of course. And, now, they are offerring me a free calendar, with the sale ending Friday. So I think I’ll talk it over with Der Bingle and pick out a picture or two for each month.

The 2014 calendar was all about Shane. I am going to have to decide about 2015. Maybe we will choose some landscapes – pictures you can stare at and envision yourself climbing into.

Spell check wants me to use only one “r” in offerring; usually I just give in to the new wave of computer spelling. But, today, I am feeling not really rebellious, but a need to say, “We’re going to do this the proper way.”

Yesterday, sitting in a car in a sparsely-filled parking lot was like a kiddie theme park ride. The car rocked as it was buffeted by winds gusting around 50 mph. Watching the canvas canopy over the walkway into the building was almost entertaining – Is it going to go? Whoa! Did you see that?

However, we managed to later be blown into Logan’s Roadhouse and took advantage of the Two for $14.99 dinners. I had salmon grilled over mesquite with a tangy sauce on the side and, although it tasted great, it also activated the effects of not having a gallbladder. The food went through me like the wind and I don’t think many calories had a chance to be absorbed. Uh, that was way too much information.

However, it was worth it for the taste and the atmosphere, although you can no longer throw your peanut shells on the floor. You have to be neat and drop them in the “shell bucket.”

That title up there sums up my day. Yesterday I made a comfy thing out of two $3 WalMart fleece throws and some fiberfill. It didn’t turn out half bad. But today, today I had to get in the Christmas/Holiday spirit by “doing.”

Yes, I again enjoyed the zoning out work of crafting something, but yes, I also was reminded of the endless repetition with very slow visible progress. I have a wee bit to yet yet, sprucing it up and whatnot, but, for the most part, it is done. It glitters. It pleases me to look at it and imagine it reflecting a bubble light.

It reminds me of my grandmother teaching me to embroider; it also reminds me of my mother’s setting at the big oak table with a huge Christmas tree skirt and bins of sequins and gold lame thread and reindeer stuff. I have that tree skirt still. I had to sew those sequins on and I used my grandmother’s engraved thimble from the days when such things were considered special gifts.

Suddenly I am thinking of making a sequined voodoo doll . . .

I think I once wrote that I ebb and flow with some things. I guess that is true here. Today has been a hard day, but it has been a day – and I often forget a lot of people would be happy with that. I mean it has not been a day with a death announcement or a medical diagnosis or one even of a headache.

I have been missing Shane. It is as if the numbness of grief has worn off and the reality of it has set in. So much was wrapped up in that dog – connections not unlike the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

I can see his face smiling at me and I see it in that moment right after he died, when he was so warm and so still. I didn’t want to disturb him while we waited for the vet to arrange the pain shot; I knew that dogs try to the very end to respond to people close to them. I thought it best to let him be alone and to not stimulate him. He was behind the loveseat a few feet from me. And then he died alone, without my hand on him.

I never wanted that.

People have said to me: He’s gone and he’s not coming back. It’s true, but it hurts so bad.

Shane was Quentin’s dog. Shane was young when Sydney was old and it was to a young Sydney my father spoke his last lucid words. When Mother became ill, she looked at the old dog who had come to the sofa and said, “So, you’ve come to see me, Sydney.”

Shane came to live with us and Sidney accepted him, but made him leave my presence every evening; the night belonged to me and Sydney. Cameron was Shane’s buddy; they fussed over each other. Many a Wubba was thrown thousands of times. And Cameron cried because he couldn’t do anything to help Shane in the end.

WE still cry . . . and mmaybe he’s not coming back because he never left our hearts. He’s still here.

The first really cold snap takes you back a bit; this time around the sudden drop in temperature gave us a big push. It didn’t just get cold, it got cold with a dry, biting wind.

And maybe I will write with more warmth later . . .

Oh, dear, it’s late and I froze in the nursing home parking lot and then in the parking lot at Wal-Mart and the weatherman on TV at the nursing home said, “Well, guys, there’s a 20 mph wind out there.

Are you kidding me? It is 9 degrees outside and feels like minus 8? Well, yes I thought the diet cola in the vestibule was a little almost slushy, but, my gosh, I guess it’s time to start fires . . . in the fireplaces.

Going to try to acclimate.

I’m been to Ohio and back; I’ve been to the mall. I’ve played Words with Friends and started watching a Norwegian series from Netflix – Lilyhammer. I’ve looked through 72 picture albums to possibly get the stuff to take advantage of a Shutterfly office.

I could get more detailed, but I’d bore you.

I had my hair trimmed today; it is getting grayer. I am wearing a large cardigan made of acrylic and wool; it used to be I could only wear wool when it was absolutely freezing. I can’t say that I’ve done much today, other than recover from the second and last raking of the season yesterday. Four tarps tugged to the curb; all rake, no leaf blower.

This morning we had a dusting of snow and farther east and north, they had lake-effect snow and the Toll Road and US 20 were slick and hazardous.

Now I’m sitting here thinking about my trip to Ohio tomorrow and what time I want to start . . . and if I’m ever going to get around to throwing a couple of changes of clothes into a knapsack.

And, in an unusual move for me, I turned on itunes. So far I have listened to Christmas songs, country songs, Welsh songs and right now This Little light of Mine is causing my knees to bounce.

I was wondering today if people pinch little girls’ cheeks. Years ago when I was in my 20’s at Wright-Patt, my friend and I got to remembering how men used to do it to us in the 50’s. Just pinch that spot where the dimple is and say, And how’s this sweetie today? We looked at each other and said in unison, You know, that hurt. A pat on the head would have been better, but reunions and holidays always had us nursing sore cheeks.

Perhaps that is why my grin is so wide – it just got stretched out.

Now I may just listen to the song about the old truck and Frank jumping in and biting my leg.

My father used to put out the flags on Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day for soldiers in the cemetery. The First World War ended November 11, 1918. He was born November 12, 1918 and his middle name was Pershing. believe grandmother had the Spanish Flu when he was born. I do remember people saying she was very ill.

That was 96 years ago. He died in 2000. It seems like yesterday.

My sadness at Shane’s passing has struck at chord deep in me and it resonates with the slightest wisp of thought. I hear bagpipes playing on the TV in the other room; it seems appropriate for both topics mentioned here.