I was walking down one of the main aisles at Glenbrook Mall in Fort Wayne when a fellow stationed at one of the kiosks reached out for my hand. He was, I don’t believe, a native English-speaker because he took my hand and said, “I can help you with that stain.”

I was confused momentarily until I realized he was talking about the white splotches on the hand he saw. (I also have them on my other hand, ankles, knees and elbow and a couple of other spots.) I first noticed them on my ankles and knees when I was a kid and I never gave it any thought. It didn’t hurt for the most part I think it was triggered by the constant scraping of those areas when I was playing.

Later,  some other patches showed up and maybe about two decades ago, I discovered the loss of pigment occurring on my knuckles and the backs of my hands. People would sometimes ask if I had been burned or if I had cream on my hands. Maybe others stared and wondered but never said a thing; I don’t know – I really never think about it.

Getting back to this young seller of cosmetic creams, he attempted to tug me over, saying that he had something to help it, fix it, whatever. I think I gave him my, “Are you crazy?” look and said I was fine with it. He looked amazed and I kept nodding my head and saying it was okay. Finally, he got a look of surprise on his face and exclaimed, “Really?!” and then gave me a high five. My hand worked fine for doing that. It works fine for most things. It’s not arthritic and I’m happy for that.

Now I’m wondering when I walk past vendors that I they must consider me hopeless because they don’t grab me and say they can fix my height, my weight, my nose, my really big mouth, my eyes which I think I set too close together (but, I really am grateful to be able to see) my clothes, my limp hair, my lack of a bustline and so forth.

I know those spots are likely to eventually show up on my face. Well, to be honest, they will probably look better than I do when I get in a “mood” and frown and scowl and forget how lucky I am to be able to walk quickly around a mall without aching joints or shortness of breath and a lot of other conditions.

I am not at the Fairborn Sweetcorn Festival. I think Der Bingle is going; he may send pictures or he may be watching demonstrations of different methods of eating corn on the cob. It must be hard for younger people who don’t know about the actual carriage return action of a typewriter.

I did not realize it but the festival has been around for over 30 years. That’s a lot of corn munching. It will be followed by the Dayton Bacon Festival. I kid you not. This one is only in its third year. Der Bingle looked at the list of bacony foods offered and decided he couldn’t bring himself to go. I don’t know, but the information about it leads off with:

Awaken Bacon Nation ~ Everything is Better with Bacon! It’s time to get your chops wet with BaconFest 2015!

I’m thinking about this Bacon Nation – maybe soon there will be a sports team called The Pigs . . . or let me think of other names. Nah, better not.

I didn’t post yesterday because the main story is that I assumed when I turned the mower blades off and then climbed off the mower and then spent time adjusting my shorts and stretching that the mower blades would have stopped. Fortunately for moi, they had almost stopped. Otherwise, I would have lost some fingertips instead of just getting a good WHACK that left me with a bone bruise and cut and a fingernail bed that is purple.

It’s not like I stuck my hand right under the mower; no, I was picking at the blob of grass that had blocked the chute, and then I picked a little bit farther and the thing I mentioned earlier happened – the WHACK.  I think that the impressions of thought that crossed my mind in a split second were “Oh No” and then “Oh, Thank God” as I snatched my hand out whole. After that I thought a lot about my parents and my dad especially and his concern for my safety and not being foolish. I think had he still been alive, I would have gotten a totally frustrated and never before performed BIG WHACK UP THE SIDE OF THE HEAD.

I was very lucky, and very stupid, but I’m going to be really thankful for the lucky. In fact, I may even consider this particular “lucky” as a noun. Yes, this was  a main Lucky for me. It doesn’t really hurt at all unless I put pressure on it, and I try not to do that.

When you don’t have a fancy suburban lawn, but, instead, are responsible for mowing a rural yard, part of which was converted from a field, it is not unusual to get what people older than I have called “summer grass.” It is probably a short weed, but being green and not growing like a vine, can pass for grass. However, in late summer, when it has been warm/hot long enough to get the actual earth nice and warm and when there as been adequate rain, it starts fattening up its blades. Each blade of grass expands with water and when the blade of the lawn mower cuts it, the moisture spews out and pretty soon, you have a major green blob of clogging mush. Those fat blades also dull the mower blades quickly.

I think I am going to have to face it today. The last time I mowed, I cut the grass very short, too short actually, but I suppose there was a little AmeliaJake vengeance in my choice of cutting level. Then we did a a few days without rain . . . and I decided to push my luck. Frankly, from a distance, when it gets taller, it has a nice lush green appearance and as long as there is not mowed spot showing, it looks not bad at all. Up close it is a different story. I’m going to find out what chapter I’m on today. We have had some rain; I just don’t know how the height chips fell.

I will have to wait until after 12 to even consider getting started, though, because when you are between a river and a creek on a block of land the settlers called “the island”, the dew lingers forever. It will also be a mosquito repellent-wearing afternoon, and I think it will be one of weed killer application. It is cloudy right now, but I think  it is supposed to NOT rain. However, I don’t know if the clouds will stick around and trap in all the moisture. I may find myself in a pickle.

Gee, isn’t this interesting? I’m sure Donald Trump doesn’t have these concerns. Too bad I can’t go out there and arrogant it into submission. Say, I wonder who mows his head.

For someone who has always been considered to be a quick learner, I have certainly missed the mark on some important things.

When people are gone, they are gone. No matter how many times I open the big, heavy old wood door that leads into the kitchen that smells of the woodsmoke of my earliest childhood, no one is going to come around the corner. About five years ago, I wrote about being there, closing my eyes and letting the ghosts come out. I guess I thought that was enough, that seeing in my mind life as it used to be would somehow keep it from actually not being there anymore. My imagination is too good. The rooms are empty, despite the ghosts that I actually see now with my eyes open.

They are like clouds. Oddly enough, I can glimpse myself sitting there doing algebra homework at the big round table. I am a misty ghost, too. And what the place is now is just an empty place. I don’t know what took me so long to realize this; maybe it really started when I walked out of Room 420 at North Ridge Nursing Home on May 12th. I followed Kathryn’s last exit and on my way, I thought of Clara who had been there until January and was also gone. I think I had been seeing her ghost as well during the last few months. I couldn’t close that door and keep the room unused as if waiting for the past to come back.

Here we are contained in these small bodies, with our awareness in a small part of that body and we are capable of feeling utterly crushed. How can perception be so overwhelming? Maybe only some part of life goes on, or perhaps some of us just can’t grow old, can’t accept the passing of time.

Right now I could use a furry shoulder to bury my face in, but he’s gone too. I think, though, that maybe one more time, I’ll close my eyes and let his ghost come out.

I only write this because I have a Wal-Mart trip in my immediate future and, for some reason, I really, really do not want to go. Perhaps when I get there, I will be like a cat being put in a carrier – all four limbs sticking out, fighting the doorway. I just thought I’d warn you so it won’t come as a surprise on the news or People of Wal-Mart.

Well, that was something. I was writing about the old vacuum cleaner dying and on LZP’s recommendation, which I overheard while watching a movie in his living room as he and Der Bingle imbibed in the kitchen, getting a Shark. Why they were talking about vacuum cleaners, I have no idea.  But, anyway, when the vacuum died, I bought a Shark and I was writing about it here and POOF, the post disappeared in front of my eyes. Sucked right into the vortex of cyberspace.

But I should be able to deal with that, after all, I got through yesterday when an Elmo balloon got sucked into a ceiling fan and the string round about the mechanism, causing it to stop. Elmo just looked down. We cut him lose, cleared the fan and all seemed well; and then I heard a Whack, Whack and looked up to see that Elmo had once again encounter the fan, but without string had been tossed out the other side. I tied a cord on him and tied that to the table, but later I noticed that a spot in the cord was inexplicably fraying. I have knotted the weak area, but I wonder if I am just delaying some date with destiny this Elmo has. The other Elmos are just floating around, although we did come upon one naughty boy hovering on the ceiling of a bathroom.

Back to the Shark. I have to admit it is fun to watch the dirt being captured in the canister which easily empties from the bottom. I have not put the Shark lengthwise on the floor and jumped it, just in case anyone is wondering. To be honest, I should say, I have not done that yet.

I have, from time to time, stumbled onto a blog in which someone is being very forthright and full of details about some event in their lives. What is prompting this remark is a blog that a few years ago talked about a middle-aged man suddenly finding out he had asymptomatic heart failure, a condition his father had died of at 35. His wife, an author, chronicled the daily progress of his condition; he eventually stabilized.

I suppose my point is that I did not know these people and it was hard to keep in mind that they were real and not characters in a novel or soap opera. Time went on and then he had a major event and she began reporting on what was happening; then she stopped, and not because he died. I find myself thinking, “Well, what happened, what is going on?” It is like falling asleep at the end of a movie and not knowing how things turned out. Of course, I have to keep reminding myself it is not fiction at all, but part of me is wondering about the continuation of the plot, although, as I said, it is not a plot, but real.

It all makes me feel like a voyeur jerk.

Two of us went to see Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation last night because it was someone’s birthday and because we have a really nice refurbished theater in town with $5 ticket prices and the first refill on the popcorn is free. The movie about those fantastic four people was playing on the other screen, but it got a 9 on the Rotten Tomatoes scale and even if it had been highly touted, it is not my type of movie.

In the very first scenes on the MI movie, I found myself thinking of the Bruce Willis movies where all the old spies get together. There were quite a few laughs in the movie and I kept wondering if it were an action film with training wheels for newbies to the genre who needed a slow introduction to the tension present in some of the original ones. THIS IS NOT REAL was virtually stamped on all the actors foreheads, along with THIS IS NOT NEW AND WAS FIRST DONE 30 YEARS AGO  on the foreheads of rubberized facial masks. Of course, all those years ago, the masks were made with a computer 3-D printer in a glass cylinder but that’s just a detail.

In addition to the movie with the birthday, we know have 10 helium balloons floating around the house – five of which are Elmo’s. They are cute; they float to the ceiling and stare down at you with there big Elmo eyes and orange noses; you almost expect them to giggle. It is a tradition that isn’t worth explaining and will probably have disappeared by the time the 19 year old is the age of this scribe.

Because the 19 year old’s mother is working a Baylor Nursing Shift this weekend, we will probably have an on-going birthday week starting Monday. (The day the birthday person has a doctor’s appointment -HAHAHAHAAH. I shouldn’t laugh, but I do. At least it’s not the dentist.)

It was raining this morning and very dark. Right now it is sunny and mid-afternoon and I am sprawled, having straightened myself out from a seated position with hands held in front, as if on a steering wheel. We got in heavy traffic; my passenger got carsick and puked; I drove the speed limit; I did not get a ticket; I did not get any to-go food. As road trips go, it was lacking.

And I missed getting a picture of the new Church of the Solid Rock Jesus Statue – the first one was hit by lightning. Or maybe it just caught fire from too much brimstone in the sermons. Really, it is the Solid Rock Church, but I like the other name better, so I’m going with it.