I usually have something to gripe about all the time, so why have I been so silent for almost three days? Heck if I know – people got lucky I guess.

I did get my dent looked at and guess what? It popped out on its own; the repair guy thinks it was because of the change in temperature. It was an odd looking dent to begin with – sort of a hollowed-out space as if a bowl had been caught up in the fender making machine. I definitely will have to post a picture of the original injury; I’m glad I took a picture because I don’t think anyone would truly believe me otherwise.

However, it still needs fixing and so next Tuesday it is scheduled for some procedures. My main concern is getting it all cleaned out because I tend you use the car as a carry-all bag. It’s going to be like a archeological expedition.

It’s a given that AmeliaJake is sarcastic, and can be so in an extremely cutting way. It comes so easily.  I am going to show you a picture:

I will type: Hi, I’m a vacuum, but AmeliaJake’s the sucker. Now, of course, there is not much to that. However, if I chose to do so, I could walk the situation six times around the sarcastic block and still have trips left in me. But, I cant . . . sink . . . that . . . low. But I want to. (Oh, by the way, it has nothing to do with any sort of vacuum review)

Now, if I had real true blue, prime time, award-winning character, I wouldn’t write anything at all. I have middling character so I had to mention it OR I WOULD EXPLODE. I still may; this may not be enough. Sigh.

As I sat in the laundromat last night because I did not want to spend the entire night catching up on the wash, my phone popped up with a weather warning. It does that a lot; it’s usually not for me, but perhaps they have refined it now – zeroed in, so to say.

A lady came in and starting talking snowstorm and my mouth scrunched up and my eyes darted from side to side in a moment of “Oh, rats – was that weather notice maybe valid?

This morning the snow is coming down at 31 degrees and it varies  between pelting my face and jacket and splatting them. It is heavy snow and I brought in lots of firewood. I had so much that I didn’t order any more this winter and so I have very dry wood of two years and seasoned wood from last year. Because that seasoned wood has had an extra year, it burns well and fast. What I need is a big, old, gnarled knot that is freshly cut and will go in a hot fire and sit there forever and just radiate a slow heat.

Ah, the wind is picking up; wet snow and wind. Limbs and power lines. Nothing to do but wait and let my boots dry before another OHA- Outside House Activity.

Not a name that I think of daily, but of late the first line of one of his poems has been marching through my head in a continuous loop.

I sometimes think of all the crosses in the cemeteries at Normandy and other battlefields and wonder that each one represents a mother’s heart – and I guess a father’s too.

And maybe I am thinking this because I would like to die for something. After all, dying is inevitable, why can’t it stand for something as well. Perhaps that is what we should put on our tombstones – what we would have died for. But, then, like a beauty contest, so many would put world peace. I think I am not so altruistic;  if it were necessary I would die for someone I loved. Not even have to think about it; do it in a heartbeat  . . . or the lack of one.

The repairman came; the washer is working although I have not given it a real test run yet. I took scads of laundry to the laundromat, because I couldn’t trust my luck. The fellow had to replace the guts of the machine. He asked how long I’d had it. I told him since October. He frowned and said it looked as if it had been used for ten years – all the parts worn out.

But he came. And for that I am grateful. Tired but grateful. And Jeff Piraino, if you had anything to do with it, thank you, thank you, thank you. (You know, the Jeff from the Dooce Maytag Saga.

Maytag preparation did not get a Day Five post all of its own because my typing fingers were attached to a really tired body that had moved a too big dryer out of a too small laundry  room. Do you know how the delivery guys got the washer into that room? They lifted it up and over a corner of the dryer. It was not an option for me and at one point, I found myself wondering if being found dead lying over a dryer like they used to bring back corpses tied over a horse would make the news.

But, finally, I got it out. AND THE DIRT BEHIND !!!! I made a half-hearted stab at it last evening and then let it wait until this morning. Lint and dust and uneasy access make a great combination for clean GUNK. I know I wrote dirt – in capital letters, no less – but actually soap bubbles and fabric softener sheets gone missing plus lint make something that only looks generically disgusting. When you get up and close and personal with it, it’s not like anything you’d pull out of a clogged pipe or out from underneath a bed in a college dorm. It just sort of colonizes an area and smells not bad. This is totally uninteresting, I know; let’s just call it free association typing. That’s so much  better than calling it crap.

Now, on Day Six, I am starting to get nervous that something will go wrong on Day Seven when they are supposed to fix the washer. There is also the matter of getting the dryer back into the room. Well, were I up to speed on rocket science, I would realize the importance of an extra quarter of an inch. But, if I look at it from a psychological perspective, I can realize it’s just my lack of fortitude and mental stability.

I need to add a little aside here, since I took a dig at Little Miss “Psychology isn’t rocket science.” I have great admiration and respect for those people who offer a helping hand to people struggling with worries and phobias and the like; what I cannot abide is someone who judges a man. Oh, wait, I do that all the time, but I don’t charge for it .

Psychology is not rocket science

Someone made that statement a couple of weeks ago and at the time, I thought, Boy, are you right. However, I agreed for a different reason. The speaker was implying that it was not all that difficult, but I think she is way off base.

In rocket science, people know what they know and are aware that there is a lot they don’t know. If they want to try and figure something out from their equations and come up with a theory and test it – – -well, they do it in a controlled area because what we really don’t know can really blow up.

In psychology, people think they know some things and are willing to guess that they know the other stuff that hides in the length of synapses and the amount of chemicals and goodness knows what. When they come up with a theory, they put it out there and declare new facts.  They don’t put fences around their brand new band wagons; they don’t state that Dr. Phil’s opinions are his own.

And people get hurt because psychological theories at this point in knowledge are like dirty bombs – they not only can blow up but they can leave fallout, the half-life of which is usually longer than a lifespan.  Then, maybe, decades later, some psychologist will say, Oh, that’s wrong; hook up the clydesdales to a new band wagon.

No, psychology is most certainly not rocket science, but, by gosh, you can get a mail order DIY kit so easily. Sometimes the requirements is the belief that two and two don’t equal four because so and so says so. (A little alliteration to analyze at your leisure and come up with an AmeliaJake theory.)

I have spent the day reading so that I can keep my mind off my hopes about my Maytag washer repair and wind up jinxing myself. What I read was just an airhead book. That is the one thing I don’t fancy about my Kindle; I cannot read a bit and then think, okay, airhead, turn to the back and check out the plot suspicions and then toss it.

Technically, you can “Go To” chapters in the book and so skip ahead, but it’s not the same as flipping to last few pages and just skimming, and then maybe taking a stab at the middle to see if there’s anything else. I have the same sort of yearning for the old card catalogue in the library. You could just stand there and let the cards flip past, your eyes focusing on spotting something that says try this one. I think it must have something to do with my age, but I just felt more connected when I was rummaging through a drawer.

Well, actually, these are kind of airhead paragraphs, so I hope you just scrolled right now, skimming to see if any great secret was going to be revealed, since, obviously, the writing is pulpy.

However, now that I my mind is on Kindles, I have a question, which I suppose I will pose to Google when I leave here. When the Kindle tells you the reading time before you begin a book, is it based on your reading rate or a time calculated from a group of readers? A lot of times, when I am reading a well-written book, I will read passages over and over again; I can tell those spots in the book by the way the pages become dingy and wrinkled. Yeah, I can highlight in the Kindle, but I don’t. It’s just not the same.

And sometimes I like to just glance at a shelf and see those books that contain prose that is almost poetry – books like The Tender Bar and A River Runs Through It, to mention just two. And then, of course, there are those books that have just a single great sentence and that is enough. The Bridges of Madison County comes to mind; the movie was better, but oh, how I loved the opening sentence:

There are songs that come free from the blue-eyed grass, from the dust of a thousand country roads.

I don’t wear Grandma’s ring all the time; I don’t want to lose it or subject it to harsh chemicals – as if I would ever clean. But there are times when I want to feel my grandma with me, because it is comforting and because when I am wearing her ring, I feel like I should try a little harder to be a decent person.

Of course, you know the ring is the turquoise thing and the white spots on my hand are vitiligo. The ring looks the same, summer or winter, but my hand come July will appear to be an abstract impression of a Guernsey cow.

Cow picture from HERE.

I wore it yesterday because I had to meet with this – aw, don’t mince words, AmeliaJake, – this BIMBO and I wanted to keep my sarcastic tendencies in check. Well, I got through that, mainly by saying only two sentences and then went about everything else.

About an hour ago, I looked down and it was gone – the ring, that is. Oh, my gosh, the PANIC. Finally, I sat down and thought, “Now, Grandma, please help me find it.” I thought it through and came up with a memory of doing something messy and putting it in a zippered free gift Estee Lauder pouch – circular, purple and pink since I’m being detailed in this recounting of my hyperventilating “the sky has fallen” mood – and then stashing it in the top drawer of a china cabinet.

There is a picture somewhere of me and Grandma standing on the front yard just before going to Sunday School. She is holding my hand: I am four or five: the ring is visible on her hand. I’m a bit older now, but I can still feel that morning air and the softness of her hand. I think I can also remember not being that enthusiastic about going to Sunday School.

Memories are such wonderful things. You can compress them in your mind and then take them out and wrap them around you like a comforting blanket and they can seem as if the moment is still here.