I have been listening to an audio recording of the YouTube video mentioned below – over and over and over again. When I was alone here, I actually hooked it up to a SPEAKER and put the volume up. While puttering around I let my mind wander from vignette to vignette, all inspired by the lyrics. Ah, so many stories I made up in my head.

Sometimes I stop to think if I were to convey the stories to someone else, they would be overwhelmed by the combination of characters and backstories . . . and they would look at me incredulously.

Ah, Der Bingle is on ichat, so so long oolong.

I can’t stop listening to this:

I have always said Thanksgiving as if it were the name of an event, a proper noun. I knew, of course, what the two words that made up the one word meant, but I always just said it with the idea (thanks to FDR) that it was the fourth Thursday in November.

A few years back, I was reading an entry in a blog by a young woman who was from rural Texas. She wrote that people here in the Midwest looked at her strangely when she said Thanksgiving, because she didn’t run it all together but pronounced it as the action the word described: THANKS GIVING. I’ve always remembered that.

We take so much for granted, especially in this country where we pretty much have it everyday. In fact, we hurry it along, so we can get on to the shopping for the next month’s giving which seems to have taken over even the slightest nod to mangers and a star and wise men.

Be it a bandwagon or a Radio Flyer, there are always people eager to climb on for the ride. Well, I’m standing firm in my admiration for George Herbert Walker Bush and firm in my belief he is an upstanding man.

To steal a quote form Martin Luther: Here I stand; I can do no other.

And how many “grabs” is it going to take to get rid of mounds of leaves?

I can’t cite where this picture is from because it popped up amid a lot of Google images about leaves.

Saturday I worked for several hours on the last wave of leaves to come down. I found myself thinking of Joyce Kilmer and grade school and trees in a slightly different way – sort of “God, you made these trees, how about a big wind that sweeps away from my house.” Yes, I know, it’s selfish, but my neighbors are younger and one has a tractor with an attachment that sucks up and mulches leaves.

There’s a little more to my tale. After I had blown and raked a lot to the curb, I turned and looked at the driveway that curves around to the back. Ah, cement, no friction; the leaves should have slid along. They mocked my leaf blower.

And so I decided that since I needed a new snow shovel I would get one the next day and just shove those babies down to the street. That next day, yesterday, it started out with rain. I figured the snow shovel could still handle them; I looked at later and saw SNOW flakes.

This just threw my big picture plan to the wind (although the leaves stayed). I had intended to clear the drive with the snow shovel and when the first light snow of the season fell, you know, a wee bit, I’d go out and blow it off with the leaf blower.

Foiled again.

A BIGGER SIGH.

In fact:

SIGH

I just got a message from USPS:

The package is delayed and will not be delivered by the expected delivery date. An updated delivery date will be provided when available. Your item arrived at our FORT WAYNE IN DISTRIBUTION CENTER destination facility on November 11, 2017 at 3:35 am. The item is currently in transit to the destination.

Could this be because it spent two full business days in that distribution center in Florida – you know, the one that’s name sounds like a swamp.

Amazon prime free two day shipping’s tracking stages are usually:

It’s at Amazon

It’s at a way station on the shipping route

It has arrived.

BELOW I HAVE COPIED PART OF THE LITANY OF THE TRIP OF USPS:

Ok, so going from bottom to top, the package roamed around the OPA locale for 48 hours and 37 minutes. Then it zipped over to Miami. Finally, on the 10th, today, it was reported to be meandering somewhere in my general direction. (I am assuming the last bit of that sentence.)

I give you ONE BIG SIGH.

When I give out candy at Halloween, I make judgement calls. Cute little sidewalk-pounders in costumes get two or three things – no matter if they peer out from behind their parents whispering Trick or Treat or come up to me and grin with a mouth full of baby teeth, and maybe a couple of those missing. Older kids get one candy bar or Skittles pack . . . or whatever. Giant kids in costumes that consist of a bandana around their lower face practically have to pull the candy out of my hand.

I usually have candy left over and maybe 9 months later I will find still some left and wonder if it is “still good” or will taste like a melted and then re-hardened sugar product.

The Shark last night had a different approach. He remembered when he left the front steps to go out himself trick or treating, trailed by his parents and his brother and his little sister who went as a cow with a stomach that moo-ed when you poked it. He remember and he felt empathy.

So, he took this huge collection of candy he had purchased and handed it out very generously – sort of like Scrooge at Christmas after the visit from the three ghosts. For two hours he sat out in the chilly air while I stretched out on a sofa and read about Napoleon.

After a while the shark “hat” got a bit awkward and he switched to the Mad Bomber hat. (It must be hereditary: his great-grandfather had one he would pull on and let the ear flaps do just that – flap. (It drove me crazy as a teenager.) His Uncle Quentin took to wearing a surplus flyers soft helmet from WW I when he had to work outside. (Did not drive me as crazy, but I did sigh.)

And when he came in with his bushel basket of what had held candy, only the dregs were left – supplementary candy he had scavenged from the house as his original supply ran low. I think he enjoyed himself and I’m glad I grabbed two tiny 100 Grand bars before he first went out.