I’ve been bombarding Rose with so many needs for counseling and comforting that she has just been run ragged (Oh, sorry) with trying to help me. Last night, she broke down during a call to Der Bingle, sobbing out, “Nothing’s ever going to be all right again.”

So, Rose is going to rest herself and Sophie will shoulder the workload for a while. Remember, however, Sophie is the one with the high top sneakers and her therapy is a swift kick to the head and/or butt.

We are hoping Rose feels better soon. Real better, real soon.

I wanted to distract myself; I wanted to focus my mind on something not connected to me. I downloaded a free Kindle book  –  a mystery –  and it was not bad at first for my purpose. But at the end, I found myself looking inward  because I had spent a few hours reading a story that wound up 200 miles east of the recently torn-down Berlin Wall and concerned a 50-year-old Nazi scheme to recreate the “missing link” by  mixing the genes of a human an ape.

I actually read this. Why? It is not like watching a horrible movie in which you look for zippers in the monster suit! Sometime “free” costs you.

Shane, our dear dog who came to us from Quentin in Houston, had a habit of digging holes. Occasionally, he relapses and I have filled the holes with top soil, at one point wondering if eventually we would have to climb steps to get to the backyard.  Der  Bingle was out at Rural King and saw that shrubs and trees were 20% off; he decided to plant blue run junipers in each hole. We did. I don’t know where it will end . . . or disaster will occur when Shane, an Australian Shepherd, decides he must herd them – blue-green sheep, don’tcha know – and winds up pulling the stubborn little guys into a definite grouping.

That is the type of situation in which you open the door, assess what you see, close the door and turn away. Ah, you see, I have steered you away from dwelling on the fact that two people put shrubs in holes randomly dug by a dog.

I carry gas in the trunk when I go to LaGrange to mow; well, a couple of days ago,  a wee bit spilled.  This is bad because Der Bingle is always remarking about how my car smells like gasoline. Except it hasn’t since last summer, but now the dratted cycle resumes. The really unfortunate consequence is that I had a full pack of Diet Coke in my trunk, and, yes, maybe some gas got on the cardboard container and wicked its way to the cans.

I discovered this circumstance this morning when I went out to get the virgin pack, put it in the back vestibule and then raised a can to my face.  Do I want to wash the 23 remaining cans or put a sign up that advises consumers to wash their own cans?

Sigh. I believe I am going to have to do the wash option. I get myself in the most unusual predicaments; it has got to be a curse.

I can’t put this off . . . so see you later.

I decided to work on my sagging jowls, which I have not done for some time because the suggested exercise is to purse your lips as if you were going to give someone a kiss and then try to touch the tip of your nose with them.
That makes my upper lip really wrinkle.

So I experimented and pressed my lips together very tightly and try to reach the tip of my nose with the center of them. It’s kind of a unique look, dontcha know?

What?? Do I hear screams of “I’m blind; I’m blind.”

Oh, a little UPDATE: Warning – Clicking on the picture makes it get very big.

I mowed for six hours straight at the LaGrange house yesterday; well, I was riding, so that helps. The part out back was very tall because mowers were in the shop due to some little accidents I’ve documented here, but don’t choose to revisit. The embarrassment factor, dontcha know.

Fortunately for me, it has been extremely dry there; rain showers and storms have skirted around it for several weeks so I did not have to contend with what would be the equivalent of chopped spinach clogging the mower and overworking its engine. On the other hand, if I were sensitive to pollen, I would have been draped over the steering wheel or flat out on the ground, covered with yellow. My engine would have clogged up.

Now, today, we are supposed to get rain, and that’s okay because the grass isn’t hanging over my head anymore – nor is it tickling my knees. Yes, the rain will encourage the battered little blades to green up and grow, but that’s better than the little dust bowl we’ve been experiencing.

I wonder if I have jinxed myself into lots of moisture and a summer of mowing and mowing and mowing. Oh, well, right now I’m just glad I didn’t put off the marathon mowing until today.

A gold star, please.

I was just scanning the Internet headlines and there it was: SCIENTISTS CONFIRM EXISTENCE OF ‘OLD PEOPLE SMELL’

When you are past 60, it is just not thrilling to think of yourself in this light. And I am not going to listen to any late night comedians for a few days.

Yesterday I wrote a post about the Kindle Daily Deal, which was, as you know from the title of this post, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. The author, Elisabeth Tova Bailey, left me a comment and I was curious enough to seek out her webpage. That would be THIS ONE RIGHT HERE.

I was impressed by her writing style and the reviews on her book. Click on the bio tab and you will find this quote:

“Elisabeth Tova Bailey has written a wonderful readable book about a snail that has 2,640 teeth. That’s a lot of teeth and they are all replaceable. Ms. Bailey is not replaceable.”

—Sam Gross, New Yorker cartoonist

The fact that a New Yorker cartoonist is the source is no small potatoes, and the information on the 2,640 teeth is a first shockingly interesting and then, for some of us, the source of scary daydreams – and Heaven help me tonight.

Now, steady yourself because you can hear this teeth in action on the webpage cited above. It is all audio and leaves the visual to your imagination; for me that started out as a snail and evolved into a very large snail. Don’t worry, I’m sure you are made of stronger stuff than I. However, you might have a different image – oh, like a snail crawling into your ear and somehow getting into your brain. Sorry, there. Though I doubt you need worry since this is a Maine wild snail and as we all know in Maine, you can’t get there from here. Or, more accurately for one’s sanity – here from there. Then, of course, you may live in Maine and then all bets are off.

Some of the folks here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse are giving me those looks that suggest I shut up.
So I will, but not before I point out that this one final quote:

“Brilliant.”—The New York Review of Books

I have always been a reader. Before the days of my Kindle, I have been known to read a book and then use it to prop up a wobbly sofa leg. There have been a few times when I have actually removed the book, looked at the title and reread it, disregarding the sofa leg-sized indentation reaching all the way through the paperback tome.

I am not particularly a discriminating reader, giving a lot of books the benefit of the doubt if I want to distract my mind from worries. I do have some standards and they are not necessarily low: I stop reading books in which the author devotes several pages to how disgusted he is with a thinly-disguised political leader or stops his story to promote some “cause”. I also do not read porny stuff, and find it annoying when a good writer adds it gratuitously.

Now that I have my Kindle – which I am NOT going to use to prop up furniture – I am reading more than ever and there’s the rub. Every morning, Amazon drops by my email box to tell me of the Daily Deal. You have to watch yourself because those 99 cent and a $1.99 purchases can add up.

Today’s offerring has given me a lift in the title: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. I clicked on the book (and you can, too, right HERE) and decided it was not for me. The gist of the story is that an active lady gets a debilitating illness and spends a lot of time observing the antics of a snail living on a bedside plant. One reviewer points out there is romance in the book, although I doubt you can get too graphic with a snail. What do they do? Rip their shells off in the heat of passion on an African Violet?

And, by the way, where did the suitor snails come from? I got the idea this was about a girl and her snail.

I don’t believe that it is not a well-written book; it is just at this time I do not want to think about having only the energy to document a snail on a plant. Now, of course, if the title were The Sound of a Wild Snail ______, I might think differently. Oh, that would break one of my main rules . . . although every rule has exception, dontcha know.

Recently I noted in a post that Yankee Candle was offerring scents for men. I’ve got a suggestion based on an email I received from LZP:

It was 95 degrees here today and the freakin’ dump is on fire
the whole county smells like a big smokey pot of chittlin’s.
aarrrrggghhh
at least this wasn’t Joe’s wedding day…
I am going yo go soak my head now….

I was so inspired; I suppose I should not have my experimental lab in the house, though, as I work on creating the recipe for BURNING DUMP.