I just looked at the computer clock and then out the window and it hits me . . . We are back on Slow Time. Or to make it clear to younger folks – yes, Quentin, I am thinking of you – Standard Time. Unfortunately, it is Eastern Standard Time, even though we are in the MIDWEST. I didn’t intend to capitalize that; I just did – perhaps it is the passion moving my caps lock key finger.

This week is to be “new roof week” with an Amish crew. I must remember to have them change the spotlight bulbs on the two-story driveway corners. Better write a note for the refrigerator. Or perhaps I should just put a post-it note on my forehead when I talk with the chief roofer.

It’s funny how you don’t know things about people – this roofing guy and I were talking last week and I asked if I could get back to him on an alteration in plans the next day. He said he was going to be gone, but would check later. Turns out he takes his daughter to Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Chicago for check-ups. They had told her at Fort Wayne there was nothing more they could do for her and the doctors at the CTC weren’t optimistic, but that was a year ago and she doesn’t need another scan check for three months now. So she starts this holiday season with some upbeat news.

He said, “We was close, but it brought us closer.” It seems even shingles have a story.

Is it airing your dirty laundry to remark that a family seems addicted to the musical chair version of “Who’s crazy now?” Oh, it would be. Well, never mind then and, after all, I didn’t mention the family in question.

So, on with the routine. Oh, dear, that involves crazy, too. Well, try to ignore it.

Yesterday had the makings of a garage cleaning, leaf-blowing, leaf-raking country song. I guess the end line of the refrain would have to be: Since I didn’t leaf vacuum, it didn’t suck. Actually, the main theme was fighting the impeding rain.

I worked as long as I thought wise in the garage, moving some stuff that could use a nice dust-off out to the driveway. I used the leaf blower to send all the little windblown-in debris heading back out of the garage and moved on to the little picket fence area, the woodpile areas, the garbage can niche, the hedge line and the under the blue spruce area. It was sort of fulfilling, watching the dry leaves before the Black & Decker hurricane fly.

They were so dry, however, they tended to disintegrate and form a nice leaf dust that permeated the space around me. Then the sky grew ominous and I grabbed this rake that is sort of the Godzilla of rakes and “rake-dozed” my piles to the curb.

I was done with what I wanted to do that day; I felt the first sprinkles and scurried back into the garage. I looked at the result of my work and thought, “Aha, and now the rain will wash the dust way.” I went inside and cleaned myself from leaf-entwined hair to ankles that were pitted with high-velocity dust, as opposed to summer’s high-velocity grass and weed particles.

I sat down and chanced to look out the window. It was not raining. I stared hard because maybe it was a fine rain. Well, it wasn’t fine because it wasn’t raining. I went out and saw I could count the sprinkle splashes on the dusty surfaces . . . including my car.

If I could keep up with my tipping points, this would be one of them.

My glasses went missing for two days during the few minutes it took me to take a shower. I am the person who has her glasses on her face for every waking hour and quite a few sleeping ones, so this quick and complete disappearance  was totally unexpected. I mean I am the Queen of Quick Showers and so we are talking mere minutes and a limited area. I thought I would find them in a matter of seconds, but this Nancy Drew bumbled around her mystery for two whole days.

It’s not that I can’t see without my glasses so much that the pull on my eye muscles is close to painful and alarms go off in my brain.

Fortunately, I had just purchased new glasses in the past few months, so the old ones had not made several trips from one drawer to another and eventually into the Black Hole of Forever Gone. And I had also signed up for the mega insurance plan for replacements if necessary. I was able to hop into my contingency plan and stave off the no glasses panic.

Still, misplacing my glasses is so UnAmeliaJake  it is ridiculous; it drove me about as crazy as not having them.

When Quentin called shortly after the crisis arose, he reminded me of the time a dog took his glasses and chewed them. I looked at Shane with my twitching-muscled eyeballs and thought certainly not. After searching the small area where they could logically be down to almost the molecular level, I was starting to wonder. The fact that the rubber dog hair removal brush had gone missing just as quickly earlier in the day did not bode well.  The fact that he had gone outside shortly before I discovered them gone was not encouraging.

Then last night, just about the same time of day they disappeared, I put my hand down on the rug by where I was sitting and felt them. It was disconcerting; I had looked right at that area over and over again and there had been no glasses there. Now, voila, glasses? I didn’t see any obvious damage. I also didn’t go running out to other rooms announcing the find. It was too eerie. People would have asked where I found them and I wasn’t prepared to get into any paranormal talk.

As for Shane  . . . let’s just say he might become a “usual suspect” since during my search I found a Wubba and numerous dog treats stashed in various places.

Since I had not logically located the glasses, it seemed I was not Nancy Drew; and when I looked in my driveway, there was no roadster. I think that makes it definite.

Again, so . . .

I entered the title before eight this morning and here, at 9:37 pm, I am starting a wee post. A tense day, but I am here still. Obviously. I voted this afternoon and, to my mind, one of the two ladies on duty for my precinct and an adjacent one sported a visage that was not too friendly at all. I don’t know if she knew me from somewhere and thought, “Oh, another dratted Republican.” Or it could be she just thought, “Oh, her.”

I got my “I Voted Today” sticker, though. In a while I will turn over to a news station for the results, probably with the sound down  to avoid the pundits. I got impatient and peeked over at a news site and . . . YES. Senator-Elect Coats, this little vote of mine helped you shine.

One thing about a digital camera – before you blur things and do whatever, the image coming out is downright unforgiving. This morning I made a wreath for Thanksgiving because I wanted to. When I began I thought I’d take some pictures to show Quentin that’s his mother’s project making hasn’t changed – it is seat of the pants.

YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING IN A DIGITAL PHOTO. And there is no doubt about it, I am a clutter-person.

Let’s both brace ourselves.

Old Roy dog treats, an empty bottle of bottled water, a book, a box of old pictures . . . That yellow thing to the lower right? It’s the label on a lamp oil bottle. There’s an empty magazine rack leaning on the firestove and you can see the back half of an upside down shoe.

What you can’t see is that down at the bottom there’s a good-sized Pilgrim and what you don’t know is that I eventually hung a wooden turkey so it would be in the center area of the wreath. This turkey is so ugly I have not thrown it out because it is just that ugly. Someone picked it up at GoodWill or a rummage sale and it got into the house and it is like the man who came to dinner.

It was either some craft project or a handmade toy for a kid. I’m betting it was a “how to use scrap wood and not cut your fingers off project”.

So here it is:

Bet you want one, right? Green with envy, right? You know once when we had a fire roaring, I thought, “Oh, I could just toss the turkey in there.” I’m thinking I must subconsciously believe that turkey has something on me – that if he turns up missing, the authorities will be sent to a safety deposit box where they will find incriminating pictures of me with a defeathered and beheaded turkey. Probably some crime scene evidence also.

There has to be some reason for my homegrown grapevines adorned with raffia, subdued fruit and embroidered Pilgrims to also sport a wooden, clunky turkey.

Soon I will have to look for Bob the Turkey whose tail opens up like a fan and hangs on the chandelier at Thanksgiving. That would the Bob the Turkey who hangs there through Christmas because I feel sorry him missing the festivities. Didn’t I even hang some ornament on him last year?