For two decades, I had reported to doctors that I am allergic to sulfa – until one informed me that really I should say I was sensitive because I do not get a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction. So for the following decades I have been telling them the modified “sensitive” assessment. Well . . .  when I found out I had a UTI and the doctor said sulfa was the drug of choice and asked what did I remember from close to 60 years ago about the sulfa situation. Not much, although I think my parents said my fever went up after each dose. I guess there was more to it than that.

Yesterday morning, after three doses, I started to feel nauseated. And then I threw up and thought, “Okay, that’s that; now I’ll call the doctor and leave the message that I’m suspending taking it.” I got nauseated again; I puked. I felt a little shaky and rested and then I got really, really urgently nauseated and while I was hurrying to the bathroom  – and considering stopping off at the kitchen sink – two things happened. Summer yelled, “Grandma’s going to throw up,” and Der Bingle walked in the door.

It was not pretty. It was violently projectile  . . . Good thing it happened here and not where it could have been documented for “People of Walmrt.”

Then I found a nice soft and horizontal place under afghans and stayed there the night. I think I feel better

There is no post title because I was tempted to type Thirsty on Thursday, but even I couldn’t bring myself to do that. There’s a simple explanation: Alison tested herself for a UTI with a kit from a store and we were going to use me as a baseline, comparing a negative test with a positive. They were cheap tests from the Dollar Tree and had been moved from store to store how many times I can’t imagine and I really didn’t think you could trust them.

Mine turned purple. PURPLE. Maybe even a darker shade than that, so I thought about it for awhile and called the doctor for an official urine test and he came out and said, “You do indeed have an infection. What are your symptoms?” I told him I had thought I was just getting older. We’ll see if I feel “younger” after this round of medication.

Actually, I like the fact they made it purple – a royal color, dontcha know? They could have kept with the sick urine theme and made it . . . oh, use your imagination. Sorry.

The lady who lives across the street had to go into a nursing home early this year and while the signs for auction of her house have been up for some time, no date was listed. Today, they are setting out tables for the stuff; she’d lived there since 1941 so I don’t know if they are going to take a day to set up or not.

I don’t know if I will go over, although I’m certain she has things from the past that have not left that house for decades. Then, again, I have the same situation since Mother did not want an estate sale. People used to tell me about my mother’s good taste and possession of old antiquey things and ask, “When’s the sale?” And I would say there wasn’t going to be one. I have given away some things, but it is difficult to know what people of different generations would appreciate.

At some time, people would go to antique stores and auctions and buy “instant ancestors” i.e., pictures from the late 1800’s of some solemn, unknown old person staring out from a gilt frame. I have two above our flat screen TV; the best you can say about it is eclectic. I suspect some family members would have liked to have them, but these pictures, enhanced with the techniques of the time, are of my grandmother’s parents and I remember her talking about them. They are not some people who are identified solely by their slots on a high branch of a family tree.

My great grandmother was a very nice lady, according to things my grandmother recalled people telling her and gleamed from wrinkly old letters and cards. My great-great Aunt Sara once said, “I always thought so much of your mother.” For Aunt Sara, that was something, indeed. My great-grandfather would stand where the lane intersected Rte.120 with a lantern so my grandmother could see where to turn when she returned from teaching school after dark in the winter. Sometimes she would fall asleep and the horse would bring her home.

Once, when she was young, Grandma ran up behind her father who was using a scythe and her leg was almost severed. She lay for weeks on a horse hair sofa with the leg elevated by being suspended from sofa’s back. I know her parents were sick with worry and her father racked with undeserved guilt.

These pictures are primitive when it comes to portraits; they certainly are not made of pixels. They stare out at me in my house because I was very close to Grandma and they were her parents, They have come down through the maternal line with feeling. So I kept them, even though there are other descendants with the same last name as theirs.

It would be a good idea for me to actually consider decorating with new wallpaper or designer paint, but I’ve never been one to think about out-dated decors or furniture. So I guess my great-grandparents fit right in.

I read that some people think they are smarter in the morning; judging from my whimsical post title up there, I would tend to believe I am not one of them.

So, moving on . . .

I just realized this is an upsetting situation: It is September 11th and I am in a frivolous mood. I just woke up that way; it’s kind of like having hiccups at a recital.

i feel very personal today and so when I remembered the date, I immediately thought how things have changed for me since then. In 2001, the grandkids were little, my mother was going strong, Little Ann and Sydney were are dogs and when Der Bingle called to tell me a plane had flown into the World Trade Center, I assumed it was a little plane and an accident.

Well, writing that paragraph has sobered me up and widened my view; I remember sitting in the chair in the sitting room watching the continuous news coverage and watching in real time as the building collapsed. It took awhile to accept that this was no movie scene.

Perhaps I am experiencing something such as the scene between Katherine Hepburn and John Wayne in the movie Rooster Cogburn where she comes upon Wayne and the Indian Boy throwing corn muffins into the air and then shooting them, as in primitive skeet shooting. She was angry and asked why they were shooting corn muffins in a meadow and her father lay newly dead and the killer at large. Wayne replied they were celebrating and when she asked what they were celebrating, he answered, “Being alive, Sister, being alive.

I don’t quite remember what I did today, although it may have concerned reading, with an interruption to fill Shane’s water bowl. Every time I did get up to walk here or there – here probably being the kitchen and there the bathroom – I picked up white fluff from the floor. Shane is shedding and I guess getting a new undercoat. I didn’t realize it took so much water, but I guess you work up a thirst scratching and rubbing against furniture.

He doesn’t like being combed too much, but he is happy to sit with you while you position your fingers like a beginning piano player, stick them in his fur and move them around like, well, “Magic Fingers”. He does not put a quarter in the little tip jar so I am thinking of taping a cardboard slot to my pocket and refusing to move until he pays up.

But, oh those puppy eyes. Sigh.

We haven’t heard about the car that conked out in Fort Wayne, other than to learn they are looking at it . . . Probably not good news. We’re taking it in stride, although I have been seeing red – Classic Red, that is. That’s the color I’m painting the shed out back; I can see if on the shed and I see it on me.

While I was wearing swatches of red classic on my skin and clothes, I thought I might as well wade into some shrubs and saw out a few tall leaders. I did and then came walking across the front lawn with the saw still in my hand just as a college girl passed. She is here in Northern Indiana for four months from Bulgaria, demonstrating software door-to-door. I don’t know if she really is from Bulgaria, of if that is just an angle to get more attention, but then maybe she didn’t know if I were really just a painting, pruning lady . . . or a casual murderer.

I was very nice and did not point to big splashes of classic red on my leg and say, “Oh, that’s Cousin Leroy; he won’t be bothering us anymore. The blob on my arm is Agnes, the tenant we just couldn’t get rid of . . . until now.”

I answered my cell phone today and that was Curtain Up! Robert was on the line – in the ether, cyberspace, whatever and he asked me what could make a thumping noise in a car. He was in Fort Wayne in the parking lot at Logan’s. . . and then I was in Fort Wayne also. Then we were home and the car is at the Wayside Garage. Well, at least it sounds like a feel-good Indie movie. Oh, maybe two old ladies sharing a nice chat at a homey service station – something along that line.

I have to say I would feel better if the name of the garage were There’s Nothing Wrong With Your Car. I imagine this story will continue – one way or another.

Apparently so. More likely, though, is that I have started posting in my head and thinking that I have actually typed it. Given some of my off-the-wall thoughts lately, that is probably a good thing.

Summer is taking art and drew a still life picture of her shoe; now she can’t find it. She has shown me the picture so I can help look. This would more than likely have been a good post for only my head.

My parents, Robert and Sarah Shimp Grismore, were patrons of an artist in Parke County. I think she was some relation to my father, but really I don’t know. She painted pictures on canvas, on old saw blades, on wooden paddles and even the flat side of old cast iron irons.

I’ve highlighted some before on this blog, but I’m not going to go and make a bunch of links because the very people who might be interested can easily type her name into the search box.

Here are a couple of the irons:

We enjoy them here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse . . . of course, we do have to watch out that no one irons out any disagreements by the whacking method.

When I was little, I would not eat a tomato. YUCK! Then one day I discovered I loved them and one year I planted some and ate so many my both developed sores from the acidity nature of the little red guys. This year has been a slow year for tomato maturation in Indiana . . . but finally, they are nice and red and juicy.

I have been eating them and each one tastes good, but that magnificent zest is no longer there. No more do I put a big old slice in my mouth and suddenly want to put my head down on the kitchen counter in a moment of ecstasy.

I am reminded of my father in the summer eating area, quoting William Wordsworth:

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes, 10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair; 15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.

I was in my teens then, I think . . . or just a wee bit older. Who knew I’d find the truth of that in a tomato?