It was supposed to be somewhat sunny and about 60 in LaGrange today. Well, it’s not going to be that. I am donning jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and a sweatshirt. Guess I won’t have to worry about sunscreen – I should be concerned with goggles because it is going to be w i n d y.
Well, if I don’t get started now, I will just stay sitting; I know myself.
Some days are just off-kilter. Today was one of them. But, like other days, it is passing. So, then, we come to tomorrow . . . and it is supposed to be sunny, if a little cool. Cool would be good because circumstances have kept me from mowing – and I mean THE BIG MOWING, not this little pansy stuff here.
Yes, it is Mother’s Day, and, yes, it is Sunday; but I’ll be taking care of Mother’s yard, and, following her example, not roaring a motor during the worship hour at the Methodist Church just down the road.
I told someone a couple of weeks ago that I first started “mowing” that yard before I can remember – following behind my grandfather with my little toy mower. I said, “And I’m still doing it.” She asked, “Not with the same mower?” No, but, you know, the view is sort of the same. And come to think of it, I won’t be wearing short, short seersucker pants with ruffles on the butt. Maybe, though, I’ll wear my Lands End hot pink utility, convertible pants. STOP! Don’t visualize it without bracing yourself first.
I’ll read a bit now and then curl up and doze the night away, perhaps dreaming of a laser mower – one shaped like a golf club with the laser beam emitting from the head, complete with controls for distance . . . don’t want to – oops – chop a tree down.
I got my little friend on my key chain as a present; she has served faithfully, but is getting tired. I am letting her retire to a nice keepsake box ( with pasture) – or maybe on the window sill where she can keep up with things. Her moo is getting weak, so I will probably take out the screw in her little tummy and put in a new battery.
Now, I’m going to go look and see if of her cow friends wants to volunteer to join me from www.simplybovine.com. I hope she’ll give me a good reference.
They came back so quickly!!
I mowed on Saturday and yesterday morning I looked at the front yard and the dandelions were all over. Actually, they had a sort of grouping to them: they looked like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, only yellow. I was tempted to get the mower out right then, but I was committed to washing windows.
I should have been committed for even thinking of washing those windows. I have old-fashioned paned casement windows – a total of eight in the den. The corners of the panes are the hardest. Let’s see: four corners per pane, eight panes per window, eight windows. That would be 256 units of pain.
Today, though, I did mow, using my electric mower and it started to sprinkle . . . but it stopped, so I didn’t have to. Unfortunately, the Mormon Tabernacle Dandelion choir was no more (for now) and so I did not hear a HALLELUYAH.
Summer and I rearranged things in her room today in an attempt to get the most comfort from her air-conditioning vent. It went okay; we moved a desk and her bed. The bed was easy enough and the desk wasn’t difficult, but there was a little surprise when I started to lift my end of the desk: the top came right up. I quickly let it go back down and told Summer that the top apparently comes off. She didn’t understand at first and replied that, no, we didn’t need to take everything off the top to ease the desk in a hovering scoot around the corner.
I said again, “The top comes off.” And she told me again we didn’t need to take the stuff off the top. Finally, I lifted on my end and said, “Look, the top of the desk is coming up and leaving the bottom standing where it is right now.” She pulled a little on her end and exclaimed, “The top comes off!” For a moment we stood there holding a thick piece of wood with a lot of things on it, including a TV. Then we set it down and bowed to the inevitable: she lifted the TV off and put it on the floor and I took the papers, books, pencils, snacks, cable box and deposited them on the bed.
We then lifted up the five-foot top and realized we had no idea what we were going to do with it; it wasn’t a drill team maneuver but we did find a place for it to lean. We moved the base; we put the top back on . . . getting the TV and the cable box situated required some cord untangling and heartfelt thanks to the person who had left a long length of cable slack. I had to sit there cradling the cable box (still attached to the TV) while Summer detached the wall cable from it and got the kinks out and then reconnected it.
We turned it on for a test and there was Sponge Bob in his square pants. I sighed. The school counselors told her she was their best science student . . . and Sponge Bob? He should at least have trapezoid pants. Then, again, my brother-in-law, who went to school on a Mensa scholarship, can recite all the lines in every Three Stooges episode.
We finished up and for some reason the exercise left us both with sore buttockal muscles. And that would be too much information.
When I was ordering online, I passed over the Station glasses because I had a feeling they were thin and more likely to break; they are thin and they probably do need more careful handling than the tough Gilbratar glasses. However, standing in the store with the glass in my hand, it felt so nice – delicate and refined. What it didn’t say on the website is that they are Krosno from Poland. (Well, it may say Poland – I can’t remember.) I bought a few for myself and I am using one now. Actually, I not only like them – I really, really like them.
They are like the Jax glasses Crate & Barrel used to carry; Der Bingle has some of these and he really likes them. (Maybe even really, really likes them.)
Just thought I’d let you know.
My first cousin Lana is younger than I from late August of one year to early May of the next. So, now, we are the same age. I don’t know why, but this time of year, I always feel like “Ha ha HAHAHA d’ HAHA” and chortle some.
Happy Birthday, Lana Jane.
Oh, yeah, there’s this picture of us from some time back:
That’s me on the left and Lana on the right. (Susie is between us and Glenda is right behind her. We were the little ones.)
Now that I have my giggling out of the way . . . for a moment . . . HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LANA.
That post title could be misleading if there is a town named Back. Yes, that is the state my mind is in. I started driving about 7:30 am to the western side of Cincinnati and then I got back some time around five . . . I think. Alison’s mother is very sick and I took her down.
I think I am a little tired. But I wasn’t too tired to pop into Crate & Barrel at Keystone in Indianapolis. On the way down, I used Ind.9 as a connector between I-69 and I-74; I thought I’d give it a 55 mph plus towns and stoplight trial as an alternative to taking I-465, which I find to always be under construction. It is also one of those roads that requires knowing insider information about both which lane when and the key word for the exit to the part of town you want.
I was glad I’d taken Ind. 9 because it started to rain and when I flipped on my wipers, I discovered they had experienced their last hurrah. I spotted an auto store, turned in and walked out with super wipers; I could not only see, but they didn’t make an awful noise. Then, on the way back, I thought that, well, going on the Indianapolis loop wouldn’t be bad on a Sunday and Crate & Barrel is practically a stone’s throw from the road.
There was the part about remembering that you have to take an actual exit AFTER you have exited the loop to get from Meridian to 86th . . . but it worked out okay. I pulled my crunched-up Buick into a parking place along side all the BIG and shiny SUV’s and walked in and around without breaking anything. I also bought about 8 sale glasses as a treat for moi. And I confidently chatted with the salesclerk as if I were driving a BIG shiny SUV. I don’t know if I pulled it off or not. Like I said, though, I didn’t break anything.
I-69 just after exiting I-465 was a mess and, fortunately, it was not a weekday. Barrels and signs about delays abounded. Traffic was heavier than I expected and I started to feel as if everyone had been told the cops had taken the day off. I stayed at a steady 75 and was passed lots of times . . . I may have passed a couple of cars. I remember I went around an RV that looked like a giant Brink’s truck – all grey and buttoned up.
The miles to Fort Wayne clicked down slowly and I went from planning to stop for a taco to just getting back. I see this has turned out to be like an obligatory book report – so let’s just say: that’s all she wrote.
That’s all I could manage, that one word – dandelions – after I looked at the front yard yesterday and saw yellow things all over. I had just mowed that area on Tuesday! But there they were; I believe they like to lurk and then spring forth. This morning I pulled the mower out again and found out many of them were just actually very close to the ground; they were under the blades of the mower. I was not happy, but since the electric mower is incredibly easy to lower and raise in height, when I came to a patch, I pushed the level and scalped them. I must have had a terrible look on my face because even I, preoccupied by the little nasties, could feel my eyebrows crunch down, my lips press together and my jaw clench.
Of course, I remember a while back I did have to acknowledge the benefits of dandelions – sigh – but, drat, there are so . . . YELLOW.
We went to LaGrange County today and Summer started to develop a blister on her foot, so we switched shoes and I forgot about it. We had taken two cars, so coming back Der Bingle with Cameron, Summer and Shane turned east on US 6 off of IND.9 to go to Kendallville and I turned west to head to the nursing home in Albion.
As I was walking to the front door, I looked down at my feet and saw these shoes.
Well, at least I can console myself thinking about Summer being upset by wearing what she loves to call – using her favorite double adjective phrase – “old people” shoes.