I went to the store and bought myself a pair of walking shoes, ones with comfy, cushioned heels. Then I came home and decided a nap would feel so good, so I took one. Then I stretched, got a drink, started to read but felt myself dozing off . . . and went with it. And now I’m going to settle down for a long winter’s night in the middle of summer.

This afternoon I wanted to go visit Kathryn at the nursing home and I wanted to be clean, so I showered and shampooed. Then I brushed my hair and decided my roots needed to dry upright . . . so I scooped up most of my hair into a topknot and stuck a hat on my head – my dear, beloved Dorfman Pacific hat with the mesh crown and the neck strap.

Sometime at the the nursing home, I took my hat off, forgetting about my hair sticking out at odd angles and spouting on top. I did not realize this until much later, after many trips to the nurses’ station and talking with people who came in the room.

I notice I’ve been doing this frequently. I don’t know what the staff calls me there, and I guess it’s more comfortable for my self confidence that way.

I know where I have been; I just didn’t realize how things blended together, as did days. This has been a week of trips to Fort Wayne, hours spent at the LaGrange house as the new green metal roof goes on, extra time at the
nursing home because Mrs. Feller’s daughter’s been sick . . . and because I like sitting there with Kathryn and Clara . . . and one dastardly day of eight or so hours of catching up (a little bit) on housework. I just don’t like that activity and am stressing rules, i.e. You get something out; you put it away.

So, no, I’m not gone; I’m here . . . for what it is worth.

Just a bit of evening light is coming through the windows and individual lamps make pools of cozy light here and there. A lot of us have our butts on one chair and our feet on another – that is, we each have our own two chairs. Glenn Miller is on the music player and right now we’re listening to Glenn Miller and “There’ll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover” and it’s relaxing.

We’re thinking of the cemetery in Kingman, Indiana because we found a three-week lost letter today from Phyllis about how the flower on my dad’s grave is flourishing. When I say Phyllis, I sort of mean Phyllis and Duane – Duane being my oldest cousin on Daddy’s side. I can remember their wedding when I was pretty young; it’s always been Phyllis and Duane. Duane was the star figure in one on my dad’s bedtime stories; I can remember lying in bed in Bloomington, Indiana and choosing “The Night Duane broke his arm” often. It was a basketball game – a 1950’s Indiana basketball game.

I asked Duane and Phyllis to be The Robert Grismore Geranium Watering Brigade since they live down the road a bit. Phyllis was worried when they left to visit their son Tim, but when she got back there were 17 blooms on it.

Thank you, Phyllis & Duane, from Mother and me, and, of course, the man who rests there.

It has been a long day and my head aches. I came home, shucked my clothes,looked at my email and saw that there was an update on a CarePage. The patient is a little boy and he is all right. Someone fed his dog, Buster, rat poison and he died nine days later. He was a Golden Labrador who was not quite two.

Uh, I tried for a group picture and LZP, of course, has a variety of expressions – one of which was fairly normal. Unfortunately, in that one Der Bingle was not as his best. So we tried a little tweaking:

Here are the original four shots.

I have been scatterbrained of late, more so than usual, and I am having trouble organizing anything – even little post tidbits. I don’t see improvement on the horizon, so I have decided to adapt and just open a post and drop off any thoughts that are falling out of my head at that time.

Well, I’ve mentioned going to Iowa, but I didn’t say that we were taking someone else – the Monk. The Monk is a ceramic statue that Cameron and I saw a couple of years ago at the Catholic Rummage Sale; I think it supposed to be St. Francis of Assisi, though he was missing the usual birds on his shoulder and his hand. We didn’t buy him. When we got home, however, we heard the call of The Monk and Cameron went back and purchased him and brought him home on the scooter, balanced between his legs. Not something he woke up thinking he would be doing.

Anyway, The Monk moved around from job to job here and for a while we tried to convince Der Bingle he needed a monk at the Ohio Redoubt. Then one weekend, Der Bingle and Summer were tossing a Shane toy and Summer knocked The Monk and his fall decapitated him. I probably had the body and head sitting around here for two, three months.

Then, when it was Iowa Time and we were taking the sundial that had been in Der Bingle and his brother’s maternal grandpa’s back yard to LZP, I decided The Monk should go as well. He has a new job now and a new name: St. Bernardus. He’s named after the traditional Der Bingle/LZP sharing of St. Bernardus Christmas Ale. (It was saved from Christmas and imbibed on a sweltering Iowa afternoon and evening.)

See . . . his head is back on, thanks to LZP who is pictured here in his fez, which seems to be a cut-off gnome hat, or not.

Yesterday morning I went to Fort Wayne for my blood testing appointment and on the way home I pulled into a gas station that was advertizing $3.17 a gallon. I filled up. When I left I noticed the sign jumping to $3.54. YES!

Yesterday afternoon I took others to Fort Wayne for appointments and on the way there – on Anthony Blvd, where Concordia has its stadium on one side of the road and the the school on the other – teens were lined up to cross the street from practice. They watched the traffic and took off when the going was good. One pair of guys, though, walked right out in front of me and I had to stomp on the brakes. Later I discovered this jolt had caused a gas can in the trunk to fall over and start leaking. That ‘later’ was when we came out from the appointment and got in the car to drive home. Hot day but the windows were open.

I have been researching ways to deal with this. Each article cautions not to use a match. Okay. Makes sense. But there are no really good suggestions so I will be experimenting . . . I hope I just don’t get the spark of an idea. GROAN.

Not that this is a special day that will show up on a history quiz; no title came to me, so I went with the date, which is fine for those of using this calendar system.

Der Bingle sent me a picture of Lilio making new friends and visiting at the Ohio Redoubt, but it didn’t come through on my email and I could not forward it from my phone. I’m not certain what is up with Sprint, but maybe there is some sort of National Security surrounding Lilio.

Today is a trip day to Middlebury and Shipshewana in LaGrange County and it is supposed to be 96 degrees. Tomorrow is predicted to be 98 . . . and we still have no – as in zippo, nada – rain. Early this morning when I was taking my walk, I glanced at a picture mounted on glassed in porch – one of those things you don’t see while driving – and it was of a blasted politician I can’t stand. I did not go up and grab it and smash it, but since I was listening to the overture of The Longest Day on my ipod, it was a pretty hard action to resist. I will say this, it gave some extra oomph to my pace.

You know what I’m doing here, dontcha? I’m delaying getting cleaned up so I can go sweat in the 96 degrees.

Well, to the task . . .