My grandmother used to say that, when something untoward happened. Lilio (see post below) were going to take a road trip to the nursing home to see Katheryn Feller when the phone rang and it was Robert and Alison calling from a car sitting on Fairview Bvld with its hazard lights blinking because the engine had died.

So I went over and, of course, had to say, “Here, let ME try to start it.” It cranked but wouldn’t turn over, and we had it towed. As of right now, the spark plugs are getting no spark food. We will see; but, in the meantime, I am staying close to home in case a car is needed. (We’ll go see Kathryn tomorrow.)

It’s an ill wind that blows no good, though, because my hunch app told me to turn into Scott’s and I got some ground sirloin and four rolls of Laura Lean at manager special prices.

I’m boring, aren’t I? We are looking for some warm clothes for Lilio and Rose had sent word she needs to be a little puritanized; I don’t know if we’ll have bloomer over her grass skirt or not. I’ll try and moderate Rose and perhaps she’ll settle for a Raggedy Ann style dress and lumber jack boots.

We were going to download some pictures of Lilio and Emily but while fooling with the camera, Summer and I came across some shots of her wearing a broken plastic hanger on her nose and making faces. (Should I post one of not . . . anonymously?) At that time, we were laughing to hard to trust ourselves with expensive electronic devices, so the download is later and probably when Summer is not around.

Last week there was this comment from Pottermom: Oh, tell Rose I ran into her cousin this week. She wants to come for an extended visit. Rose replied that would be okay but she’d have to bring her own sleeping bag. Well, Rose’s cousin just arrived, just minutes ago. We will post pictures soon, but since we noticed a tracking number on the package we felt we should announce her safe arrival immediately.

Let’s see if we can get a photobooth picture of Cousin Liliokauna, though.

Oh, by the way, Rose is on a mission trip to the Ohio Redoubt of the West Facing Cave, as is Sophie, so Emily will see that she gets settled in . . . and adapts to non-Hawaii weather.

I heard that sentence decades ago; it was spoken by the husband of my friend who was from a family of 11 kids. We were looking at a wedding picture of a crowd, when he uttered it. Yes, it was the bride, her parents and siblings.

Sometimes, I think of those 11 siblings, conjure up their spouses and grown or teen-aged kids and think, “Wow! What a workforce.” The I assign them each a job in my house and yard and sit here with my eyes closed, imagining their busy bodies doing all the chores and improvements and making me lunch to boot. With Grey Poupon.

Joe, LZP’s son who is in the Air Force and is being transferred from out west to  . . . brace yourself . . . North Dakota, stopped by his hometown on his marathon trip. That would be the kind of trip Der Bingle used to do way back when – I mean way back, so far back a lot of pictures are curling Polaroids. The “I don’t need no motel; I’ll drive 20 hours straight” trips.

When he got to North Liberty, he ate something, drank something and fell asleep. Then he got all scrubbed up and recognized his dad, his brother and his fiancee.

Sam and Joe.

Sam and Joe.

Dad LZP (aka Santa off-season)

AND . . . Joe and Sloane, who will be married this July. (And then she will go to North Dakota, too.) When they got engaged, he was in the sunny southwest; so plans of sundresses have given way to visions of parka hoods with fur around the face. Ah, such is true love.

I have watched clouds fill the sky and seen periods of sun – and, always, there has been the wind. It is gusting strong. I doubt that is the best way to express it grammatically, but it captures the feeling. When I was in Scott’s parking lot with a half-price vegetable tray in my sack, the wind turned the sack inside out and the veggies went plop, but the tray stayed closed.

In the time since I started typing until right now, the sky has gone from a threatening Melville storm to an exultant blue. And now it’s back again.

I hear a siren . . . maybe a tree came down, or power lines were ripped off poles. Guess this is one time I can find a use for my extra weight.

I am sore today because I decided to totally ignore Friday the 13th and worked with machinery. So, okay, the steam cleaner had picked up FISHING LINE at the very last suck of basement cleaning a couple of days ago AND NOBODY KNEW IT. Of course I knew it after I had toted it up to the porch and unknowingly pulled more and more fishing line off the reel . . . and when I turned it on, it sucked it all in and stopped.

It took me one and half hour to get it fixed, but fortunately perseverance prevailed and water got sucked back up and the rug got cleaner.

Then, high on my success, I mowed the yard. Nothing bad happened.

But last night I was tired and stiff and this morning I am stiffer. Maybe I should take a couple shots of single malt scotch and feel lubricated – although I’d still be a stiff.

Decisions.

So, last night came the news of the raccoon in the trash can – the trash can that had to go out to the street for morning pick-up. These are the thoughts that ran through my head:

Glad it was Cameron that saw it and not me; I have already had the famous Palatine, Illinois Raccoon Encounter, in which I was watching a late show in a room with six-foot sliding doors on the east side and eight-foot sliding doors on the north side, with a deck going around the corner from one to the other. A forest preserve was close by and I heard a sound and looked over my shoulder and saw these BIG EYES looking right at me. I might have yelled.

With this experience under my belt, my first thought was 10-foot pole . . . with Cameron on one end and the trash can on the other. In my mind, I saw the raccoon pull off an Errol Flynn jump and land on Cameron and nip him . . . with a possibly rabid mouth.

Cameron may or may not have been thinking something similar, although I am fairly certain Errol Flynn was not in his scenario. He said he thought he’d wait to take out the trash. And I said, “Okay.”

But we both dozed off and when I woke up it was time to take Alison to work and she said she got Robert to take the trash out because Cameron hadn’t done it. And I launched into the Raccoon Story, although I think I embellished a little. It was a HUGE raccoon and we would have needed a 100-foot pole with spikes on it, dipped in deadly poison. And we didn’t have an antidote in case there was a little accident.

If the trip to the hospital had been any longer and I had talked more, I suppose the news trucks from the supermarket tabloids would be pulling up out front about now.

Cameron just came in and said a raccoon was in one of our trash cans. So there is a plot and it will thicken, I think.