When I had my new furnace installed in October, we were still having warm days, but the evenings were quite cool and the temperature inside my brick house stayed fairly consistent. I had set the touch screen thermostat on Heating Mode with an upper cut-off and it worked well.

Then we had a some very warm days a couple of weeks ago and when I walked through the dining room, I saw the temperature inside was 77 degrees; I thought I was getting a bit warm and the room seemed close. I’ve written about the segment where we found out the Cooling Mode was connected incorrectly and so no matter what amount of fiddling I did with the thermostat, the outside unit would not come on. It was fixed, for free, and I decided to go to the Auto Mode. And, I need remedial thermostat training.

Actually, I don’t think I ever understood the ins and outs of this thermostat; there had not been a quiz. It appears there are periods of the day and you set what temperature you want during those time periods. I tried it and, frankly, it got fairly cold one night.

I started fooling around with the thermostat again – and “fooling around” is the most accurate way to describe what I was doing – and made things worse. It seems you can add as many periods as you want, and name them if you so desire. (Awake, Sleep, Away, Home, Work, etc.) Finally, I found out it was possible to delete periods as well. This was fortunate because somehow I had filled up the thermostat window with lots of periods, each wanting to have a temperature designated.

What I want to do is set temperature that triggers the heating mode and, if necessary, the cooling mode. I may have to consult YouTube. It will probably work out, assuming I do not let my AmeliaJake-ness take over and make a bunch of time periods that I can name, such as George, LaTisha, Harvey, Annabelle, Jack. I know that’s not right, but it is so tempting.

It is good news. Last year when the new thermostat for the new furnace was installed, one wire was inadvertently attached at the wrong place and so the outside unit did not receive a message which said: START UP, THEY ARE ROASTING IN HERE. There was no cost. Woo Hoo. And, because the spring continued to be cool – the day the AC man came the high might have been 50 degrees – we actually did not roast.

Memorial Day is not far off; imagine that. It has been an odd year in relation to seasons. If this were the real, the authentic, the rocking chair on the porch old days, I would be one of the old-timers remarking about days when we used to melt in our band uniforms while marching on Memorial Day.

I am still an old-timer – just writing on a blog – and not counting the days until I can wear white shoes. Such rules. My goodness. Oh, by the way, I still often call the refrigerator “the icebox.”

Cameron and I have started to make a habit out of watching “600 lb. Life” on Wednesday nights; I don’t know why. We don’t make fun of anyone; I think it started out to be surreal – people too overweight to get out of bed and yet somehow making relatives bring them food and more food.

But L***, the psychotherapist who sees patients referred by the bariatric surgeon because of their eating habits, DRIVES ME CRAZY. (It’s a short trip, I know) There are three or four therapists to whom he sends patients, but when he announces it, I almost yell at the TV: NO! NO! NOT L***. Tonight luck was against me. It was the L woman. I will not state that she is, but I will say that, in my opinion, she is an AIRHEAD.

And, after an entire season, of holding my fingers from typing about her, I now feel the irresistible urge to put her in the Joe Biden category and let everybody know it. AmeliaJake can’t stand L***.

Let me introduce my therapist: Her name is Feisty, although sometimes she too has to give her feist a kick in the patootie.

Rose recommended her. You remember Rose –

Rose is out scuba diving with her bestie, so she’s not available this week.

Anyway, Feisty says I don’t need a couch or a box of kleenex for our sessions; she is recommending drinks and foldover sandwiches, with 35 calorie per slice bread and a thin layer of PB from the largest jar I have seen. Feisty says we’re probably going to use it all before she deems me ready for function, maybe even need another jar.

Maybe I should contact one of those telephone shrinks who advertise on TV?

First there was the multiple car pile-up on icy April 17th that totaled the car; then the rider mower at LaGrange signaled there was no way it was going to make it through even the beginning of this season; now – after a long, cold spring –  I selected the cooler option on the thermostat and became aware that THE OUTSIDE UNIT WAS NOT STARTING UP.

I checked circuit breakers and went outside and “professionally” looked at the non-working unit. I did not spy a reset switch which had been mentioned in internet articles, along with the warning to not fool around with anything if you didn’t know what you were doing. I might have been qualified to look for a red button, but I knew I had no business poking around any wires. So, no red button and  I am on a waiting list for a diagnostic visit from the repairman. Friday, but maybe sooner if there is a cancellation.

It is an adage that things come in three’s; well, I don’t know if perhaps I am starting a cycle of THREES. That is to say: three unfortunate events, then three more, and then a third series of three. I am a little worried about getting up from the sofa.

ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN: I could get up and catch my foot in wires and send my computer flying to destruction; I could start down to the basement and end up cartwheeling down; I could  . . . oh, gosh, just anything.

But, I will go ahead and attempt a shower – at least, whatever happens, I will be clean.

That’s right; you can’t tow a John Deere lawn tractor, although “Nothing Runs Like a Deere” according to their slogan. This is a quick For Your Information, Public Service Announcement post-let. It is not a full post because I have a full day and so must hurry and forgo what would be my usual account of the John Deere purchase which would follow the pattern of  an Alice’s Restaurant story. So, no pictures, no circles and arrows, no dumping of garbage, no Group W bench.

And no little asides about John Deere green vs. Kermit the Frog green and which is easier.

The basics: I had to get a lawn tractor; I researched it; I wound up at a John Deere dealership  – GreenMark – and became the proud owner of a super shiny green machine. The salesman familiarized me with the position of the levers and the pedals on the mower, including this little L-shaped thing that sticks out the back and should be pulled out if you want to push the machine. Then he mentioned that you should never, ever tow it. If you run out of gas, you push it. And he stressed he had seen many an expensive machine ruined because it had run out of gas and been towed and so he made a point of telling people. Good.

This is now in my mind like a phobia. What if I go crazy and tow it; okay, I should say crazier. I will probably make a sign: DO NOT TOW to ease my mind. And I can’t casually say, Oh, my John Deere mower is great; it toes the line. I probably would never have considered that sentence, but my phobia center is obviously right next to my pun center in my brain. Bad.

Now to the errands of the day.

I wrote an email to someone yesterday that referred in passing to the temperatures this “spring” and I commented that the long-lasting cold to cold-ish temperatures had left me unsettled and stuck in hibernation.

What I did not write then, but will do so now, is that this long winter has resulted in scales on my eyes. It has become a routine to pull into the driveway up to the backdoor, hop out and settle in to read or binge watch some Netflix series – Babylon Berlin being an example.

Yesterday the temperature edged its way over 80 degrees. It had reached up to and past 60 in the past few days. Do you know how fast grass can grow? Well, let’s just say that for right now the old adage about watching the grass grow isn’t really applicable. Not at all.

I went outside and surveyed the yard and while standing on my driveway heard something hit the concrete. I looked down and Heavens to Betsey, it was the scales from my eyes. Seeing all of the summertime jobs that are demanding to be done, it was tempting to bend over and put them back on my eyes.

But the scales are yucky looking; maybe I will opt for sequins.

It has been a trying day, and I have to write that I am really annoyed when people write such things in a blog and then don’t get specific. So I am a hypocrite, but is not that it has been a major traumatic day – just a series of topics with backstories that would be be boring.

On the other hand, today a yogurt fell out of the refrigerator and did NOT crack open and splat the contents all over the floor. I did NOT get out to the car and realize I had forgotten something. Double stick tape did NOT get all fouled up and wind up being a tape ball yoyo. I watched a couple of history documentaries that had, in my opinion, a good tinge of revisionism and did NOT feel like throwing anything at the TV. I suppose I am most grateful for the non-splatting yogurt.

When I was riding along with Der Bingle in Dayton, I got to let my eyes wander to more things than the road ahead of me.  Dayton is at what I call the beginning of the Ohio River descent, which is to say there are a lot of places where you can be in a populated area and still have ravines and expanses of vegetation. And in Dayton, there were a lot of green blurs, not just the easy-to-see through stick formations that have been lining the roads here for so long.

I’m been around the barn a few times when it comes to seasons, but this is the first year that I have not anticipated the budding of the trees and bushes because winter has seemed so entrenched. Because I have not been thinking about things getting green, I did not give any thought to pulling out the grape vine that was strangling the side hedge.

This is not a task you want to undertake in summer, but I did anyway one year and discovered it was like separating fly strips. So I got Cameron and we went out to the hedge this afternoon; it didn’t look too daunting. It was a bunch of tangling branches, but looked as if you could select a grape branch, follow it to its source, use the pruning saw and slip it out.

No. Not only is it not slippery like spaghetti (that has not been overcooked), it is very strong. In fact, I now suspect it may have some inbuilt defense response that shouts out: Heads up, guys, it’s tug of war time. More than once, we had to apply our combined weight to get the section we had detached to give up its hold on the hedge. It was about the intensity of the reverse of putting a stubborn cat in a carrier.

By the time we had a good bit of it out, I felt as if we had been fighting a tentacled monster in some scary thriller. Lying on the ground, it looks like a monster, not the stuff of which attractive grapevine wreathes are made.

Now I am waiting for the sunlight to reach into the sparse depths of the hedge and encourage it to leaf out and thicken. I am not giving up hope on that one; I have actually succeeded to some degree in getting the hedge to spread out to the north a bit so it is not a just a property line fence. The myrtle that has been on a transplant migration from Fountain County, Indiana to LaGrange County to here is spreading nicely. An entire yard of myrtle might not be bad (if you don’t plan to play croquet).

Tomorrow the hedge clippers for the evergreen shrubs in front, with Cameron to clip away and me to hold the cord  . . . because when working alone, you try to be careful but get tired and think just a bit more and CUT THE CORD. It’s moments such as that that make even the foulest-mouthed person just sigh in extreme frustration and only manage an Ah Shucks. Then there is the walk of shame back to the garage with this large implement trailing a foot of brightly-colored extension cord. Nothing better than that to take the spring out of your step.

Today is Friday. Today is Friday.

Let’s just keep repeating that and maybe I won’t have to worry about my arms extending out in front of me and my walk becoming a shuffle.

I got back from Dayton on Wednesday afternoon and I was well aware it was Wednesday. Then I went to Kroger’s in the evening and caught myself thinking that all the specials should be different because they change on Thursday. So the start of this Twilight Zone shift must have started then.

But it gets odder. I awoke on Thursday thinking I’ll go get the morning paper because Saturday has the best Sudoku. Of course, it wasn’t Saturday. I thought, “Oh yeah, it’s Friday.” An all day long, I kept in mind what I had to do before business offices closed for the week-end. Then, somehow, I became aware it was Thursday. Who knew? Obviously, not me.

Perhaps all this started because when I got home on Wednesday, I rented a Redbox film and came home to find the Blue Ray remote missing. I did my usual look, which is usually successful and came up empty-handed. Not to be deterred, I turned the sofa upside down. Well, that got the sofa clean – and all the cushions neatened up. But no remote.

I looked everywhere, figuratively speaking, because if I had looked everywhere literally, I would have found it. Perhaps it was thoughts like that that zapped my brain.

So I went to sleep, pouting, and had nightmares and opened my eyes on Thursday – to what I felt, for some crazy reason was Saturday. And that takes us back to the beginning of this time awareness story. Now, on Thursday, which I had found out was not Saturday, or Friday, I puttered around and developed a slight headache, which I felt would be helped by a “slight” lie-down. I fell asleep and had all sorts of wild dreams and awoke to light in the window and thought I had slept through until the next morning – Saturday. I guess I had never truly been convinced when I lay down that it was Thursday.

Of course, it was not morning; it was afternoon and it was the same day, which was Thursday – although it felt like Friday.

And I’ll be darned if today doesn’t seem like Saturday – AGAIN. Maybe there is such a thing as Zombie Dust, sort of a different thing from what Tinkerbell and the other fairies scatter around. Although, if tomorrow is not Saturday, I guess I will be in Never Never Land. At least, I hope I am not heading toward being a Zombie.

So sorry for wasting your time.