Ree Drummond, has cultivated the blog seed she planted back in, oh, 2006, into a major brand. You know it: The Pioneer Woman. It has grown from stories and pictures of her family’s enormous ranch in Oklahoma to include a TV cooking show, a product line at Wal-Mart, re-purposed buildings in small Pawhuska: The Merchantile and an in progress boarding house. She has done very well. I forgot to mention the cookbooks and her pets, primarily Charlie, a basset hound who was the subject of one of her books.

Charlie did what dogs do when they get old – he passed away. Unfortunately, he was one of the faces of The Pioneer Woman brand. She got another basset, Henry, and wrote how much like Charlie he was. On March 7th, she wrote an entry in the section known as Confessions and addressed the issue of Henry being just like Charlie and maybe the family should just accept it and call him Charlie. She was voted down. Thank Heavens. One would hate to think of the successful Charlie being nothing more than an advertising cog in the Pioneer Woman brand.

I don’t want to infringe on any copyright protected material, so I will not quote the entry, nor show a screen shot, but I would refer you once more to Old Man Henry (Charlie) on her blog. And maybe we should wonder what would happen should anything happen to Marlboro Man.

Daylight Savings Time is here in Indiana once again. It is my chronological Joe Biden. (I can’t stand that man.)

On the first day of DST, I am going to a movie in Auburn because I went to a movie early last fall and it was in the previews, scheduled to come out in November. It’s the remake of Death Wish and how bad or good the movie is is of no longer any importance.

You see, having seen the original years ago and again now and then on some movie channel, I was curious about Bruce Willis in the role. I wanted for November, but there were no ads for the movie; where did it go? Finally, I found out it was to be released in early January 2018; that was a big, fat lie. So, now, in March, it is in theaters – but it did not come to our comfy, refurbished Strand Theater here in Kendallville.

I am biting the bullet and going to Auburn for the matinee – tickets $5. I bought them online for the 2 o’clock showing and printed out my precious barcode receipt. I also received a coupon for a free small popcorn which can be upgraded to a larger size. Unfortunately, I have fallen flat-faced off my diet and really should not print out this coupon. HA! Who am I to fly in the face of tradition?

Just look at the date today and the date of my last post. I have been wrestling with the fact that DST is coming this Sunday, March 11. Yes, it has been a long struggle to come to terms with it once again – especially so early.

I’m going to repeat myself from years past: It’s the fact that I live in the far western part of the Eastern Time Zone and just at the time when the sun is coming up around getting up time, WHAM!! it goes back to being pitch black pre-dawn. That is a shock to one’s psyche. You remember what they always told you – it’s always darkest before the dawn. See, you not only are whisked back by the clock from light to dark, you are slammed into the darkest dark.

DARK DARK DARK

REALLY, REALLY

DARK

Okay, you’ve got the idea. Now, in the past, Indiana would opt out of DST and we would be on Standard Time all year. If you want to get complicated, you can say we go from Eastern Standard Time to Central Daylight Time. Or, as we used to say, we stayed on slow time.

Some years ago, Mitch Daniels, who was campaigning for governor hinted that he would put us back on NO DST. We would not move our clocks ahead. It may not have been a big, fat lie, but he didn’t have it work out that way. In fact, now he’s the Head of Purdue University, so you little sleepy heads, come Monday: GET UP.

I’m open to compromise. Atlantic Time is one-half hour ahead of Eastern Time. With that precedent, why doesn’t Indiana opt for one-half hour behind Eastern Time? It couldn’t be that complicated; after all, counties around Chicago opt to stay on Chicago time. I suppose that would add another twist to the fast time/slow time jargon that has confused many a younger soul than mine. But, hey, I’m sure Apple watches could handle it. Maybe.

I honestly do not know where this is from. It looks like a New Yorker cartoon, but maybe not. I found it in images – and I was not looking for aging or dwarves. (I think elves planted it there, just to give me a poke.)

It is gray outside; it is warm, very warm for February and I find myself off balance. Most years we have had enough cold weather that I think that perhaps, just perhaps, we will have a hint of warmer weather. This year, with the exception of the few days I typed how we were going TO FREEZE, it has been more than above freezing.

I am starting to believe that most of my life, I have been been toughened up by being slapped in the face by the biting cold of walks across a parking lot. This year, especially this month, I have experienced something like a tepid bath – not cold enough to invigorate you, nor warm enough to relax and soothe your muscles. Much to my surprise, I find myself missing that feeling of “Oh, Thank God,” when I scoot into the back of the house and lean on the door to make certain it is fully shut. “The warmth, the warmth,” my mind would silently exclaim with an atavistic surge of the genes that reach back to the Stone Age.

Now I am a blob, uninspired by the gloom and fog that float from one day to the next. The fault, of course, is not in the weather, just as it is not in my stars; it is with me. It has been said that February is the waiting room of the year (C.S. Lewis), but, if so, than I have been sitting here without an appointment.

That would seem to make no sense, and yet it poured right out of my fingers. I may mean that I have just existed during this time, sitting here not even glancing at the time, nor reading an out-of-date magazine, not anticipating what the appointment will bring.

My grandson is a great one for choosing really nitty-gritty informational shows, including those on how things are produced. Usually, I start out thinking it will be a HO-HUM show that I will listen to and glance at and, at times, find myself really enlightened.

This morning, though, introduced me to an episode that will stick in mind for a long time because it showed a video of fluffy little yellow chicks being picked up by their beaks and revolving around to reach the beak-clipping apparatus. It is necessary because the idea pecking order is not just a phrase; chickens who retain the hooked part of the beak will literally injure each other in a crowd. A chicken crowd is what you have in an egg production farm, whether it be cage-free or not.

Now, I know I have not adequately portrayed this image with words; it might be nigh on impossible, so I am going to search the Internet for a picture or video. If I find it, I will have to provide a warning first. The beak clipping is not painful, the industry claims, but it is something that you would not conjure up on your own – even in a nightmare.

I found an image: I suggest you do not try this ride at a street carnival. The video in the show I watched featured fatter little balls of chick fluff. It will be a long time before I can look at another Peep.

When my eyes came open this morning, I saw that the bare branches outside the window were moving vigorously. The sky was grey white and I had to stop myself from frowning at the gloom because, after all, I was awake and not aching anywhere. When I stuck my head out the door to grab the Sunday paper, it actually felt invigorating – the brisk movement of air a welcome change from the constant downward movement of raindrops yesterday.

I didn’t open the paper; I seldom do anymore since I look at the Internet for news first. After a quick surf of various sites, I realized I had seen ads for the book The Great Alone several times. I believe my eyes had repeatedly flicked away from it because the Grab You line was: What older people are flocking to read.

Finally, I gave in an put the title up there in the search bar and wound up staring at this:

This is not a book review nor a knee jerk reaction to the book’s title. I know nothing about the book other than what is shown in the little blurb. Obviously, if it is set in 1974, then that would be when I was in my 20’s – youth. And, now adding 44 years onto the time period makes the adult characters now “older people.” Me. And some other old fogies I know.

And that’s fine, but I think I’ll wait awhile to delve into the story for purely emotional reasons – I need to get my older person sea legs.

I turned the TV on while I was sorting through some papers in boxes and up popped one of those reality shows that have become the staple of The Learning Channel – one about Gypsy weddings. Quite frankly, I thought, “Oh, rats, I don’t want to see this,” but the remote was over by the TV itself and my lap held a bunch of papers and so I figured I’d just wait a minute until I could get up and change the channel.

In that time period, however, I realized there was a lot of information about Gypsies I had never been even slightly aware of. For instance, I had no idea there are basically two distinct groups of Gypsies in the United States and they have different cultures. It got confusing, so I turned to the Internet and tried to sort everything out. It was not as easy, at least for me, as one would expect.

Origins and migration routes and were intriguing and I found out, much to my surprise, that Gypsies came from Northern India – the Punjab. Depending on how much mixing with locals occurred as they moved across Europe, the culture varied or stayed somewhat the same. I also found out, much to my chagrin, that they were first called Gypsies because of the mistaken notion that they came from Egypt. I use the word “chagrin” because had that been a question on a multiple choice test, I would have thought it a trick question.

Needless to say, between researching Gypsies and catching glimpses of the really fancy dresses worn by those who came though Britain, I didn’t get much sorted. So, my grandson put in a movie I had rented – Manchester on the Sea. I found it incredibly depressing. Halfway through, I couldn’t take it anymore and checked the spoilers for the plot and was not encouraged. I turned it off.

Now I am sitting here depressed, with unsorted papers and a probably confused concept of Romani genetics. Come to think of it, if the Roman Empire had been listed as an answer to the above question, I don’t know if I would have chosen it or not.

I am partly behind the times. I use a smart phone, have been using a word processor progressing to an all out wireless network computer over the years, shop Amazon, read with a Kindle, bank online, and push the “send” button far more than I lick a stamp. However, I have watched the Alexa commercials and think I am out of my league. Were I do walk into a “smart” house, I suppose I could manage to command Alexa to turn on the lights, set the thermostat, check the security cameras, turn on the TV, initiate a phone call and define a word. Whatever. But “Must Have Alexa” doesn’t call out to me and so I don’t order Alexa to do anything.

She’s not here. But I am here and I am having enough trouble getting myself to do things.
AmeliaJake, vacuum the floor, get the dishes out of the sink, fold up your clothes, dust everything, get the debris out of the car, find your tools and put them all in one place, organize your electronic accessories.

AmeliaJake does not listen. Or, more likely, AmeliaJake just filters it out. I suppose if we had an Alexa in this house, someone would say, “ALEXA, WHACK AMELIAJAKE UP SIDE THE HEAD.”

Amazon.com is having a Gold Box rug sale; I clicked on the link and saw multiple pictures of rugs with a trellis pattern.

You can click the link above for a close-up or, here, take a look at part of the first page of the sale offers:

I don’t know – maybe I don’t care for it because I first saw it a couple of years back in a (excuse me) snot-green color. It was about 4′ by 6′ and just lying there on the floor in front of where I was sitting. And, of course, an AmeliaJake trademark thought crossed my mind: Well, if I have to violently sneeze, this would be the place to do it. I know, I know, I’ll just grimace along with you.

It is supposed to be 60 degrees come Tuesday and I suspect the outside will look so dingy I would almost welcome a trellis patterned landscape. But maybe not.