I used to read all the time, every minute I could snatch . . . and then things got more hectic. And to tell you the absolute truth, the print in some of the paperbacks got a little smaller. The clutter increased greatly in most house and I couldn’t count on finding a book where I had left it and I certainly couldn’t have three or four books lying around just staying in one spot waiting for me to return and snack on a few pages.

Now there are several on my laptop and all I have to do is click, click and maybe click. I am in Nazi Germany, Down South in Mississippi in the late ’50’s, overseas being pursued by bad guys in Australia, in America’s heartland – both literally and literaturishly.

I feel more like me now. Yes indeedy.

(Rose is reading; Foo is reading in the Foo Bar; Lydia is reading a book about Scott Joplin. A lot of other regulars have their flat noses stuck in ebooks*; I think we’re going to have to hire some new help . . . like anyone gets paid, except in foldovers and drinks.)

* Oh, sorry about the “flat” remark. Good thing Sophie is at the Ohio Redoubt.

There are all sorts of online quizzes promise to tell you your IQ, Emotional Quotient, Personality traits and so forth; I don’t know if I have ever pop-up window that asks: How Crazy Are You? Considering I am sitting here thinking up questions for such a test in the back of my mind, I’d say I’d score high on the Crazy-O-Meter.

What non-edible objects have you considered eating? And have you done so?

Have you ever felt like you wanted to put your head in the microwave oven? And after standing there for three minutes with nothing happening, then seriously wondered how you could shut the door or rewire it so the door would not have to be shut? (Maybe this is more fitting for the IQ test.)

Have you ever worn snake-mating pheromones to a rattlesnake round-up? And leaned over the fence?

When  you talk to yourself, do you eavesdrop?

When was the last time you hired someone to run over your feet with a car?

When was the last time you hired someone to run over your cat?

Okay, I don’t know that we’re done here, but we probably should be.

One thing before I go off:  1) my rocker; 2) the deep end; 3) half-cocked; 4) on a wild goose chase; 5) none of the above. This thing – I once took an online IQ test and got a 76.

I have been boring myself here in these little entries. The weather.com people said we would have mucho days of sun; today it is cloudy and thunderstorms are predicted for this afternoon and tomorrow. GRASS FOOD – that’s what they are – GRASS FOOD!

See, I was boring then – with a little rev up at the end.

Fortunately, Rose is here and Sophie, the Comforter with the Sneaker, is at the Ohio Redoubt. Rose just told me she needs more assistants – something to do with the psychological climate of the place.  Soon she’ll be asking for Hardship Pay. I must remember that she doesn’t get paid if and we go into negotiations.

We are supposed to have several days of sunshine: I hope so because yesterday I got out the big mower and put it on HIGH and mowed the part of the yard that is to the north – that used to be a field. I had decided last year that I would let some patches revert to tall grass and maybe wildflowers in the more northern part – with wide swaths of paths mowed through them.

That area of reversion is growing. A combination of a lot of rain and not less time than usual and WOW! did that green stuff grow. Actually, it’s not too bad; the tall grass moves in waves with the breeze and when the wind is up, as it was yesterday, it looks like a rolling sea. Makes a nice picture, right? Well, there’s the other side – what creatures lurk in that deep, green sea?

Last year Summer and I were flying kites – or trying to – and she backed into a patch of taller grass and came out at a fast run, screaming. “SNAKE.” Oh, I guess that should have been an exclamation point, not a period. Screaming snake with a matter-of-fact tone just doesn’t work.

I have told this story before so I will just hit the highlights: My dad preached to me about not leaving a mower running; I ran over a snake; I took off screaming “Snake!”; I remembered the commandment and quietly went back and turned the mower off. Then I took off waving my arms and screaming “SNAKE!” even louder.

I think it’s the part about no legs. No legs makes me nervous. Slither is not my favorite word. My sentences are getting basic. My eyes are darting left and right . . . I am off this subject and out of here.

While I worked today, I was just my normal dwarf self, plodding along. I only call myself a dwarf because I am short and others sometimes make jokes. Actually, I guess I think of myself as a munchkin – but then they were played by dwarves so it must all be semantics.

I don’t know why whistling – both the concept and the not doing it – popped into my head. Maybe it is because I feel like whistling now that I am showered and moisturized and sitting. Whatever.

This morning, as soon as I had delivered Cameron to school, I gathered up gas cans and filled them and then I filled the mower. I went slowly because I had the predicted high of 89 stuck in my head. It was only 80 at the time (felt like 83) but that 89 was intimidating – considering we had a fire for warmth  just a few days ago.

After a bracer of pink lemonade,  I went upstairs and pulled stuff out of closets and pre-sorted it and folded things that weren’t folded but were looming in hulking piles. About four hours, I’d say. Do you know that gathering up hangers that have colonized the storage closet floor can be very tedious?

Do you know that when you sit in the entrance to a closet and pull stuff out and put it behind you, you often find yourself walled into said closet? In my case I fell forward in a flop and then moved across the expanse like a swimmer in jell-o.

I did take a break in the de-hoarding  of the closet and other spaces to be the Goddess of Cool Air and hooked up the portable air-conditioner in the southwest room that heats up so much despite double-paned windows and thermal curtains. It was so much anything to do with the goodness of the Goddess’ heart, but that the modem and airport are in that room.

This is a boring post – but I just had to boast. About all that working.

Of course, there is tomorrow and Mother’s yard and, uh, deciding how to arrange the stuff that fell in the keep category.

Time to do my boasting dance . . .  hop, leap and reach for the sky, twirl while coming down, do several knee high steps, a little skip, maybe hula like an Aztec. Oops, I’m losing it  . . .

Okay, this morning I am not getting ready to go someplace or recovering from having been some place or slouching with an ebook on my tummy. So, I guess I am back. I do not know if I am ready to be back. But here I seem to be.

I haven’t been up to see it, but Der Bingle tells me a tree was uprooted just up the street during a spell of high wind yesterday afternoon. I don’t know if we had a microburst or strong straight-line winds, but the tree is down. It was confusing: the tornado siren went off when it looked clear, and all we could see on weather.com was a line of storms in Goshen; later wind passed through very fast, followed by pouring rain.

I have trouble keeping in mind that it is Monday, the 30th. Der Bingle came on Thursday night instead of Friday which first made me think Friday was Saturday, and that would be in line for today to feel like Tuesday. Only it feels like Sunday. Maybe because Friday, Saturday and Sunday were sort of one continuous Saturday cookout for the carnivores here.

Then I missed the Indianapolis 500 because when I was little, I believe the rule was the race was not held on Sunday, period. If Memorial Day fell on Sunday, it was on the 31st. So today in the 30th, but there is no race so it must be Sunday. I guess I breathed in too much grill smoke.

It is dawning on me that perhaps I am not “back” as I indicated in the title. I am hovering somewhere around it . . . I think . . . maybe.

I didn’t think I’d like it but I have not been writing because I’ve been reading books. Sort of The Bookworm Returneth.

G.W. & Sarah Grismore; daughters Maude and Eva. AJ’s great-grandparents and aunts.