I remember my dad teaching me to wash my hands; he taught my sons also. He was a big believer in not making yourself sick unnecessarily, and since he grew up before antibiotics, he wasn’t lackadaisical about it. I also brushed my teeth a lot too, but that is a different story in the same vein.

Anyway, I have always associated the aroma of soap with being protected, or watched over, or however you want to put it. Now I will get my hands filthy dirty right along with the best of them – including lying under my old MB300D fiddling with leaking lines and hoses. (May it rest in peace) However, when I go to get them clean, I want something that smells robust  . . . that takes five fingers and stamps C-L-E-A-N on them – and, yeah, the other hand too.

I do not use lavender scented soap by choice. And when it comes to scents like apple and strawberry . . . well, they’ll do in a pinch. Of course, you don’t get the psychic comfort out of the scent, but nothing’s perfect.

Two days ago I was in Wal-Mart to get softsoap refills and I saw there were some melon-scented bottles for 97¢. I figured at the rate we go through soap, I’d get a couple of bottles. Now I feel as if I have namby-pamby hands – the kind of hands that hang back when the slop jar spills.

Okay, we don’t have slop jars in my house now – but we have dogs and every now and then it gets a bit sloppy.

So I head for the serious stuff. Ironically, I don’t like the hand sanitizers. They smell like I’m going to have some medical procedure done; they don’t make me feel old-fashioned clean. My hair and the rest of my body can smell like apples or pomegranates, but darn it, I want my hands to radiate SOAP. It’s a quirk, I guess.

I don’t use bookmarks when I read and I don’t turn down pages because I never have. I have always been able to zone in on where I stopped reading. I have bought them for other people because of the appropriate message – for instance, right now there is one on the windowsill that pictures Maxine; I’m going to have to get a picture of it, but not now because that would involve getting up and taking three or four steps.

This sucks swamp water. I actually got up and went over to  get the bookmark because, hey, sometimes lazy just gets too darn embarrassing. It wasn’t there; I don’t remember picking it up and moving it, so, rats, maybe I am getting to the age when I need a bookmark. I did hit my head on the old Indian yoke my grandfather unearthed.

I came back and started writing the above paragraph and by the time I reached the final period, I had decided I needed a picture of the yoke. Eight steps over, eight steps back.

See, here it is. That’s Lydia, our piano player to the right (apparently she has taken off her trapper hat) and the Thomas Bickle light to the left.

But I was talking about bookmarks, and I had intended to say that I didn’t use bookmarks for books, nor on the computer. I do bookmark esoteric pages, such as “how to replace your power adapter chip”, but that is a stress I don’t need to remember here. However, my browser thinks it should remember sites I have been to and automatically offer up some choices when I venture into the address bar. Of the times I have scrolled down to click on where I want to go, a good percentage of those clicks have hit the address above or below . . . and I wind up where I don’t want to be. So, I went into my preferences – always a scary journey – and deleted some sites without deleting others.

This is no big deal, but you gotta remember, I am of the age when I have to learn to move beyond the eraser on the top of a pencil, which used to be my very best friend.

I could ramble on but Lydia is suggesting that I don’t . . . that I just scroll up to the sleep choice and click on it. Sometimes she treats me like I am such a child.

I’M DOING IT, LYDIA!!  . . . . Oh, was that a little temper tantrum reply?

My fellow Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhousers are lined up like kids at Show & Tell. We each have picked out stuff for the scanner and then the blog and we are jumping up and down, yelling, “Me! Me! Pick me!” Today we’re going to show what Moo has found. You remember Moo –

She chose something from Chi-town – one of our favorite places.

I’m here, sort of late, typing – and my right index finger has a paper cut on it – because, oh, I don’t know, I guess I think AmeliaJake has to  check in.to say, Yo, I’m still here. Me. I know I posted earlier, but that was of things I came across. For some reason, I need to tell you that my pals here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse had stuff spread out over the tables. We were playing the jukebox and sipping drinks with crushed ice and reaching in a grab bag full of surprises.

We talked it over and decided we’d be posting a lot of it for the sake of family and because some of the stuff is just plain interesting – a peek back into the 20’s and 30’s and 40’s. And this was just one box. We have more. We found relatively ancient pictures of ballplayers that were cut out of the back of cereal boxes. I kid you not. We found basketball schedules and poems and birthday cards and a letter written on V-J Day.

We found the program from my dad’s graduation from college after the war. Have we got stuff! And we are loving it.

I just wanted to say that in my AmeliaJake way, and not get too caught up in just reporting and posting. For some reason, all this old stuff makes me feel my life so strongly – that it is real. It’s kind of like when my father-in-law died and a fellow wrote to tell his sons about when they played football in the early 40’s. Every now and then, out of the blue, I will remember the sentence about my father-in-law getting up after a rough and tumble play with a big smile on his face.* I can see it. It exists in how we cite someone’s signature quote and then grin: My father’s “He can’t sing like he used to” ** and my father-in-law’s “Count old Kook out.” Hmmm . . .  have I told you that story? Oh well, some time soon.

* Football story:

My best recollection of Bill Vance was in 1941;we we were at
Carthage High;Bill was a sophomore and I, a senior & on the
varsity football–Bill played guard and I, tackle. Bill
being two years younger and smaller played only parttime.
When Bill was in the game he played long side of me. When
a running play was over our side, I would say “Come on Bill.”
We opened holes many times for the running back to make a
good gain. Oftentimes when we were unscrambling from a
pile-up, Bill’s helmut (being too large) would be half
turned on his head and I could only see a big smile on his
face. Yes, Bill was “tough and scrappy” which he had to use
too many times during his life.
Yes, I am proud to have been his cousin. May his soul rest in
peace.

** My dad always punctuated any Bing Crosby song with the comment, “He can’t sing like he used to.”

My father died 11 years ago but my Mother remained active in the house until just before her death last year. She died in the fall and the winter was snowy and cold. We hurriedly took stuff out of the house and when I opened one box, I took a deep breath and closed it quickly. My dad’s things were in there from when he was a boy and a young man in the army. Today I opened the box again and just grazed the surface. There are a lot of personal things there, but when you’re talking about a little town in Indiana, some of those items have a bit of history to them.

From the Danville Commerce:

Babe Ruth

and then

Lou Gehrig.

And then there are these guys – such as they were. I don’t know the year or the name of anyone in the photo, but considering it was with my dad’s stuff and given the heavy cardboard, I’d guess maybe one of the players is my Great Uncle Parke Grismore.

A couple of days ago I wrote about my nutcrackers who avoided the end of season trip to the attic. As of now, they are claiming they have an easement on the top of my cabinet, but that’s another story. The nutcrackers are not the “story” to which I referred in the post title.

This is the that story:

A nice lady wrote a comment about her “Santa” situation and, so you don’t have to go bopping back to the original post again – if you did following the link – I am publishing it right here.

Albug // Jan 17, 2011 at 12:05 pm

I have a large collection of Santas that never made it into the light of day this year because of the flu (mine not theirs). This has happened before and I always hear them in the attic calling me asking to be set free. I would be afraid to let them out during the summer because I know they would never want to go back and I would loose the battle. Then my little house would be taken over by Santas and my family would commit me I’m sure. Good luck on your negotiations, my suggestion is to turn their faces to the wall and begin packing immediately.

Then, today, I received a note from her about an encounter she had earlier in the day. I must say I feel somewhat comforted knowing I am not alone in my dealings with these fellows from the North Pole.

Are you ready for it? Well, here it is.

Okay, I must be insane.  Today I was taking the back road to Garrett from our house.  I was thinking about nothing at all when I saw a yield sign with a SANTA attached to it with one of those plastic zip ties. His eyes were bugged out, his little Santa hat was all whopper jawed and he had a demented grin on his face. I couldn’t take a picture, my phone has no camera.  I don’t know what the poor thing could have done to deserve such punishment, maybe he kept calling from the attic, let me out, let me out.  I  almost went back to rescue him, but then I would have had to put him  in the ATTIC, what a dilemma.

I swear on my grandkids’ heads, this is a true encounter.

Oh, by the way, I did have an Alien Tree you know, but I am not linking to that post now. I’m keeping my head below the radar.

Albug

When Sydney was young and Cameron was little.

Two special guys.

I woke up in the dark, feeling well-rested. I had no sleep in my eyes and out the window the sky seemed light. I lay there, all snuggled in and wondered if it were close to morning or if the sky was just light because of moonlight, weather or whatever. I finally picked up my phone, pushed the button and saw it was 2:33 am.

Ack. I had almost convinced myself to get up get going, but then I saw it was THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. I took it with aplomb; I snuggled down deeper and decided to pretend I had just finished a project and could go to sleep with a good conscience. Well, that brought on a sense of relief and euphoria that was so delicious I considered it might keep me awake. Maybe it did . . . for two or three minutes. I woke again about 15 minutes ago and went outside to the garage to grab a cold drink.

I heard DRIPPING instead of the crystal silence of cold. I had known that the high was to be 37? today; I just had not expected it to be that temperature in the early morning. How long it will stay this warm I will have to check, but I suspect it is a matter of a few hours.

I walked back in and asked if there were a school delay and the answer was yes; I suspect fog came in the night and perhaps that was the light I saw outside in the dark of night. I imagine county roads are slick out there, as well, with water sitting on top of packed snow. In fact, I would not be surprised if my driveway were like that.

I am meandering here . . . meandering in the minute facts of the moment while part of my brain yells at another part: Hey, bozo, remember the euphoria of last night? So forget all that stuff about relaxing by imagining  yourself on a beach; when stressed, just close your eyes and feel that last period being typed. Remember the feel of pressure falling away as you think, “Done” and just enjoy it.

I guess I have spent many years with procrastination; it is like beating yourself over the head because it feels so good when you stop. (Not that I have done that literally.) I’m getting too old for it. I guess I’ll have to sit in my rocker and re-tell stories about the times I woke up knowing a 20-page paper was due the next day . . . and I hadn’t even read the book yet.

LZP sent us this photo of himself with this question:

Well do I know how to party or what ?

I downloaded it into iphoto, but did no editing. This is it  – without enhancement. The colors radiating around him are really that bright; his cheeks are that rosy. And when I went to name it for export to my desktop, I saw it was already called “Mustachio” and thought, “Well, okay, I can go with that.”

I asked Der Bingle if he thought this was the result of a delirium brought on by 34+ hours of non-stop caregiving when nursing shift schedules were disrupted by nurse-illness. He started telling LZP stories and . . . I think he should tell some here. Or not. What are the chances of a fez-wearing, banana-eating, bandito chasing us down?

In the meantime, I guess I will

Party . . . oh, yeah.

This is the comment left below, but I feel it needs to be up here:

LZP, aka the Hanging Judge, adjudicates all appeals of traffic/parking tickets issued at the University of Iowa.  He has a stuffed vulture mounted over his desk.  The only thing missing from this picture is the black robe.  The moustache, however, appears augmented as if he had been sniffing cotton balls….

Christmas baskets were put in white kitchen flex bags, as were wreaths. Most of the garland went into the bigger black flex bags, and, of course, there were the boxes of ornaments and lights and paper and just a lot of stuff. It all went up to the attic. Cameron moved it from the staging area in the sitting room to the lobby under the attic stairs and the bucket brigade began – with me at the top. It didn’t take long to do and then I came down and vacuumed.

I noticed them out of the corner of my eye as I sucked by; they were massed on top of a cabinet and they looked threatening. Somehow a virtual army of short nutcrackers did not get packed up. They were all summoned to the port of departure but their ship forgot to show up . . . and now they don’t want to go at all. They want to be the “Home Guard” for the year; they want to experience summer.

I have not negotiated with nutcrackers before and, to tell the truth, I do not know what they are capable of when I fall asleep. They have hinted at it. I am leaning toward giving them a lease on a shelf this year.

Yes, yes, this is all nonsensical but it is Monday morning.