My glasses went missing for two days during the few minutes it took me to take a shower. I am the person who has her glasses on her face for every waking hour and quite a few sleeping ones, so this quick and complete disappearance  was totally unexpected. I mean I am the Queen of Quick Showers and so we are talking mere minutes and a limited area. I thought I would find them in a matter of seconds, but this Nancy Drew bumbled around her mystery for two whole days.

It’s not that I can’t see without my glasses so much that the pull on my eye muscles is close to painful and alarms go off in my brain.

Fortunately, I had just purchased new glasses in the past few months, so the old ones had not made several trips from one drawer to another and eventually into the Black Hole of Forever Gone. And I had also signed up for the mega insurance plan for replacements if necessary. I was able to hop into my contingency plan and stave off the no glasses panic.

Still, misplacing my glasses is so UnAmeliaJake  it is ridiculous; it drove me about as crazy as not having them.

When Quentin called shortly after the crisis arose, he reminded me of the time a dog took his glasses and chewed them. I looked at Shane with my twitching-muscled eyeballs and thought certainly not. After searching the small area where they could logically be down to almost the molecular level, I was starting to wonder. The fact that the rubber dog hair removal brush had gone missing just as quickly earlier in the day did not bode well.  The fact that he had gone outside shortly before I discovered them gone was not encouraging.

Then last night, just about the same time of day they disappeared, I put my hand down on the rug by where I was sitting and felt them. It was disconcerting; I had looked right at that area over and over again and there had been no glasses there. Now, voila, glasses? I didn’t see any obvious damage. I also didn’t go running out to other rooms announcing the find. It was too eerie. People would have asked where I found them and I wasn’t prepared to get into any paranormal talk.

As for Shane  . . . let’s just say he might become a “usual suspect” since during my search I found a Wubba and numerous dog treats stashed in various places.

Since I had not logically located the glasses, it seemed I was not Nancy Drew; and when I looked in my driveway, there was no roadster. I think that makes it definite.

Again, so . . .

I entered the title before eight this morning and here, at 9:37 pm, I am starting a wee post. A tense day, but I am here still. Obviously. I voted this afternoon and, to my mind, one of the two ladies on duty for my precinct and an adjacent one sported a visage that was not too friendly at all. I don’t know if she knew me from somewhere and thought, “Oh, another dratted Republican.” Or it could be she just thought, “Oh, her.”

I got my “I Voted Today” sticker, though. In a while I will turn over to a news station for the results, probably with the sound down  to avoid the pundits. I got impatient and peeked over at a news site and . . . YES. Senator-Elect Coats, this little vote of mine helped you shine.

One thing about a digital camera – before you blur things and do whatever, the image coming out is downright unforgiving. This morning I made a wreath for Thanksgiving because I wanted to. When I began I thought I’d take some pictures to show Quentin that’s his mother’s project making hasn’t changed – it is seat of the pants.

YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING IN A DIGITAL PHOTO. And there is no doubt about it, I am a clutter-person.

Let’s both brace ourselves.

Old Roy dog treats, an empty bottle of bottled water, a book, a box of old pictures . . . That yellow thing to the lower right? It’s the label on a lamp oil bottle. There’s an empty magazine rack leaning on the firestove and you can see the back half of an upside down shoe.

What you can’t see is that down at the bottom there’s a good-sized Pilgrim and what you don’t know is that I eventually hung a wooden turkey so it would be in the center area of the wreath. This turkey is so ugly I have not thrown it out because it is just that ugly. Someone picked it up at GoodWill or a rummage sale and it got into the house and it is like the man who came to dinner.

It was either some craft project or a handmade toy for a kid. I’m betting it was a “how to use scrap wood and not cut your fingers off project”.

So here it is:

Bet you want one, right? Green with envy, right? You know once when we had a fire roaring, I thought, “Oh, I could just toss the turkey in there.” I’m thinking I must subconsciously believe that turkey has something on me – that if he turns up missing, the authorities will be sent to a safety deposit box where they will find incriminating pictures of me with a defeathered and beheaded turkey. Probably some crime scene evidence also.

There has to be some reason for my homegrown grapevines adorned with raffia, subdued fruit and embroidered Pilgrims to also sport a wooden, clunky turkey.

Soon I will have to look for Bob the Turkey whose tail opens up like a fan and hangs on the chandelier at Thanksgiving. That would the Bob the Turkey who hangs there through Christmas because I feel sorry him missing the festivities. Didn’t I even hang some ornament on him last year?

The tornado sirens went off yesterday – this late in October!! I was sitting here working on something and  over the noise of a train, I thought I heard a high pitched whine. It was extremely windy and I figured it was that wind funneling between something and making a whistle. Well, I was close with the funnel part.

At the time, I just sat here listening and thought, “Is that the tornado siren?” Then, for some reason, I had this irresistible urge to think “si-reen”, as in, “Was that the tornado si-reen?”

And I sat here for longer, looking at the weather.com page to see what was going on. Well, there was a lot of red around our town. Bright red – weather map bright red. Then, again, there was that si-reen.  You know how you think it will never happen to you? Well, it didn’t. The si-reen stopped.

By this time, I’m thinking I’m fairly stupid because the last time I begrudgingly went to the basement for the kids’ sake, I did come up to find a tree down across the street and later found out about a huge tree down at Mother’s.

I then landed on the idea that if someone were to yell “Tornado” in a movie theater crowded with AmeliaJakes, there probably would not be a stampede. I believe I am going to have to start hearing the call of “SNAKE” in my mind when the siren goes off. That will get me moving.

The dude part of the post title? Well, you see, in the evening, a run of “Billy the Exterminator” shows began and, after a while, I realized Billy and his brother, Rick, call each other “Dude” all the time.

“Look out, Dude. There’s a snake, wasp, skunk, beaver, whaterver!”

“Whoa, Dude, you are right.”

“Dude, that was intense.”

“Right, Dude.”

So, of course, I had to point this out to Summer and we called each other Dude for the rest of the night.

I feel about average today and I’m thinking about  how tremendously big emotions can seem because I was looking on the weather site and glanced at the category “Feels Like”.

I started thinking about sadness and how incredibly crushing it can feel; exuberance to the point of possible explosion . . . that sort of thing. It comes from some tiny sparks jumping between teeny gaps in my brain. It is amazing to think about . . . and amazing that a couple of those little sparking gaps just caused a wince because I ended a clause with a preposition.

What a scientific experiment it would be if I could guide little nano guys around tweeting this and that to see what would happen. Of course, I would first need a reset button in case we wound up with thas and thit . . .