Well, we got this message from LZP and then there was a delay in posting because we were fooling around in iphoto and didn’t know if we had a before and after shot or not. So finally we just posted the peeps, the spam and the perp.

Here we are preparing Peeps-ka-bobs, You can see the little ghostie peeps are happy next to the spam cubes on a stick and under the little spam blanket waiting to get warm and snuggily in the microwave

BWOOOOOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHA

The kids were talking yesterday about a moment of silence that had been observed at school for someone who had died in a cycling accident. This morning I was looking it up on the Internet when I came across another article. You have heard of people who have Googled “How to commit murder” on their computers, well, this might be of interest to them

This article is about a cyclist in Britain who while cycling at a high rate of (cycle) speed, saw a young woman ahead of him and shouted, “Move because I am not stopping.” I don’t know if her reflexes were off or if she was just shocked by the impending event, but she didn’t move and he hit her . . . and killed her when she hit her head on the pavement. The cyclist admitted in court that he could have avoided her or slowed down. He did neither.

The cyclist was fined about 2,200 pounds. That’s it. I investigated to see if there was a follow-up to the way this unfolded but I couldn’t really find much other than her parents were outraged.

So, theoretically, a hit man could take his victim to a jurisdiction in Britain, maneuver them into a street, shout, “Move because I am not stopping” and run them down. Would this work with a car? Would it work with a gun? “Move or I am going to shoot you?” Let’s cover ourselves here: We are on a shooting range and people have been warned not to cross a certain point. But one does, and we see him. Let’s say he walks over and stands in front of the target. We see him before we are anywhere near pulling the trigger, but we choose to yell, “Move because I am going to shoot.” Do we just pay a fine?

What if the person in the street had been a child, old enough to understand the warning of “Move because I am not stopping” but not old enough to do anything but freeze in fear and confusion?

Or someone sits down at a table in the cafe and we say, “Move your foldover or we will sprinkle arsenic on it” and they leave the foldover where it is?

It just seems that this deliberate hitting was, uh, wrong?  He could have hopped off his bike and begun a tirade about people getting in bike lanes, hopped up and down and swore. But he powered right into her.

And for him everything was fine(d).

I have been thinking that it has been  a year since Mother was talking about finally going to a doctor – after some decades. And I was telling her we would get a baseline, so in the future the doctor’s could look at it and say, “I guess she isn’t having a heart attack or whatever – she’s always had this.” Well, you know, I convinced her of that and I was wrong.

No long essay here, but I felt like I wanted to mention it.

Oh, hum, well, I’ll be working hard to clean up the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse to get it ready for the holidays . . . because Quentin is coming to see us. That is, if he gets in gear and tells Der Bingle when to make the plane reservations. I just thought I’d mention it, QUENTIN, so you would know that I have not lost my little prodding touch. Also, SHANE wants to remind you to get planning so you can do some planing. I would post a picture of him looking at you sending you that message, but I think your imagination can do such a good job all by itself.

Feel the nuzzling nose?

Feel the fur?

Hear the Wubba land at your feet and the little pleading whimper?

I’m thinking we’ll chop a little volunteer cedar from up at Grandma’s and make duct tape ornaments a couple of days before Christmas. I suppose the sticky surface makes duct tape origami a little difficult? Oh, well, we’ll manage.

We were just sitting around talking over foldovers and cures, when I happened to mention the movie Three Days of the Condor – you know the one where Robert Redford reads books looking for hidden spy plots and so forth? So we started talking about spies and sending messages and we thought, “Oh my Gosh, do you secrets are being sent  hidden in posts written here?” We have seen some sort of regulars and some just-stopped-by people typing on their cell phones and laptops. Some of them looked like this:

And like this

And this one:

Not to mention her and her story:

Yikes, do we know the secret password to our own cafe? Are we involved in international intrigue? Before Lydia, was our piano player named Sam?

We must keep our eyes peeled.

Oh, Foo just whispered, “The balloon bobs in the wind.”

I remember the days before digital cameras, back when people took fewer candid shots to conserve film. That would have been the time when a period of time passed between the photo click and viewing the picture . . . and you would think, “Oh, I look like that?” Not too thrilling, but not too bad. Then yesterday I handed the camera – the little red one – to Summer and asked her to take a picture of the barbecue with Spam on it. When she handed it back she remarked maybe I should not have trusted her with the camera.  I remember thinking I didn’t think she’d break it. Well, she didn’t.

But this morning I know what she meant. I plugged the camera into iphoto and do you know there are angles to almost 62 years that don’t show up in a stand up straight, look straight ahead position? Bend that 62 years and  – whoa – things don’t follow the curve of the bend the way they did , oh four decades ago.

And she photographed it! Do you know that I could have been the understudy to the lead in “Throw Momma From the Train?”  I’m going to go off and practice:

OWEN!! Bring me the salted nuts; the unsalted nuts make me CHOKE!

I am not there; Der Bingle is. He went off with Cameron and Summer to watch Predators and Vampires Suck. I had told Alison early this summer that drive-ins were no longer fun because cars are smaller and they don’t have the speakers that hung on the windows and people run their engines to keep the air conditioning going. But they went anyway and it seems people now take lawn chairs and radios and sit outside the smaller cars.

So Cameron asked what was playing at the drive-in and Summer said his face lit up when Der Bingle said Predator and her face lit up when he said Vampires Suck. So there are there . . . with lawn chairs and long sleeves and a bag of mosquito repellent and AfterBite if the repellent doesn’t go “off” as planned. They took a radio, like other folks.

I don’t know, I kind of liked it when we went in the old 1964 Buick.

Hello there,

I am Rose’s new assistant in the comforting and advising department of the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse; she needed help because there are so many nuts here. I don’t know –  maybe they should not have been eating extra crunchy foldovers. But anyway, there is a need and I am here. Yes, here in the wicker chair of consolation. See how it is easy for someone to just sit down next to me. Oh, maybe I should move over a little. Okay, for the time being, when you sit down, please turn your upper body sideways.

My name is Meryl because of my strong resemblance to the movie star. But you can call me Sophie.

Overcast today and add to that  the days are getting shorter and so I am no longer waking up very early to find the day has begun and is waiting for me. Well, chronologically it has begun . . . but the daylight thing is uplifting, don’tcha know. It is supposed to drizzle most of the day, so what to do? Well, surely someone in the world is having a birthday today. We need a party. To help them celebrate. A peanut butter party? A cookout party? A cookie party? A Spam party? Auuuggggghhhhhh. The brainwashing Spam agents opened an offensive, but were fought off.

Of course, we could have fried bologna sandwiches. Nah, not today.

I must put my mind to this and come up with a festive theme for the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. Cameron would suggest a road trip; Summer would want Zebra Cakes; Shane would want to get more Wubbas; Sydney would like to trick Shane to go outside because he can’t figure out how to open the door to get back in. We could wash the cow and tie a festive ribbon on her. So many options . . .

Summer says she was bored a lot of the time – the biology teacher had a monotone. I wonder if she will be bored once that monotone starts saying, “My job in this class is to challenge you who have been coasting.” I can anticipate a period of tension and complaining – two words: science project.

Cameron has the same Mrs. Handley (name changed for obvious reasons)  for English that Quentin had. She and I were opposites in many ways and ever since one parent-teacher conference, Quentin measures  things that don’t help him out in terms of the Handley-O-Meter.

And I went to the gas station and got a gallon of gas in a can for the lawnmower . . . and I mowed the yard. Yes, I really should have a yardmower because the green stuff out there is mostly chopped down weeds, despite the amount of grass seed I have deployed. I sweat a lot and it felt good,  a watery sweat that cleansed me more than it made me sticky. It seemed to cleanse my spirits as well. I was so upbeat I got out the cord to use the hedge trimmer. When it was ready, I looked in my trunk and found out I had left the trimmer at Mother’s.  Bummer.

So I decided to start a small barbecue for hot dogs and right now Cameron is cooking Spam on it. Auuuuggggghhhhhhh. His Great Uncle Lon makes Spam Kabobs with his son Sam and I imagine one day Cameron, his grandpa, his great uncle and cousins will gather for some sort of a fest involving Spam and, gee, maybe bonfires. This reminds me that I forgot to publish a picture of the Spam cookbook LZP sent me. Odd how the word bonfire made me think of that book.

Would you believe me if I reported that Cameron is chanting a song about Spam and is feeding it to Sydney and Shane? The Spam not the chant. Now he is talking about “Spam-bites” as a breakfast cereal . . .

Well, there is one thing that soothes me tonight – School tomorrow.