Category Archives: Just Me – AmeliaJake
Auggghhhh
I was all ready to be sitting RIGHT NOW in the car on my way to the fairgrounds with Sydney after the school drop-off, but a few minutes ago as I was standing at the door, Summer reminded me it was 30-Minute Delay Wednesday. Of course it it. So another Wednesday with my psyche feeling like a cymbal that has been dropped on the floor. Thank you very much, East Noble; I find these Wednesday rants so cathartic. I can spell cathartic because I did not have four years of screwed-up Wednesday mornings and English classes. I’m probably exaggerating; of course I am. But these stupid Wednesday 30 Minute Delays bring me to it, and every darn week I let them catch me off-guard.
It has grown all out of proportion for me, I know. I think it has become the scapegoat for lots of frustrations in my life. I want to incite riots over this; I want to march on the school corporation office and demand the head of the person who came up with this Wednesday farce. I want to be a partisan fighting against The Thousand Year Wednesday Delay. Oh yeah, next year it’s on Mondays. Okay, let’s call it the 30 Minute Delay Regime.
We need codes and safe houses and . . . blood pressure pills.
Now, now, just relax
Hi there, Pottermom. It’s me, Rose, waving at ya. I know you must be so almost done in with this wedding business. My job here at the PBC & Roadhouse is pretty much the one who comforts. I am also the Den Mother for the Ohio Redoubt of the West Facing Cave. I don’t know what it is, but Der Bingle always says, “You just don’t want to let Rose down.”
I have experience with this: Everything from two blood clots and hospital stays and AJ’s mother passing away to Summer having the right shirt for her chorus recital. It’s going to be all right.
Really, I know you will all have a wonderful day with dancing and laughing and visiting and Hannah will be a beautiful bride . . . a beautiful, happy bride.
See, look how calm and happy I am. You can trust me. You will save me some cake, won’t you?
Now, just put your hand on the computer screen and we will share good vibes.
Oh, AJ says “Hey.”
Yesterday in the attic
With the dumpster in the driveway crying out, “Feed me; feed me.” , I felt compelled to go to the attic yesterday and throw a lot of stuff down. (What the heck is the correct punctuation for that sentence anyway?) After I had cleared out a lot of attic stuff, I felt pretty good; this morning I feel pretty achy. The backs of my legs especially. Then this morning was the first DST weekday morning and I felt drugged – and not with the kind of drugs that help the aches.
A couple of the folks at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse here have suggested that the cure is the hair of the dog that bit me, i.e., more filling of the dumpster. Well, you “couple of folks” , suppose you take your foldovers, open them up and fold them back over your noses. Obviously, I seem not to be in a cheery little mood. Especially since I watched a show titled “Hoarding: Buried Alive” last night and am now looking suspiciously at my stuff sitting here and there and on top of the first here and there.
Ack! I am staring at Cletus, one of the original “couple of folks” . . . and I know he is about to ask if I got a big enough dumpster. Yes, he stage whispered it to his companion, Floyd. And they are snickering. I don’t care if they have twinkles in their eyes, next time they are going to have super glue in their foldovers.
Mitch Daniels and Mother and Daylight Savings Time
My mother passed away on October 17, 2009. Mitch Daniel’s Indiana was still on Daylight Savings Time; my mother’s Indiana was not. Governor Daniels and Mother were always at odds about this, although he never replied to any of the emails or letters I sent in her behalf.
I know Mother was disappointed in “that boy”. I can remember her saying when he kept us in the Eastern Time Zone and included DST, “I never would have voted for that boy had I known he was going to do this.” Mother was a member of Tom Brokaw’s acclaimed “The Greatest Generation”; she was a well-regarded lady of eccentric tendencies, but a sense of responsibility and accountability that could knock your socks off. I think she deserved a response from Governor Daniels; apparently he did not.
Well, she is gone now. But she had a good point and I think I’ll carry it on. Mother kept Sarah Grismore Time and I think I’ll just keep my watch that way too. AmeliaJake Time. Now if you want us to go on DST, let this state so far from the Atlantic Ocean observe Central Time (aka Chicago Time). What is Indiana doing on Eastern Time? Heavens to Betsey, let’s be sensible. And if you can’t be that sensible, then don’t make us also go on what we used to call “fast time”. That is sort of like going on Double-Double Stupid Time.
So, That Boy, that’s the way I look at it.
Diesel day at Max Myers Motors – Middlebury
I think we may go up to Max Myers and bring the diesel home today, sort of like bringing home a dear family member from a stay at a rehabilitation facility. It is big and black and a 1981 Oldsmobile my father got when Quentin was born . . . because, as he told my mother, they had purchased a new car when Robert William was born.
The fellows at Max Myers have worked on it periodically during its stay, dealing with problems as they showed themselves. Problems that more or less came from not much driving time during the last couple of years of my mother’s life.
We started out not knowing if it would start. Well, actually, we started out here when it was winched out from the basement garage. Or maybe it started out when Mother was just days from dying and she said, “Well, you have the diesel.” It isn’t just a car; it was part of the time when my dad was alive and so was Miss Alice who used to nap in the backseat when my parents went in to Das Dutchman’s Essenhaus for lunch or dinner. They were one of the charter member customers, back when the place was a revived diner.
Ah, see, I am caught up in the nostalgia. Of course, the truth is it IS just a car and if it gets banged up or totaled and lets us know it is worn out, well, then that’s okay. It is not a shrine. It is the memories about it that are sacred . . . sort of. And the best part is, no matter what happens, my parents would be so pleased to see Quentin slide in behind the wheel and head off into life with it. Yes, it took some money to bring it up to speed and, gee, heck, being a diesel, coming up to speed may not be be all that fast. But, I think that’s all right. I think even my Depression Era parents would approve. Somehow that link from Mother and Daddy to Quentin is priceless – no matter what comes after.
In the real world it’s just a car, but in that part of us that would rise above the sensible, it is a symbol of the intangible – the little blond head and the grayer ones sharing the last of a lifetime and the beginning of another, the love of reading, the love of dogs . . .
And that first “Will it start?” Well, Brad Fisher at Max Myers told me they charged the battery and . . . “I’m certain your folks wouldn’t have been surprised, but it turned over and started.” Of course.
Tote that log
I ordered a clean-up dumpster and moved a lot of wood to make a place for it, but the guys missed my sign for where it was to go and put it someplace else. That someplace else would be the place we park the third car when Der Bingle is here. So I went out and moved more wood to make a spot to park and put plastic trash cans to protect the car in case anyone forgets my warning: Back into my car and I will kill you.
I moved that wood the old-fashioned way – one piece at a time.
Pacing yourself is good when you are moving wood; I find taking the long route from place one to place two provides a moderation to the exercise. It takes longer but bit by bit, log by log it gets done. Do you know you can find a lot of gunk under a woodpile? Especially if it is one that wasn’t completely racked because of weather and life’s complications. Muddy gunk. I must admit, though, that muddy gunk is better than the half-frozen gunk that you find when the temperature does not climb into the 50’s. I was lucky these past two days; we had warm temps and so I dealt with muddy shoes and not a fallen-on rear end.
I also threw stuff into the dumpster. Oddly enough, when I am standing in muddy gunk, holding a log, I don’t feel this great sentimental attachment to the things that show up in the driveway area. Not a whit of nostalgia; I just chuck it in. The one thing about where they placed the dumpster is that it is not far from the second story windows of this big ole room that is chock-a-block with stuff. I’m betting I can get pretty good at tossing stuff out of the window and hitting the dumpster. Of course, I am handicapped by the fact that the windows crank out and in the open position they are 90 degrees out in the middle of the window. The old windows in the other part of the house crank out to the side and give you wider egress. Of course, with the window in the middle, there is less chance of falling out. Things balance out, I suppose.
We do have some characters here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse, though, and there might be an unwanted balance between dumpster chukking and dumpster diving. Oh, well.
Scary TV
No, not werewolves or vampires or serial killers. This show called Monsters Inside Me can really eat at you. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to express it. I’m talking parasites and just now the show is featuring tapeworm cysts in the brain. They have even . . . ack, Alison is calling to be picked up . . . just got back to hear the closing that some parasites can’t be killed and for the rest of your life you will have – get ready for it – Monsters Inside Me.
Before I left, I caught a shot of them pulling a tapeworm cyst from someone’s brain; it was horrible and I can see it in my mind’s eye. Last night I had terrible nightmares and given the last hour, maybe I’ll just stay up all night. That’s an even better idea now that Animal Planet is showing a raft being capsized by a hippo in a croc-invested river.
Will somebody turn the key in my back
I am having trouble getting going this morning. I could have done it, after all I got up and took Alison to work and came home and started the process to get Summer moving. However, I was informed it was Collaboration Wednesday; that, apparently is the new – or newly-used – name for the damned 30 minute delay Wednesday.
Disgusted, I put my head down on a pillow and thought, “Oh, Puh-lease.” Robert took her to school and I stayed in the ball of tired despair that comes from being reminded of the unbeatable, annoying and stupid things that are not satisfied to psychically beat you in points, but beat you up and down.
Last week Summer came home and said the school wasn’t going to have the Wednesday delay anymore; I am not stupid – I looked at her and her grin and guessed they had changed it to another day. Oh, yeah, I was right. Now we are going to have Collaboration Monday. Of course. Monday. I suppose they feel it eases you into the week. No, it does not. It introduces you to the week with a nod to starting out with a salute to the idea that the week is something to groan about. To start out by delaying and throwing everything out of whack.
I’m sure this little fiasco of a schedule blip is because someone needed something on a resume as a progressive program. But like many little stepping stones needlessly thrown down by people, it remains to trip us up.
So now, today, I am going to be complaining to all the guys stopping in at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. Hey! Guess what?? I turned my own key. They will probably walk in, take one look at me and mouth, “Oh, Puh-lease.”
Curbside spruce – blue
Today was climb up on the stepladder, which was leaning against the blue spruce tree trunk, and saw off some of the lower branches. It needed to be done; the tree towers over the house, but the bottom was looking ragged. The air conditioner sits right beside it and the driveway is on the other side and as time passed, the branches next to the air conditioner dried out and died and fell off. The branches by the driveway tried to encroach upon the passageway of the cars and there was confrontation. For awhile on that side, we pruned. But pruning a drooping blue spruce branch sort of results in a pom-pom type bottom.
The whole thing was lop-sided. It took me about three years to pick up the saw, however, because, gosh, it’s a tree. Today I did it.
And then I dragged some of the trimmings to the curb. Cameron dragged the rest. Alison looked out and exclaimed, “There’s a tree on the parkway!” Well . . . sort of. We will plant some ground cover when we figure out what would look okay. Maybe a bed of spikes:
