This afternoon I thought I’d go on record with my psychic power and announce that the Colts would lose, but I didn’t. Of course, I was right. Summer is growling/crying and I am just sad to be vindicated.

RATS

I got up to take Alison back to work after being off for a while to deal with her mother’s stroke. It was colder than I expected – in the teens. Still, this is early February in Northern Indiana so there’s no reason to be surprised, just a reason to be cold. The car’s auto operation of the heating up process doesn’t direct air at the windshield immediately because that air would be COLD. As usual, after a while, the blower came on strong and there was a strong smell of skunk all the way out the hospital and a good part of the way back. It is my fervent hope that the smell did indeed dissipate and that my nose did not give out; I don’t want to have a deja vu moment when I get back in the car.

When Sydney got skunked last time, he had apparently harassed the skunk under the car because his head got a direct hit and the bottom of the car reeked for days. Oh, that was fun – shampooed/skunky dog in the car interior and skunk smell coming out of the vents. Sheesh, Sydney. Not a good memory if you visit it too closely. That episode was followed by weeks of panic whenever he went out at night again. Sydney’s out?? Oh, no.

Yes, it IS cold this morning – I just had to slip my shoes off because the leather was giving off the retained cold into my feet and not outward into the room. I have them pulled up under a small blankie now . . .  oh, yes, hmmmm, good. Hey, my nose is still cold as well. Now that I have realized it, I am having trouble getting it out of my mind and think I will snuggle down in this little corner with a nice comforter all around me and pulled up over my nose.

This storm had forecasters talking about Washington D.C. being buried in snow; as of yesterday morning the forecasts and radar showed  the mass in Indiana dissipating just north of Indianapolis and Ohio was to be cut in half horizontally as well. But it slid a little north and gobbled us up in the nor’eastern driven winds and wet snow. I guess Washington is still in blizzard conditions today and Der Bingle says he heard on the radio that folks there were clearing grocery shelves of bread, milk and Super Bowl beer.

We don’t have much snow this morning but last night that snow riding in 35-40 mile gusts made driving bad. Der Bingle, who thought he would have an easy trip up last night spent about twice as much time as normal getting here. He said it wasn’t the worse weather he had travelled in, but it was close. Cars were off the road all along the way. Robert and Alison were coming from Cincinnati and they were really caught. At first I let them know I had told them so as they travelled up I-74; I had said the Ohio River Valley is going to be a mess, a mess, I say. I’m nice that way.

As Alison called from the interstate to report on the number of slide-offs and wrecks, I told her they should drive out of it north of Indianapolis; I was wrong. She called from that area and talked for 29 minutes in a play-by-play account of cars they were seeing in ditches and median strips. I kept thinking I wanted her to hang up because I didn’t want to be an audio witness to their car sliding. She did hang up and they did get home okay.

So did Der Bingle who got here about 10:30 pm and tossed my cold Hot Head Burritos in my lap. You know, when they are cold like that you can tear a hole in the foil and just stick your face into the flour wrapping and bite right through to the rice and beef and cheese and sauce. I’m sure Der Bingle was impressed as he watched me do that while he sat a wee bit away taking off his gloves. Yes, yes. I got the burrito unwrapped before he got his hands ungloved. Impressive, no?

He talked about the trip and I just went munch, munch and munch. This is where getting toward old age and far into marriage works out – imagine doing that on a first date. Well, even I shuddered at the thought.

I have worn glasses since I counted my age in single digits, and folks, that’s a heck of a long time ago. I clean my glasses, oh, about . . . well, I can’t remember the last time actually. Sometimes something major will splash in the kitchen and I will wipe them off. Other than that, I just keep looking through them; I think most people who started wearing glasses as a kid have adapted this way. Now, Der Bingle, he came to glasses later in life and often times I find myself thinking, “Oh my gosh, he’s cleaning his glasses again for crying out loud.” If he catches a glimpse of my lenses in a certain light, he reacts as if I am wearing a sludge of mud, manure and plague germs. Sometimes he even grabs them and cleans them. He shows disgust.

I think he is a glasses wimp.

But, this morning, I have to admit I was reading and started to wonder if I were having a stroke because I was having trouble maintaining focus. Finally, I did take my glasses off and looked at them from a distance greater than an inch. There were tiny spots all over the lenses; yes, just tiny peepholes between the spots. Obviously, my eyes were shifting from peephole to peephole. Or, I should say, my eye, since I rarely voluntarily look out of my left.

So, perhaps, Der Bingle, I do need to clean my glasses . . . with Windex even. I may get around to it in a couple of hours or so. Or maybe I could just use this soft shirt here. And, really, I probably only need to do the right lens.

Oh, by the way, have you ever wondered if a town has had both a Minnetonka factory and a Mini-Tonka factory? What if the deliveries got mixed up and they started turning out steel moccasins? And kids had to play with little leather trucks with beads on them?

Oh, dear, the guys here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse think it’s time for me to have another “treatment” in the Tabasco Room. Sort of shock therapy.

ALERT    ALERT   ALERT    ALERT ALERT    ALERT   ALERT    ALERT – –  PHOTO NOT FOR SQUEAMISH

I turned on the TV this morning to get a fix on what the local station was saying about the weather, my main question being: Is the snow still going south of us. And what they said and what the weather site indicated had blended together in my head when my ears picked up some talk about necks. It seems if a woman’s neck is over 13 inches around, she is more likely to suffer heart problems. I knew I did not have a long attractive neck; I knew though that my head did not sit directly on my shoulders – I did have a neck and it didn’t seem to me to be huge. Wrong. It is over 13 inches. I suppose Summer would say it goes along with my fat head. I am going into the Foo Bar for a stiff morning bracer. For Heavens Sake, isn’t it enough to have to worry about keeping a stiff upper lip, now it’s “keep a skinny neck” too.

I also have stubby fingers which are another harbinger of ill-health genetically, not to mention are sort of not elegant looking. Well, maybe it will work out because I suppose my stubby fingers will fit around those reedy little 13 and less inch necks. Why, yes they do . . . I actually measured. I did.

Here’s a house not far from me being torn down for parking space and/or green space. I was driving back from the fairgrounds with Sydney when I saw a big yellow machine eating a house. Soooo, I grabbed my camera, flipped on the video mode and took some movies. This one shows the chimney coming down. As I looked into the house, I saw a solid wooden panel door still on its hinges and remarked I was surprised that it had not been salvaged. The new owner said he had had someone go through on Saturday who had told him there was nothing worth salvaging . . . solid wood paneled doors? Oh, I think there might have been a market, especially right down the street at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse.

And here is the end – a hole in the ground.

We had a good day –  a little more than we planned, but we made it. Straggled off the train at 10:38 p.m and got home a bit after 11. I lay down and the next thing I knew it was light outside. LIGHT!

Here are a couple of pictures, which come to think of it, may indicate the part about getting back was just an illusion.

AJ and Summer sitting over Chicago and Der Bingle looking out at us.

Oh, look . . . they’re getting so much smaller.

Tomorrow at this time, some of us will be on a train – a real life Amtrak train – on the way toward Chicago. We are just going and coming back on one day for the heck of it and for younger eyes to see the big city. We are hoping to go to the Sears skydeck during a non-cloudy period, but given that there is a new GLASS floor, maybe clouds would be better. Some people are envisioning AmeliaJake gluing suction cups to her hands and feet and inching out onto the glass support.

I will never live down the time in West Chester when I froze like a flattened squirrel on the garage roof.  Fortunately for me, that was before the day of little digital cameras and cameras in cell phones – heck, even cell phones. The latter is probably good because there were no calls . . .”Hey, I’m out here looking at AJ up on the garage roof . . . Ooooooh, you should see her . . . Sticking to it and shaking at the same time . . .  ”

I am surprised no one has thought of paying the folks who live there now to allow filming of a “dramatization” of the actual event

You are not supposed to blog when you are angry; okay, I’m not angry. I am just a frustrated blob hitting her head on a brick wall. I have spoken about this artifact in East Noble scheduling before – first in general, then when the high school only delayed 30 minutes on Wednesday so teachers could discuss students and whatever and the middle school didn’t, and again when both schools had the delay.

I HAVE MY OPINION ABOUT THIS DELAY.

Today was Wednesday but I forgot and then readjusted and then Summer tells me, “Oh, there is no 30 minute delay because we get Friday off.”

Before I got to the part about thumping my head on a brick wall, I hauled off and kicked something on the kitchen floor and SAID A FEW THINGS.

Then, after dropping the kids off – probably late – at school, I took Sydney to the fairgrounds and entered my psychic world where I lurk on hands and knees on the flat roof of the porch at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse, peering over at the ground below, waiting for some offender to walk by. I then pounce on him/her like a commando – or rabid, flying squirrel.

Maybe some nincompoop . . . ooooooh, getting really close to the edge here . . . felt themselves psychically flattened this morning. Makes me want to do it again. War cry and all.

I have been working in the bedroom/sitting room area, digging my way through my usual “personal memory things I cannot live without” and the accumulation of stuff gathered over the past few months and plopped into those rooms for convenience of knowing where they were – Christmas things, Mother’s papers . . . oh and the sickroom items, including the necessary bottle of Tabasco sauce to make meals brought up palatable. And piles of books, afghans and quilts . . . and a sewing machine.

This has been an ongoing project but Sunday I had a milestone moment: I took two large, green, flexibly expansive trash bags and filled them – filled them to maximum bloat – with things from the walk-in closet in the sitting room. I impressed myself. Even more impressive is that this did not leave the little room looking anywhere near empty.

What is scary is that each piece of stuff is not just a thing; I could tell a story about all of it. Even if there is no story, one would pop into my mind. And when there is a story, well, look out for the emotions. I cannot be like a dog, bending over and sending things flying through my legs. Actually, I think though that is how I got it out of the closet . . . then I sat down and sorted through it, bit by bit.

And when my two bags were filled, I had to pull them out walking backwards, using my leaning weight to keep them moving . . . and humming loudly so I would not hear the little voices of my little things calling to me.