All right, I’ve got this blog going for probably mainly me – and as a link to me and what I’m doing, Yes, it’s a big ME anyway you slice it. Here’s the thing: My mother has been diagnosed with advanced cancer and she is here at our Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. We all are very sorry that her 83rd birthday was marked by this. However, she has been pointing out it happens to everyone and she is 83 and she has never really been sick. In fact, she insisted on using the little rider mower just last week. Dr. Warrener says she is “tough”. Yes, she is. We are going to try to be that way too.
Category Archives: Just Me – AmeliaJake
A special friend
When I am seriously taken aback, shaken to my roots, I make mindless errors. Just now, when I went to type in my user name, I typed “a special friend” because she (JE) was very much on my mind. I was thinking of when we went to Shadowlands at Kenwood Mall and there is this speech by C.S. Lewis, (Anthony Hopkins) :
I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God, it changes me.
She was sitting on my right and after that last sentence, she turned to me, smiling, and softy commented on the truth of it.
I have often returned to that moment and how she looked and what she said . . . and I have found comfort.
The birthday test
Today Mother is 83 years old and we started the morning off with a CAT scan with IV contrast, after drinking a lot of the pre-test Crystal Lite mixture just before the scan and 16 ounces of water before that. Did I say we? Oh, I did . . . well . . . Mother did the drinking and since her stomach has not been feeling at all well, it was a bit of a long process, with her lying in an examination room with a vomit pan beside her.
Oh, before we left, while I was upstairs changing clothes, I heard Sydney barking plaintively and thought he was in the back vestibule, although he sounded closer than that. He was; he had followed Alison two floors below into the bunker (where the cat is) and didn’t make it out before she left and put the gate up. He was trapped with Tiffany, the cat from, well, Mother’s. When I got down there, his little nose was up against the gate like a doomed prisoner.
Mother is sleeping on the porch now, after having watched Angela’s Ashes and I am on the other sofa with traumatized Sydney. We have the electric firestove on and a Macintosh and Peach Yankee Candle burning. And I am drinking a cure: you know, Diet Coke mixed with Coke and sipped after two aspirin.
Careful with those code phrases
I’ve been watching movies about World War II partisans and secret agents receiving coded messages from London since they started running the movies on Frances Farmer Theater (mentioned HERE to the right and just below the picture of Harlow Hickenlooper) and The Late Night Movie and The Afternoon Movie. That’s a lot of years, folks. Of course, I was safe on the floor in front of the TV, not huddled in a cave or cottage while the Nazis zeroed in on the signal. It was so cool. Sometimes it was something like “The bluebird nests in a red birdhouse.” Sometimes it wasn’t a phrase or sentence at all – it would be a particular song of movement of a symphony. And, of course, those of us who went to school back then know the D-Day signal: Wounds my heart with a monotonous languor.
Well, tonight I was typing away with Der Bingle on ichat while watching a show about redwoods and I sent this tidbit of information: The wandering salamander lives in the canopy of the redwood forest. Some of the folks at the Ohio Redoubt of the West Facing Cave were reading over his shoulder and panicked, typing back to me, “Oh my God, the invasion is tonight!!!!”
That was a few hours ago. At that time I envisioned the bears and Grover on the sofa with a laptop computer; now, though, that vision has evolved into them gathered around a big radio behind a fake wall in the Foo Bar listening to the incoming messages. Grover, of course, would be humming La Marseillaise.
Cheese and horseradish
I have been thinking of soft, spreadable cheese lately. Not the nacho kind – the type I’m using to having on holidays and other special occasions. So I went looking while at the grocery and found a small tub of cheddar and horseradish for $3.99 and I could imagine on my tongue and forgot about the price and put it in my cart. Then I came home and ate it. Not all of it, but a lot. It was so good – almost a transcendental experience. Then I got stomach cramps. It was worth it. In fact, I’ll probably do it again tomorrow. The really cool thing is that when Der Bingle is not here, I am the only one who will eat anything with horseradish in it.
Spiders
I bought spiders today – electric light ones – that were on sale; I was in CVS getting Mother’s prescription when I saw them and thought, “Aha! Grover would like me to put these up to give Summer the creeps.” So, I bought them and then I went up to Scott with the medicine and on the way back pulled over at the little Sidener Cemetery to see if Catherine Fowler had been buried there in 1851. Yes, she had and there was a broken off Fowler stone leaning against hers – but it was so worn away I could not read all the information. There was a lot of open space in those first five or so rows of white soapstone headstones. I suspect a good many are gone.
I just realized I went from Halloween spiders to dead people – that connection was not my point; my point is the excursion into the chilly wind of the cemetery compounded my fatigue from yesterday’s Apple Festival and I went home and snacked and napped. No spiders were hung. That sounds as if I am stating a disclaimer: No spiders were harmed in this production. The truth is the production got postponed and when I’m climbing around on a ladder tomorrow, some spiders might be whacked against the ladder or ceiling or even dropped. Then again they could tangle me up in the web of wires and I will splat myself off the ladder.
ooooooooooh . . . AmeliaJake vs. Eight-legged Freaks.
Okay, I got misted, but that’s okay
It was chilly, very chilly, and raining on and off this morning . . . and the Apple Festival opened. I was sitting here all snug with warm feet and I thought, “Well, if I’m going to be alive, let’s be alive.” And so Der Bingle and I walked over to the fairgrounds; I wore a camisole, a turtleneck, a heavy hooded sweatshirt and tied a lined windbreaker around my waist. It spit rain and it misted but we made it over in pretty good shape. Of course, there were no lines for anything, so I filled up my Bayou Billy cup from previous AF’s with peach-flavored soda and then got a buffalo burger.
One of the men waiting on us looked familiar and so I said, “I think I know you,” and he replied his name was Mike Kramer. I was quiet for a moment and then put it all together and realized he was Judge Kramer of whom I have a very high opinion. He looked different I guess in a sweatshirt than in a black robe. Actually, he is not what you would call a handsome man at all. I interviewed him once for an article and when I first sat down it occurred to me right off the bat that he wasn’t handsome. I’m sorry but that’s the way it is; the funny thing is I rarely notice people’s looks unless they are strikingly attractive or, forgive me Sydney, real dogs . . . and he’s not in the “dog” category.
He’s just a very friendly, polite, intelligent and kind man . . . and I’ll take that kind of “just” anytime.
Munching my buffalo burger and sipping my peach soda, I headed down the fairground lane with Der Bingle. He was doing the same, but right across from the Merchant’s Building, he tried to breathe a chunk of buffalo burger and choked. Momentarily. Then bits of burger flew out of his mouth and hes was just breathing and coughing. One of the thoughts that ran through my mind was to be glad the festival was not crowded because it would be easier for people to spot the screaming short woman calling for the EMS. As I said, though, he unchoked himself and just coughed for awhile and then off and on for a while.
We went into the Settler’s Roost (Swine Barn) and sat on bales of straw for 15 minutes while a group which shall remain unnamed warmed up and tuned. Then they played and we realized the only good thing about having sat there was it kept us out of the more heavily- falling rain outside. The Swine Barn is also home to oodles of craft booths and I bought a rectangular piece of wood – oh, about four inches by two – that was painted white with black spots, said “COW” and had a little wire by which to hang it. I also got a wooden cut-out that says “MOO” and a pathetic reindeer because I felt so for him. AMELIAJAKE! The reindeer is not real, he is a piece of WOOD. I know my inclination to personify gets me too involved; I need to do something about that before I start a charity drive for pathetic wooden reindeers and primitive stuffed dolls and mooseheads on springs that stick into flowerpots.
We did more stuff, but I’ll get to that later. However, it was in this time that I first saw the coyote scalp with ears that is now sitting on my head. I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT MYSELF.
Der Bingle and the Bayou Billy famous refillable mug for only one dollar, heading back over to another festival. He got Cherry Wine – I got peach.
Last year I could not have taken this picture; the lane then was a moving snake of people. The picture would have been of somebody’s shirt.
Waiting for customers.
Notice the “cow”.
Wes Linenkugal band. Very good, happy music.
furniture
I moved some furniture today – oh, a loveseat and a couple of chairs. And then I toted boxes too, boxes in which I am collecting the tools I find around the house. I transported afghans from the porch to the living room . . . I steam cleaned as well. Almost forgot, I moved the little fire stove out of the corner and about two to three feet south against the east wall. So now we have a speakeasy alcove in our cafe and roadhouse, our little Foo Bar. It is the place where we are refined, where we think of poetry and poetic prose, where decisions are made, where we frown inwardly when we fall into being our second-rate selves and . . . well, that is yet to be seen.
But wait a moment, speakeasy seems not the right word for these sentiments, yet it came right to me and I like it just fine. It’s okay . . . we tend to pull odds and ends together because we like them and because they usually work out. At least for us.
Oh, festival, oh festival, your rainy days may be coming
It is raining now; it was raining last night; it is supposed to rain all day and then tomorrow morning and maybe tomorrow afternoon.
The is the weekend of Apple Festival; two years ago the sun was out both days and the temperature was at record highs. The Lutheran folks could only spend 10 minutes a shift at the apple fritter cooking vats. Last year the weather was unremarkable in my memory so I suppose it was suitable weather, but not the Goldilocks “just right” weather we had three years ago.
So, this year it looks like a chilly. rainy Saturday and a chilly – with left over Wet – Sunday. This is the year to find a spot on the hay bales in the Swine Barn (they call it Settler’s Roost or Open Prairie for Apple Festival) and listen to the Possum Trott Orchestra and other good fiddling groups with nifty names. The craft booths are in the Swine Barn as well, lots of them. That’s where Cameron started the tradition of getting Grandma GiGi (Mother) an Apple Festival birthday present. The first year – even though he was quite little – he summed her up pretty well by stopping in front of a “Grow Dammit” garden sign and pointing out she would like it.
This year she is teetering on how she feels and mentions going on Sunday if the weather is okay. Of course, she hasn’t been feeling well and is spending a lot of time resting and being nagged to eat. BUT, an echocardiogram has shown her heart to be “strong” – let’s hear if for a 65% ejection fraction. Now we are looking at the stomach . . . but that stomach is thinking soft festival pretzel with cheese.
Ack, they tell me I have to drive to to Albion for a court Colin judge conference . . . So I guess I’ll comb my hair.
Hershey’s kisses
When I was little, my parents would give me a dime or nickel and let me walk all by myself over to the General Store and buy candy corn. I think there is some story about my pronunciation causing a problem in the transaction. I do remember that I never really cared all that much for the orange and yellow and tip of white stuff because it was too sweet. I don’t think I verbalized this at the time because I think I didn’t have enough experience to know that people have different preferences.
Over the years, I would occasionally pass a dish of candy corn and, against my better judgment, pick up a piece with the idea that maybe, just maybe, I might join the majority of people who liked candy corn. It had never worked with watermelon and pumpkin pie, but it was a quick little test. Each time it was too sweet as always.
And then Der Bingle brought home a bag of candy corn flavored Hershey Kisses and I thought, yeah, right, whatever. But, hey, they are good.
I took pictures of a couple in their foil and then naked and when I get around to it I will post them here below.
Candy corn kisses
Nakie corn