Having just posted about a couple married for 70 years, I am so tempted to post the pictures LZP sent that I am going to do it.

These are divorce cakes:

Flowers, cards and a great-grandson

Little red flowers and big yellow ones.

Kathryn and more flowers.

AND now here is the verse and the signature from the card she gave Emory:

MB 300D

The link above will expire, so this is what I am talking about:

It’s in California. So in my wildest dreams – considering the story listed above about the ole 300D resting in peace – I see myself teleporting to California, forking over money from my newly -acquired fortune and driving back to in a new little greenie. Driving back? Hmmmm. Well, I’ll tell myself it’s a road trip.

I’ve been here, not feeling bad, just feeling cold-y. Thing is, though, I’ve not had too many ideas; I find that boring, but there it is. I’ve worked on the pattern for the bathroom floor and run people to appointments and such and eaten peanut butter foldovers and had my share of doses of “the cure”  . . .  and just let thinking nanos drain out of me. And, now, I think I am getting refreshed thinking nanos back; I don’t know but perhaps they went to a spa. I’m thinking of it as a transfusion from myself, sort of like when you have surgery and they collect the blood you’re bleeding and pump it back in. Or, perhaps, this is more a dialysis process: the little nanos (and yes, I suppose adding that adjective is redundant) come out, get scrubbed, massaged, a pep talk from Lou Holtz, aromatic therapy, some counseling and then go back into my brain.

So . . . maybe I’ll have a thought soon. Don’t want to rush it, though.

Or perhaps none of this happens.

Literally,  the keys were locked in the trunk. The car keys . . . in the car trunk. Yesterday my daughter-in-law asked me to drive her to Wal-Mart, and so I did. I dropped her off at the door and then parked way over on the east side that faces a rolling field, dotted with the remnants of hedgerows. Far enough away that you can’t make out details, stands – somewhat unsteadily – a barn.  It is peaceful. Well, it looks peaceful; for all I know, someone could be operating a meth lab in it.  Crushed that moment of bucolic bliss, didn’t I?  Sometimes I feel like a shark circling in the paragraphs I write.

The keys. Alison came out with her cart and I handed her the keys so she could put her stuff in the trunk; this car does not have a remote trunk opening device. In the rear view mirror, I saw her coming up the passenger side of the car . . . with nothing in her hands, just her purse over her wrist.

She got in and I, although I knew what her response would be, put out my hand for the keys. “I was looking right at them; I told myself not to forget the keys.” In her mind she heard a replay of the very definite closing of the trunk.

I tell her it’s all right, and, actually, I’m thinking that this is something in the bank for me: Perhaps I can get many withdrawals of favors from the “Locked the keys in the trunk” account. When I take out my phone to call Der Bingle, I was surprised and confused to see the speed dial list was different. Lon was there and I was there. Why would I be on my phone? Where was Cave Girl and Mother and Der Bingle himself? Slowly, bit by bit, neuron by neuron, it dawned on me. I had picked up Der Bingle’s phone. Same phone, same case – couldn’t see the wee bit of copper on the edge that distinguishes his from mine.

I call myself, but Der Bingle does not answer. He does not realize his phone is gone. Then I call the house, my son, Cave Girl and no call will go through. Again I have a stretched- out bit of understanding; he has a different area code. Finally, I get my son’s cell and say, “Walk the phone in your hand out to your dad and give it to him.” I was that specific; I had the idea this might be an episode out of “Anything Can Go Awry” – a yet to be conceived and produced BBC comedy.

So, Sydney and Der Bingle came to our rescue. I went up to the sitting room to clean up – read make a stab at – the piles of clothes and papers and found the shredder was clogged. So I spent two hours working on it, but it was a cheap one and I think the papers bent the little chewing up gears. It was somehow calming – I suppose like basket-weaving at the you know where place.

Yesterday I got up and got myself over to the hair place for a nine 0’clock coloring job. Two hours. The lady who does my hair remarked that I didn’t have much gray, which is good, I suppose. However, the gray I do have sits on the top of my head like a beanie – kind of the reverse of when I was little and had a Brownie beanie on top of blonde hair. SpellCheck, wants me to take the “e” off of blonde; yep, redline again. To heck with them. Okay, maybe I’m being petty. SpellCheck is also getting a redline; this one is sort of satisfying.

The reason I didn’t mention the name of the lady who does my hair is because while she was cutting my daughter-in-law’s hair as my color absorbed, she related the news that her granddaughter had died at age eight months last spring. Her parents had taken her into the ER two or three times and been sent home and then, a day before she died of dehydration, another ER admitted her.

I have had my hair done between then and now; I did not know this. But her birthday would have been Friday . . .

What you don’t know about people who pass through your life . . .