Check out this big, reaching maw of a plant on the east side of the entrance to the hospital; there is another one just like it on the west side. Does it make you think of something sinister? Something like a Venus Flytrap.  It looks hungry, doesn’t it? And I could not stop the thought that popped into my head: So what DOES the hospital do with “mistakes.”

Possible lyrics:

Painting in the bathroom, painting in the hallway, sanding on the kitchen floor  . . . wearing old and dirty, torn and ragged clothes. Aching little muscles and sanddusty skin. Paint on my face and pressure points on my knees . . . and a big, fat pain in my butt.

I must scan in a picture of Quentin on an earlier birthday, maybe from days he can’t remember  . . .  and maybe from days he can.  That would make it two photos – maybe I could go for 3, 4 or 5. Why, I could start a trend.

A couple of days ago, the grandkids wanted to hear the  “snake on the patio” story. Der Bingle was home and so I asked him to tell it; well, of course, he started it out wrong, so I had to take over, telling the part about Quentin running through the front door telling me there was a snake out back. At the time, I thought he meant a foot-long garter snake and I figured I could control myself to handle that, so I opened the patio door and steeped out.

There it was – a four to five foot fat rat snake – stretched diagonally on the patio. I immediately pivoted and U-Turned back into the family room. Quentin was standing in the doorway from the hall and I stared straight at him and said, “If you ever leave the patio door OPEN, I will kill you.” That may seem harsh, but the mere thought of sitting on the sofa to have a snake crawl over me pushed me toward the asylum; the actually event would have made me a permanent resident.

“Ha,” you think. “A snake in the family room. Hahahahaha and ha.” Well, that happened in our neighborhood in West Chester, Ohio. This lady was a fanatical housekeeper. Of course, compared to me, that could be anyone, so let us say she was a housekeeper’s housekeeper. She constantly vacuumed the shag carpeting in her famiy room . . . and that is why she could see the “S” marks that alerted her to the snake slipping into a door left ajar. So, at least she knew there was trouble afoot. Hahahahahahahaha . . .  afoot, snake? get it? hahahahahaha.

Then there was there was something else that happened often. One lady told me about it; this thing that she and her neighbors experienced. You see, a lot of the house backed right up to the woods – I mean right up to them – and that part of Ohio being hilly, many of the homes had three stories in back. Walkout basements, dontcha know? Of course, they built elevated decks off their family rooms . . . decks that had trees shading them. Birds nested in the cross supports and most people would complain  about dropping on the concrete patio below. But something overshadowed this . . . snakes would crawl into the tree branches and hang there sensing the birds under the decking. Then the snakes would drop onto the deck, maybe next to someone sitting there relaxing.

Writing about it making me hyperventilate. Gotta go to my happy place . . . hope no one left the door open there.

I feel I am fortunate to be a Baby Boomer – especially an early one. Why, with the Depression followed by a long war, the late 40’s and early 50’s were times when people wanted a more pictue book existence . . . and gave it to young kids. And we didn’t know any different; we were spoiled. We spent babyhood and toddlerhood without TV. A lot of outdoor time and new things everywhere. They were grabbing the prosperity of the times and relaxing . . . and we littlier ones thought that was the way things always were.

But enough of that, sort of. Enough of the good-life Baby Boomer childhood. Think about the Baby Boomer getting older time. Yes, a while back, it occured to me that my generation certainly could not use phrases such as “in the old days” or “back then” or “horse and buggy days” or anything that would tarnish our prince and princess beginnings.  Obviously others thought the same, maybe some young whippersnapper in advertising, and we have the phrase “in the day.” Gotta love it. It doesn’t give an inch.

And that’s the way we early Baby Boomers like it. Yessirree Boob . . . er, Bob.

You won’t see me looking at a kid or grandkid and saying, “Hey, back in the old days, we had to use typewriters and the typing of the school paper was so much harder than actually writing it. And footnotes?  Badword that. Footnotes put hair on your chest in those days. I don’t talk about only the broadcast channels and days of no videos or DVD’s. I don’t talk about being at the mercy of The Morning Movie to see old classics. Not me. Because that would suggest to people of less age that I and my classmates are becoming generic oldtimers.

No. No. No.  We will always be the special Baby Boomers, maybe just more wrinkly. But, hey, if we’re wrinkly, than that’s the style, because we are the M-I-C-K-E-Y  M-O-U-S-E kids that sent away for ears to wear during the show. We are the cat’s meow.

I am typing with tired hands . . . tired from holding a gen-u-wine scrub brush – holding it against the kitchen floor and pushing on it. We are putting new stain on the floor because it has reached the stage of looking really horrible. Once a golden pecan with satin polyurethane, it would now be at home in a rundown tenement in an abandoned neighborhood. We are doing only part of it at a time because we are uncertain how it is going to take the shock of rejuvenation.

Right now I could use a little “tonic” . . . Oh, yeah.

Der Bingle mentioned last night he had checked “the cow” and found nothing. I didn’t notice it myself because I was not at the cow, but since I knew I wasn’t at the cow, I did know he was right.

I have been here and there, peering into paint cans and standing out of range while Summer spray-painted the old pump red.  Paint has dripped on me from kitchen walls, hall walls and bathroom walls . . . and I have scrubbed (I love you latex) paint from floors and counters. Soon, I am going to do another scrubbing of me. I have run to the stores, taken Alison to work, stopped at Redboxes, hunted for lost shoes, stomped trash, set mousetraps in the fruit cellar, retrieved and reset mousetraps in the fruit cellar . . . come out to do some things on the porch and found  refugees here, asking sanctuary.

Yesterday, I was tapped not only to take Summer to the dentist, but to convince her she should go. I did the latter by talking to her through a locked door. So, eventually,  we’re there – at the dentist we share – and while waiting for her to numb, he talked to me about this and that and, oh, by the way, are you writing?

Well, no . . . just on this little blog I have. He mentions these grandchildren and I say, well, yes, it seems my time is nickeled and dimed.

And while I have been writing this, Alison has been standing here on the porch, talking to me constantly, phrasing her words so I have to at least nod at intervals.

And, yes, well, yes . . . I am complaining.

Yesterday, Summer and I put a cooler with ice and drinks and a pizza in the trunk; we put the insect repellent in the front seat.  We headed up to Mother’s for a few hours and, as it worked out,  Summer was introduced to driving the Wheel Horse – the 12 horsepower one. I was on a bigger one and Mother rode the one that looks more like a cart.

Summer did quite well – of course, she is almost 13. We put her in gear, showed her the brake and let her make big ovals. She really liked it, although she did notice that my tractor was and 18 horsepower model and went pretty darn bouncy fast. In fact, several times I felt myself sliding off the seat as I made a turn. It was my first time on that mower, but I did pretty well – after all, I am almost 61.

The three of us mowed out back for a little over an hour. During that time we noticed Oakley Grey was also using a tractor mower up at the old schoolhouse. He waved. The “old schoolhouse” reference can be confusing to some and so we didn’t use the term with Summer. You see, the three story brick schoohouse was torn down two or three decades ago. We still say things like: Oh, it’s by the old schoolhouse; he lives across from the old schoolhouse; the fog is so thick I can’t see the old schoolhouse.

Anyway, when the three mowers were gathered at the mound (which does exist), Mother checked the gas and we decided to move Summer up to the cart mower which has a CLUTCH. She would mow in the center of the east section and I would chug around the bouncy, bouncy oddly-defined edges comprised of fence sections, trees and really big shrubs. For this I used the 12 horsepower Summer had been riding – I think she liked it better now that I no longer had the element of speed, which she had envied. Except for having my hat knocked off by a determined branch, we got it finished up.

Summer had fun mowing but her face soured a bit when I told her she would have to get a couple of years experience under her belt before she did the big tractor. But, hey, she came around okay when I pointed out that Quentin had mowed with the 12 and when I growled that when I was her age, I mowed with a reel mower. We had to explain that to her.

I have pictures but I can’t find my white transfer cord right at this moment. I KNOW I just saw it. And, Der Bingle, we have FLIP video of Mother explaining the workings to Summer. One little tidbit she added as an aside to me: “Your dad said you don’t want to fill this tank (the 12) all the way. I don’t know why, but I don’t.”