We made six large and one small pizza tonight – and I was doughgirl. You get in a groove and I just kept going until I had quite a stack. We put them in the refrigerator and starting chopping ingredients. Other people put everything together and did the oven work and I grabbed a few little bites here and there. Summer made a pizza she called “Only I know what’s on it” and one where the crust was shaped like an “S” for, she said, snake.

Alison outdid herself with a pizza that was so high it could be measured in inches;

There is no reason for the accounting of this pizza afternoon and evening, but it typed itself out. No, it didn’t – I am being silly. I typed it, but I felt like I was on autopilot; I guess you could say the rendition was not presented with feeling. That is probably because I feel a little fuguey. Sort of, well? What now?

Today while running some films back to Family Video, I started thinking about some of my favorite times. I always liked the moments just before touchdown at Limbergh Field. Walking in the jet way and coming out at the very end of the terminal arm.  Seeing the statues in the fountains.

Then riding in the passenger seat as we travelled on the busy roads to Pacific Beach. The knowing that this was the first day there. There is no reason why I loved SD and PB as much as I did. Maybe it was the bougainvillea.

Today I was in the very rural middle of Noble County on narrow roads that grid-systemed their way at right angles through fields. It is not bad scenery. It is fertile; it has trees and hedgerows and old farmhouses. I dread the possibility of not having my village corner in the county just north of here to call home in the future. Corn School on the courthouse square.  But, for all this, I cannot be satisfied.

That’s my problem – I always want more.

I don’t know why this is.

So much for autopilot . . . I guess I don’t have a direction.

There are times when I work and sweat and trigger good little endorphins and when the light of the fading day is cheerful, making me look forward to the next morning’s dawn . . . Heck, maybe it’s the barometric pressure. But anyway, there are times when I can think maybe that most wonderful thing will happen. I delay talking sense to myself because for those few moments of delicious hope and great cheer, I feel so very good. And I am so happy that tears come to my eyes . . . and then I can tell myself, AmeliaJake, that won’t be . . . because those tears in my eyes can also carry away the stress hormones of sadness. So it is an ache, and for a little while, not a bring-you-to-your-knees pain.

Yikes, this year’s winning entry in the Bulwer-Lytton contest actually doesn’t sound bad to me; I mean I can really see it – the gritty reality of lustful passion.

“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.”‘

Garrison Spik

And this one sounds okay, too –

“Like a mechanic who forgets to wipe his hands on a shop rag and then goes home, hugs his wife, and gets a grease stain on her favorite sweater — love touches you, and marks you forever.”

— Beth Fand Incollingo, Haddon Heights, New Jersey  (The name seems odd though, kind of close to in cognito with a nod to lingo.)

I think the following is not within the nature of the rules, but I guess the awards committee thought elsewise:

“‘Toads of glory, slugs of joy,’ sang Groin the dwarf as he trotted jovially down the path before a great dragon ate him because the author knew that this story was a train wreck after he typed the first few words.”

— Alex Hall, Greeley, Colorado

Well, it is cloudy today and rained . . . Will it be a dark and stormy night?

I went to Fort Wayne today and took Lens Crafters up on its 30 day policy. The sunglasses, tortoise shell frames – RayBan – dontcha know – were single vision because I thought they would be good for driving and just staring straight ahead. Not so, they made me feel odd and get headaches; so I went and had them changed into bifocals. No line bifocal sunglasses.

Can’t say I don’t look cool in the sun . . .

Oh, wait I got a call while eating at Logan’s – the air conditioning man came and the unit is kaput. We are warm – so very warm – until the beginning of next week. But I still look cool.

I have mentioned that in the past, Quentin and I sat down and named – and labelled on their butts – bears in my collection from GoodWill. There were, dontcha know, the bears that looked so cute and so needing of a home they just had to be real. Actually, they had all sorts of looks.

Yesterday we pulled stuff off the shelves in the laundry room because it was getting really crowded in there, not to mention a little linty. I saw a small fuzzy foot and thought it was a dog chew toy; it was not – it was a bear from the collection and my daughter-in-law looked at his butt and said, “It’s Cagney.”

I thought that we must have talked about him looking like George M. Cohan or a gangster . . . You dirty rat. I thought about Quentin and me sitting there naming them as I pulled more stuff off the top shelf. Later, when things were trashed or reshelved, I picked up Cagney to put him somewhere safe.

Only, when I looked at his face, I thought, hmmmm, why did we think he looked like James Cagney? I turned him upside down and on his butt was written Cagey. Cagey? What the Heck? Here I was getting all sentimental about a stuffed animal when I have been working on telling myself they are nothing more than cloth and stuffing. I would perhaps have said, “Toss him,” had she not misread Cagey’s name as Cagney.

I remember when we always watched Yankee Doodle Dandy on the Fourth of July . . . and Quentin once impersonated Cagney impersonating Cohan and dancing up the wall in a fancy turn. No way could I toss Cagney.

Then I stopped in my steps. That Cagey bear had managed to save his little skin (cloth) by bear magic. His name did fit . . . and how can something fit something that isn’t real? Ack.

Anyway here is the end of the story . . . plus a picture of three pals.