Yesterday was trash-stomping day. I do this almost every week – get up on a stepladder and use my weight to compress trash bags in the bins. Yesterday I fell off the ladder. I don’t know; I was on and then I was on the driveway on my back.

Nothing broke and maybe the thin bit of packed snow had more give than the concrete. I lay their for about 30 seconds, ascertaining that nothing had broken, and then got up. Actually, I think I knew when I hit that I was okay, but the 30 seconds of just lying there was a break in the routine – no pun intended.

It’s not bad – lying on packed snow, looking up. It was better than the time I fell inside a wheeled trash bin and cut my forehead on a raised rim and had blood all over my face. Worse than the actual event was trying to get the ER doctor who was stitching my head up to grasp how such a thing could have happened. To this day, I doubt that he believed me, but I was not inclined to demonstrate.

So, it is AmeliaJake 0, Trash bins 2. Although, come to think of – I do believe I have backed into them once or twice . . . or more. They say revenge is a dish better eaten cold and yesterday started out at -2.

So the guy at the country club wanted to poison John Boehner because the voices in his head told him to do so.

John Boehner is from West Chester, Ohio, a northern suburb of Cincinnati. We lived there a number of years and I was at one of his first neighborhood fundraising meetings when he started his campaign for Congress. That may be my only brush with fame, unless I hear voices that tell me to do something REALLY bad and I guess that brush would be more of infamy.

Enough of that. No wait. This business about voices in people’s heads: Why has no one had voices that say “Send AmeliaJake all of your cookies? or a portion of your fortune?

Now, enough. We had a day in the high 20’s – and maybe it reached 30 degrees, and now it is -2, which is warmer than it was the past mornings. This cold stuff is a problem because it is a tricky thing, sort of the reverse of of Icarus. “Oh, it’s not that cold; I can go out and grab this or that.” I mean maybe in the first seconds it even feels refreshing. And then there you are with your jeans frozen to your legs.

I have slender, artificial alpine trees of good quality that I first started using a Christmas tree additions and then I took to putting white lights on them and hanging everyday things from the branches and calling them Winter Lights.

Three are clustered by one long series of windows, and today, somehow, after all this time, I brushed against one and it fell, pulling the others with it. I even managed to trip the circuit breaker. I think I have got everything picked up, but I’m going to keep an eye out for things that may have sought refuge from my clumsiness under a table or behind a box.

It started when I couldn’t find my amethyst necklace right off the bat. Okay, it’s somewhere in one of my special places, but it has gone undercover. I usually wear it and the turquoise pendant, but every now and then I take one or the other off and “put it somewhere safe.” Sigh.

Actually, the trees now look pathetic, but my head hurts and I guess I can wait until tomorrow to straighten up the lights, the cows, the sock monkeys, the necklaces, the Salvation Army bell and need I go on? No, not if you know me. Oh, yeah, the old-fashioned small Santas that hang around all year, because, yes, AmerliaJake, there is Christmas Spirit.

I like to listen to Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and performed by The Irish Tenors all year round, just as I like to glimpse views of the cheery Santas. Yesterday, I looked up an explanation of the lyrics. If you try to make sense of them, it’s depressing. So I just listen and hear what I want to hear. The Tenors have cleaned up some of the lyrics and skipped one entire verse that was quite R rated. Sometimes, Googling something is not the smartest thing to do.

The thing about being around is that you end up where you started. That sounds logical, but I know it is just a little trick with words. And that’s okay; I’ve been around.

Touching on the “around” business, I did have to get new tires. That became apparent during the last snowfall and subzero temperatures that made the roads really slick . . . and I really want to thank the unknown pickup truck that compensated when I came sliding on through an intersection by WalMart. That could have been a traumatic shopping trip.

Kathryn had a bad spell and I sat with her rather than going to Clara’s visitation. I figured Clara had known how I felt. She would have been disappointed in me had I left Kathryn to “make an appearance.”

I’m going to have to buckle down on my diet because the nursing home spoiled me. They brought cookies and breakfast bars and offered to cook me whatever I wanted for breakfast. I must watch myself or I will become addicted to Fieldstone oatmeal creme pie cookies. I munched my way through them like a manic squirrel.

This morning is an errand morning, and it is an errand morning with more snow out there. The temperature went up yesterday to the 20’s, but it has slipped back down. I watched the Green Bay game, but skipped the Colts/Broncos. I had a feeling the Broncos would lose, and I just didn’t feel like watching Peyton Manning lose some of his finesse.

Last Sunday evening, while I was dozing off about 8 pm, after having been up to LaGrange, Clara Bender, aged 97 and Kathryn Feller’s roommate at North Ridge Village in Albion, Indiana passed away.

Because of changing circumstances, I had not been to the nursing home for probably a month. I didn’t intend to be away so long; for a long spell I saw Kathryn and Clara very frequently. The last time I was there, I left, telling her to hold down the fort.

She had seven devoted children and many, many grandchildren. She lived and passed away surrounded by love and carrying. I regret missing being there these last few weeks, but I am so glad that one day when I was pushing her to lunch, I leaned over her shoulder and whispered, “You’re a courageous and wise woman, Clara Bender, and I am honored to know you.” Probably that was the opinion of a lot of folks.

As I sat in the room with Kathryn and Clara, she told me many stories and shared private thoughts. She gave me a couple of her necklaces to remember her by . . . and she gave me so much more in the philosophy and conduct of life. I will not forget her.

CLARA BENDER

It is COLD. The high today will be 10 and the low -11. Isn’t that special? Tomorrow the high is predicted to be 11. And it is slick because we had more horizontally-blowing snow that sticks here and there until all the spots are covered and then waxes every surface, including the turn from HWY 6 to Allen Chapel Road. That would be the one where I felt the car just move almost off the road as I slowly turned.

I don’t know why I feel so put out by this cold blast. It could be that this dry, sterile cold gets inside you and lingers even after you have come into the warmth.

Out with the snowblower at 6 am, out later in a negative wind chill factor . . . and then OUT. I wasn’t really tired*, but muscles were sore and I felt as if I’d been pummeled so I thought I’d just take a couple of Aleve and rest for awhile under my Moo blanket. Well, I did more than that; I let my eyes close and thought about actually heating up one of Mother’s/Grandmother’s/Great-grandmother’s soapstone bedwarmers. Sort of seriously thought about it, but didn’t. What I did was fall into the arms of Morpheus and had terrible dreams, which fortunately I do not remember.

Then I woke up. Now getting back to sleep may be a chore- or not.

W, X, Y . . . ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

I am one of those people who, when I go against my instincts for logic, don’t remember the times I made the correct decision. Maybe there were none? I stew over the times I go against my intuition and wind up wrong. It doesn’t matter if it is a little smack or a SMACK – not the slightest bit.

That might not be true; it might be the littlest ones that gnaw at me. After all, a big SMACK can be quite a punch; I imagine that is Wailing Wall time not gnawing.

Sometimes I think of all the times in movies when the character has to go with his gut or logic and by doing the former, saves the Universe. (Well, maybe with Mr. Spock, it’s different.) I find myself thinking, “Boy, if that had been me, I’d be smithereens. What brought this topic up? Oh, just a word game. See, I told you about the small things and the gnawing. I made the mistake of visualizing it like the little monsters on the athletes foot commercial. I’d advise you not to do the same.

Because I have been writing about weather, I’ll just continue. We got more snow – enough to use the new snowblower I think. And it is still COLD. Very cold. Why am I obsessed with it being cold this year? I don’t know and I don’t care; it is not a major psychological issue with symbolism and transference and whatever. And, if it is, I still don’t care. I am too busy fussing about it being cold and snowy.

In fact, I have to do that now: go fuss.

I know I must be here because I am darn certain I am not there Just a little AmeliaJake logic for the uninitiated.

A good post lies right here in the alphabet on my keyboard; my fingers rest above it. I wish this were a MacOuija Board and impulses would trigger my fingers to type the letters of beautiful sentenced full of truth and warmth and good humor. It would be nice, that.

My story lies in those letters, just waiting for someone to put them in just the right order. I look at the Qwerty board and I marvel at what 26 letters could show. I don’t know if I really know how it would read myself.

I was intending to complain about the coming negative numbers in temperature last evening, but I dozed off. I woke up before midnight and could have posted, but simply went to the bathroom, took my medicine and crawled back under my Sherpa Moo blanket.

Not unexpectedly I woke up around five this morning and it is a quarter of seven and still dark. I don’t think I would do well in Scandinavia in the winter. Dozing changed nothing – it is still going to be very cold and snow is expected. In LaGrange County, maybe even some added lake effect stuff. Don’t you just love a good whiteout on the Toll Road? And I am still in a complaining frame of mind. Apparently, standing in thigh-high snow several times last year left an impression. Please, no remarks about thigh-high on me being ankle dusting on others. Oh, go ahead; I know it’s almost impossible to hold back.

I did buy a snowblower; I thought I would be so excited and anticipating snow. That didn’t seem to have happened. I think I assumed if I got a snowblower, it would not snow. Not the most scientific theory, but maybe it is what got us through December.

It’s definitely time to bring in lots of wood; I am considering just putting a log pile in the basement by that fireplace. I figure if I bring in frozen logs, there won’t be any snakes in the woodpile. Right?