Category Archives: Kendallville

Did Gordon Ramsay lead me to this?

That’s a backwards question; it should be asking if searching for foods that Gordon Ramsay mentioned alerted this site to me.

It is what I call The Awful Picture to Find on Your Desktop.

At first glance I thought it was about a game that my husband plays – Civilization, in which I think you can hurl plague victims over an enemy wall. But forget about the pictures and look at the prices and you may feel like hurling. (A BIG SORRY) Should I have said, “Toss your cookies? (NO, NO and NO)

Palm Sunday tornadoes 1965

Because I am an older American and lived in Indiana, I was alive when tornadoes ripped through on Palm Sunday, 1965. I would have been a junior in high school and possibly fretting about homework that would be due on Monday. It might have been Easter Vacation, though, I really don’t remember.

What I do remember is my Mother coming into the West Room (aka – the Cold Room) and telling us a black cloud was coming very fast over the treeline. She and my grandmother went to the basement; I don’t know why my father and I didn’t feel the urgency to do so. And it seemed, at first, as if we had been right.

Then, a little while later someone came to the door and asked if we had phone service and added that the farm house across the field and beyond the trees had been lifted up and turned on its foundation. Down the road, houses were picked up and thrown into the lake.

Just a little northwest of the house, on the road we took to the orchard, a man I knew sat on his lawn with his house in shambles, a huge, huge tree totally uprooted not far from him and metal from silo wrapped around trees in a nearby woods.

Forty-seven tornadoes killed 271 people. One lifted after it hit that aforementioned farm house and went right over our heads and set back down – and we didn’t even know it. Amazing. And tragic for others.

Old time blog reading

When blogs first became popular, I remember encountering a great number of them in which the authors SPILLED THEIR GUTS in relation to their bosses, husbands, in-laws, children’s misdeeds, etc. Reading them was not the most honorable thing, but gosh darn, it was addictive.

I think some people couldn’t shake the feeling that they were just venting off into the ether. I mean providing a detailed account of your suicide attempt or your husband’s infidelity or your mother-in-law’s jihad against you is not the wisest thing to do. I think a number of people were awakened rudely to this fact or it dawned on them to wonder: What the heck am I doing?

Now, after having said it wasn’t the most honorable thing to read such blogs, I find that I sort of miss the over the fence, backyard, whispered gossip of people I don’t know.

Oh, I confessed this . . . and . . .and . . . I’m NOT just sending words off to disappear in the ether. What was I thinking?

Is it really me, AmeliaJake?

I think so; I think I have emerged from the shadows. I may wander back in, but while I’m here, I guess I could at least say HI.

Let’s see, Der Bingle was taken to the emergency room on April 19th with lights flashing and the siren going. I was three hours+ away and did not find out about it until five hours later. I could tell a long story – anyone who knows me at all realizes it could meander around every emotion and hospital corridor and long, sleepless nights; BUT no need for going through it again – he turned out to be okay.

Then two days ago I had cataract surgery, which went very well and for which I thank the researchers who did the necessary “how to” work and the doctors who went to medical school and mastered the “can do” part.

And in between, I had vertigo.

If it weren’t for all that, the big news would be the glass shower door shattering out of nowhere on my daughter-in-law. She got some cuts, but is doing all right . . . and they tell me you could see her footprints left in the tub full of pebbly glass. I’m going to have to track down the warranty material – now that I can read it.

So, actually eating healthy and doing muscle building exercises doesn’t seem like drudgery. I could post before and after pictures, but given the existence of photoshop, I will either get in shape or get very good at carving away bulges and flab with a cursor. The latter would be a useful blogging tool, but I’m going to try for the first option.

Hands in dishwater

That post title up there? Well, that’s all that is left of a post I wrote this morning, not because I goofed up and fed it to cyberspace, but because I looked at it and thought, Jeez, Louise, AJ, this is rotten writing, rambling, just muttering around . . . whatever. I erased it; I thought it was the best thing to do. Of course, taking the time to wish for World Peace would have been a better use of the time, but that’s been well-covered in beauty pageants and movies spoofing movie pageants.

And explaining why I just wiped a bit of today’s writing off the face of the earth serves also to give reason as to why I am not writing anything else.

Sigh and ok: World Peace.

The surprises that we allow

Of course, a vague post title. Even I sighed. You do your best, cut the slack, hope for the best . . . and then it comes: the little announcement or action that all along you knew would come. It’s usually the little things that disappoint the most – the ones that indicate – in some people’s eyes – that those who have held the fort have not strived, not been pained, not sacrificed. And you sigh and say, “I see.” It’s not really a surprise: it’s more the out of the blue moment when it pops out; you knew it was there but you just wanted to pretend maybe it wasn’t.

This is, for the most part, a fill in the blank post. I in our lives, so many of us have situations where the truth of the matter is the same, just the details vary.

I feel better, having rambled on. I would recommend rambling on to anyone who has experienced the let down of being left to hold the bag, and reminding oneself of what we have always known: the bag has been empty.

Look at the sidebar on the left

Her birthday, not that today is the only day I think of Jody. I see that picture framed by where I sit; I think of Thomas Bickle everyday too – his light is still shining on the wide window sill of what was once the old north porch. You can see it better from the outside now that the bushes have been trimmed, but that’s just with your eyes. Thomas Bickle’s light burns straight to one’s heart.

But this is about Jody, about her picture, actually. It is my favorite picture of her; I once wrote to someone that she reminded me of a young Queen Elizabeth II. I said she looked so royal.
The person to whom I was writing – a very intelligent person – responded that yes, she did look regal. Of course, regal was the word I should have used; it’s an adjective . . . and I am a stickler for grammar. But for some reason, when I look at that little face under the scarf smiling out over her shoulder, I don’t see a description, I see the an essence. I am looking at someone royal.

Be yourself

I think this commonly given advice needs to be re-evaluated. I think it’s closely related to thine own self be true, but there is a dangerous twist in equating them. Look, I’m feisty and sometimes nasty and we all know that; now, it would be good for me to be aware of this and try to work around it. However, when someone throws caution to the wind and says, “Be yourself”, it’s likely they are going to come to the conclusion I am rubbing them the wrong way.

I am certain that I have known all along that I am judgemental, but lately I have really come to see it more clearly. And when I get on a judgemental roll, I can keep going even when an incline would slow a stone. It is a scientific anomaly, probably. I think it feeds on itself; one clever, but snide aside can help to clear the path for many more. It just happens. Oddly enough, most of the time, I really have no interest in the object of my mocking intolerance.

Pausing here, it occurs to me that it’s not a matter of not tolerating; it is stumbling on something fun to mock and then letting loose. I know mocking is not supposed to be a sport, that it is considered unkind, cruel, plain old bad . . . and yet something will serve as a trigger and there I go.

I am pleading an unfortunate deal in the card game of genetics. I think I need to be shuffled. Or muffled. I’m back at my old argument that some people are born nice and some people not and it ain’t fair when the natural nicies think I’m going out of my way to be obnoxious.

I sometimes actually fantasize about being a naturally nice person; it would be, well, nice. As it is, I’m afraid I may go into withdrawal now that Joe Biden has Amtraked his way to Delaware. Well, a word oF advice to the state: BEWARE.

Cows and Skittles Trump Trump in our news

Yes, we watched the Inauguration of Donald Trump and listened to all the opinions about this and that and his speech, which I will admit, took me somewhat aback. I remembered that I always liked and respected Bob Schieffer a great deal. I rolled my eyes at some of the commentators. I thought I should be doing something, but didn’t persuade myself.

Then I got a text from Der Bingle, who told me to look at The Drudge Report, second item from the bottom of the second column. I clicked on the link and found myself so amazed by the first paragraph, he had to nudge me to read the last one.

The roadkill in Wisconsin got our leaning cow standing straight up; she is not contented to be in Indiana. So . . . we ordered some Gummy Worms and I’ll probably be at the trough as well. Kind of envy the four stomachs when this stuff is involved.

Isabella Selmes Ferguson Greenway

I had to look up this lady’s name because only once did I run across an account of her decades ago in a book about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. I really should have looked more into her life; I should have realized that an short anecdotal reference in a book does not normally stay with you for several weeks, then months, then years, then decades without it being very meaningful.

The nutshell gist – and that’s getting pretty basic – of the reference is that Isabella and Eleanor were girlhood friends and, in fact, Isabella’s first husband, Robert Furguson, was at one time a suitor of Eleanor’s. Her brother Hall confided later to a friend that he had been rooting for Robert, rather than Franklin.

Well, in the early years of both marriages, Robert was diagnosed with tuberculosis and he and Isabella moved to Arizona for his health. Apparently Isabella managed to blend the architecture and style of the Southwest with the familiar furnishings of the quite upper class lifestyle of far away New York society. Eleanor visited at one time and wrote in a letter to a friend that Isabella had made such a pleasant home, both in comfort and good cheer that she said it almost made one wish they had a husband who had tuberculosis and had to go to Arizona.

I do not have that type of personality; I wish I did. However, if the best I can do is recognize the gift Isabella had and shared, then I am at least glad that for a few minutes every now and then I can see what I should have had the good sense to strive for.