After watching seasons of Kitchen Nightmares and the 24 Hour to Hell and Back shows, I am really wary of going into a restaurant and sitting down for food. I keep seeing the grease, roaches, rats, mold, rotten food and a mouse coming out of a toaster. I can’t help wonder when my food was cooked, frozen and then microwaved . . . and possibly dropped on the floor.

I am certain I am being terribly unfair to many restaurants but when I think of all the variables involved in running a restaurant, I can see how a business could get in trouble. It seems odd to say that I feel most comfortable standing at a counter watching my burrito being prepared just a few feet away.

I’m not a good cook; in fact, I just don’t like it. You work on something and BAM, someone EATS it. It’s gone. Or it’s not eaten and it’s in the refrigerator where it gets pushed farther and farther back and soon that refrigerator could easily be on Kitchen Nightmares. Sort of open the door and look at death a hundred times over.

That’s why we specialize in slices of bread and peanut butter out of jars. We use clean knives to spread it . . . and we like it that way.

However, I must say that I ate at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant in Las Vegas and it was the best food I have ever tasted. I mean if I could eat that way three times a day, I would not snack between meals and that is saying something.

Of course, Gordon might be dismayed by my limited palate. Pearls before swine sort of thing.

Returning to my initial point, I think I would like a restaurant where you entered through a glass hallway beside the kitchen. Perhaps restaurants should not advertise with pictures of food, but pictures of clean kitchens.

I put on a warm coat yesterday, one with a hood, and went out back to my tiny yard to rake. Tiny takes on a different meaning when you have a regular rake and lots of leaves. It it the price to pay for having trees, so I am not complaining; I am simply remarking on the situation. I also have to admit it is better than having to deal with a long driveway with lots of snow – but that is a different matter.

There was someone who was to rake my leaves last fall, and, indeed, some were. We had an early freezing rain and a bit of snow and I guess he didn’t get it finished. When I went out to rake up what i thought were remaining leaves, I saw what I thought was a strip of leaves stretching along in the middle of the yard.  Well, it turned out, it wasn’t a strip; it was a mountain range that had settled into a dip in the landscape.

Ok, I raked the top dry layer off and found a frozen, wet, stuck together and to the earth long mound of leaves. I left it to dry out layer by layer and will return, like Douglas MacArthur and the Philippines.

It felt good to use my muscles and breathe in the non-frigid air. I went inside after awhile to putter around and then decided to go back out. My “feel-good” muscles were not amused. After about ten minutes they sent me a memorandum that they were flabby and out of shape and I should talk to their Union Rep about a possible strike. They used pain communication and it proved to be effective.

It is sunny today and looks inviting outdoors following the bleak winter, but I have decided not to cross the picket line during the “rake down” and am offering up aspirin and sofa time to my muscles. I hope they will come to realize the additional oxygen provided to them by movement will be advantageous. I don’t know, though, they seem to have a stubborn streak.

Maybe they would like Zumba?

And here I sit, the first Monday of Daylight Savings Time, adjusting to the great leap ahead.

It’s one hour, AmeliaJake, why are you having such a problem with one hour? Well, I don’t know; I guess it has become a ritual – gripe about being on DST between March all the way to early November. It is almost a catechism for me, older than, but probably not as heartfelt as my anti-Joe Biden roll of the eyes. Ironic, one complaint is about Fast Time and the other about Slow Joe.

It is an overcast Monday, the sky such a light, light grey that it appears white. After staring out my window at it with a focused eye, I really have to say it is white, maybe a dingy off-white, but still white. If it were a Christmas light strand, the bulbs would not be “warm” white, they would be that ice white that can tempt you in the store as sparkling icicles, but in the house is not at all comforting or cheery. It is more like having a huge spotlight in the room, and sometimes you feel like the deer in its beam.

There was no need for that paragraph, only to serve as witness that the situation was observed. In other words, were it a forest out my window and a tree had fallen, I would have heard it.

People talk about the moments in life; I think they are probably referring to several consecutive moments. One actual moment would be like an individual “pop” of a popcorn bag in the microwave. Then again, encapsulating a moment of time into a memory gives it more time, so to speak. Lengthens it. If you often revisit that memory, does that moment become close to a forever? Perhaps.

This is rambling; it is what my mind does all day long. Considering I dreamed last night of a chaotic attempt to gather things together for a train ride to Paris – figure that one out, considering the ocean, – rambling might be what my mind does ALL THE TIME.

Yes, I used capital letters –  not shouting, just struck by the idea. All the time. Now would that be Fast Time? See? I’m already rambling on.

Now, I’m going to bend my fingers into fists . . . so hop off the site quickly before I type again.

I have some wood that needs burning up before the onset of warm weather. I assume it has a need to fulfill its destiny – flame and ashes and smoke. I will enjoy sitting near the hearth reading or watching a video on the VCR. You know, one of the goodies from when they first started turning old movies into video tapes.

To get that wood from pile to fireplace entails me building up my strength by going out for 15 to 20 minutes, climbing on the woodpile and chucking it over to where it can be picked up and transported in. I am a woodchucker and maybe I will be able to answer how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck were a woodchucker. Or, something like that.

I really like soap, well the aftereffects of using it. Being clean and smelling fresh is invigorating.  This needs a caveat, however, where I am concerned: I do not care for sweetly perfumed soaps; I like the outdoorsy sharpness of a woodsy evergreen.

Walking down the body wash aisle, I spied some opaque light green stuff and read that it was Himalayan Salt. Okay, I had earlier walked by a Himalayan lamp and actually used Himalayan salt for seasoning, so I really was not inclined to resist. I bought two bottles. When I used it, I liked it.

I felt invigorated as if I had made the summit at Everest or taken on an energetic Sherpa persona. I suspect that feeling imbued by Sherpa spirit is not the first thing that pops into other users’ heads. I am aware this leans toward my being eccentric; well, that’s nothing new to me.

Is it news to you?

So, somehow I got back to the adding post screen that I like. I suppose it is not modern or state of the art, but, darn it, just because you can change something doesn’t mean you should. This is not decades ago with women waiting to find out where their hemline is supposed to be to be “in style.”

Frankly, all these changes seem equivalent to someone deciding in the past to change the lines on notebook paper to run vertically or be wavy.

Now, before anyone thinks that I am against change, please keep your thoughts sensible. I certainly appreciate the word processor over the typewriter and I truly love the internet and not having to know what library has what and then what the hours are. It is this little stuff that programmers feel they have to fool around with that irritates me. I would be happy if they would just put their new format ideas in a box and I could browse through them.

I did not like opening my add a post page to see that I was “BLOCKING.” All the options that have always been at the top of the writing area were GONE. I only found my way back to this format by clicking on an option in a leap of faith. For all I know, I could have wound up with the Chinese alphabet before me.

What is really scary is that I am supposed to be “not stupid” and even a wee bit above average. I almost suspect that somewhere really savvy computer people are looking right through the screen at me and laughing. If that is so, I need an emoticon for STICKING OUT TONGUE.

In mid-February I decided to come back to the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse after a hiatus of a combination of a number of things, perhaps one being the fact that I had and continue to have trouble with turning 70, not to mention that 71 is next.

However, I was startled in my state of self-pity by the splash of a pail of Joe Biden cold water on my face. I thought it was time to do the (rough paraphrasing) I have been bloodied, but I am not slain poetic reference cited by then Governor Reagan in 1976.

So I was limbering up my fingers when I began to think, Hmmm, I believe my tummy is a bit unsettled. It was a slow process taking about a day to realize that whatever was queasying up my stomach had remained in place until – in a minute’s time, it was filling half of a large Dutch Oven I had quickly grabbed. And, of course, there was diarrhea . . . and joint pain and aches.

I caved, CAVED. After pneumonia, I sank into a mixture of stomach flu and Woe is Me and Nothing will ever be all right again. The stomach cramping is going away after about a week now and I wondered if I should try again or sink into a world of Netflix, Hulu and dvd rental movies.

I am not noble and was seriously wavering and I looked at a movie from Family Video my grandson had rented. It was titled Insidious. I thought it might be a spy movie and looked up the plot. I found this: A family looks to prevent evil spirits from trapping their comatose child in a realm called The Further.

Well, okay, I decided to once more unlock the cafe doors. Here I can ramble around with thoughts, theories, opinions and pure nonsense. I am protected by the fact that almost no one sees or reads this site. If in 30 to 40 years, someone finds something that has become politically incorrect, well, I’ll be dead. And since I will never have a statue of me in an airport named for me, I guess that won’t even rattle my ghost’s shackles.

Well, dwindling posts from the Average Janes and Joes has turned into a landslide. And that’s okay – mass blogging was a trend. However, I think I’m going to gather my momentum up and get back to speed, not because the world needs to know anything from or about me, but because I enjoy connecting, well, a least having my little hand out there waving hello.

Ten years ago I could open my computer, click on the Internet and experience all sorts of drama that had nothing to do with me. I could follow the ups and downs and catastrophe family fights on a daily basis. You really didn’t have to live your life; you could spend a good part of your day keeping track of whose in-law was miffed at whom and what toddlers all over the country were doing to drive their mothers crazy and even find out about Mormon underwear.

Then it slowly petered out. And even The Pioneer Woman gave up all pretense of being a daily companion to all those folks out there that she loved more than her luggage.

I petered down and petered out, but I am aware of this drip, drip, drip of my thoughts continuing and carving out the landscape of my character, so I think I’ll keep on writing to the wind because it’s part of my sense of being here.

Now, as to that drip, drip, drip . . . I’m not like Maxwell Coffee, not all my drops are good. Just a warning.

I noticed last night that there was a wet spot on the floor at the edge of the refrigerator and thought that once again an errant ice cube had missed the cup and escaped. In a whimsical mood, I hoped that the ice cube did not think “Freedom” and then realize it was, well, you know, the M-word.

But this morning the spot was back again and after having been mopped and dried it got wet again. I could not figure where the water was coming from for there was no telling trail back to the refrigerator. When I reached down I felt the constant sprinkle of water; investigation revealed that the hose to the ice maker had developed a crack.

I looked on the Internet and discovered that for about three dollars I could buy a plastic coupling that would fix the problem once I cut the hole away. The hardware store had one and Cameron and I moved the refrigerator out and (oh, the dirt, but never mind) and did what the video showed and WE FIXED IT WITHOUT A PLUMBER! Thank you, YouTube.

This past week on Indiana 25 on a school day, three students were killed and one badly injured when hit by a southbound car that did not stop for the northbound school bus waiting to pick them up.

I have been on Indiana 25 near Rochester; it’s a old-fashioned highway that goes along the east side of Wabash River terrain. I don’t know for certain, but it feels like a route that evolved from an Indian trail turned pioneer road and, as such, it does not go straight. There is a section of the road that has a lot of curves – some of them have the “S” curve signs and some of them are close together, but not actually connected into an “S” configuration.

I don’t go on 25 often; when I do it is because my point of departure makes it the most sensible – assuming the weather is good. I add that last part because every time I travel on it, I find myself thinking, “Boy, I wouldn’t want to be on this road in the dark or in slippery conditions.” It wiggles to the south in twists that you can’t ease into.

This past week, the week of the accident, Indiana was still on Eastern Daylight Time. Anyone who has read a bit of this blog knows that I do not like Daylight Savings Time in Indiana. We are as far west as you can get and still be in the Eastern Time Zone. When you add on Daylight Savings Time, it really throws things of off kilter; in fact, for years, Indiana opted out of “going on Fast Time” as we used to call it.

With the fairly recent extensions of DST until November, school mornings in Indiana are in the dark. Buses run in the REALLY DARK. Another thing from the past is that school buses picked up students from the side of the road where the kids were waiting. Routes were designed that way, and then, somewhere along the line, kids had to walk across one lane of a highway to reach the bus, go in front of it, and then board. We’re not talking county road here; we do mean highway, complete with an actual painted line down the middle.

What happened this week is more complex that just a driver going by a stopped school bus. Coming out of a curve at 10 miles below the speed limit, she saw yellow lights in the dark. Just recently one dark morning I saw yellow lights by the side of the road and knew it was utilities or construction, but still thought that it probably wasn’t the safest idea to have workmen out before it was light. I’m pretty certain there are red lights on a stopped school bus, as well, but they are mixed in with yellow.

The school bus driver saw the headlights of an oncoming vehicle but figured the driver would stop and motioned the kids, two of whom were six, across the highway. I have always stressed to anyone I have taught to drive never to trust that a car signaling a turn will actually turn; you can’t pull out until you actually see the car commit to the turn. I have stressed that in the dark car lights may or may not be closer than they seem. And it is not beyond possibility that a driver may become impaired and not stop for whatever reason.

In short, I cannot understand a bus driver motioning little kids to cross in front of a moving oncoming car.

The parents of the children hit had repeatedly complained to the school district about the bus stop regarding highway-crossing situation. However, no adult accompanied the kids to the stop – and remember two were SIX year old boys.

If Indiana had not been on Daylight Savings Time last week in late October, it would have been light when the car approached from the north. But, it was dark and in the short amount of time coming out of the curve, the driver did not recognize there was a stopped school bus in the other lane. She made a tragic error. Nothing will bring the children back, ever. She knows that. I don’t think she deserves to be vilified because of what happened. It was not a willful flaunting of the law, and she was not speeding.

I don’t believe one can ignore the other factors in play, in particular, the decision of the bus driver to assume the car would stop and the choice of worried parents to not make certain their still Santa Claus believing tykes would not encounter disaster on an Indiana highway before dawn.

Remember the impaired driver situation I mentioned? Well, this year in Fort Wayne, a police office suffered a heart attack while at the wheel of his squad car and lost control. It happens. It could have been a police officer who struck kids instructed to cross the road.

What happened this week must be evaluated in light of all the information.