I don’t quite remember what I did today, although it may have concerned reading, with an interruption to fill Shane’s water bowl. Every time I did get up to walk here or there – here probably being the kitchen and there the bathroom – I picked up white fluff from the floor. Shane is shedding and I guess getting a new undercoat. I didn’t realize it took so much water, but I guess you work up a thirst scratching and rubbing against furniture.

He doesn’t like being combed too much, but he is happy to sit with you while you position your fingers like a beginning piano player, stick them in his fur and move them around like, well, “Magic Fingers”. He does not put a quarter in the little tip jar so I am thinking of taping a cardboard slot to my pocket and refusing to move until he pays up.

But, oh those puppy eyes. Sigh.

We haven’t heard about the car that conked out in Fort Wayne, other than to learn they are looking at it . . . Probably not good news. We’re taking it in stride, although I have been seeing red – Classic Red, that is. That’s the color I’m painting the shed out back; I can see if on the shed and I see it on me.

While I was wearing swatches of red classic on my skin and clothes, I thought I might as well wade into some shrubs and saw out a few tall leaders. I did and then came walking across the front lawn with the saw still in my hand just as a college girl passed. She is here in Northern Indiana for four months from Bulgaria, demonstrating software door-to-door. I don’t know if she really is from Bulgaria, of if that is just an angle to get more attention, but then maybe she didn’t know if I were really just a painting, pruning lady . . . or a casual murderer.

I was very nice and did not point to big splashes of classic red on my leg and say, “Oh, that’s Cousin Leroy; he won’t be bothering us anymore. The blob on my arm is Agnes, the tenant we just couldn’t get rid of . . . until now.”

I answered my cell phone today and that was Curtain Up! Robert was on the line – in the ether, cyberspace, whatever and he asked me what could make a thumping noise in a car. He was in Fort Wayne in the parking lot at Logan’s. . . and then I was in Fort Wayne also. Then we were home and the car is at the Wayside Garage. Well, at least it sounds like a feel-good Indie movie. Oh, maybe two old ladies sharing a nice chat at a homey service station – something along that line.

I have to say I would feel better if the name of the garage were There’s Nothing Wrong With Your Car. I imagine this story will continue – one way or another.

Apparently so. More likely, though, is that I have started posting in my head and thinking that I have actually typed it. Given some of my off-the-wall thoughts lately, that is probably a good thing.

Summer is taking art and drew a still life picture of her shoe; now she can’t find it. She has shown me the picture so I can help look. This would more than likely have been a good post for only my head.

My parents, Robert and Sarah Shimp Grismore, were patrons of an artist in Parke County. I think she was some relation to my father, but really I don’t know. She painted pictures on canvas, on old saw blades, on wooden paddles and even the flat side of old cast iron irons.

I’ve highlighted some before on this blog, but I’m not going to go and make a bunch of links because the very people who might be interested can easily type her name into the search box.

Here are a couple of the irons:

We enjoy them here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse . . . of course, we do have to watch out that no one irons out any disagreements by the whacking method.

When I was little, I would not eat a tomato. YUCK! Then one day I discovered I loved them and one year I planted some and ate so many my both developed sores from the acidity nature of the little red guys. This year has been a slow year for tomato maturation in Indiana . . . but finally, they are nice and red and juicy.

I have been eating them and each one tastes good, but that magnificent zest is no longer there. No more do I put a big old slice in my mouth and suddenly want to put my head down on the kitchen counter in a moment of ecstasy.

I am reminded of my father in the summer eating area, quoting William Wordsworth:

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes, 10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair; 15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.

I was in my teens then, I think . . . or just a wee bit older. Who knew I’d find the truth of that in a tomato?

Because I have an active cold that is keeping me from visiting people and because  sudden onset of diarrhea episodes are keeping me at home totally, I sat down and decided to try getting the pickle card video posted.

Maybe you didn’t need to know my reason . . .

But anyway:

Well, I had to go to YouTube:

<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/p9LOm-2FjZU?rel=0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

I must research how to put imovie on blog . . .

Rats. It didn’t work. Let’s try this and it it doesn’t work, just know I have thrown myself under a leaning cow.

Actually, this post could be titled What I Found in Daddy’s Wallet or Robert Allen’s Picture or Forever Relationships.

I suspect, though, that the most accurate title would be, Oh, the timing of  it . . .

Patrick Alexander passed away this month at the age of 38 after a long and valiant fight against cancer. His father, as I have noted before was my father’s nephew. Robert Allen Alexander was named after my dad and his dad – Robert Pershing Grismore and Allen Alexander. I think Daddy was always self conscious about it and therefore always called him Robert Allen, although most people call him Bob – the same way that he always called his grandson Robert William, even though most people call him Rob.

I haven’t been able to make peace with Patrick’s early death and the loss felt by his mother and father and his wife, Katie. This morning I sent Robert Allen’s sister, Lana, an email to that effect and that I just didn’t know how to put what I feel into words. She very thoughtfully sent me an immediate reply that they knew I had been with them throughout the journey.

An hour or so later I got the urge to straighten up some piles of stuff I had put on a bookcase. Jobs like that are not in my nature – I am a clutterer. But there I was on my knees reaching and spreading things around me. As I pulled out one small box of clippings, my father’s wallet fell onto my lap and out of it slid an old picture, extremely worn from being transferred from wallet to wallet to wallet.

I recognized it right away as Robert Allen; it was so worn and soft that it felt like cloth in my hand and one little piece flaked off, as other pieces had obviously already done over the years.

I don’t know if it is a sign; I don’t know if Daddy was telling me that spirits never die and that his is looking over his nephew and grandnephew. I feel that maybe it is just that, and this is one of those times when “feeling” is more real than “knowing”.

Shane and I have been resting – he with his snout snuggled between his paws and me with my mind closed for maintenance.

Okay, here’s a picture of the little friend who arrived in the LZP box; she’s named Wild and Woolie, but we think maybe, just maybe, she is Wily Wooly.