The other day a woman who used to live in Missouri said that people had told her there were bears in Indiana.  I didn’t think there were, but saw no need to say anything in the situation. However, working on the premise that “AmeliaJake doesn’t know everything”, I did a Google search.

The bears are gone, according to the powers that be. One man thought he saw one and called the DNR, but they didn’t believe him. He was quoted as saying, “I know a bear when I see one.” Apparently, the DNR person said, “No, you don’t.”

There was a surprise for me in Google, though; there are Air Bears in Indiana. The Air Bears are a jump rope club and even offer to provide unique entertainment.  It was surprising to me, but I can see how coordinated young (or fit older) women could enjoy working out the routines.

I am not coordinated – clapping along with the beat is hard for me – and I envisioned me holding one end of the rope while and causing one person after another to face plant themselves as they attempted maneuvers inside the erratically rotating rope.

Then I envisioned the person at the other end of the rope walking toward me and tying me up, assisted by all the bruised face planters.

It’s raining and supposed to be cloudy all day and I think it is going to be so. Yesterday I started off with that same impression but shortly after I had expressed that opinion, the sky turned blue for a while. I was in my cloudy mode, however, and had to debate if I would change gears. And yesterday that annoyed me, revealing that my mood that day was actually “snitty with grimaces”.

I could go either way this morning – and I’m thinking about it.

UPDATE (And it is UP): Scanning the little headlines can be productive and today, out of nowhere, I got a psychological lift from Reader’s Digest. No, it was not an inspirational story or one of the contributor-soliticited anecdotes.  It’s tempting to consider joking about it being  a temporary Snake Oil Salesman boost in attitude  . . . because it is about WD-40 – uses for the product that is. Thirteen of them, actually, and the headline says “amazing”.  Frankly, it is informative – bring on those tea-stained counters and cockroaches. What? Well, check out the article or not; but I have to say, there is no way I am spraying oil on my windows – unless I’m going to be dropping paint.

I just remembered today is Fast Day, not to be confused with Fast Time and Slow Time, which people of younger generations are not familiar with anyway. Fast Day goes slow because I have to start a 15 hour non-eating stint for blood test tomorrow. Now, of course, I can eat through most of the day, but it hangs over my head, this ban on food. It’s not hard to do physically at all; it’s just that knowing you can’t have even a bite of peanut butter is psychologically upsetting. Maybe I’ll get PTS Syndrome.

Fasting is easier on a hot day, but now that it is a damp, cool and cloudy day in the fall, I know I will be thinking of comfort food. I guess I’ll think of it as a cleansing day because I can have all the water I want . . . better not load up with salt before the fast begins or I may bounce into the testing place.

Obviously, I am at nervous loose ends today – writing about the dark and fasting and absolutely refusing to knuckle down and get anything accomplished and compelled to share this condition. You know, quite probably it isn’t the rain or gloom or dark or fasting; I think it is dread of starting the battening down of the hatches chores preparing for winter and the cold air that can sneak in everywhere. (Not to mention raking leaves.)

I will need to use psychological tricks, But I will be manipulating myself – the irony of it is amazing . . . and incredibly amusing to my usual (victims) patrons of the PBC & Roadhouse.

Typing seems to be a lifeline keeping my fingers from window film and double stick tape. Yikes! I’ve got it bad today – the incredible lazies, which I’m certain is a credible medical condition totally out of my control. Yes, that has to be it.

It was dark last night with rain when I got home and it is that way at 7:30 this morning – and I mean dark. When I paused to think for awhile, the computer screen dimmed and hinted at scary movies. But the wind is not howling and the rain is not pelting down; it was splatting down, however,  when I stuck my head out the back vestibule for a can of Diet Sam’s.

Ninety minutes later:

It was unsettling this morning, all that big DARK, so I did the sensible thing. I curled up on the sofa and pulled an afghan over me, including my head because shutting my eyes wasn’t enough. I peeked out a couple of times and it was still very dark and then I dozed. When my eyes popped open and I peeked out again, I found myself in daylight filtered through thick white clouds.

And that brings us to now. But I am still as potentially boring as I was when I talked of Diet Sam’s and the back vestibule.  I have considered that I was so fresh from befuddling sleep when I heard the “splats” of fat raindrops that my brain began to feel like a big splat itself. Whatever. One way or another, I am boring myself again.

I am stopping typing . . . but I think I’ll be back. HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

I have been in a cycle of not really writing about personal things; I mean the personal things that cause one to feel sad or choke up or feel the weight of regret and guilt. Lately, I have been having dreams about my Mother – dreams in which I am very angry with her. It is not a good thing to wake-up to, and, in fact, Der Bingle has had to waken me from some of the nightmares.

I think I am actually angry at myself and that Mother is not really haunting my dreams . . . because if it is the latter, a post-AmeliaJake-death  meeting of the two of us could be ghastly and not just ghostly. My father told me when I was young that he and Mother did not expect to be repaid for anything they had done for me – that I was to pass it on to my children. I’m trying, Daddy; I am trying.

Well, heeheeheee, a box is packed for LZP’s birthday and it is ready to be taped up and taken to be sent out.  The price of one of the items is still on it because, yes, it was a Sign from God purchase from GoodWill.  I was driving on Dupont and a voice kept nagging me to go to GoodWill . . . for the Fun of the Hunt. (Hint: hidden unintentional pun)

It is silly, not much, but oh, so appropriate. I mean who would expect a _____ (to be filled in after LZP receives it) to be sitting there on a shelf, waiting for me.

Oh, by the way, more folks here at the PBC & R took off for the Ohio Redoubt . . . are they tired of our peanut butter? Tempted by the land of Cousin Vinny’s Pizza and Hot-Headed Burrito? Or could it be my personality? Oh, of course not, AmeliaJake; you are the nicest, most wonderful, sweetest person in the whole wide world.

Ack, the keyboard is in spasms!!!!!!!Rtuy;jn] CALMING TOUCH ON KEYS . . . Uh, yes, I may have exaggerated my magnificentude; I’ll try to be more humble.

For someone born in 1948, such as I, AmeliaJake, there was a lot of talk in the history classrooms about the Dust Bowl. Descriptions of the the dust storms and mentions of the drifts of dust up against fence posts and barns and houses. But we still didn’t get, or at least I didn’t. I knew dust, but the truth of the matter was that it was not dust; it was fine gritty dirt – black sand. It had weight and it smothered both the animate and the inanimate. More bluntly, it smothered the living and covered things.

Yes, I’ve been reading a book: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan. It is a far-ranging book, talking politics and government policies and agricultural methods. Sometimes I find it a little unfair to Hoover – well, maybe a lot so. Sometimes I find it a little hard on those who chose to pack up and leave the area. And in these sections it is often slow-going.

It is also slow-going in the segments that talk about the day-to-day, month-to-month and year-to-year accounts of individual battles with the dirt that filtered into everything, including the lungs and stomachs of people and animals. It also filled the eyes and blinded people. But that very plodding pace brings you closer  to understanding the horrible conditions – the situation went on and on and on. There’s no quick description and then moving on and the reader thinking, “Oh, yeah, I understand how terrible it was.”

This is a case where a thousand words are actually better than a picture. This is a book where you get a sense of the slow ticking of the clock, no fast forward to better times. Quick treatments such as that make me think of the Made-for-TV movies that take the viewer through first symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and coming out into the sunlight at the end of a dreaded illness. Two hours of your time and you think you understand. Think about enduring two hours in the middle of the dark night with crushing worries about an unknown future – night after night after night? That would be reality and that is what you grasp in this book about the Dust Bowl.

I am not done with it, but I am appreciating the plodding through, and I am learning.

I did not watch the debate last night, but I thought about it. And then today I saw Biden’s mocking grin . . . and I cleaned a lot on the porch AND THE GARAGE AND SHED.

I CAN’T STAND THAT MAN.

In a couple of hours I will leave to go to my final appointment with the surgeon who removed my hyperactive parathyroid, which was first suspected when the doctor who did my colonoscopy 18 months ago told me my calcium was definitely high.  This will be my third trip to Fort Wayne in as many days: Tuesday I took my granddaughter to an appointment close to the old Main Parkview Hospital (The Big House); yesterday my daughter-in-law had a “scoping” of both her esophagus and her colon at the new Parkview Regional Hospital and today, I am heading to Lutheran Hospital, which was new around 15 years ago and is constantly being expanded on. I don’t know if a new me has emerged by the surgery, but at least expansion has been stopped in both my parathyroid and my overall weight.

I was going to just slip on clean clothes and run on down, but I think I will scrub myself up good for this quick appointment – nothing wrong with leaving a good last impression. And, besides, I can claim later in the day, “I can’t do that sweat-inducing chore; I’m all spiffed up.” I don’t know if it will work, but I can try.

But I must re-embrace the sweat and keep exercising for my metabolism; I will, but today I just feel like taking a deep breath and getting ready for the continued journey. After all, it is not the true “finally” yet; at least I hope not.

I stepped on the scale tonight and groaned. Three months ago I would have looked at the same number and been ecstatic. Well, a little bit at a time . . . and adjusting to a YMCA schedule as opposed to early morning or late evening walking.

Turning the crank in my back so I can get my second wind at this weight loss business . . .hahahhahahahahahhaahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahah

Sorry. I’m a little giddy this evening; there’s no reason for it. If anything, I should be irritated by the book I’m reading – it’s a free spy book with the most beautiful and smartest and most talented spy-ess and “never mind how implausible, let’s just pretend” plot. Still, I have read about a third of it. And why? It’s probably akin to watching the grass grow.

I need to get another passtime – like watching Wanda Wrestling. I know, only a couple of people understand that remark, which is how I plan on staying alive. Oh, that I could post the picture . . .