Yesterday, I cleaned, got cleaned up myself, considered going to the Mall for something . . . anything . . . watched hamburgers being grilled, ate one of the latter and then had an interesting scooter ride.

Later I got the urge to mow the lawn. It needed to be done because even though we had received little rain, the buckhorns were quite noticeable and the whole area was shabby. It doesn’t take long to do this little lawn; it is not like the one in West Chester that was a hill stretching some 200+ feet from the driveway to the creek on the curved road side and a good number of feet from that road UP to the house. Now that was an undertaking.

Last night’s little mow was adventurous, however. I heard a mighty clang and saw a white ball shoot out – one about the size of a softball. The mower kept running and took a few steps and saw the other part of the explosive collision: the scalp, ears and legs of a bluish grey  furry bunny Wubba.

I was sitting, looking at Robert while he cooked hamburgers, and my eyes wandered and settled on the white scooter. Sitting there with a breeze blowing, I thought, “Hey, I’m going to ride that thing.” And I did. First I had to manhandle it out of the garage past all the paraphernalia of the cafe & roadhouse and then I turned on the key and pushed the start while holding the brake and . . . nothing, nothing at all.

Well, there was more than nothing; I exaggerated. There was a bit of a rumble. What I was not doing was revving up enough to make the scooter move, because if it moved, I might crash – in my own driveway, into my own car.

Then I got the courage and ZOOM I was outta there; I had forgotten the feel of the throttle and when I went for it, I really went. You know how when you want to stop in a car, you push your foot away from you. There is a reason they say throttle back on a scooter.

Yes, I was going to stop and I went FASTER and then I did what I had learned, not what was instinct. I think the panic of a “what the hell is happening” situation helped me cultivate the instinct to rotate my hand back on a scooter.

Car: push brake.

Scooter: pull back on throttle.

The breeze caught my hat and it blew off. Yes, I had forgotten the helmet. Well, at the beginning I was just going to see if it started and maybe putter down the driveway.

This would be the part in my story where someone can cue the ZOOM effect.

Summer greeted my return with, “What do you think you were doing, riding without a helmet?” I said, “I lost my hat.” I believe that started a non sequitur  ping ponging effect in her brain and bought me some time. I was already going in the house when I heard, “Hey, wait a minute.”

It’s true, though, I did lose my hat because I figured after my ZOOM, I wasn’t going to fool around thinking hat when I needed to think throttle.

Now I need to clean the grilling grease off the white scooter, because my one thought not dealing with scooter survival was, “Gosh, this thing looks tacky.”

I am here, clean again. That says it well enough, although some would be tempted to use an imagery of adjectives and references to Ivory-soaped babies, spotted with talcum powder and lying on a fluffy white blanket in a pool of sunshine that dances through the window much like the sailboat beyond the panes glides across the waves.
TAKE A BREATH.
TAKE TWO.
Today, now that I am clean, I want to do something; thanks to the clean factor, I find it prudent to rule out things involving dirt and sweating. That leaves me in a quandary. Napping is clean, but it is on the shaky side of “doing something.” Going out and buying something for me, me, me, me, would be clean enough, but not prudent. Especially, if I manhandled myself into my car and went to Jefferson Mall, rather than Wal-Mart.

Did you ever wonder why Wal-Mart doesn’t have a pianist at a grand piano in the atrium formed by the escalators? Oh yeah, they don’t have escalators. So how about an automatic keyboard with an associate pretending. It would just be cheerful, dontcha think?

I hear they have strict rules at Wal-Mart, such as you have to call Arkansas if you are sick or you must pass a customer off on to another associate if it is your time to break, lunch, or clock out. I don’t know for certain about this and am going to have to look it up.

And then I will probably tell Wal-Mart just how to run their business.

Okay, this isn’t about us here, but I didn’t want to put Pioneer Woman in the post title. She’s a controversial figure in the world of personal blogging. For any male readers: just believe me about this. Actually, she has moved way beyond personal blogging to being a brand blogger and is going to be on the Food Network.

What has prompted me to write this morning is two-fold.

She posted a “recipe” that consists of putting Kristy Kreme doughnuts in a an over set at 300 degrees for 10 minutes, placing them in a bowl and serving them. People have tried to replicate this and disaster has resulted – big time. So much disaster that the bowl part and serving them should not even be considered. Although the Pioneer Woman often posts of embarrassing situations in her past, she has not once updated the Krispy Kreme post to even hint that there might be a problem – that perhaps, just perhaps – she was wrong. Not even a disclaimer: I am a trained professional; do not try this at home.

One of the mantras of the Pioneer Woman is “keeping it real” and I find it insulting that she cannot or will not acknowledge that something might have gone wrong. Mistakes happen. I don’t mind her doughnut post; I don’t like the fact that she has not acknowledged the failed attempts at duplication. (In fact, come to think of it, I have not seen any posts from her millions of fans that show pictures of successfully duplicating it.)

What would be wrong with saying, “Oops, let’s look at that again.” She could get a funny story out of it.

The second factor prompting this post is that she has featured her dog Charlie in countless posts and countless photographs. She even wrote a kids’ book about him. Then the family ran over him in an SUV – not on purpose, of course. I know about this from reading another blogger’s post. I went to the Pioneer Woman site and did see that she had a short post about having done so in the recent past. She said she wouldn’t bother the reader with any details and Charlie recovered.

I would think “The Running Over of Charlie” should feature prominently in her blog. She has followed his life in detail and endeared him to her fans . . . but Charlie being run over is a footnote. A “never mind, moving on” post?

Well, that’s it.

We mowed on Wednesday afternoon – WEDNESDAY – and guess what? Yes, we had to mow again today. Three of us rotating on tractors and Someone is complaining of a sore butt. Some people used kukris to slash at weeds because, dontcha know, using a Gurkha knife is way better than using a weedeater or a hedge trimmer. And all of us got really hot.

We sat in the shade and cooked out on the Weber and I have to say I definitely prefer charcoal to gas. I made about 26 hamburgers yesterday out of very good meat and we cooked half on gas last night and today when we cooked the others on charcoal, I was surprised I had forgotten the difference in taste. The Weber burgers were much better – in my peanut butter biased opinion.

Of course, today whenever Der Bingle smiled, we had to suppress a grin because he lost a crown yesterday and it is in the left front. Or more to the point, it is not in the left front. There is a hole there. He whistles when he talks and says he feels like . . . well, never mind what he says.

Hotness is due tomorrow as well; I’m calling it hotness because that describes it better than heat. Heat can be comforting; hotness seldom is. We were surrounded by sultry hotness. No jungle drums, though, so we don’t have the makings of an Indiana AmeliaJake movie. I’ve got the hat for it, though, if we ever do.

I didn’t have bad dreams last night; I had them after I snuggled back down at twenty minutes to seven this morning. I don’t remember much about these dreams that occurred like the snippets of movies you see in a series of trailers.

I do remember having a limp in the middle of a seemingly abandoned wide Main Street in some town – a main street with secretive buildings with no windows except the one that I suspected was a funeral parlor. Usually I say funeral home, but thinking of those windows with red velvet curtains, funeral parlor came to my mind.

I also recall walking inside a tall building with shiny floors and firemen. In my dream I thought, “What if I couldn’t see and the floor just ended?” Poof, it did. I could see all of a sudden that I was standing at the very, very edge of where the floor ended and a vast chasm opened.

So, I fell on my back – SAFE!!! – until I decided to scoot my body closer to the hole to test my courage, or would that be stupidity?

Shane is shedding, not just a hair here and there and everywhere; it is a cotton ball shedding. I vacuumed the living room yesterday and when I reached the end at which I finished and looked back at the end at which I had started . . . yes, a new crop of cotton balls.

They are not tumbling weed cotton balls because they stick to stuff, and not just carpets. We are wearing fur clothes here and not by choice. We have combed and bathed Shane and still he sheds.

One thing makes him feel better about his condition – being scratched. One would almost think he is milking it.

Yes, we had no internet today – until now, when we do have it, but it is already four. Summer could not track her ebay packages and was distraught. We saved the situation by looking it up using a phone.

Well, I guess we will go take the paper bags off our heads now that we are not hyperventilating every 15 minutes.
But . . . But . . . What if it happens again?

I opened my mail this morning and saw this from LZP:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say a Des Moines woman has been assaulted with a bratwurst at her home.

It wasn’t bold and it wasn’t red; I did that so that you would be used to the flash of red in the paragraph below.

Authorities say a Des Moines woman has been assaulted with a bratwurst at her home.

Sixty-three-year-old Connie Jones told police that she got into an argument with 31-year-old Tajuana Banks.
Jones says Banks yelled profanities at her, then picked up a bratwurst and threw it at Jones. It struck her chest. A police report says there were grease marks on Jones’ clothing.

To give credit where credit is due, this paragraph came from HERE.

CSI should be able to shine on this case.

Using Google images as a place where suspects might lurk, we wonder if the alleged crime arose in the heat of the moment . . .

Or was it the product of premeditation?

Then again, the perp might have had an accomplice.

Or, perhaps, it was just some wild and crazy brat.

I was going to write about this earlier, but I forgot. Then just now I remembered.

Last week Der Bingle remarked that he had heard an old Roger Miller song on the radio. And he mentioned the title. What I heard was not quite right since I have apparently entered that phase of life when “time” sounds like “dime” to some folks, momentarily turning someone asking, “Got the time?” into a panhandler.

I did not hear “You can’t Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd”; I heard “You can’t rope sheep in a buffalo herd.” Frankly, I think it’s a better title – enigmatic and all that. And even though I downloaded it from itunes, I have attuned myself to hear rope sheep. I like it that way. How about ewe? ACK!!! Newfie made me say that.