Someone in our family is taking a summer class that involves reading and grammar and vocab. That reading includes poetry and literature. So, every now and then, Someone walks up, plops down beside me and says, “Grandma . . . ” She gets me started on one certain poem and then leaves and I go from poem to poem to poem because she has poked a spot in my brain that likes the sound of thoughts.

Time passes quickly when this happens and now I must make up a couple of hours of work:

I must strive to shut down this computer;

I must seek the vacuum;

I must find the vacuum and the vacuum bags;

And I must not yield to the temptation to blow it off.

***

Indeed, I must suck it up.

On this day every year, I begin a month of being one year younger than Der Bingle. Yes, it is his birthday. He has had others . . .  chortle, chortle, giggle, smirk. Oh wait, what is it with the smirking? I must not forget that soon I will be adding one more to my tally of “other birthdays.”

He is in Fairborn at the Ohio Redoubt and I am here so we will have a cake probably this weekend – or maybe a couple of twinkies with some candles on them. Don’t visualize that; I did and it is daunting – the  twinkies would look like porcupines. So just strike that thought from the record.

I have no nifty internet card, nor even a Weebles birthday video. It’s our modus operandi; birthdays are low key here.

But, Der Bingle, just because I don’t do much with the day, doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate all the years.

Happy Birthday from AmeliaJake.

Many moons ago, as in something like over 120, LZP sent a Peeps album to me because Der Bingle had this thing about Peeps. Summer liked it – especially one song – and played it over and over. Then one day, the purple disc disappeared.

I was talking about that to LZP just now and I looked at the peeps site where you can make your own Peep character and that nudged me to actually look at itunes. For some crazy reason, I bought about two and a half minutes of the past here at the PBC&R.

If you are lucky, it won’t play.

01 Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep

I think I had to go to the bathroom, now that I go over it in my mind. Yes, I think that woke me. Oh, yes! Now, I fully remember. I heard the clock – it did the 16 chime thing, but no hour bong thing. So I bounded to the clock – yes, bounded – hoping against hope that the bonger had not stopped at three or four – and fumbled with the key for several seconds, my fingers as sleepy as my eyes.

I stuck the key in all three holes and wound and when I started on the third one, the clock started to bong, even though I was still winding. SIX TIMES!!!!!

I know it is odd to say, but I think it was fortuitous I drank all that iced tea before bedtime. I was afraid I would have to do the darn coordinate the bonging and correct hour thing again. But luck was with me.

Oh, the adrenaline of it all has worn off . . . so I guess I’ll snuggle down for just a little while.

I’ve written about blogging before – the why of my doing it – but I was thinking about it again yesterday while driving down to Avilla and back to get a prescription renewal.  I had some pretty good sentences come into my head, if I do say so myself; sentences that got right to the core of the matter.

I don’t know what they were now exactly, but I know the reason I blog is clear-cut: I enjoy fooling around with putting down in writing some of the funny stories I’ve encountered, some of the sad and some of the made-up fantasy places I’ve put together in my imagination.

I like it, and I like that because someone else may see it, I sometimes strive to be a little more accurate in what I say. It helps me to remember parts of my life as well, and it is where my life goes on when people are far away. They can come here and see AmeliaJake is still AmeliaJake and there are ongoing tales to go with the ones they may remember from the past . . . like the day I fiddled with the toilet tank mechanism and water shot all the way to the ceiling.

It’s a place where sometimes I can talk with them in ways that don’t work well on a phone – a place where they can pause for awhile  before going on  . . . because that is how we do it in real right-next-to-you life.

It’s pretty obvious I blog for some people because I am so desperate not to lose them.

And, yes, I blog because people have told me I have a gift for putting some feelings into words. I thought for years that everyone could; I have been told repeatedly many cannot and that they appreciate the lyrics to the melody.

All in all, I enjoy it – especially the goings-on with those raggedy regulars at the Peanut Butter Café & Roadhouse. They’ve signed the waivers and I’m going to be sharing more of their antics . . . although they might not have signed if I had phrased it like that to them.

Oh, in case you didn’t read the post from last night – which is under this one now – missed the warning . . .

I will be taking a picture tomorrow; it will be of a special squash. I will be taking this picture at the request of a member of my household. You should be aware that the subject of this photograph is a conjoined twin squash.

I will not be doing anything with this squash and therefore do not expect to be featured on The Discovery Health Channel in a precedent-making vegetable operation.

This is basically a non-announcement.

My Kindle protector came today from Waterfield (sfbags) and it looks like this:

My MacBook sleeve looks like this:

And then there’s my ipod case that looks like this:

I suppose you see a pattern there. The Kindle and MacBook cases are different sizes – although you can’t tell if from the picture.
This is not my usual M.O. – the having matching things bit – but I liked the first one I got (MacBook) and decided to stay with a winning team.
The Waterfield people also send nice emails and add Thank You’s with your delivery.
Today is one of my appreciate my things days.

Yes, it has turned out to be an extended affair – Zee washer, she needed another switch, because the broken part which caused the THWACKING was not the also the cause of the non-rinsing, non-spinning problem. Apparently, if the latter switch had not failed, I could have pushed the THWACK part back up and just the potential for future THWACKING would have remained.

Of course, the switch failing saved me from one of my idiosyncratic “fixes” and now I should be able to wash without any hitting of a certain spot or standing a certain way or sticking a piece of “something” “somewhere” to get it to work.

Now, they just have to get here . . . Excuse me, I am going to do an Indian Washer Man Dance to hurry them along.