One thing about a digital camera – before you blur things and do whatever, the image coming out is downright unforgiving. This morning I made a wreath for Thanksgiving because I wanted to. When I began I thought I’d take some pictures to show Quentin that’s his mother’s project making hasn’t changed – it is seat of the pants.

YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING IN A DIGITAL PHOTO. And there is no doubt about it, I am a clutter-person.

Let’s both brace ourselves.

Old Roy dog treats, an empty bottle of bottled water, a book, a box of old pictures . . . That yellow thing to the lower right? It’s the label on a lamp oil bottle. There’s an empty magazine rack leaning on the firestove and you can see the back half of an upside down shoe.

What you can’t see is that down at the bottom there’s a good-sized Pilgrim and what you don’t know is that I eventually hung a wooden turkey so it would be in the center area of the wreath. This turkey is so ugly I have not thrown it out because it is just that ugly. Someone picked it up at GoodWill or a rummage sale and it got into the house and it is like the man who came to dinner.

It was either some craft project or a handmade toy for a kid. I’m betting it was a “how to use scrap wood and not cut your fingers off project”.

So here it is:

Bet you want one, right? Green with envy, right? You know once when we had a fire roaring, I thought, “Oh, I could just toss the turkey in there.” I’m thinking I must subconsciously believe that turkey has something on me – that if he turns up missing, the authorities will be sent to a safety deposit box where they will find incriminating pictures of me with a defeathered and beheaded turkey. Probably some crime scene evidence also.

There has to be some reason for my homegrown grapevines adorned with raffia, subdued fruit and embroidered Pilgrims to also sport a wooden, clunky turkey.

Soon I will have to look for Bob the Turkey whose tail opens up like a fan and hangs on the chandelier at Thanksgiving. That would the Bob the Turkey who hangs there through Christmas because I feel sorry him missing the festivities. Didn’t I even hang some ornament on him last year?

The tornado sirens went off yesterday – this late in October!! I was sitting here working on something and  over the noise of a train, I thought I heard a high pitched whine. It was extremely windy and I figured it was that wind funneling between something and making a whistle. Well, I was close with the funnel part.

At the time, I just sat here listening and thought, “Is that the tornado siren?” Then, for some reason, I had this irresistible urge to think “si-reen”, as in, “Was that the tornado si-reen?”

And I sat here for longer, looking at the weather.com page to see what was going on. Well, there was a lot of red around our town. Bright red – weather map bright red. Then, again, there was that si-reen.  You know how you think it will never happen to you? Well, it didn’t. The si-reen stopped.

By this time, I’m thinking I’m fairly stupid because the last time I begrudgingly went to the basement for the kids’ sake, I did come up to find a tree down across the street and later found out about a huge tree down at Mother’s.

I then landed on the idea that if someone were to yell “Tornado” in a movie theater crowded with AmeliaJakes, there probably would not be a stampede. I believe I am going to have to start hearing the call of “SNAKE” in my mind when the siren goes off. That will get me moving.

The dude part of the post title? Well, you see, in the evening, a run of “Billy the Exterminator” shows began and, after a while, I realized Billy and his brother, Rick, call each other “Dude” all the time.

“Look out, Dude. There’s a snake, wasp, skunk, beaver, whaterver!”

“Whoa, Dude, you are right.”

“Dude, that was intense.”

“Right, Dude.”

So, of course, I had to point this out to Summer and we called each other Dude for the rest of the night.

I feel about average today and I’m thinking about  how tremendously big emotions can seem because I was looking on the weather site and glanced at the category “Feels Like”.

I started thinking about sadness and how incredibly crushing it can feel; exuberance to the point of possible explosion . . . that sort of thing. It comes from some tiny sparks jumping between teeny gaps in my brain. It is amazing to think about . . . and amazing that a couple of those little sparking gaps just caused a wince because I ended a clause with a preposition.

What a scientific experiment it would be if I could guide little nano guys around tweeting this and that to see what would happen. Of course, I would first need a reset button in case we wound up with thas and thit . . .

Friday, I ambled into Kroger’s just after they had moved a lot of steaks over to the “Reduced for Quick Sale” section and, so, I took advantage of the situation and planned a weekend cookout with Der Bingle and the clowns – er, Summer and Cameron.

Saturday  looked like rain all day and, in fact, it did sprinkle in the late afternoon. We decided to put the grill in the entrance to the garage and have our semi-circular of chairs under the roof. And because we were in the garage, I brought out my ipod player and turned on my infamous AmeliaJake July Playlist: Chattanooga Choo Choo, The Stein Song, Buckle Down, Winsocki, Sweet Gypsy Rose, Scotland the Brave . . .

Well, Summer and I decided we liked singing along to Sweet Gypsy Rose and so we did; we put it on repeat until some people threatened to leave. Then we had to satisfy ourselves with joining in when it came around again in the queue.

Robert wanted to bring out Frank Sinatra but I can’t stand him and everyone knows that. Cameron and Summer were not aware of the extent of my distaste for the man until Der Bingle told them the story that condenses itself into this sentence. Your grandmother was looking at houses to buy in Chicago and went in one that was decorated with Sinatra stuff and walked right out.

Anyway, Der Bingle grilled and the steaks were delicious; I ate my right off of a two-pronged carving fork. (It’s this quirky little rut I seem to have fallen into.)  So we are planning a winter garage grill out when Quentin comes – assuming it’s not 20 below.

Then we dumped the coals into the firepit and started a large fire with actual flames. That was when we remarked that we had noticed the people in the house south of us and beyond the hedge walking back and forth between their back door and the far side of their garage. Back and forth; forth and back. Kids and an adult every now and then.

By the time I went in, it had been dark for quite awhile and they had a fire going too. And the back and forth continued. Eventually, I heard music coming from the gathering I could only imagine on that far side of their garage. I heard snips of words and one clear phrase: “going to the graveyard”.

Alison said she got up at night and heard them still out there. Der Bingle and I are guessing it was some sort of  Day of the Dead thing. I am so glad I did not realize it last night when it would have been fodder for nightmares.

Der Bingle sent me an incense burner shaped like a teepee; it was from him and my good friend NaPoo.

And here is a picture of the teepee:

Along with this, they sent some scented wood samples:

Now, look inside the box and see how things are packaged and labeled.

Because this is an open package, the little logs are not so tightly squeezed together that they appear as one big rectangle. I was on the phone with Der Bingle, reading off the samples and  said, “Holder wood, alder, mesquite . . .”

Later when I slit the plastic, I realized the holder wood was actually a holder for the incense made out of terra cotta.

As my good friend Grover would say, “I am soooooo embarrassed.”

I did more cleaning yesterday – in an uncharacteristic rut, I guess. Or maybe I didn’t clean and when people come over and gasp, “I thought you were cleaning,” I will say that I had but the dogs and kids went wild and oh, well, this is what it is back to.

Then I went to the store and got a call that Alison, who was working her shift at the hospital, had succumbed to low potassium again and was in the ER. Of course, this day was the one that Colin had come back for a fall break visit.

It occurred to me to walk over to the walk-in freezer area and tell them I needed an emergency suspended animation . . . but I went home instead.

And this morning Summer has just come over to say, “I need socks.”

Shoot, I can’t let the sleeping like the dead be at the forefront. I have better things to share, such as the teepee incense burner and the different wood-scented incense logs Der Bingle sent me. And the embarrassing part about the “holder” wood.

But I need to take pictures and do some other stuff first. Actually, I need to pull everything off my old computer onto an external drive first; yes, I’ve been procrastinating. But, by God, this morning I am going to do it . . . assuming I can find the cables now.

Well, later.

Last night I could not get to sleep. I mean I really couldn’t get to anything even involving relaxed. I was as tight as a spring and my mind was running in circles. Do you remember Peter Finch in Network? “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Yes, that Peter Finch. I was probably beyond that.

So I decided to get up and walk into the kitchen. I guess I figured it was a good place to go since I was stewing and at the point of boiling over, only to return to a simmer to keep the cycle going. I got something to drink and some aspirin and came back and lay down.

I lay in a fetal-contracted near ball – my legs pulled up as far as they could go. When you are 62 years from fetalism, you are more an oval.

And it dawned at me at 2:30 in this early morning that this probably wasn’t going to work. So I rolled over and stretched out flat on my back with my hands on my midriff. I probably looked like a mummy. I lay there breathing slowly and telling all my muscles to just feel gravity. I felt better; enough better that I started to wonder about the hands on the midriff position.

“Do I want to be in a coffin with my hands like that? Would down at my side feel more comfortable?” I tried it and I wasn’t sure. So I went from on position to the other, asking myself  optometrist-like questions:  Number one or number two?  Want to try it again?

I was experimenting with a third modification – arms by my sides with the forearms elevated slightly on something soft when I did drop off to sleep.  That’s what I like about puzzles – you start focusing on all the variables and “poof”  your mind eases.

I guess the sleep was in the details.

I have gotten in my head that I want some balsam incense and so I looked on the internet and, of course, there was Amazon.com offering some from Paine’s. I wanted to check it out so I went to Paine’s site. It turned out to be minimal and didn’t have a “contact us” link, so I guess you can’t get there from here. Did I mention they were located in Maine?

To tell the truth, I was headed back to order from Amazon or another site when I saw listed in products – the dog, not for sale.

I looked HERE and decided to order from Paine’s. Chalk one up for Josie.

Photo from Paine’s website.

It’s a basement; it’s not really a cellar. You go down the stairs and reach a landing: Go right and you are into the paneled section with the fireplace and TV and other stuff; Go left and you enter The Bunker, which used to be known as The Cement Room. Mother got creative down there, you see. The Bunker has a definite Scott House ambiance. Gee, I just remembered – when I was very little, I used to say, “Up to the Scott House.” Well, that was a long time ago. But now it is in my mind again. We’ll see for how long.

But, back to The Bunker part of the basement. One of the rooms on that side is paneled and carpeted and has a drop ceiling. Fitting around the boundaries of this room is a space the shape of Oklahoma. Coming off of what would be the east side of Oklahoma if you were looking at a map are the furnace room and the fruit cellar. I know, I don’t know why we don’t call it the fruit basement. I like the fruit cellar, probably because it has floor to ceiling beadboard cabinet doors. The furnace room isn’t half-bad either; it’s square and the furnace is fairly small these days. Oklahoma and the furnace room are painted in sage with light peach here and there; we have a puzzle-working table next to the furnace and chairs, old cabinets, a TV, an old upright radio, a table, a refrigerator, a freezer and a footstool that has a Raggedy Ann face on it (GoodWill) in the Oklahoma section.

Well, yesterday I cleaned some down there. And I emptied out the chest freezer that is over by the panhandle of Oklahoma. When I get near the bottom, I have to climb up on a step stool and then lean over. Actually, that lets me just barely reach stuff and I wound up straddling the front wall of the freezer this time. I felt a little more comfortable that way; one time when I was leaning over, I teetered on the wall, like an upside down “V”. It could have been bad.

I also sucked cobwebs. With a vacuum, of  course. That was probably obvious but knowing I had been upside down in a freezer might have had you wondering about my mind.

I also went to Wal-Mart. I’m looking at that sentence now and chuckling. Maybe I should be worried about my mind.