Ah, yes, Collaboration Wednesday, has moved to Monday. I suppose they thought it would be better to start off the week with a 30-Minute delay, rather than interrupting it with one. I’m not so sure; Monday morning was always a bench mark. Make it up on Monday morning and you had done the hardest part of the week. Now, that steel in your backbone has been challenged by the 30-Minute delay. Trying to set your body in the right frame for the week? Forget it. Forget it. Forget it.

Monday morning fortitude is a time-released thing and it starts to wear off quickly. You suck it up and go, or you start sliding into the “I’ll just rest my head for a moment” pitfall and the next thing you know your system is being shocked by the viscous counter-vibrating forces of an amusement park ride in Hell.

Oh, well.

Sydney and Shane parked at every single person we saw on the way to school -Every Single One. Sydney barked because Shane did, and Shane barked because he was, in fact, shouting, “YOU ARE NOT WITH THE HERD, YOU NINNIES!”

On the way back we waited for three adult women early morning walkers to steam across the intersection. There was Big Strides with Strong Legs, Tries Valiantly to Keep Up, and Huffing and Puffing.

Big Strides ignored Shane; Tries Valiantly glared at him for breaking her focus, and Huffing had these pleading eyes that begged him to stand on the electric window button, leap out, push her to the ground and bark for the shepherd to come.

Oh, and Summer did not go because she almost threw up on the driveway. It was kind of sad – when I got back from taking Cameron, she was sitting there with her nicely-completed poster assignment on a possible career choice. Hers is veterinarian. Well, maybe Sydney and Shane will sleep with her today.

I feel nervous and anxious and as if I want to move, move, move. My grandmother used to say she felt like she needed to jump out of her skin. My mother said, “Mom used to say she felt as if she wanted to jump out of her skin.” That’s my documentation; I don’t remember my grandmother saying it. But, anyway, that’s the way I feel.

I think I am going to call it Body Cabin Fever. BCF. I’ve got BCF, or in the vernacular, “the BCF”. I messed up today something awful; I wanted to go to Mother’s and then I didn’t go because it really did look like rain. Also I was having trouble getting out of my rut. Then I ate some nachos and openly took a three hour nap. It was so windy today with a front coming through that had I actually gotten out and done something, I would be feeling exhilarated right now.

Thunking my head on the wall sounds like a half decent idea right now. That would be moving, burning up some chemicals. I am, however, like one of those “sitting figures” they have for holidays – witches, Santas, Pilgrims, turkeys, elves snowmen. I have this psychological box lodged between my abdomen and butt holding me down.

Well, I’ll never be able to put one of those on a mantle of windowsill again. I’m sure their eyes will follow me, sending the message, “You know our pain . . . Get us off here.”

On top of everything else I have been thinking today is Saturday instead of Friday because Der Bingle came in last night. Oh, yeah, NEXT weekend, not this one, is going to be the Great Migration of computer files since we don’t have the right cable. That should be fun. I abhor moving things around on the computer. Over a decade ago, Quentin got this program called Spring Cleaning and my font that looked liked it was clipped from a newspaper for kidnap messages, disappeared forever.

Actually, I probably have most things repeated three or four times as I fooled around getting new computers and using external drives and really being paranoid about losing something. You just can’t get down on your hands and knees and look around a computer’s insides the way you can look under a sofa.

I have actually done cleaning work today, including moving soda pops into the garage from the vestibule and organizing all the sodas in the garage already. Guess who is a soda pop hoarder in our establishment? It’s Alison. I could throw a big, big party with all the soda we have, not to mention the on sale chicken breasts and hot dogs.

Then I got the blower and windswept the garage and the vestibule while Sydney and Shane watched through the little windows. I did laundry and dishes and then I showered and made the potatoes and carrots for a stew.

Then I showered and put on clean clothes and started another wash and  . . . I am not certain I am myself. Then I realized I was sitting here savoring my bare feet and the light from the oil lamp and I knew it was I, AmeliaJake.

However, I have been considering dabbling in multiple personalities. But it might be dangerous, like the fooling around with your heartbeat during intense yoga. I think I will settle for closing my eyes and imagining myself with different traits. Some of them will be a stretch and might make my brain start vibrating. Maybe the vibration would get out of control and Scotty would have to yell, “Cap’n, I canna hold her.”

Come to think of it, it might be fun just to have my family imagine me with various personalities and then watch them fall down laughing.

Maybe AmeliaMotherTeresaJake.

But wait, AmeliaJake, didn’t you leave  your computer in Indiana? Yes, I did, but now I have a new computer and I finally managed to remember the password to get into the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. I am also going to have to remember to remove AJ passwords from the computer which is being passed on to Cameron. That computer will, no doubt, become a devotee of The Drudge Report. I think it is genetic – it is one of Der Bingle’s favorite sites.

I drove all the way down here listening to my all time favorite, Count Your Blessings. I don’t know what I will listen to going home. I’ll sleep on it.

Our consigliere.

Today. Some time around 11 am. I don’t want to go. I vaguely remember the dentist remarking that the tree little places were small and he didn’t think I need Novocain. He asked if I’d be comfortable being in the chair about 90 minutes and I answered “Yeah” because I wanted to get out of the office then.

Oh, auuuggggghhhhhhhh.

But, yes, I’m glad I have my own teeth and that they seem to be fairly strong, genetically speaking. So I will go . . . but I won’t like it. I’ll be wearing my inner five year old face of displeasure under my barely passable neutral adult expression. I thought about sending Rose in my place, but she has gone to Ohio for some R&R. Come to think of it, I have never actually seen Rose’s teeth. Let me imagine her with teeth . . .

Nope, can’t do it. And as much as I am tempted, I won’t photoshop them in. I mean that would really piss her off. Ack, I said “piss”.

ACK! I DID IT.

Cameron has misplaced his cell phone and he looked pretty darn thoroughly. He didn’t find it. So we started a search together that included his lifting heavy furniture and me using the super sucking wet/dry vac to a)maybe latch onto the phone and b) to grab some dirt. We started on the porch and worked our way through the living room and into the den and then into the kitchen and ran out of steam in the dining room.

So much sucking; so much dirt; so much taking things apart and putting them back together. And no phone.

I don’t think Cameron has the talent for going into his memory and floating into that last moment with the phone in his hand, so we are going at it without vibes.

Maybe I will lie quietly tonight and and chant “Be the phone . . .”

This is up by Bluffton and the river isn’t very wide at all; in fact, it is a small fraction of the eastern floodplain  down by Covington in Fountain County  where my dad is from. Well, he’s from Kingman, but it’s close. Or, maybe it is not – close that is. Given the times I have headed out to Covington from Kingman on the little roads that meander around in that old territory, it could be oh, way far away.

Long ago they built the Wabash & Erie Canal and over in Delphos, Ohio, you can see one of the locks. I am humbled by the thought of all the people slowly making their way west. And that is something, since I have one of those egos that is an “I” carved out of granite. Come to think of it, it’s more of a “ME”.

I was sitting here at my little table at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse and planning to post . . . and then I thought, “I’m mundane.”  So I closed my laptop, said “So long, Oolong” to the others, and headed up to Mother’s for a little mousetrap checking and potential mowing.

There were two mice caught in traps; all the other traps had sprung prematurely or had not sprung at all because they are the new Victor mousetrap made with plastic. They are not a better mousetrap. I did my best to set them again, but I am not confident. Aha, I was going to show you a picture and went to the Victor site and found out I have not been using the traps correctly – they are pre-baited and disposable. Okay, made a little mistakie. Nevermind.

On to the mower. I backed it out, gassed it up, did the oil thing and started it and flicked the mower switch. Such a CLANGING. It was not a good sign and so I went into the okay, let’s get this figured out mode and lay down beside the Wheel Horse. I had found a wee old pen knife in the shed – about two inches long – and was using it to cut away stuff from the shafts. Then I put it down beside me and when I went to get it again, I couldn’t find it. I looked for several minutes – I mean, where could it be? But I gave up and got something else. Still it clanged and I realized that the motor itself was not revving to well.  I dug into the air filter and engine and poked debris out and, yes, we had power and the blade went fast enough it did not wobble.

I was good to go. And I did. For about four hours, or maybe five. Then I had no more gas and, gosh darn it, I had to stop. So I decided to look for the knife again . . .  I used a metal rake and I used a plastic rake and I watched for the sun to reflect on a blade and nothing worked. I am going back with a big magnet.

So, this is to be continued.

One day last spring I had to be in the ER waiting room while somebody was being seen; I just know it wasn’t me.  A lady in a wheelchair was pushed up to the intake desk; she had fallen and maybe cracked a bone or sprained a muscle. She was elderly in the way I will be in, oh, 10, years and her husband looked a little older. He was slender, casually well-dressed and poised. It seemed like a regular visual encounter in a waiting room.

AND THEN, their two twin daughters came in. They were very tall, very slender, very professionally coiffed and dressed in designer-like black dresses. They were accessorized and they were probably somewhere in their thirties. One could have imagined them showing up in a Manhattan ER and being quickly escorted to the VIP section – which of course isn’t listed on the directory, but exists.

I was short, squat  and dressed in the work clothes I had been wearing when we had to head off our patient. They were not, as I have said.

They also stood in the waiting room as if no one else were there; I suppose they didn’t want to embarrass us by indicated we had been noticed. Or they were very snooty. I found myself wondering, since their mother did not seem to be in pain or distress, if they had taken time to dress for the occasion.

I think I am being unfair; I just would have liked it had they shown some awareness of an old woman, wincing in discomfort as she waited – of the little boy standing there all nervous while his mother held his splotched and crying sister.

This was quite awhile ago, and I still think of it now and then. I think I would have liked it had I not been jealous of their looks, icy cold though they were. But, rats. that’s me and it doesn’t look like I’m going to change.