I was inclined to be a Halloween Grinch and button up the house and hide, but Cameron looked at me as if my heart had already shrunk three times its normal side, and so we went to Wal-Mart for candy. I agreed on the condition that he be the one to hand out the candy to the little doorbell ringers.

He agreed and even decided to sit outside. I suggested he wear his Mad Bomber hat and then he saw an alternative at the store:

While we were watching the Bears/Saints game yesterday, almost everyone at the PBC & Roadhouse came close to having old-fashioned apoplexia.

I am not going to link to a video of the catch; I don’t want to watch it and go splat on my keyboard. I think the refs wear stripes because they should be in jail.

I know what you’re thinking: Tell us what you really think, AmeliaJake.

Not a classy title for a post, but it is sort of a sigh because I can nor perhaps attribute for being tired to a reason other than laziness. You go to the doctor with “this pain in my right side” and he pokes and feels and sends you for a urine sample. Yeah!!

Well, not yeah; I had not drunk anything and it took several cups of water to  . . . oh, you know . . . pee. (Urinate if my father were here looking over my shoulder and commenting on what a lady should say.) I thought after a while I was going to be able to make a homestead claim on the lab waiting room.

When I was five, my mother said I came home from the doctor with pills in my hand and announced, “I’ve got the chickenpox.” Yesterday, I came in with my Cipro in my hand, but didn’t announce anything. It didn’t seem as dramatic as the pox. Actually, I hope it is no where near that; when I had the chickenpox, I was completely covered with pox spots, between my fingers, my lips, everywhere – and it was the Christmas season too.

We tuned into CBS to watch the Bears game and it is being broadcast in Spanish, although the commercials are in English. All of us at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse are dumbfounded . . . but getting ready to yell at the screen.

I am not going to type what I think will be yelled.

I have done the sudoku from today’s paper; I have actually driven one block to Jim’s Pizza to get an icy cold Diet Coke from their vending machine; I have checked the weather, the news and looked at Amazon.com. What I have to do is cleaning, and I mean basic cleaning – such as finding the kitchen counter. This is not my forte and I think it is time for someone to invent a cleaning robot that roams around and does more than suck floors.

Until that time, I am left to sigh and tote that bale and so forth. I am tempted to go with the “so forth”, which could involve being abducted by aliens. No. I crossed the line there; aliens are a reach.

I could delve into the programming of the thermostat for my new Trane furnace, but it is daunting. When I found out I would need a new furnace, I researched the subject and first found out that the the serviceman’s company represented one of the two most reliable furnaces produced. I thought, “Well, that’s good, I won’t have to cancel the appointment with the salesman who was to come.”

I delved into Consumer Reports and Internet ratings and descriptions of types of furnaces and efficiency and one stage heating, two stage heating. What I learned that was most important was that much more than half the cost of a new furnace goes into the installation. It is not, I guess, like plugging in a space heater. So I decided to make certain not to cut corners on the actual physical furnace since so much was invested in the installation.

The fellows came, made no comment about my cluttered house and went about their business – the basic furnace guy was, to quote the salesman, “an old sheet metal guy with 37 years experience. Good. The other guy was younger, but his job was to vent the furnace to the outside and connect the thermostat.

Venting the furnace. They did not use my chimney; I now have thick PVC pipe going through the brick wall and sticking out like a dryer vent. Santa can’t handle it, but I suppose the elves can squeeze in and spy through the vents. Now the thermostat is not a simple little control where one pushes a button repeatedly until the temperature desired appears in a digital window. It certainly is not one with the little wheel one rotated to align an arrow with a desired temperature.

No, this thermostat is a touchscreen with options to connect it to my smart phone, schedule different temps for different times of day and other stuff highlighted in an instruction book I am approaching with apprehension. My favorite part of the display is the drawing of a chimney that shows a red X when the furnace is not running. (Of course, this chimney represents the tradition brick one on a roof; it is not a drawing showing a PVC pipe poking out of the wall.)

I have valiantly tried to keep typing to avoid the cleaning thing, but I must face my problem. Clean it? Well, maybe I can think of something else that is just vital to do. Suggestions are appreciated.

From a few years I wrote about Thomas Bickle and his family’s story of his fighting a big, bad brain tumor. He lost the fight. It was sad. His mother wrote a blog about his journey and she wrote very candidly and very well.

I think sometime after Thomas’ death, I wrote a comment on her blog expressing my hope that she would not take it down because I felt it would be a help, a comfort, whatever you want to call it to people who were going through a similar experience. And, quite frankly, I think it helps any reader to be a little better than they are. I believe she had already made the decision to let it stay for others to read.

I didn’t have her blog scheduled to show me any updates, but today I was looking for a reference to an author (Elizabeth McCracken) she had quoted from an article in Oprah, the magazine. (I have linked to Sarah’s blog and not the magazine).

My thoughts went to this author and Thomas because a friend from the past in Chicago is in Paris and posted a picture of Notre Dame on her Facebook page. It was a lovely picture and she mentioned a service was taking place while they were there. My mind went to France and religion and . . . nuns. (Who knows what lurks in the neurons of a brain? And, okay, I did think of the hunchback as well.)

Nuns made me think of the story Sarah had cited and I looked it up on her blog. When I arrived on her front page, I saw that she had updated on September 17th of this year. So, of course, I read her entry. It is an important issue. I wanted to pass it on. Thus, this post.

For decades, I have spread the theory that The Cubs were born to break your heart; in fact, I often cited The Cub Factor when discussing World Series play. The rule was to count up the number of players on each team who were ex-Cubs – the team that had the few number would win.

And it was always a time to rest your head against a wall, too sad to bang it, and watch the Cubs win every straight game after they had become statistically ineligible for the Series.

Last year I waited for the dream to end and even imagined the crushing letdown when the Cubs came so very close. Then, in the last game, I remembered all the movies about BELIEVING and I thought: Believe, AmeliaJake, believe.

And they won and it was wonderful. Where was Frank Capra when you needed him?
Fortunately, it was October and the holiday season showings of “It’s a Wonderful Life” were just on the horizon.

Then this year came; they made it to the play-offs, but the game total wins was 3-1, in favor of the Dodgers. I thought, I am ashamed to say, of the agony watching and hoping and I’m pretty certain I stopped believing; I think I wanted the pressure off. They lost. And part of me is ashamed, because I was to afraid to believe. Yes, I’m breathing, but I didn’t anticipate the sadness; I wish I had believed to the end.

I know there is a show on TV called Monsters Inside Us that addresses the topic of parasites and bacteria. It’s the type of stuff that can make you cringe – a tapeworm in the brain, for instance.

I have a different problem; the litte-researched Pun Fungi, colloquially known as the Pun Fun Guys, has infected my brain and forged a superhighway to my mouth.

Last night I saw an image of a toddler demolishing a Lego town that had been built by his sibling. It could have been a snippet of Internet family video that was picked up by a news site. While watching the carnage and listening to the fellow who had spent hours Lego urban planning, I thought of Hillary Clinton – It takes a child to raze a village.

I don’t think that I could be an English teacher, or more accurately an instructor in English poetry and the writing thereof. What would be poets have been stifled by English lit teachers who have cried “No, no, no!” at pupils’ submissions.

I can just see the big red letters reading: YOU USED TWICE THREE TIMES, EMILY!!!

I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!

Angels—twice descending
Reimbursed my store—
Burglar! Banker—Father!
I am poor once more!

Emily Dickinson . . . courtesy of The Poem Hunter.

Given that I don’t watch a lot of TV that has commercials, I’m certain this is not the first Christmas commercial broadcast. However, I am announcing that my first has just been experienced and it is Denny’s pancake sort of dish; I don’t know what it is called because I was focused on the little nutcrackers behind the food display and the bouncy, cheery Christmas music.

Thinking back, I believe commercials were something that we endured and maybe used to our advantage to run and snack or go to the bathroom. When I started watching WGN’s Late Night Movies, which came on at 10:30pm because we were on Central Time in Chicago, the commercial breaks did get annoying and lengthy to the extent that I would often fall asleep, missing scenes in classic movies. However, you really weren’t certain you’d missed anything because you’d seen the movies so many times before. Of course, if the National Anthem was playing or you were looking at a test pattern, you knew the vision of Bogart and Rains walking into the fog talking about a “beautiful friendship” was from a previous viewing.

Once, in a sort of misguided idea of tradition, we watched “It’s A Wonderful Life” on broadcast TV. Lordy! We could have played the video tape three times in the time it took to make it to Zuzu and the angel getting his wings and George Bailey winking upward to Clarence.

I must admit, though, sometimes a commercial pleases me. The latest is the Geico commercial with the pigeons on the telephone wire using the phrase, “Fire at will.” Then one pigeon thinks Will has flown by  . . . and it is not unlike a short “Who’s on First” experience.