This morning I sat at the fairgrounds facing East while Sydney  sniffed and chased two squirrels and investigated other areas. He got in the car and I followed the lane around to the fairgrounds entrance. I was sitting – facing West now – waiting to turn on to Park, when I looked up and saw a really black horizon coming at me. Weather.com says it is not going to rain this morning and maybe we will have some sun this afternoon. I don’t know if I can trust them. Cameron suggested yesterday that I must have a threatening sky cloud that follows me around. He may be right. Oh, yeah, apparently we have already had our high for the day.

I just know I was meant to be a Southern Cal girl and not a 60- year- old Midwestern frump. Now I just have to figure out the magic formula that will do the trick. However, some of the folks here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse where we have rickety chairs and scarred tables and overstuffed sofas that are 50+ years old think my metamorphosis would upset the essence of the place. “AmeliaJake,” they say, “we can’t see you as a So Cal girl. Cargo pants and safari shirts with useful fishing or photographers’ vests don’t really translate . . . You don’t have a bikini personality, not to mention a bikini body.”

They can’t get it through their heads that with the right potion I would be young, tall, blonde and shapely. I would be sooooo cool. I think they are trying to gently tell me that I would still be a Midwestern, sudoku-working, sarcastic frump inside. Well, come to think of it, I can’t really visualize sushi peanut-butter or a big plate with a tiny bit of food elegantly arranged on it – a cracker, a dollop of PB and a carrot standing on end.

I suppose I should put any potion through trial protocols. Or maybe I will just sit here and hold my breath until I find myself in sitting on the beach . . . Uh, didn’t think that last thought through . . .  GASP . . . SNARFFLING AIR SOUNDS . . .

8 out of 10 days of clouds and rain; one of those two sunny days will have thunderstorms.

I’m working on this bright side thing . . .

UPDATE: Dandelions have regrouped; tomorrow is that half day of predicted sunshine with thunderstorms in the afternoon. Tomorrow morning is W-Day (Weed) so all you folks listening to the Free French Radio Broadcast and hearing the phrase “wounds my heart with monotonous langour’ don’t tell the boche on the lawn.

Just a while ago, Der Bingle returned from the fairgrounds with Sydney, the last trip until next weekend. And he brought with him something he had found on the bleachers by the old Merchants Building. This:

Yesterday, people had gathered for a giant garage sale and I guess this got lost in the commotion. Der Bingle didn’t quite know what it was, but I told him I thought it was from a puzzle for very little people, hence the handle on the piece. I asked, “Is this a sign?” and he said he didn’t know, but he couldn’t leave the little cow over there – that it seemed to be destined to come to the leaning cow. He added, “Especially with the little smile.” Then he said  he had left a dollar under a rock where it had been. I doubt anyone will come looking for it; quite possibly it was out of a box filled with this and that of toddler toys. Perhaps the farmyard of its home puzzle has been long gone for some time now.

I don’t know who will find the dollar, and maybe there will be a reward for a lost cow . . . but, right now, she is here and she is leaning.

Three of us – four counting Sydney – spent some time facing part of the yard today after this snowy, melting, deep-freezing winter. I wheelbarrowed leaves out to the parkway; Cameron toted topsoil and spread it out and after Der Bingle finished a myriad of tasks, he and Sydney shared a rest. Der Bingle got the iced tea; Sydney got the belly rub.

I was sitting last evening in my favorite spot in the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse when my cell phone rang. Thank God for cell phones or I would have been forced to bestir myself from my spot and go to the phone. Imagine the inconvenience. Anyway, it was Quentin calling from a small Asian market, but, of course, given my previous problem distinguishing between Secret Agent Man and Secret Asian Man, I had to make certain he was not calling from an agent market, which I suppose would be a place that provides the Maxwell Smart’s of the world.

He – Quentin, not Max who somehow fumbled his way into this discourse – was looking for lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, produce with which I have no familiarity. So he asks if my computer is nearby and I then look up pictures of the stuff. I inquired why he didn’t ask a worker there, but he said he had and they didn’t speak English. Apparently there were pictures of produce so I told him to grab an Asian and point, but he didn’t think that would be productive.

I describe kaffir lime leaves, telling him it looks like grass, then realizing I am looking a picture of a knife next to cut-up lime leaves (kaffir, don’tcha know.) Thinking, “Oh,” I tell him to forget that and visualize two shiny green hedge-like leaves, one coming out of the other in an end to end fashion. Not managing too well with this, we go on to lemongrass, which I told him looked like the weedy reedy grass that you see along ponds around here. This is also not too helpful.

Finally, I tell him that his mother, me, is a 60 year old product of a childhood in Northern Indiana where all I knew was a menu that came from the north of Europe. Okay, we did have spaghetti, but I’ve learned long pasta and a bland tomato sauce isn’t necessarily true spaghetti. I didn’t have pizza until well into my teens – probably at some college summer program for high schoolers. The closest to Chinese food I got was rice. To tell the truth, I suppose it was quite a long time before I realized not everyone ate staples of meat and potatoes and fuit pies.

Now he’s talking Thai food. He and his dad, Der Bingle, like it. I went to a Thai restaurant once in San Diego – it was a storefront jobbie with white tablecloths, an acoustic ceiling and absolutely no AmeliaJake type of atmosphere. And, of course, no meat and potatoes. Right then I knew, knew for a fact, there was no way I would ever be cosmopolitan.

For several minutes we wandered down the aisle of the asian market via cell phone and finally he checked out; he remarked it was the last time he was going there alone.  I suppose the clerks put their heads together and watched him go, this stranger in a strange land.

I don’t know how the Thai soup turned out. He wanted it to be spicy enough to clear out his sinuses.  And I don’t know much about leaves in food. Heck, when I was a kid, we would have been appalled to see a leaf in the stew. And, just a couple of years ago, we all gather round to watch the bay leaf float in the homemade hotdog soup. Ahhhhhhh….. Oooooooooh. And we scandlously wondered, “What if we put in two?”

(HA on me! It’s Mangum, not magnum. But now I can’t do the Dirty Harry part, so I’m going to pretend I didn’t realize my mistake.)

This morning I saw one of the Bayou Billy mugs that we have picked up over the years at the Apple Festival here in Kendallville; I prefer the Cherry Wine flavor, although I have branched out to try lemonade and grape. I thought I’d just check the site and see make certain they would be coming this year – and  check if they might be at the county fair.  So, here I am, scrolling down the calendar when I see Waynoka Snake Hunt. Nooooooooo! I have already given myself nightmares by stumbling on the Waurika Snake Hunt event.

For some reason, on this rattlesnake site, there is a picture of a python or anaconda . . . but since you know it is a rattlesnake site and you are thinking that way, when you first glance at the picture of that huge snake, you stop breathing. Of course, you start again because it’s only a picture and part of your mind is yelling, “not a rattlesnake, not a rattlesnake, not a rattlesnake.” Not a cool visual experience. I quickly clicked on the “About” page and saw this photo:

Bayou Billy . . . what are you doing to me?

BUT WAIT.

Bayou Billy’s calendar also shows this event: Mangum Snake Hunt. These folks (Shortgrass Rattlesnake Association) have been doing this since 1966. And the picture on the main page is not a python. It is this one and it totally scares me.

They do have a nice, informative site and I found this phrase in the history section: “when snakes begin to slither out from their dens.”  I don’t know . . .  I think I would want Dirty Harry with me . . . with his Magnum, you know, the 44 one. The most powerful handgun one.

Bayou Billy apparently has a special brew for these events – Wild West Soda.  Maybe they add whiskey and snakebite anti-venom.

I do see that they are going to be at a marshmallow festival in Ligonier, Indiana . . . that seems more my speed.

Here are the thoughts first brought about by the Waurika Round-up:

Actually, I don’t know if I would feel compelled to go if I lived close enough . . . When I was little and we would go to a zoo, I always wanted to visit the reptiles first. Was that because I was so frightened of them I wanted to get it over or because I wanted to look at something which could freeze me with terror.

I think the fact that they don’t have legs bothers me the most – the fast, fast slithering and the head and upper body being able to spring forward in the blink of an eye. I guess arms on a human could snap forward and punch me in the nose pretty fast, but I don’t think about that for some reason.

I can’t remember not knowing about the Rudyard Kipling stories of cobras and the days of ropes that could be pulled to summon servants and a murderer putting a poisonous shake through the hole in the wall so it could crawl down the rope and bite a sleeping person. See, I am upset enough to write run-on sentences again.

When my grandfather was farming and they cut and baled hay, my uncle said there would always be a rattler in one of the bails . . . that was his least favorite job on the farm – helping with the hay bales. Rattlesnakes are scarce here now – although a hundred years ago when my grandmother moved into a house by a lake, the family discovered a snake nest in the cellar. One big snake crawled up into a wall and stuck his head out a hole in that wall. My grandmother used a broom to keep hitting it back until someone came, got a shotgun and blew its head off. Wait a minute – they fired a shotgun in the house? That seems odd. Well, desperate times lead to desperate measures, I suppose.

Maybe I would be drawn to the festival as I am sometimes drawn to watch scary movies. I might have to duct tape myself to a wall for that weekend to keep me from going. Yet, I live in an old house with a fruit cellar – what if a snake gnawed a hole in the wall right where I was taped? Oh, Lordy!

Now I am thinking that these Oklahomans just go out around where they live and find these snakes for the roundup. So for me, if I lived there, every day would be snake day. I would buy a shotgun, maybe two . . . and wear boots . . . and not sit in the grass.

I am a wimp . . . or Indiana Jonesette – Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes? I hate snakes!

Now, gummy worms . . . they’re pretty cool.