Whoa, someone out-AmeliaJaked AmeliaJake*. I don’t usually write book reviews because reading is such an individual activity, and because I wrote enough of them in school. Occasionally, I will feel obligated to comment that a book is really bad, unless you want to read for the purpose of finding a way to transfer an emotional need to barf into an actual one.

However, I just finished reading a review of a book that most readers agreed was a “good story” but also agreed with one long-winded and nit-picking reviewer about the exact use of words regarding it being women’s historical fiction about someplace in the South. Yes, the capitalized South. Heavens to Betsy, that one Southern Belle took the author to task for every little nuance, citing the fact that she had lived in that area and, by God, it wasn’t exactly the way she had understood the language of the area and era.

It was a STORY set in an historical time. From what I could tell, the gist of the background was correct, it was just these little miscues that were a sin against people’s eyeballs, not to mention minds. It was not a historical scholarly paper. Most of the people who thanked the lady for dissecting the writing, mentioned that they were also from that exact area. Yeah, they said, he was a good story but, uh, you can’t make a verb a noun in that part of the country.

There are a lot of little piranhas out there in reviewerland and to mix a metaphor, some of them deliver their bites with the annoying, repetitive knocking of a woodpecker at two o’clock in the morning.

* AJ can be scathing, as those who witnessed her “dud” analysis a few years back. Gee, reminding myself of that day, I feel as if I am back in the car, spouting off, “Dud! What a dud. A real dud. A dud. Dud!!!!” And that was before we had even cleared the parking lot.

You don’t want to know, but part of it involves taking a kitchen range apart and putting it back together and part of it involves standing on a woodpile with an extension pole to reach a spot that needed to be painted.

Part of it also involves a shifting in the house Internet network coverage and my constantly being dropped. I found myself looking at the screen and saying BAD WORD IT.

I have pictures of the wiring of the range – lots of pictures, so I could keep track of what went where. They would bore you, although you might be surprised by the sheer number of wires involved. But the putting it back together was the interesting part; if it were a movie, you would be watching from behind the sofa, peeking over at the suspense every few seconds.

When I threw the circuit breaker back on, the problem still existed and I was actually not overly upset – I was relieved the stove came on and everything worked as it had before. It didn’t throw off tons of sparks and set the house on fire. Of course, this means I have an old stove with probably some switch/circuit malfunctions.

I have a plan, but I’m keeping mum about it because, well, you’ve read about my other antics and I don’t want you to worry. It does not involve a chain saw.

It has been very pleasant this week, with highs in the mid-70’s, but today it warmed up to 78 and it may be warmer tomorrow. This would not be bad except I think I am getting what would be my first cold in a long time. Couple that with a possible UTI again and I am feeling like I want to wrap myself up in a blanket with a heater on when I am outside in the sun. This is annoying. So I am aspirin girl and tomorrow I will go for a urine test. Yes, too much information; I know, really I do. Bladder pain, chills and sneezing can make you just let it all spill out.

I WANT SYMPATHY. BECAUSE I’M A NAMBY-PAMBY WUSS.

They say confession is good for the soul . . . but it isn’t helping my bladder.

I received a postcard this summer from an Internet friend who was in Europe, and I was glad to get it. Yesterday, in the basement of the Lagrange House, I came across another postcard from Italy, one I received 63 years ago. I don’t remember getting it, but I was glad to find it – and maybe a little surprised.

I need to scan it into my photo library, but because I didn’t feel like going through the steps right now, I just snapped a picture of the back:

Actually, she was my great-great aunt; she was the youngest child of six and the oldest was my great-grandfather, so she was only a couple of years older than Grandma. They both loved to read, graduated from Lima High School, went to college and became teachers. They paths diverged and Aunt Sara married an Encyclopedia Brittanica salesman and traveled the United States with him; he died and she worked in Washington D.C. at the Veteran’s Administration; she remarried – (they both thought the other was rich); they traveled around the world; she kept her hair dyed red, but was very regal appearing. When I was around two and three, she took lots of pictures of me when she came to Indiana to stay with us for a summer – or longer.

Oh, she called her husband L.D. so we all did; I don’t think we knew why she called him that. He died in a doctor’s office waiting room of a heart attack in New Orleans. She came back to Indiana when she was very, very old and died not far from where she was born.

Look at the penmanship. I remember Grandma making each “p” with the same upsweep. I cherished those p’s. There’s one in the inscription in the Bible my grandma gave me in 1953.

I found the card on a dusty shelf under some other stuff. Dust to dust and not long until me too, but oh, how clear and solid memories can be. Maybe somewhere they are all stored; maybe moments are forever, we just don’t know it. If they were and if we did know it and if we could, maybe we would just step back into them . . . but which one to pick. What forever would we choose.

So many things go with us when we die and those of another generation have not a clue of the scents and love and comforts of the moments that were so dear to us. It’s in the details – the feelings of it, and I dearly wish I could find a way to link the emotions of one life’s experiences to those of another life. I would like to think that each link in the chain could at least sense the essence of warm sunshine and loved one’s smells that makes that chain.

There are occasions when you are sleeping along just fine and someone wakes you for some reason  – maybe worthwhile, maybe not – and then you are AWAKE. Obviously AWAKE and then that word begins to stretch itself out and grow taller and pretty soon you are  AWAKE with a Times Square New Year’s Eve Awareness.

This is one of those occasions. In the old days, which we now refer to as “in the day”, it was common to turn on the TV and see what was on The Late Night Movie. Sometimes you got lucky and it would be a classic with real actors and dialogue that didn’t fall flat and a plot. It was a crapshoot, but there was a comfort in a flickering black and white drama of merit or even a Japanese monster movie when you were awake alone at night.

Now, I could stick a DVD right here in this old computer and watch a classic of my choice. I could even find one of those gag gift DVD’s that feature some movie made on a tiny budget and shown three times at a matinée in Peoria. But it’s the principle of the thing and there is just not the companionship found in a random late night programming schedule: Hey, you’re awake and alone too? Well, watch me make the lighting dance on your dark, nighttime walls. And don’t mind the 10 minute commercials if you’re watching WGN. I mean, you know how my plot is going to go and if you fall asleep during a commercial, you won’t miss anything – like whodunit?

Heck, I even miss the homemade car commercials on WGN; I just flat out miss my late night sessions with that iconic station.

So, although I am AWAKE,  I am going to cuddle down and think about the 40’s and old cars and rainy nights with water dripping off men’s fedoras – and maybe Barbara Stanwick or Joan Crawford or that second tier movie actor who was almost a big star and chased robbers or traipsed through Africa in jodphurs and a pith helmet.

I read a book today and a book yesterday and one I ranked because the Kindle asked me to, and one didn’t bother asking, and I think I know why. Why I kept reading it is the real question. The first book was okay, but I was really in a mood to read and I had read books by this author before and my eyes scampered over the words.

When the BEFORE YOU GO thingie popped up, I was startled and gave it four stars because, hey, I liked his other books quite a lot. But this wasn’t his other books, and that dawned on me after I had clicked the stars. Actually, I guess it was a “you had to be there book” and what I mean by that is that you had to have read many, many, many books about the era and the subject. Otherwise, it was a blend of first grade’s Dick and Jane and Where’s Waldo?

Was the boy’s name Dick? I don’t remember. Jack and Jill went up the hill, but who was the boy in the first grade reader who didn’t do anything memorable. I can see the illustration; I can see the actual book; I can see my front of my dress with nicely turned collar and the poofed sleeves; I can’t see his name. I can see, however, the typeface, which was big – like I use now that I need cataract surgery.

The typeface of life: Big and clear for very young eyes and then in high school the tiny print in long books where the publisher wanted to save money, then back to BIGGER print. My parents used to yell at me for reading “in the dark” but it seemed fine to me, although I did use a flashlight some nights under the covers. I remember once I had a conversation with Suzy Wolff about how, depending on which side you were lying, you had to read the even or odd pages like they were on a ceiling. This was a serious subject to us, worthy of nuances about flashlight position and book size and so forth.

Once in McNutt Hall, I almost roasted myself in a hair dryer because the book was so racy I couldn’t put it down. (I think my eyes were open pretty wide then.) I doubt that they still have hair dryers in McNutt anymore – the beauty parlor kind. Girls probably don’t run around with rollers in their hair in the evening, either. We used to sleep on them. Holy Moses.

So, what the heck was I going to write about perspective?  Oh, yeah, don’t trust my ratings, although when I type BARFY,  you have to realize it’s one bad book. Barfy you can trust.

Having gone through a state of catatonia, I failed to mention the fate of the lost purse, which after three hours became the “had been lost” purse. It was in the basement, hanging on a chair with something thrown over it. It seems that I was cleaning the freezer when I got the call to pick Summer up and when I returned, I, and the purse with the driver’s license in it which was over my shoulder, went right back downstairs.

It was unusual for me, but I did not go anywhere with my purse later. It just hung there and I had had all I wanted to see of the freezer for awhile.

Yesterday and today, I painted the fence on the south of the shed Classic Barn Red. Five Gallons of paint weighs a lot. That repetitive brush/roller business gets a little old as well. I’d say I aged five years – at least my muscles feel like it. And I got splotchy – big classic red spots all over me; it was an adventure.

The good thing about it was that the Rural King lady who sold me the paint had a wonderful story about how her parents met during the war at a Curtis-Wright Plant in Ohio and then started dating when they met again at Purdue in a class in which they documented the number of bugs that crossed over a square foot of dirt. (I think Purdue calls it farmland.) Then we shared snake stories and then some young guy came up to buy some tool or whatever. He looked askance at us. Oh, well, no snake story for him.