Yes, I have been away for the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse for some time. I could say it was a phase, but it seems to be a recurring one. Maybe I’ll be here tomorrow and maybe not.

Had I been here everyday, I’m certain I would have been crying into my CheerWine at the FooBar about the number of gloomy days with rain we have experienced.

Actually, I think one of the reasons I’ve been staying away is because the decor here has changed – and I don’t mean someone dusted; the new, crisp theme is just that. It is not cozy. I like cozy.  I am considering hauling it out of the bin, complete with all of its pages and sidebars.  But then, WordPress would keep nagging me about it and I would sigh and ignore the little hints that I update it every darn time I log in.

Surely something must have happened while I’ve been away. Well, no, not really; there’s been a lot of sofa-sitting and reading and wandering out to the kitchen for eats even though I am really wanting to lose weight.

Oh, a pipe in the upstairs bathroom started leaking but I thought it was the skylight with all the rain . . . until the leak got very vigorous and we finally figured it out. My bucket list now includes reaching the point where I don’t need a bucket balanced on the stairs.

I have repeated postponed my trip to the cemetery because of the rain and storms; Thursday was supposed to be clear when I looked this morning. Now it is again in the thunderstorm 70-80% range. I am going.

I am going to be passing by fields that have not been planted because of the constant rain and I am very glad I am not under the pressure that farmers are feeling. And maybe when it stops raining, it won’t start again until everything is parched. Not a good thought.

I am not a farmer, as I said, but I am thinking about the prices that will be in the grocery stores in the future. I’ve been dieting and I may encounter a real economic incentive as opposed to a waistline one.

Der Bingle is from Iowa – corn country – and the word from there is that the fields are under water.

I wonder if they are tar and feathering rainmakers.

We have had rain, drizzle, sprinkles, whipping rain, hard rain and really overcast skies. Today it is overcast, but according to the guru at weather.com, there is a 0% chance of rain. That means I can go all eco-unfriendly and spray for weeds and dandelions.

You will notice I separated weeds from dandelions. That is because in my war against the little, insistent smiling faces that turn into puff balls and grow out of a green plant body that looks like a spider from a science fiction movie, I have received a lot of information about all the good things  for which dandelions can be used for. So, okay, I will mitigate my stance and not call them weeds. Having said that, if the skies remain cloudy and don’t produce rain, it’s D-Day for the little guys.

There was a time when I had a long garden instrument to dig out dandelion roots; it wasn’t too effective at keeping then at bay, although people could drive by our house on a hill in West Chester, Ohio and think, “Oh, what a fine environmentalist she is.” Of course, quite a lot who drove by knew me and I’m sure that they then thought, “Nah, she’d prefer to shoot them – this is just a front for the HOA.”

I will give it a couple of hours to make certain the grass is dry and then I will make my move.

SHHHHHHH . . . don’t tell.

(My weight is around X -1, but let’s keep that quiet also.)

This is a cautionary tale for car drivers, or it could be considered a horror story; I share because I need to get at least some use out of it.
I have a key that does not go in the ignition, it just has to be in the car and when I got in to go to Krogers, I placed it on the console. After I had parked and was ready to get out, I picked up the key and it slid out of my fingers and between the seat and said console.

This prompted a word of frustration, but it is not the first time something has gotten lodged in that area. No problem, right? NO. The key disappeared. Really. I know because I searched for 15 minutes using the flashlight option on my phone and moving the seat back and forth.

When I was leaning in, reaching down between the seat and console, my hand got stuck. I tugged and nothing. I tugged and tugged like the wolf huffed and puffed, and I probably looked like a pig with legs sticking out the door, scissoring around as I tried to get leverage. I thought of animals who gnaw their paw off from a trap. Finally, my hand came loose, but the key remained missing.

But the key couldn’t be not in the car and so I finally pushed the starter button and drove over to Jiffy Lube and begged for a favor.
They were very helpful and located the key wedged on top of the motor that moves the seat. They kind of grinned, but that’s okay. I really don’t mind being the old lady who lost her key right under her seat; I was just grateful to get it in my hand again – the hand with the scrape marks from being stuck itself.

Here’s my word of caution: consider taping your remote key to your body every morning and just poking yourself when you want to lock or unlock the doors, or access the trunk.

You know what I’m going to do, don’t you? I’m going to forget I was complaining about goofing up the template and decide to jump right back into the puzzle. Why I am doing this I don’t know; well, I do. I just can’t leave well enough alone. And besides I need something to keep my mind off this blasted diet.

Apparently, I happened; but I was just fooling around trying out different themes and OH MY GOSH this is going to be interesting.

Such a short, mundane post title. Actually, if I could use a frustrated, resigned sighing emoji I would. They were not in my kitchen yesterday; today I picked up a cup and looked in it and THERE THEY WERE. I will have to get some of those little hexagonal ant traps or poisoning devices – whatever they are – and place them all around. Then I will have to go into the back vestibule and spray where it shares a wall with a window with the kitchen. Of course, I will see the window and admit that I really should clean that window (not to mention its compatriots in all the rooms of this house) and I will sigh again.

By the way, when I was writing about my weight loss crusade, I said last time to wait for the update. Just stand right where you were then and you’ll be at the update place. I would sigh with resignation and frustration, but I used up my reserve on the ants. Still, it is not going up and I am actually using weights to aid strengthening my muscles . . . the trick is not to put them down and them trip over them, faceplanting myself and winding up recuperating in bed while stuffing my face.

This is probably a petty thing, but I have never been comfortable with someone saying, “He disrespected me.” Technically, maybe, perhaps, it can be traced back to an early source, but I don’t remember hearing it through decades of my life. Then all of a sudden, it showed up.

I know my father was not familiar with the usage either because once he came into a room, asking what it was about disrespect as a verb. At the time that would have meant he had spent seven decades of his life being unaware of it . . . and he had taught English.

Come to think of it, Rodney Dangerfield got no respect; he never claimed anyone disrespected him. Now, there’s an authority on the matter.