As I scanned the headlines on the internet, I saw one that stopped me in my tracks. Actually, I stopped breathing, but I started again or else I would be dead now, to quote Lionel on BBC’s As Time Goes By. But – oh how can I be so calm sitting here? – going on to relay the information, here it is:

Can  Biden soothe Ukraine tensions? Go ahead, click on the link and wonder what is going to come out of that man’s mouth. Do you remember how Horton heard the Who folks? Well, I think fairly soon we will all hear a collective voice from the Ukraine calling out: WE CAN’T STAND THAT MAN.

Yesterday was warm and sunny and Easter; I didn’t see any Easter bonnets because I went up to the LaGrange House. I was wearing a SD ball cap, which I think I forgot up there and I saw people of the sidewalks with them also – one was a Cubs hat – there may be something symbolic about a Cubs hat on Easter, but I’m not sure.

Anyway, Shane took his lunch and a Wubba and I took a couple of foldovers and had some Diet Sam’s in my car already. I also had my Kindle and an extra set of clothes . . . because you never know, dontcha know.

I sat on the south facing porch where Grandma and I had played Old Maid and she had taught me to embroider and where Robert William had played when he was little and where Mother and Sydney would compete to get one of the wicker chairs. I am becoming more comfortable with being there with the past.

And then we came back – Shane and I – and I colored eggs with Summer and Shane found a spot on the sofa two rooms away from where the two egg-coloring decorators were discussing methods and what messages to write on eggs. Der Bingle called and we put him on speaker and set the phone in a glass so it would resonate and he got to hear us discussing and then, for some reason, he hung up.

I have one hard-boiled egg colored light-green. There are 17 uncolored hard-boiled eggs. Somehow I got caught up in watching the Da Vinci Code with Summer and Cameron and by evening was left in the kitchen with 18 eggs. I made up one of the dyes . . . and thought it was boring to do alone. So, come tomorrow, maybe we will use more of the dyes. One year, Summer decided to color the deviled eggs; it was not a good experience for me. I had to close my eyes to eat them.

It’s 10:30 pm and, my gosh, it’s past my bedtime. But maybe I’ll just read a little . . .

My iphone was in my hand before the thought was truly formulated in my mind. My mother was not one for people flaunting their housework, so to speak, and she had her only little Sarah Eileen Grismore crusade against organized and competitive Monday washing. Given her age and  locale in a small village, that was she came to know Monday’s activity when a girl.

That is not to say that Mother did not like the smell of sun-dried clothes; she really appreciated it and I will often throw a pillow case outside to quickly soak up some sun. She did not, however, like to see clotheslines sited prominently in yards where everyone could see them without trying. It also irked her to remember a neighbor who literally trotted on Wash Monday to get her clothes out first. I don’t know when Grandma washed, but I think it was more flexible, taking into consideration what she had planned to do, what she wanted to do, how she felt and the, uh, Indiana weather.

All this is just churning around in my memory as half story/half the atmosphere of those years with Mother.  I find myself grinning without any specific incident in mind – and at times, grimacing. You know, the kind of remark that stretches out: “Yes, Mother . . . does it really matter . . . Can we just not talk about it this time?” Well, no, if Mother wanted to talk about it, we were going to talk about it.

In later years, going on a car trip through the countryside – especially the Amish countryside – on a Monday was not what you wanted to do.

On the other hand, when Der Bingle and I lived in Homeowners Association suburbs, she was irate to read through the rules, including the one about hanging washing outside. Good God, did these people have no true class? Pretending clothes on a line was uncouth was a slap in the face of all our pioneer ancestors.

See, I’m still churning – so let’s get to the butter. I live in a small town –  in the thick of it, warts and all and I opened my front door to see laundry on the line across the street. Actually, they have no backyard because it is a corner house, and on a busy street. I suppose at first she would have rolled her eyes and then decided that, hey, it was towels and people were going to be scruffed up after baths that night in the scent of rough sunshine instead of the fragrance of dryer sheets. She would probably have adapted her views to have negative feelings about “more sophisticated people” driving by. Now, if it had been underwear . . . Well . . . I . . . don’t . . . know.

This has been on the wall in the informal eating area of my kitchen between two windows, and then I started on my painting marathon. I took it upstairs and leaned it against a coffee table in the sitting room. Today, as I was sitting in that room, trying to decide what to declutter, I looked over and decided I’d just pull my iphone out of my pocket and take a picture.

It’s not the best picture, but it’s the way it looked this morning with the light pouring in from the bank of windows on the southern wall.

I wrote a whining post, but it’s part of being human and then I looked at the dashboard and saw the announcement that an update was available for WordPress and would I please UPDATE NOW. They nag. But I sighed and updated and then they wanted to tell me how much better some things were. It drives me crazy that they don’t grasp the fact that content is the most important thing, but then after my recent posts, perhaps they feel I need bells and whistles.

Yeah, I know it’s not right, but I feel as if I just want to sit down and read off a list of complaints – kind of the type that have been festering for awhile. I feel somewhat pathetic, but it’s not too upsetting a feeling. Actually maybe it’s a version of a two-year old’s tantrum – it ain’t pretty, but it gets out a lot of stress hormones.

I had a nightmare when I fell asleep reading this evening. I woke up really upset and thinking it was a shaky start to the day; I then looked at the clock and saw that I had been asleep about an hour and I have the whole night looming ahead.

I have already forgotten what the dream was about but am not anxious to to back to sleep – WHAT IF THE MONSTERS ARE STILL THERE??!! Maybe I had a bad dream because I was just in a pissy mood earlier, ready to explode all over people. Had I been a user of the  “count to 10” technique, I would have had to adapt it to count to a million . . . and then some.

I was definitely a FEE FI FO FUM-er and I decided I should just remove myself to a solitary place. Maybe it has something to do with my little brain cells firing like crazy when they sensed the white of my eyes.  Ah, I see the mixed up rhetoric of my nightmare is still with me; this does not bode well . . . for me abed in my abode.

Oh, Lordy, I sense it’s going to be quite a night.

  BABO

What do you expect a whimsical person to say? Well, whatever, it might be, you can compare it to what you are reading right now, because I am a WP. I would not say I am certified, but I believe there is a consensus that I fall in that category. Nuts and bolts people have no understanding of and really no tolerance for whimsical souls. I don’t know why this is, but I firmly appreciate them, even though they do not feel the same about me. I appreciate them because they are quite happy to do the paint-by-number aspects of society – the minding the P’s and Q’s rules – the keeping the “box” spiffed up. After all, it gives us WP’s a place to run and jump into when our thinking outside the box needs, shall we say, re-thinking.

Yes, we dedicated WP’s find the Nuts and Bolters lacking; ironically, they tend to think we WP’s are “not all there.”