Well, we walked over to the fair grounds – Alison, Colin, Summer and I – and got ourselves Bayou Billy drinks. I pulled on the tap for Cherry Wine and it sure tasted like grape. But, that’s okay. The weather was hot and the drink iced.

I was charmed by the quilt on the bed in the log house and as we left the attendant thanked me for noticing it – A friend had made it from things of her late mother. The friends and flowers piece was once on her mother’s pillow.

I have figured out that I am the only on who even considers puttering around in the yard and becasue I don’t want to work with unwilling, grumpy workers, I am going to gradually use sand with a weed barrier and mulch to get under bushes and around some spots where I have planted flowers. Another thing: I am only going to plant perennials. Oh, and lots of ground cover – tons of it. I feel somewhat mature not to have become so disgusted that I despaired of the future and stuck a flamingo front and center . . . and a gnome up by the door.

Is there such a thing as a “trailer lawn”? Sorry, it just popped out . . . I think it was the gnome.

This morning I woke up and found myself making a foldover immediately; I wandered onto the porch with it, along with a soda and then hurried back to make another one. I wolfed both of them; there was no counting of the chews. (See, sometimes we chew for 35 times before swallowing – pudding can be tough – and I instruct that chewing more means eating less. This is mostly done in fun, but I guess I could could comprise between gulp and 35.)

Okay, I’ve peanut butter sandwiched myself and now must decide if I am going to take the chore route, the dynamic route of enthusiastic cleaning and spiffing up the place . . . or the meandering path of morning puzzles in the paper, some checking on Internet news. I  could just pull an afghan over my head and look out through the holes.

I wonder what I would do if I were at a beach resort? Go for a long walk at the surf line, winding up with wet shorts and probably sunburnt feet? Sit on the beach and look at the ocean, getting up intermittently to cool off in the surf? Sit up on the balcony of a coffee shop drinking a diet cola and watching the ocean, then wandering across the sand to the surf? Oh, the pressure of the decision-making process.

I must think about this . . . lower the Afghan Cone of Rumination, please.

That’s not accurate. It was twenty of three when I first work up and a quarter of three when I got up to go to the bathroom . . . and ten of three when I decided I would probably be in sinus pain and sleepless and got up to clean up the kitchen after the late night rangers. Now it is 3:51 am.

I have scanned the headlines on the Internet news and am propped so my sinus cavities will drain and my pain is but a nose ache now. Here’s to gravity – a toast of aspirin, Coke and Diet Coke. The cure.

Oh, a sneeze  . . . that helped.

This seems detailed and I think I am basically blogging the clock. I could blog the dog – he has been in and out and had a drink, but he is sleeping now so not much plot there.  I could talk about the cat but we don’t have one, which is fine with me and fine with Sydney. He can sleep free of the fear of feline ambushes.

I may look and see if rain is predicted because, if not, tomorrow will be a day to mow and get creative with weed management in my new natural garden/lawn endeavor. You see, though, weed plot sculpting is negated psychologically if I call the outback a “yard” – which of course it is.

All of a sudden, I thought of gnomes. I think that would denote a yard, too. Now, why am I snobbish about gnomes and I leave rakes around and have the type of mutt ground cover that doesn’t have a name? I don’t know. I am waiting for the era of the inflatable gnome. And speaking of inflatables, this is July’s first week which means there are three left in the month and four in August and then Christmas things will start sneaking into the box stores. Hey, wait, maybe we could get an inflatable cow and put lights around its neck. I think I can back away from that idea.

I remember Bing Crosby being alive, but I think he’s been gone for about 36 years now. Still, I don’t think, “Oh, listen, a dead man is singing,” when I go shopping in the season’s music-filled stores. I wonder what people think whose lives did not overlap his. I have noticed that during the past three years or so, his songs are mingled more with other more . . . well . . . alive artists. So I don’t know if he is getting deader or not.

Ah, then there’s Jimmy Stewart and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It will be a long time before he’s dead to even the younger generation thanks to the years of the no royalties on the movie and constant broadcasting that started a Christmas tradition. Just a couple of years ago, Walgreen’s had a deal on the movie and it played continuously in their stores. I asked a clerk about a shift’s worth of angels getting their wings, Mr. Potter and Clarence, not to mention Zuzu, and he gave a shiver/shrug. Gee, it’s kind of odd that a trend didn’t start of naming little girls Zuzu. Or perhaps not.

I believe my nose/head/sinus situation is better and the head pain is gone . . . but maybe yours is starting to hurt, given all this rambling about George Bailey and White Christmas stuff. Well, if it is, just grab a Coke, a Diet Coke, a couple of aspirins and delve into your own calendariffic out-of-sync ramblings. Like that Wizard of Oz thing . . . or Gunsmoke . . . mini skirts, tie-dyed shirts, VW vans with psychedelic paint jobs.

We have this tradition – when Grandpa’s here, we make home made pizzas. Last night we made seven and I made the dough for all but one. This could be on youtube as “horrific crust accident when amateurs tried crusting at home”.

Mother with a Samuel Adams Cherry Harvest Ale and a slice of Pizza Hut Bistro pepperoni pizza – the first of 2008.

Summer on rope swing.

Yes, we are heading up Indiana 9 to the Howe Military School corner where a left hand turn and about 8 miles will take us to my first home. I guess I’ll take my camera and maybe my granddaughter, but we’re not sure on the latter.

No, we’re not going to have any down home heartland Methodist/Presbyterian food – the Presbyterian influence coming from my grandmother, whose mother was of Scottish descent. We are going to stop and pick up a pizza at the Pizza Hut just north of LaGrange . . . and if we take Summer, we will get her a personal pan cheese pizza ’cause she’s a pizza wimp.

Guess we’ll be putting together the wagon Mother bought at Winfred’s to tow behind on of the lawn tractors. It’s red and that’s about all I know about it. Hooking up her TV converter boxes too. The PBS station in South Bend lost its analog tower in a storm and decided to just go digital now. Don’t blame them.

Mother could get cable now, but I doubt she will; she reads a lot, dontcha know?

I have my list of stuff to take up there: a book; the fancy, but slightly broken articulated large wooden bird that if repaired correctly will flap in the wind. I got it a rummage sale – she likes that sort of challenge; Diet Pepsi because we have a sale; a bottle of beer. She still has the one she took home at Christmas and stuck in a snowbank and then moved to the refrigerator, but doesn’t know if she wants to drink that one. So the Der Bingle friend is taking her a variety carton of 12 Samuel Adams beers. He likes to do things for her, such as when 30 years ago she decided she wanted to smoke a pipe like mountain women, he bought her exotic tobaccos.

I will have to get a picture of the two of them; she will gripe about because she says she will just be working out until we come. She doesn’t mean working out as in a gym; she means working on the other side of the house door. Outside. And she wears raggedy clothing when she does so. Ask her to leave the premises, however, and it’s Jones of New York or Pendleton or Talbots . . . purchased at Goodwill, of course. She is a small size and gets stuff for 50¢. You see, up here, people who need inexpensive clothing won’t buy it and so the money she spends goes to the fund. Ironic, but true.

To tell the truth, which she often does, she never wanted a kid, but here I am. My daddy and my grandmother were the ones who hugged me. She wasn’t that way, but once driving to Indiana University, my father told me she had always done the best she could for me. Now, Daddy is gone, and here we still are – Mother and I.

I spent the night cleaning yucky, yucky stuff. I scraped, I scrubbed, I cleaned the place and then I went to the beach and cleaned it. Then, I went upstairs and cleaned some more and managed to get a rattlesnake into a trash bag. Before I closed it up, though, I heard weird sounds and discovered a mesh bag such as oranges come in filled with a bunch of snakes about 12 inches long. I put them in the trash bag also and got my husband to carry it out. Only he didn’t! He said it would be fine to keep the bag inside and took it back upstairs. I ran after him, hysterical.

Yes, I was dreaming. And when I woke up, I wasn’t really upset about being terrified about snakes – I was upset that all the cleaning didn’t really happen.

Ah, Grandpa in the kitchen making pancakes – AmeliaJake all stretched out on the sofa, well partly sitting up. I’m stretching my leg muscles; they ache from mowing the lawn, I think. I totally plodded through it yesterday. I’m thinking of taking some aspirin and making myself a cure. Then I think I will stretch again. Then when Summer asks me something, I will aim her at Grandpa. Oh, such cruelness I harbor in myself . . . He only has a few days and then back to Georgia. Maybe the heat down there will feel good after a dose of Summer’s hot temper.

The question has been posed about a little variety in my foldover consumption. Well, I guess my younger days were my creamy phase – and I held on to the tradition long after crunchy was introduced. I don’t remember when I started with the crunchy preference, and, as I think about it, I believe I tend to vary between the creamy and crunchy in relation to brand.

For years and years and years, I ate Peter Pan PB, then we had Jif in the house and I ate it and I guess maybe I prefer it, but I can switch over to Peter Pan quite easily. It is like riding a bicycle.

I do think I like the little extra oomph in crunchy and extra crunchy. Perhaps because I add nothing to my peanut butter, I appreciate the additional texture that crunchy provides. I do vary the bread and venture into Panera choices – asiago cheese, for instance. For some strange reason, I think my favorite is Trader Joe’s Sourdough with some funky peanut butter my husband has picked out. It takes some getting used to, but it makes me feel I am approaching my true self.