Category Archives: This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Thoughts on a Monday in Limpo

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I am in my mid –sixties. I remember grimacing when I entered my mid forties and fifties. To tell the truth, I was iffy about my mid-thirties. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that each decade I wish for the last one to be back.

I think it would be wise to assume if I make it to my mid-70’s that this is the time I would be wishing back. I must remember that today and tomorrow and so forth. I imagine I will forget.

When  you get older, it dawns on you that the childhood other people are remembering was your mid-twenties or mid- thirties and so forth. The comforting memories of your own childhood mean nothing to them: fireflies caught in a jar, dressing up for trips into town, no fast-food places, handmade comforters with no designer names, and speaking of comforters:  grandmas that looked like grandmas – grey hair, housedresses and clunky laced shoes with heels.

Okay, stopped thinking for now.

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Today is Der Bingle’s birthday

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We aren’t really “birthday people” here – not much for fanfare and not rich enough for anyone to find a brand-new vehicle with a bow on it in the driveway. Today Der Bingle official becomes a senior citizen, and he says he’s happy about it, considering the alternative. For one month and one day, I will be one year younger than he is. I may go to the Dollar Tree and get a few $1 helium balloons to float around the house – just because Summer could find interesting things to do with them . . . I don’t know exactly, but something like tying on messages and using a fan to aim them. Of course, she might say that there’s no need for helium balloons since the candles will make enough heat for hot air balloons.

Maybe I’ll tie a bow on a roll of duct tape and leave it in the driveway.

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Zombies

Okay, I know it is Halloween and the time of ghostly, ghastly scary things – unless you’re little and in a cow, princess, beaver, fireman costume  – but I can’t understand why I amunder zombie attack at the kindle store.

Today there was an ad for a book ttiled something about strangers in a strange land.

Yep, it was about THEM!

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Casting the dye

This early morning I am just about to get dressed and head on down to Lutheran Hospital to have the last two preparatory tests for my surgery – an EKG and a mapping of where this little tumor is in my neck. The mapping part – which actually involves an isotope and not a dye (but Casting the Isotope didn’t make a pun) – will take half a day of mostly waiting between comparison scans.

Soooo . . .  I will pre-fix Shane’s food for the day (official food) and then go off with my Kindle . . . and later today will call home and ask, “Did you remember to feed the dog?” Oops, did I say “the dog”.  I meant HRH Shane.

The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse, This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Golf and me

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Coming back from Albion on Drake Road, I pass two golf courses: Cobblestone and the Kendallville Golf Club.

My parents were avid golfers and they bought me clubs and I even had lessons. I do not like golf, as the game is played – hit the ball, walk to the ball, hit it again, walk to it, hit it again . . . and on and on depending on how good you are.

I could stand for a long time at a driving range – hit, hit, hit, hit, hit. All that hitting would be called practice. I do practicing well. Years with a saxophone hanging around my neck and variations on scales would testify to it.

But to do it like golf would be like practicing a measure by playing a note, walking around and playing the second and so on, depending upon whether they are whole or half of 32nd notes. Of course, there is the possibility of a rest but the when and length are dictated.

This is a game where the fewer times you have to show skill, the better you score. I don’t have that type of an outlook. Let’s say I was somewhere on the fairway, heading for the green with an iron. Now, real golfers are like snipers. They steady themselves, they gauge, they steady, they wait for the right wind, they steady, they breathe a certain way, they steady and eventually they hit that one shot. If that shot is bad, they have to suck it up and bury their frustration and proceed to the next possible debacle.

I prefer another method; I want to approach the green with my six-gun a-shootin’ and my Winchester a-whirlin’. Yes, John Wayne style. I want to hit that green like a Marine on Iwo Jima and plant the hole flag where . . .  well, never mind, but “hole” would probably fit in the description.

Obviously, I do not have the personality for this game I do not like. So I guess it works out in the end. Besides, how can you strive in a game where the goal is to be a sub-par player?

 

 

Just Me - AmeliaJake, This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Inside in Kendallville, Indiana

Ah, yes, I wrote two days okay about spending time outside in the warm air doing yard stuff.* Yesterday, too, I went out and thinned out some big overgrown shrubs, aiming at preserving privacy while allowing sunlight into the middle to stimulate more lower growth.

I sawed . . . and left some more sawing for today.

And wouldn’t you know it, but when I got up to take Alison to work, it was raining! Raining!!! I said that I guess I wouldn’t be working out today; I sighed. Then when I got home and still had a lot of snot in my nose and sinuses, I decided to take some medicine and lie back down – since I couldn’t do my planned pruning.

When I pulled the blanket away from face, THE SUN WAS OUT and things had dried off. The sky was also blue. I would say Mother Nature decided I was not sincere in my “oh, shucks, it’s raining and I can’t work out” attitude and decided to let me have it up side the head. (I must sign up for acting classes.)

I tried to suck it up and get out there, but I couldn’t do it. So I went into the kitchen  – and while having a theological discussion with Cameron  –  put some beef in the slow cooker so I could shred it, and then let it sit in barbeque sauce overnight and simmer it tomorrow. It didn’t take long. I could still go out. I didn’t.

I am inside, looking out at the sun and listening to the birds.  Maybe I can manage to saw out one big, fat and tall leader – just one – sometime today. I just looked at the weather – THUNDERSTORMS ARE PREDICTED for the PM!!! Oh, but they are not to start until six.

What is it Chef Ramsay always tells me? Oh, yeah. I remember.

* By the way, I couldn’t find any of my Lands End hats and had to wear my bright yellow SPAM hat that LZP had sent. It was cool; the high school girls who passed by on the way home from school thought it was so neat that they giggled . . . once they were three feet past me. And, rats, I can’t find my pictures of my Spam hat. Oh, I also have a Spam shirt, also courtesy of LZP. Well, I just have to take new pictures.