I ordered a clean-up dumpster and moved a lot of wood to make a place for it, but the guys missed my sign for where it was to go and put it someplace else. That someplace else would be the place we park the third car when Der Bingle is here. So I went out and moved more wood to make a spot to park and put plastic trash cans to protect the car in case anyone forgets my warning: Back into my car and I will kill you.

I moved that wood the old-fashioned way – one piece at a time.

Pacing yourself is good when you are moving wood; I find taking the long route from place one to place two provides a moderation to the exercise. It takes longer but bit by bit, log by log it gets done. Do you know you can find a lot of gunk under a woodpile? Especially if it is one that wasn’t completely racked because of weather and life’s complications. Muddy gunk. I must admit, though, that muddy gunk is better than the half-frozen gunk that you find when the temperature does not climb into the 50’s. I was lucky these past two days; we had warm temps and so I dealt with muddy shoes and not  a fallen-on rear end.

I also threw stuff into the dumpster. Oddly enough, when I am standing in muddy gunk, holding a log, I don’t feel this great sentimental attachment to the things that show up in the driveway area. Not a whit of nostalgia; I just chuck it in. The one thing about where they placed the dumpster is that it is not far from the second story windows of this big ole room that is chock-a-block with stuff. I’m betting I can get pretty good at tossing stuff out of the window and hitting the dumpster. Of course, I am handicapped by the fact that the windows crank out and in the open position they are 90 degrees out in the middle of the window. The old windows in the other part of the house crank out to the side and give you wider egress. Of course, with the window in the middle, there is less chance of falling out. Things balance out, I suppose.

We do have some characters here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse, though, and there might be an unwanted balance between dumpster chukking and dumpster diving. Oh, well.

I am having trouble getting going this morning. I could have done it, after all I got up and took Alison to work and came home and started the process to get Summer moving. However, I was informed it was Collaboration Wednesday; that, apparently is the new – or newly-used – name for the damned 30 minute delay Wednesday.

Disgusted, I put my head down on a pillow and thought, “Oh, Puh-lease.” Robert took her to school and I stayed in the ball of tired despair that comes from being reminded of the unbeatable, annoying and stupid things that are not satisfied to psychically beat you in points, but beat you up and down.

Last week Summer came home and said the school wasn’t going to have the Wednesday delay anymore; I am not stupid – I looked at her and her grin and guessed they had changed it to another day. Oh, yeah, I was right. Now we are going to have Collaboration Monday. Of course. Monday. I suppose they feel it eases you into the week. No, it does not. It introduces you to the week with a nod to starting out with a salute to the idea that the week is something to groan about. To start out by delaying and throwing everything out of whack.

I’m sure this little fiasco of a schedule blip is because someone needed something on a resume as a progressive program. But like many little stepping stones needlessly thrown down by people, it remains to trip us up.

So now, today, I am going to be complaining to all the guys stopping in at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. Hey! Guess what?? I turned my own key. They will probably walk in, take one look at me and mouth, “Oh, Puh-lease.”

Today was climb up on the stepladder, which was leaning against the blue spruce tree trunk, and saw off some of the lower branches. It needed to be done; the tree towers over the house, but the bottom was looking ragged. The air conditioner sits right beside it and the driveway is on the other side and as time passed, the branches next to the air conditioner dried out and died and fell off. The branches by the driveway tried to encroach upon the passageway of the cars and there was confrontation. For awhile on that side, we pruned. But pruning a drooping blue spruce branch sort of results in a pom-pom type bottom.

The whole thing was lop-sided. It took me about three years to pick up the saw, however, because, gosh, it’s a tree. Today I did it.

And then I dragged some of the trimmings to the curb. Cameron dragged the rest. Alison looked out and exclaimed, “There’s a tree on the parkway!” Well . . . sort of. We will plant some ground cover when we figure out what would look okay. Maybe a bed of spikes:

(I, the amazing AmeliaJake, was tired last night, so this morning I am going to put a capital “A” on my amazing and correct typos. I have also actually downloaded pictures . . . and found out, by the way, I am a gnome.)

We started out on a trip to Crate & Barrel today and we wound up going to more places; sometimes we were lost and sometimes we were not. It is part of the road trip adventure for folks 60+. We feel okay about knowing mostly where we were and in is interesting to look on Google Maps and see where we actually were when we didn’t know it at the time. Well, we knew the general vicinity of where we were at all times – at least we knew we had not crossed any state lines.

Here is an intersection where we stopped for gas when we were not really certain as to how far off course we were in our meandering around what was we intended to be Northern Cincinnati. The street sign out there says “Avenue of Champions”; unfortunately we had not had our Wheaties that morning and our guardian angel had already alerted the emergency squad.

The picture below is cropped so you can’t see my gnomeness in its full glory. (Joan, I’ll email you the full picture.)

Gnomy AJ, Joan and Steve.

The best part of the day was getting to see my good friend Joan and the dicey part was sitting across the table from Der Bingle at Mimi’s when he received his order . . . liver and onions. It was under the heading of “Comfort Foods” but, personally, I think that was a little private joke of Mimi’s. I didn’t watch him eat it, but I think knowing what was going on affected me adversely. I started to get a headache and then had the distinct urge to get up and grab the man across the aisle who was being really loud and ripping his fat, bald head off.*  So I took aspirin and Tylenol and came home and sucked down a Diet Coke.

The atmosphere at Mimi’s.

*Der Bingle says this is a personality trait I share with Maxwoo.

Today I was walking down the frozen food aisle at the grocery when I noticed a sale of quick microwave little meals. I am so partial to meatloaf and there was Michelina’s face and the suggestion, “Let Mama feed you” and I succumbed.

I took it one home and followed the directions to open a corner of the lid. So I tore the box open and looked for the saran wrap type covering I expected to find on the usual little blackish microwave dish. Aha, there was a surprise – no saran wrap stuff, no dish. I saw a frozen thin slab, so I picked it up in disbelief and leaned it against the box and photographed it.

Now you may be wondering how I got such an intact picture of the box when I had no idea of taking one until I had seen the slab inside. Well, guess what? I bought two. Auuuuugggggghhhhhhh.

As I clicked into this site today, I noticed that a post consisting of a death notice and an obituary followed one about my having a sinister sounding deadly cold. And then there was yesterday when I did not post anything. Even I was inclined to wonder: Am I dead? No, if there is a trend, it is slower moving. I am still here.

But here’s a twist that has some of my pals at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse staring at me – I came in remarking that after having watched tons of crime shows on Cable TV about domestic murder, I had suddenly realized how fortunate I am. I  have never, ever even had a passing idea that Der Bingle might “do away with me”.   I have taken it for granted that I would not be found drowned in a bathtub “accident” or crumpled at the bottom of the basement stairs. Well, I have thought about being crumpled at the bottom of basement stairs, but not because I was pushed or a step was sawed and weakened or whatever.

Rose – Oh, that is Rose below. Rose is one of our sweetheart patrons who is a comfort to everyone.

Rose asked me outright, “Why would you even think about this?” Well, I don’t know; it just popped into my head. And, of course, I don’t let things pop right out. No, I have to crawl all over them and go oooooh and ahhhhh and poke here and there. I make Rose sigh and order sassafras to her iced green tea when I get like this. But she keeps coming back because she is, well, Rose.

This current traipsing into the thought processes of AmeliaJake apparently gave her pause because she stopped sipping her tea and said actually she had never worried about being found with her seams ripped open. See, Rose likes me.

I am thinking cold, as in aching, coughing, sinus pain and a miserable night. I usually say I have “a cold” but this little baby feels like it is in a different category – a Stephen King category; it hovers in my chest and around my personality like an unpredictable, looming doom. Therefore, I call it “the cold”.  And today I decided to throw something scary at “the cold” and sat down in the middle of a good deal of mail that has accumulated about Mother’s death. Up until now, I had just let it stack up and then let the stack fall over and then start a new stack.

Now, I have a trash bag of processed paper. And I feel better as if “the cold” has taken  a solar plexus punch. However . . . there is this matter of income and property taxes and car titles and oh, gosh, lots of stuff.

Ah-Choo