I have worn glasses since I counted my age in single digits, and folks, that’s a heck of a long time ago. I clean my glasses, oh, about . . . well, I can’t remember the last time actually. Sometimes something major will splash in the kitchen and I will wipe them off. Other than that, I just keep looking through them; I think most people who started wearing glasses as a kid have adapted this way. Now, Der Bingle, he came to glasses later in life and often times I find myself thinking, “Oh my gosh, he’s cleaning his glasses again for crying out loud.” If he catches a glimpse of my lenses in a certain light, he reacts as if I am wearing a sludge of mud, manure and plague germs. Sometimes he even grabs them and cleans them. He shows disgust.

I think he is a glasses wimp.

But, this morning, I have to admit I was reading and started to wonder if I were having a stroke because I was having trouble maintaining focus. Finally, I did take my glasses off and looked at them from a distance greater than an inch. There were tiny spots all over the lenses; yes, just tiny peepholes between the spots. Obviously, my eyes were shifting from peephole to peephole. Or, I should say, my eye, since I rarely voluntarily look out of my left.

So, perhaps, Der Bingle, I do need to clean my glasses . . . with Windex even. I may get around to it in a couple of hours or so. Or maybe I could just use this soft shirt here. And, really, I probably only need to do the right lens.

Oh, by the way, have you ever wondered if a town has had both a Minnetonka factory and a Mini-Tonka factory? What if the deliveries got mixed up and they started turning out steel moccasins? And kids had to play with little leather trucks with beads on them?

Oh, dear, the guys here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse think it’s time for me to have another “treatment” in the Tabasco Room. Sort of shock therapy.

ALERT    ALERT   ALERT    ALERT ALERT    ALERT   ALERT    ALERT – –  PHOTO NOT FOR SQUEAMISH

I turned on the TV this morning to get a fix on what the local station was saying about the weather, my main question being: Is the snow still going south of us. And what they said and what the weather site indicated had blended together in my head when my ears picked up some talk about necks. It seems if a woman’s neck is over 13 inches around, she is more likely to suffer heart problems. I knew I did not have a long attractive neck; I knew though that my head did not sit directly on my shoulders – I did have a neck and it didn’t seem to me to be huge. Wrong. It is over 13 inches. I suppose Summer would say it goes along with my fat head. I am going into the Foo Bar for a stiff morning bracer. For Heavens Sake, isn’t it enough to have to worry about keeping a stiff upper lip, now it’s “keep a skinny neck” too.

I also have stubby fingers which are another harbinger of ill-health genetically, not to mention are sort of not elegant looking. Well, maybe it will work out because I suppose my stubby fingers will fit around those reedy little 13 and less inch necks. Why, yes they do . . . I actually measured. I did.

Here’s a house not far from me being torn down for parking space and/or green space. I was driving back from the fairgrounds with Sydney when I saw a big yellow machine eating a house. Soooo, I grabbed my camera, flipped on the video mode and took some movies. This one shows the chimney coming down. As I looked into the house, I saw a solid wooden panel door still on its hinges and remarked I was surprised that it had not been salvaged. The new owner said he had had someone go through on Saturday who had told him there was nothing worth salvaging . . . solid wood paneled doors? Oh, I think there might have been a market, especially right down the street at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse.

And here is the end – a hole in the ground.

We had a good day –  a little more than we planned, but we made it. Straggled off the train at 10:38 p.m and got home a bit after 11. I lay down and the next thing I knew it was light outside. LIGHT!

Here are a couple of pictures, which come to think of it, may indicate the part about getting back was just an illusion.

AJ and Summer sitting over Chicago and Der Bingle looking out at us.

Oh, look . . . they’re getting so much smaller.

Tomorrow at this time, some of us will be on a train – a real life Amtrak train – on the way toward Chicago. We are just going and coming back on one day for the heck of it and for younger eyes to see the big city. We are hoping to go to the Sears skydeck during a non-cloudy period, but given that there is a new GLASS floor, maybe clouds would be better. Some people are envisioning AmeliaJake gluing suction cups to her hands and feet and inching out onto the glass support.

I will never live down the time in West Chester when I froze like a flattened squirrel on the garage roof.  Fortunately for me, that was before the day of little digital cameras and cameras in cell phones – heck, even cell phones. The latter is probably good because there were no calls . . .”Hey, I’m out here looking at AJ up on the garage roof . . . Ooooooh, you should see her . . . Sticking to it and shaking at the same time . . .  ”

I am surprised no one has thought of paying the folks who live there now to allow filming of a “dramatization” of the actual event

You are not supposed to blog when you are angry; okay, I’m not angry. I am just a frustrated blob hitting her head on a brick wall. I have spoken about this artifact in East Noble scheduling before – first in general, then when the high school only delayed 30 minutes on Wednesday so teachers could discuss students and whatever and the middle school didn’t, and again when both schools had the delay.

I HAVE MY OPINION ABOUT THIS DELAY.

Today was Wednesday but I forgot and then readjusted and then Summer tells me, “Oh, there is no 30 minute delay because we get Friday off.”

Before I got to the part about thumping my head on a brick wall, I hauled off and kicked something on the kitchen floor and SAID A FEW THINGS.

Then, after dropping the kids off – probably late – at school, I took Sydney to the fairgrounds and entered my psychic world where I lurk on hands and knees on the flat roof of the porch at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse, peering over at the ground below, waiting for some offender to walk by. I then pounce on him/her like a commando – or rabid, flying squirrel.

Maybe some nincompoop . . . ooooooh, getting really close to the edge here . . . felt themselves psychically flattened this morning. Makes me want to do it again. War cry and all.

I have been working in the bedroom/sitting room area, digging my way through my usual “personal memory things I cannot live without” and the accumulation of stuff gathered over the past few months and plopped into those rooms for convenience of knowing where they were – Christmas things, Mother’s papers . . . oh and the sickroom items, including the necessary bottle of Tabasco sauce to make meals brought up palatable. And piles of books, afghans and quilts . . . and a sewing machine.

This has been an ongoing project but Sunday I had a milestone moment: I took two large, green, flexibly expansive trash bags and filled them – filled them to maximum bloat – with things from the walk-in closet in the sitting room. I impressed myself. Even more impressive is that this did not leave the little room looking anywhere near empty.

What is scary is that each piece of stuff is not just a thing; I could tell a story about all of it. Even if there is no story, one would pop into my mind. And when there is a story, well, look out for the emotions. I cannot be like a dog, bending over and sending things flying through my legs. Actually, I think though that is how I got it out of the closet . . . then I sat down and sorted through it, bit by bit.

And when my two bags were filled, I had to pull them out walking backwards, using my leaning weight to keep them moving . . . and humming loudly so I would not hear the little voices of my little things calling to me.

Der Bingle made some chili today and I think it may be modified because it tastes good but then it starts to make your mouth very hot, not to mention the back of your throat. I was sampling some and as usual, I dropped a bit on my shirt. But, I assert that because the chili had a hidden punch I panicked and spilled even more.

I could have changed my shirt, but I decided to wet a paper towel and blot it. It got wetter and wetter and soon a big circle like a target was on my chest – and it was cold. I am aware that putting on another shirt would have been the best choice all the way around, but I opted to wad up some dry paper towels and wedge them underneath the wet spot on my shirt, producing a hump. And that is probably as close as I will ever get to having a bosom of sorts.

Ah, the truth comes out. Der Bingle could not find chili powder so he used red pepper! He confessed. The paper towels are staying in until my shirt dries or ridicule forces me to pull my head out of  one turtleneck and put it into another.

But wait, there is more. Der Bingle says he countered the effect by adding honey, a trick LZP learned from his old “Vietnamese buddies”.  I will have to try this; good thing I still have the hunchchest shirt on.

This morning before dawn – even though it is a Saturday – I was making myself a foldover using smooth peanut butter and as a I got a big glob on the knife, it fell off and wrapped itself around the handle to the cabinet below. It was still a glob, only a very complex one that looked like a rope that had been knotted on the handle. Some things in life put you in automatic mode or you would lose your mind instantly; some things in life cause an involuntary whimper of your inner puppy. This was in the first group.

I stared at the blob; I put down my knife; I gathered up what I needed to get the clinging alien growth off my cabinet handle; I executed the maneuver. I calmly continued to make my foldover and got my drink and I came out here to my favorite spot. I believe I have begun to come out of my robotic phase – my breathing seems less mechanical and I am making little movements that are not absolutely essential to the moment.

I think I am at that stage where one must decide if one is going to let the incident haunt one into the fetal position or take a deep breath and muster on.

I I do decide to carry on, will there be cameras to record my triumphant return to the kitchen, just as they watched MacArthur come ashore in the Philippines? Somehow I doubt it. Oh, the thankless job of the anonymous general.