Amazon prime free two day shipping’s tracking stages are usually:

It’s at Amazon

It’s at a way station on the shipping route

It has arrived.

BELOW I HAVE COPIED PART OF THE LITANY OF THE TRIP OF USPS:

Ok, so going from bottom to top, the package roamed around the OPA locale for 48 hours and 37 minutes. Then it zipped over to Miami. Finally, on the 10th, today, it was reported to be meandering somewhere in my general direction. (I am assuming the last bit of that sentence.)

I give you ONE BIG SIGH.

When I give out candy at Halloween, I make judgement calls. Cute little sidewalk-pounders in costumes get two or three things – no matter if they peer out from behind their parents whispering Trick or Treat or come up to me and grin with a mouth full of baby teeth, and maybe a couple of those missing. Older kids get one candy bar or Skittles pack . . . or whatever. Giant kids in costumes that consist of a bandana around their lower face practically have to pull the candy out of my hand.

I usually have candy left over and maybe 9 months later I will find still some left and wonder if it is “still good” or will taste like a melted and then re-hardened sugar product.

The Shark last night had a different approach. He remembered when he left the front steps to go out himself trick or treating, trailed by his parents and his brother and his little sister who went as a cow with a stomach that moo-ed when you poked it. He remember and he felt empathy.

So, he took this huge collection of candy he had purchased and handed it out very generously – sort of like Scrooge at Christmas after the visit from the three ghosts. For two hours he sat out in the chilly air while I stretched out on a sofa and read about Napoleon.

After a while the shark “hat” got a bit awkward and he switched to the Mad Bomber hat. (It must be hereditary: his great-grandfather had one he would pull on and let the ear flaps do just that – flap. (It drove me crazy as a teenager.) His Uncle Quentin took to wearing a surplus flyers soft helmet from WW I when he had to work outside. (Did not drive me as crazy, but I did sigh.)

And when he came in with his bushel basket of what had held candy, only the dregs were left – supplementary candy he had scavenged from the house as his original supply ran low. I think he enjoyed himself and I’m glad I grabbed two tiny 100 Grand bars before he first went out.

I was inclined to be a Halloween Grinch and button up the house and hide, but Cameron looked at me as if my heart had already shrunk three times its normal side, and so we went to Wal-Mart for candy. I agreed on the condition that he be the one to hand out the candy to the little doorbell ringers.

He agreed and even decided to sit outside. I suggested he wear his Mad Bomber hat and then he saw an alternative at the store:

While we were watching the Bears/Saints game yesterday, almost everyone at the PBC & Roadhouse came close to having old-fashioned apoplexia.

I am not going to link to a video of the catch; I don’t want to watch it and go splat on my keyboard. I think the refs wear stripes because they should be in jail.

I know what you’re thinking: Tell us what you really think, AmeliaJake.

Not a classy title for a post, but it is sort of a sigh because I can nor perhaps attribute for being tired to a reason other than laziness. You go to the doctor with “this pain in my right side” and he pokes and feels and sends you for a urine sample. Yeah!!

Well, not yeah; I had not drunk anything and it took several cups of water to  . . . oh, you know . . . pee. (Urinate if my father were here looking over my shoulder and commenting on what a lady should say.) I thought after a while I was going to be able to make a homestead claim on the lab waiting room.

When I was five, my mother said I came home from the doctor with pills in my hand and announced, “I’ve got the chickenpox.” Yesterday, I came in with my Cipro in my hand, but didn’t announce anything. It didn’t seem as dramatic as the pox. Actually, I hope it is no where near that; when I had the chickenpox, I was completely covered with pox spots, between my fingers, my lips, everywhere – and it was the Christmas season too.

We tuned into CBS to watch the Bears game and it is being broadcast in Spanish, although the commercials are in English. All of us at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse are dumbfounded . . . but getting ready to yell at the screen.

I am not going to type what I think will be yelled.

I have done the sudoku from today’s paper; I have actually driven one block to Jim’s Pizza to get an icy cold Diet Coke from their vending machine; I have checked the weather, the news and looked at Amazon.com. What I have to do is cleaning, and I mean basic cleaning – such as finding the kitchen counter. This is not my forte and I think it is time for someone to invent a cleaning robot that roams around and does more than suck floors.

Until that time, I am left to sigh and tote that bale and so forth. I am tempted to go with the “so forth”, which could involve being abducted by aliens. No. I crossed the line there; aliens are a reach.

I could delve into the programming of the thermostat for my new Trane furnace, but it is daunting. When I found out I would need a new furnace, I researched the subject and first found out that the the serviceman’s company represented one of the two most reliable furnaces produced. I thought, “Well, that’s good, I won’t have to cancel the appointment with the salesman who was to come.”

I delved into Consumer Reports and Internet ratings and descriptions of types of furnaces and efficiency and one stage heating, two stage heating. What I learned that was most important was that much more than half the cost of a new furnace goes into the installation. It is not, I guess, like plugging in a space heater. So I decided to make certain not to cut corners on the actual physical furnace since so much was invested in the installation.

The fellows came, made no comment about my cluttered house and went about their business – the basic furnace guy was, to quote the salesman, “an old sheet metal guy with 37 years experience. Good. The other guy was younger, but his job was to vent the furnace to the outside and connect the thermostat.

Venting the furnace. They did not use my chimney; I now have thick PVC pipe going through the brick wall and sticking out like a dryer vent. Santa can’t handle it, but I suppose the elves can squeeze in and spy through the vents. Now the thermostat is not a simple little control where one pushes a button repeatedly until the temperature desired appears in a digital window. It certainly is not one with the little wheel one rotated to align an arrow with a desired temperature.

No, this thermostat is a touchscreen with options to connect it to my smart phone, schedule different temps for different times of day and other stuff highlighted in an instruction book I am approaching with apprehension. My favorite part of the display is the drawing of a chimney that shows a red X when the furnace is not running. (Of course, this chimney represents the tradition brick one on a roof; it is not a drawing showing a PVC pipe poking out of the wall.)

I have valiantly tried to keep typing to avoid the cleaning thing, but I must face my problem. Clean it? Well, maybe I can think of something else that is just vital to do. Suggestions are appreciated.

From a few years I wrote about Thomas Bickle and his family’s story of his fighting a big, bad brain tumor. He lost the fight. It was sad. His mother wrote a blog about his journey and she wrote very candidly and very well.

I think sometime after Thomas’ death, I wrote a comment on her blog expressing my hope that she would not take it down because I felt it would be a help, a comfort, whatever you want to call it to people who were going through a similar experience. And, quite frankly, I think it helps any reader to be a little better than they are. I believe she had already made the decision to let it stay for others to read.

I didn’t have her blog scheduled to show me any updates, but today I was looking for a reference to an author (Elizabeth McCracken) she had quoted from an article in Oprah, the magazine. (I have linked to Sarah’s blog and not the magazine).

My thoughts went to this author and Thomas because a friend from the past in Chicago is in Paris and posted a picture of Notre Dame on her Facebook page. It was a lovely picture and she mentioned a service was taking place while they were there. My mind went to France and religion and . . . nuns. (Who knows what lurks in the neurons of a brain? And, okay, I did think of the hunchback as well.)

Nuns made me think of the story Sarah had cited and I looked it up on her blog. When I arrived on her front page, I saw that she had updated on September 17th of this year. So, of course, I read her entry. It is an important issue. I wanted to pass it on. Thus, this post.

For decades, I have spread the theory that The Cubs were born to break your heart; in fact, I often cited The Cub Factor when discussing World Series play. The rule was to count up the number of players on each team who were ex-Cubs – the team that had the few number would win.

And it was always a time to rest your head against a wall, too sad to bang it, and watch the Cubs win every straight game after they had become statistically ineligible for the Series.

Last year I waited for the dream to end and even imagined the crushing letdown when the Cubs came so very close. Then, in the last game, I remembered all the movies about BELIEVING and I thought: Believe, AmeliaJake, believe.

And they won and it was wonderful. Where was Frank Capra when you needed him?
Fortunately, it was October and the holiday season showings of “It’s a Wonderful Life” were just on the horizon.

Then this year came; they made it to the play-offs, but the game total wins was 3-1, in favor of the Dodgers. I thought, I am ashamed to say, of the agony watching and hoping and I’m pretty certain I stopped believing; I think I wanted the pressure off. They lost. And part of me is ashamed, because I was to afraid to believe. Yes, I’m breathing, but I didn’t anticipate the sadness; I wish I had believed to the end.

I know there is a show on TV called Monsters Inside Us that addresses the topic of parasites and bacteria. It’s the type of stuff that can make you cringe – a tapeworm in the brain, for instance.

I have a different problem; the litte-researched Pun Fungi, colloquially known as the Pun Fun Guys, has infected my brain and forged a superhighway to my mouth.

Last night I saw an image of a toddler demolishing a Lego town that had been built by his sibling. It could have been a snippet of Internet family video that was picked up by a news site. While watching the carnage and listening to the fellow who had spent hours Lego urban planning, I thought of Hillary Clinton – It takes a child to raze a village.