Yes, here I am . . . fresh from cleaning a bathroom. So, not really fresh, actually, far from it. Need to shower. However, it is appropriate I am already tarnished because I am going to give you a peeps link that Der Bingle says is “atrocious”. He’s right, but hey, I’m going to do it. Here it is. That is to say, it is HERE.
Advisor
We have a new wise one at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse . . . and without further ado, here he is:
To tree or not to tree
**Not to panic . . . not really a Christmas post**
For several years, we have been putting Christmas trees in several windows – upstairs and down. It started when I bought our first artificial tree back in maybe 1997 when I was in a funk because the weather was too bad for my folks to come down and for us all to go to Fort Wayne. So, I went to the old Wal-Mart and bought a fake tree on sale. I brought it home, took it upstairs to the sitting room and opened the box. I thought, “What have I done?” It looked like a pole with sticks angled on it. I caught on after a while to the fact you were supposed to free the branches from their squashed shipping posItion and it looked a little better.
That’s the tree on which I started hanging the broken and worn-out ornaments, the kitchen utensils and things that weren’t Christmas tree ornaments but were things that I liked to look at. It is THE SITTING ROOM TREE.
Then I bought another on sale and when my grandchildren came to live with me, I had a frenzy period.
And somewhere along the line, family members got depressed and sick and upset and didn’t want Christmas and I wound up decorating as if I could chase and catch good cheer. Well, you can’t. I decided last year not to do it, but I did.
Now, my daughter-in-law who is a nurse has come home on two or three ocassions and said that patients, on learning where she lives, have remarked how they look forward to seeing the trees in the windows. She could be lying through her teeth; I don’t know.
I don’t know if I am going to do it or not . . . but I did go up and sort out all the artificial branches. Maybe there are people out there who like to see them, who like the twinkling of the lights in the windows at night. People who look at them and feel a moment or so of good cheer. Perhaps keeping Christmas well for them will an act of good cheer and spirit for me.
Well, at least I will do the sitting room tree, the first one – the one that reminds me of people I have loved . . . and in one way or another are here no more.
Oh, yeah, I guess I’ll put an ornament made out of duct tape on it
Woo-Hoo
hot, hot and humid, oh so hot . . .
It is 86 and feels like 90. It hasn’t really done that this summer . . . until now when Labor Day is past. We might get isolated thunderstorms this afternoon. Hmmm, I guess I mean to say the whole area “we” will have isolated thunderstorms and so the local “we” may have one . . . or not. Nevermind.
Tomorrow it is supposed to be 72 for the high, but it is not going to be a drastic drop today; it will just drop into the 60’s tonight and not climb much higher tomorrow. I personally would like a storm and then the relief of cooler weather. But, I do have to admit that I think the Ice Road Trucker climate would be too cold for me . . . at least out on the tundra. Maybe with a sturdy log cabin and big fir trees I would be content. Maybe.
I am not myself today – I have been doing housework, cleaning windows and pulling down cobwebs and cleaning woodwork. And vacuuming. I need automated scrubbers attached to my hands and/or an army of elves. I had a elf handyman once, but he kept writing down when I was naughty and I had to let him go. Come to think of it, that might have not gone over well with the man in the red suit.
UPDATE:
90 big ones and it feels like 95. I am so acked. I picked Summer and Cameron up . . . and made sure to park in the shade waiting for them. We have not seen a thunderstorm, although it got dark just as I was ready to step into the shower and I rushed under the water and into my clothes to get the comforters that were drying in the sunlight. Then it cleared up.
Summer’s white comforter smells so good, having dried in the sunshine . . . and if I see her walking around with it on her shoulders while the ends drag, I will zip into my super grandma suit and leap through the air and land on her and pummel her.
Or . . . I will smite her; I have been taking lessons from some angel friends, but, darn it, I don’t have my license yet. I guess it will have to be a drive-by smiting . . . or a fly by night one. I suppose I could hire a hit angel.
Well, now that I am in the mood for smiting, what if she doesn’t drag the comforter? What then, huh? Oh, yes, there is always Joe Biden.
bones and kitchens
Dropped off Colin at the school and headed down to Fort Wayne so Robert could get a new cast; I took some pictures of the incisions pre-staple removal. Probably post them. Basic new cast – four more weeks – no weight-bearing. Stopped at Hallmark Store for a Yankee Candle in a jar and, guess what? – they had Macintosh and Peach, one of the discontinued scents. Got two drinks to go at the Marathon station and one of the weird looking clerks was talking to a man who was leaving. They were talking politics and the man who was leaving said that the Republicans were only for the rich and didn’t care for anybody. Almost said, “Hey, Sir, don ‘t be assuming I’m a jerk.” (Along with the little old lady puppy dog look.) Kept my mouth shut. The other clerk, an older gentleman waited on me, and he kept his mouth shut too.
Came home and worked in kitchen until fed Sydney on the porch and guess what???? Colin is home.
Okay, doing pictures now:
Aha – Der Bingle’s friend and others are heading back to Georgia, leaving Nashville and aimed at Chattanooga. They just checked in with a picture of the denzins of the backseat – California Lemonhead and Alien Poo. They are navigating and Alien Poo says the map is inadequate. “We usually use globes,” she told Der Bingle.
That’s AP on the left and CLH on the right. Invisible Poo is in between them. No, no. I kid.
So, while I was in the kitchen, going backward here, I made chili out of the home-grown tomato sauce. And I made something for the urchins as well. I have had a cup of the chili and am waiting to see how it is going to affect my digestive track, which has been a little touchy of late.
Ack, interrupted again. Maybe I’ll be back.
Feist -y
You wouldn’t suspect it, probably, but a lot of us here at the PBC really have a soft spot in our hearts for Feist and listen to her often . . . and even watch her videos. We sort of discovered her because she and one of our favorite friends share a name – okay, for our friend it’s a nickname: Feisty*.
So we are very pleased to post this YouTube video:
* This is Feisty:
ATGB
That’s for As Time Goes By – the British sitcom with Judith Dench as Jean and Geoffrey Palmer as Lionel. I was thinking this morning about Lionel – in fact, the episode where someone remarks to Jean that “Lionel is kinder than he wants to be.” That is about the best I can hope for, given my personality. I do not understand how kindness comes naturally to some people.
Just to refresh memories, here’s a summary from an ATGB site:
Their two characters: Jean and Lionel, fell in love during the early 1950s, but when army officer Lionel was sent to Korea they lost touch after a letter he sent her never arrived.
Both assumed the other had lost interest, but 38 years later their paths cross again, when Lionel returns to England to write his memoirs of life in the army and as a coffee-planter in Kenya (imaginatively titled ‘My Life in Kenya’).
Seeking an agency temp to handle the typing, he is sent a young secretary in the form of Judith Pargetter and after hitting it off they agree to meet for dinner.
That evening, though, Lionel also chances upon meeting her mother and his long-lost sweetheart: Jean.
But could their love be rekindled after so long?
I like this quote also, although I don’t think of it as often as I do the “kinder” one:
Lionel: [trying to get him to write a second book, Jean walks Lionel through the first time they met] I saw you, and I stopped breathing. I really did.
Jean: Aww
Lionel: I started again, of course, or I would have died…
Flee the scent
That tremendously wonderful dog two posts down? He reeks of the smell of flea medicine. Maybe a little too much got on the fur as opposed to the skin; it is hard to access his scalp because his fur is thick. It is not so hard to give him the heartworm medicine anymore because I have finally learned the technique used by our vet: toss it down the throat . . . “I haven’t had a dog choke yet,” he said”
However, now we are trying half a big arthritis pill every morning. He hasn’t choked . . . but he still manages to spit it out. Then I pick it up and try again; sometimes that pill gets quite mushy before it gets to where it is going.
I have tried the hot dog pieces game with little pills. Toss a bite of hot dog; toss a bite of hot dog; toss a bite of hot dog with a little pill in it; have in my hand another bite of hot dog to throw. I throw it and watch as it hits the top of his head when he looks down to spit out the hot dog with pill. Then he eats the one that bounced off the head to the floor.
I get frustrated.
I suppose he does as well.
This morning those of us in the Cafe & Roadhouse were talking about chemotheraphy for animals. I don’t believe I would put a dog through it unless he were quite young, the chemotherapy was “mild” and the statistical chances of it working were very high.
We put Little Ann to sleep when she had a tumor on her jaw. She was old and the tumor came back quickly after it was removed surgically. Further surgery would have been radical and chemotheraphy needed. She was such an indomitable little dog that I couldn’t let her suffer, fighting a battle that could not be won. When she couldn’t get up to go outside to urinate and lay in her urine, I took her in.
The vet looked at her and said, “Little Ann, you’ve been a good and faithful dog.” About a minute later, she had accepted the shot and was gone.
Now, I’ll bet Der Bingle’s friend is sitting somewhere with tears in his eyes . . . she always loved him best.
The humidity . . . the humidity
It is up around 80% and it feels so . . . . moist. When the temperature climbs, I suppose it will feel – oh, dear, now what is the word? Sultry. Yes, Sultry. It will be sultry. Because there will be an overabundance of sult in the air? Who knows where these words come from? Well, I guess Merriam Webster people do:
- Etymology:
- obsolete English sulter to swelter, alteration of English swelter
- Date: 1594
Uh, is that because there is a lot of swelt in the air?
Say, swelt is one letter away from sweat. Coincidence?
I believe I am going to close up this post and get a grip on myself.