Yesterday was a hectic day, hectic and stressful and then last evening, when I was watching a DVD movie, Summer came around the corner and said, “Grandma, you should see this.” She led me to the basement but did not turn into the main area, which by the way they had trashed; she led me into the other third of the basement – the bunker where we hide out. There, on the far wall, I saw a waterfall. The rug was soaked like a sponge.

It is apparently the drain pipe from the washer and that pipe is hidden behind another. The water pushed Pfaltzgraff serving bowls and lids off shelves; the big crock pot . . . kaboom.

Today, I will try and handle this . . . and then I may lie down in a fetal postion.

Some years ago Summer and I formed the Mean Girls Ice Cream Eating Club. We are both mean and vindictive and we both like ice cream and so we would just share a carton and pretend the it was an island and we were monsters eating its shores and digging holes to China. (Do they did to the USA in China? Nevermind.) We imagined little inhabitants on our spoons.

We are mean.

Today, though, I was surfing around and discovered that there is this huge glob of negative energy generated as people attack blogs and defend blogs. Comments sections have the most vicious remarks. And it is personal. I had learned about a site called Poops on Peeps when I first did a little research on Pioneer Woman. P on P didn’t care for her; she also didn’t like Dooce of whom I had not heard of, but now know is a really top blogger. Okay, her opinion. I don’t care . . . and actually I check in from time to time to get the latest.

Today, when I went there I saw she had blogged about  a site where the woman had complained that she had heart trouble and not cancer because if she had cancer, people would give her a new computer. That site is What Was I Thinking* and I thought, “Hey, I’ve seen that blog.” So I went there and that lady had written a rebuttal and then there were comments on the Poops on Peeps site and gosh, it gets a little scary.

IP address threats and HA! I spit on IP address threats, you computer nimcompoop.

Summer and I are backing away slowly.

*www.outtamymindwithworry.blogspot.com (What Was I Thinking)

Cameron is writing paragraphs about A Separate Peace by John Knowles that was assigned for summer reading. He is supposed to address the characteristics of two “round” characters in this paper. Okay, he writes a bit and then sends me what he has written and asks, “Is it right?” Duh . . . I don’t know; so I put him off and Google the book which takes me into character analysis and motifs and themes and symbols. Did Knowles figure all this out as he planned his book, or did he just write the story he had and let people make of it watch they will?

Since people have been looking at the themes and motifs and symbols in literature for a long, long time, I guess I must function at a lower level. I think I have always looked at the characters themselves in determining why they reacted as they did; all these years, I should have been paying more attention to the part of the question that asked what the author was telling you. Those characters, they didn’t have a chance. I guess novelists are Presbyterians – predestination, don’tcha know.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the kitchen . . .

This is a roll about:

You may notice the leg that goes with it. It has been broken three times.

So the Roll-A-Bout  has been used some – notice the duct tape. Let’s see in 2006, August 15th, we had the first breaking – mangling of the ankle –  then last July, 2007, the stress fracture occurred and this  July, they discovered it was disintegrating again.

But the Roll-A-Bout doesn’t look like this anymore, as of yesterday. Last evening the frame broke at a welded crossbar  – right by the toe of the boot in the picture – and I will be heading down to James Medical to see if they can arrange to fix it and provide us with a loaner.

I wish I knew someone with a big ole blowtorch . . . I wonder, do you think an auto body shop or a motorcycle shop would be able to do something with it?

It is going to be an interesting day.

It is around seven o’clock and perhaps I wish I were still snoozing; my eyes are tired, but when I close them, I think, “Okay, what now?” I am wavering this morning about starting a diet cold turkey, which reminds me I ate the last of it last everning. The Der Bingle crew has done so well and I know it is for my own good . . . but my spirits are low, my motivation is low and Idon’t wanna. Of course, if I do actually diet, my personality will be so irritating . . . not that anyone would notice since I am already off the scales. Oops. Scales. Inadvertant punning rears its ugly head.

Well, here I go on a test run through the kitchen.

Oh, dear, a scary thought just popped into my head: What if I wrote down everything I ate here. I could eat anything I wanted but I had to write it down . . . here. Of course, I could lie. Almost panicked.

Yes, today was bag day – or day two – of the Catholic rummage sale. I usually try very hard to use every cubic inch in my bag by putting one thing inside another and soft compressible things around hard ones. Then I give an extra donation because it’s not in being greedy or cheap; the fun in in the challenge.

I didn’t feel like that today, but I did give a donation anyway. And I found quite a few things to either tie onto Christmas gifts or to use to make little Christmas candy boxes for neighbors and such. And I stuffed the old tin lid for a pan in my  bag. Yesterday, I just let it go by – it would have cost perhaps a nickel –  because I thought “Oh, I’m done with collecting.”

Old kitchen things in my visual field are soothing – they remind me of Grandma and the old kitchen when I was little . . . which, by the way, is the same kitchen now that I am older. Some of them I use – potato ricer and the old two cup measure. Some I don’t use because I don’t know what they are. Some I tie on the Christmas tree up in the sitting room.

So there it was today – the pan lid, ignored and unwanted. And I put it in my bag. I will use it to set over something I don’t need a tighter cover for. It’s all lumpy and bent and just the way I like it. Aluminum cake covers are great too; I have some of those – can’t have too many. Some of the stuff has wooden handles painted red, and some painted sage green – a color that’s come back into vogue.

We try to keep the meat tenderizers – especially the one with the metal inserts – out of Summer’s easy reach. She has a temper.

Well, they aren’t really old ladies; they are younger than I for the most part. They live in close proximity to Quentin and he helps with taking their trash out and other things . . . and at Christmas they give him cookies. That is how I heard about them. His wife mentioned the older women in the neighborhood, and in my mind I immediately thought of the little old ladies in “The Producers” – one of my favorite movies. The original, the one with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder.

Well, of course, I was saying “little old ladies” and his wife was nicely trying to steer me to the realizaion that they really weren’t, there were mother-aged older ladies. That doesn’t amuse me; little old ladies amuses me. And, because I want to, I am sticking to it.

But, anyway, this is the point of it now: Quentin has weeds spreading in his yard, especially in one corner. A lot of weeds . . . and he called me to ask about just putting rock salt down. I don’t know, but that sounds odd if you want anything else to grow. Besides rock salt kills grass; I don’t know that it kills cockroach-strength weeds.

We (he and I) once put everything killer along the fence line, but we didn’t realize our nozzle was leaking and in a few days we could follow every path we had taken as we went to different places to spray. It wasn’t good, and in the grand scheme of things, it was not particularly bad . . . but it was impressive.

I realized right then that anyone doing anything nefarious ought not to carry weed/grass killer. But that doesn’t partain to this; it is more in line with my fantasy criminal and wartime partisan activities.

Quentin still has his weeds, and since I, too, have this problem, I said I would research it. The next day, a busy one  – the day after the Summer birthday, I was mowing the yard (lawns do not have weeds) and suddenly thought, “Quentin’s little old ladies: I bet they know something about grass and weeds and gardening.”

I was ichatting (video and typing) with Bing’s Georgia buddy when Quentin called him . . . so he put the Q on speaker and I could listen in. Technically, Quentin could hear me also if I spoke really loudly . . . but then so could anyone else. So I typed my little old lady idea to the fellow in Georgia  who passed it on vocally to Quentin. But, I forgot, Quentin is the type who doesn’t want to be a bother and he won’t ask them . . . never mind that they would get such a kick out of helping him. Maybe he is afraid that this quid pro quo might jeopardize his Christmas cookie haul.

Anyway, that is my project – to find out about weed control and grass regrowth before he pours the rock salt. After all, he himself admitted the idea of a rock garden in the back yard did not go over well.