I kept telling him to move a little this way and that and finally, I wasn’t quite at the right spot, but I didn’t feel I could push it any further and so snapped this picture of:
Man in a Gnome Hat.
Of course, up closer, it looked that the tree that ate Dayton:
I drove through a lot of rain yesterday, but, surprisingly, only patches of heavy traffic. I think there may have been an accident on the southbound lanes close to Dayton because that traffic was lined up, all lanes full and not moving, for some distance. However, it could have just been the mass of people heading for one of the few crossings over the Ohio River as they guided their Sunbird vehicles Florida-bound.
I was even able to take the county road route around Van Wert – the one where you can practically drive right down the center of the road, not, of course, that I did that; my father said it was easier on the tires.
The temperature has dropped to freezing and that is what the rain is doing outside, so I am going to postpone my trip to LaGrange County for a day – tomorrow, the high is supposed to be 40 degrees and no precipitation. The little cast iron stove in the kitchen up there has been cleaned out and checked and I AM SO TEMPTED to go full pioneer – well, if you don’t count the ipad and Verizon connection and the Sprint phone connection.
It is windy and even at 8:00, barely light enough to qualify as daytime. In fact, it looks like a morning not fit for man nor beast, nor UDO.
Such little details to post about. Surely I could come up with something worthwhile? Thinking . . .thinking . . .thinking . . . thinking . . . well, apparently not. Do you want to read about the washing marathon that awaits me in the laundry room? I thought not. So there you are.
But next time, maybe I will write about Secret Mission Bat, who was called in when Guido kept going missing. But perhaps I am not allowed to write about SMB, his been secret and all. I hope I haven’t blown his cover. As far as Guido is concerned, I am considering fitting him with at GPS device – or a piece of twine around his foot. He’s a sneaky one. He’s trying to shake his mafia reputation and go stay on the straight and narrow, but I heard him tell a fellow UDO: “Just when I was out, they pulled me back in.”
Der Bingle and I had a quiet Christmas here in the Ohio Redoubt and today was also quiet, because I felt sick. Not a big sick, but a little intestinal distress here and there and a nose full of green stuff and overall a feeling of wanting TO JUMP OUT OF MY SKIN.
I didn’t, however, and even remained in my jeans and shirt. My skin seems more comfortable right now, and I’m enjoying being wrapped up in the Moo Blanket. Tomorrow, I’ll throw stuff in the car and head back to Kendallville. And, by gosh, I’ve just bored myself enough to stop typing.
Before I left for Ohio, I parked on Main Street and hurried over to drop my water bill payment in the outdoor slot. However, they had just opened and so I went in – the only early bird client on the foggy morning that had delayed my departure.
And for about 30 minutes, the water bill lady and I “kept Christmas well” to cite Dickens. She told me about the gathering planned for her house on Christmas Eve and her young granddaughter and “reindeer food” and the young lass’s intense worry that the reindeer wouldn’t be able to find it.
We talked of bubble lights and her son, who likes to hunt, giving out presents in his hunter’s cap with the ear flaps. We talked of making fancy cookies, something she does and my mother did, but I flunked in elf school. We talked of family traditions and magic and all sorts of good cheer things. And her smile was so sincere and warm as she shared with me – it kept me smiling through the fog and rain to Dayton.
Had there not been mist and fog, I would have been too early to enter the lobby; I would have dropped the bill in the slot – and I would have lost out on some of the cheer of the season.
Above is one of those inexpensive Christmas ties that plays music in a tinny sort of way. It is made of a material that feels like the satin on the edge of a blanket. This worked out well because here in Ohio, I did not have any satin on my blanket and that was a crisis. From the time before I can remember, I have fallen asleep with what my father dubbed “a feeler” between my fingers. The ribbon-feeling used to be accompanied by thumb sucking, but I reluctantly gave that up.
My mother once said that if I were to die before she did; she would insist I have a ribbon between my fingers in my casket.
So last night, when I mentioned not having a feeler, my husband joked that well, there was his Christmas tie. He grinned and tossed it on a table, but I called out, “Give it here” with some urgency in my voice. And last night I slept, not with sugar plum fairies in my head, but with a lifelong primal need met.
I received a survey letter from a local funeral home; it was all very proper and dignified and I can’t fault it at all. It’s just . . . well, it’s right before Christmas and I had just been thinking of Scrooge’s ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future. I saw in my mind’s eye as I scanned through the questions about pre-planning and funeral costs, the cold and lonely grave in Scrooge’s future unless he changed.
My granddaughter asked what I was looking at and I told her and she wanted to know if it was a limited time offer for a funeral discount. You know, die in the next 30 days and you can get a coupon for a family member sort of thing. Youth will find humor in things. At my age, I heard the echo of Marley’s chains.
We are not certain about anything here, but Guido either stealthily crept back in OR he moves between space/time dimensions. He turned up in a place I had searched many, many times. He does look a little frazzled.
Frankly, he looks a little spaced out.
But this is not the end of the story. HE WENT MISSING AGAIN. This time it was a short absence, but possibly a more dangerous one, seeing that he turned up in a bag that contained scissors.
He demanded to be placed on sheepskin for contrast and we have posted a Bat Watch; if the alarm sounds, the Home Front Light Horse Brigade is ready to spring to action.
I would say I have officially been left behind. WordPress, over the years, has been updating and then nagging me to follow along. And I have; but now I am truly following blindly. Under the heading What’s New?, the people at WP pointed out some things and down at the bottom they had actually code to invigorate comment arguments.
You read that correctly and here’s the exact quote: New arguments in WP_Comment_Query make crafting robust comment queries simpler. falling back on the “Uh” used by people fumbling around for something to say, I feel the need to utter, “Uh, what are you talking about?” Of course, they are not talking; they are writing; I say this simply to indicate I am not an overwhelming idiot who flunked English and can’t discern the proper use of words, I was just expressing myself colloquially.
I do think one could make an argument that my posts could be more robust, but I don’t think that is what is being commented on here. Actually, what I believe it boils down to is giving computer code savvy people an easier and faster way to express the following universal exchange:
YEAH?
OH, YEAH!!
YOUR MOMMMA!
BITE ME!
Then the more clever of the jousters will play the Trump card and perhaps go a pun too far and refer to Rubio’s Cube in relation to blockhead.
If you think I’ve been out of touch, well, it’s nothing compared to Guido the Bat. I have been looking for him for two weeks. Der Bingle and I have been down on our tummies looking under chairs in sofas in Indiana and Ohio.
I suppose he could be on a secret mission, but it’s not like him to be gone for over an hour . . . and it has been days, weeks. I’ve been so upset I’ve been cleaning. I have shaken blankets, clothes, boxes, bags and baskets. No Guido.
I distracted myself for a couple of hours this afternoon by sitting hearthside and watching The Sea Wolves with David Niven, Roger Moore and Trevor Howard. Maybe I was trying to lure him home.
OH, MY DEAR GUIDO: WHERE ARE YOU????
HERE IS AN ARTICLE I WROTE ABOUT GOING TO A MOVIE AT THE STRAND WITH MY GRANDSON published in Kendallville Mall.
The name of the movie was “Secondhand Lions.” And “we two” were in the audience, each with a large cola in the drink holder and a large bucket of popcorn between us.
I am the elder of this two-person club, by a good 44 years. I am the grandma. Specifically, I am the grandma who likes good books and good movies and has always been drawn to stories where characters try to pull themselves up to what is right.
I am the grandma with scenes in her head: Humphrey Bogart in the rain in Casablanca telling Ingrid Bergman about how if the plane leaves without her she’ll regret it – maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of her life.
I remember Gregory Peck leaving the courtroom in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I can see David Niven’s quiet determined bravery in “55 Days in Peking.”
But let us not think of me – this grandma – as a gentle soul of soft voice and compassionate character.
No, I am also the grandma who looks at a refrigerator door standing open and yells, “The next person who doesn’t shut this door is going to . . . “ Well, let’s not go into what exactly it is that I yell; let us settle on the notion that I can be pretty inventive.
I am the grandma who looks over her glasses and inquires, “Now exactly how long have you known about this project . . . that is due tomorrow?”
Now the younger partner on this “we two” team is 10, soon to be 11 . . . and he is Cameron, the grandson. He likes video games and action movies and is constantly badgering me for permission to build up forts and such in a computer game called “Stronghold” which is installed on MY computer.
However, he is also the boy who gets up before school to turn on the Animal Planet Channel or the History Channel. And once, he and I stayed up way past our bedtimes to watch “Attila the Hun.”
So when I saw Cory Renkenberger, manager of the Strand in the Do-It-Center and he said “Secondhand Lions” was coming the following week, it got my attention. I remembered the magazine reviews I’d read and I thought that any movie where Michael Caine and Robert Duvall star as two old eccentrics who spent 40 years of derring-do in Africa and are now hosting a great-nephew for a summer should be pretty good.
Actually, maybe too good to see alone . . . and maybe too good to see with a brood. So the idea came to me of “we two” – Cameron and I.
We went on a school night – homework done first – and were first in the theater. And this takes us back to the beginning . . . in the theater with the drinks and popcorn.
While waiting for the movie to start, we munched our way about three-quarters of the way down the popcorn container. Cameron looked at me and said, “Why, Grandma, I think you’ve outdone yourself.”
I got us a refill.
The lights went down . . . the movie came on. We watched through the exciting parts, the funny parts, the sad parts and the part where Robert Duvall gives a portion of his “how to be a man” speech.
He told the boy there are just some things you ought to believe in – honor and courage and virtue . . . some things you just need to believe are true – such as people being basically good.
I didn’t look over at the boy sitting next to me, but I thought of him – of us sitting there together in a small town theater . . . and I remembered another movie I had seen over a decade ago –“Shadowlands”
That movie was based on aspects of C.S. Lewis’ life. Anthony Hopkins played the title role and he spoke of feeling happiness lay in what was over the crest of a hill, around the bend of a road. Then later in the movie he reconsiders and talks about happiness being “here and now and that’s enough.”
I feel the pull of the crest of a hill, the bend in a road . . . but in that theater, in this little town, the here and now of “we two” was enough.