So, a great many of young people don’t know who Ray Milland is; well, if they want a true education they had better learn. He is known for The Lost Weekend and back when older movie stars eagerly agreed to be on Columbo, he was the one in which Peter Falk stuck a potato is a tail pipe. I know, never mind.

But, on Saturday morning I got a call in Fairborn, Ohio that the house in LaGrange had been broken into. So I ate lunch at City Barbeque and then headed back. You see, I have my priorities straight. I sent Der Bingle out to get gas in my car and a Hot Head Burrito for the road and while he was gone, I packed up the shortbread cookies with only a wee bit of guilt.

The sheriff deputies had gone through the house with drawn guns and the window was fixed by the time I got there. It was a quiet time – surrounded by drawers pulled out and emptied – and I established a presence and picked up a little. Then I sat and read and nibbled on shortbread and burrito and peanut butter and planned how I would eventually clean up. I did that Saturday night, all day Sunday and the entire morning today.

I am now resting from all that reading and carbohydrating. Der Bingle, somewhat miffed by the disappearance of all the shortbread, has dubbed me the Carbohydrate Queen. A small price to pay. However, I believe I wasn’t thinking about the long term. Now when I go to the Ohio Redoubt, I will probably have to ask on bended knee for shortbread and be blindfolded while it is removed from a locked place. That price is higher.

I completed most of Part 2 of Section One of getting the basement in order. I had a fire burning while I did the dirty work and then I sat and enjoyed its warmth and watched a movie, sitting in my Morris chair.

This is the chair my mother sat in when she was little and sick and the chair I sat in under the same circumstances. Grandma would put a table leaf across the arms and it made a nice little desk. Then, when I was tired, I would push the plunger on the side and recline.

One arm has the curve sawed partly off so it would fit in a certain spot when Mother was little. Bing Crosby once mentioned his Morris chair in song lyrics. And, actually, I still put a table leaf across the arms. It’s an old-fashioned recliner and that’s okay.

I have reached a new low. A pun – see post title – popped into my head and I could have used will power and pushed it out, but it was so easy to think about the day the water main connection broke in front of our house. At that time, although other towns considered it a city responsibility, mine did not. So it cost me the equivalent of two MacBooks to have the spot, located right by the curb, fixed.

It was interesting to hear the men standing in the really deep hole talking about the shortcut way the connection had been made in the first place. It was interesting to remember that a short while past the town had widened the road and had very heavy machinery digging and grinding and jackhammering right over the connection that broke. Ah, but that’s all water under the . . . well, rats, I can’t think of a pun for bridge. I’m forced to leave it as a cliché.

When my mind gets like this, even I get a bit scared. Of course, Guido always thinks I’m a hoot. Or did he say kook?

Fluctuating between feeling really tired and then determined to get something accomplished and then frustrated with myself and reading, reading, reading, I decided it would be best not to watch any football because I so wanted Green Bay to win and because I so wanted the Patriots to lose. I had the psychic feeling that neither was going to happen.

Then someone came out and said Green Bay had won; that’s because they did what a lot of Seahawk fans did, left the game early. But for the moment, I was pleased, thinking it was good that they had won and that it was good that my psychic feeling about bad things was not always right. Having found out the truth, I just could not even consider knowing anything about the Colt’s game.

Do you know you can hear outraged screaming from a long way off? The part about the ball hitting the face mask and being a fumble and that hooligan Tom Brady’s team getting a touchdown was re-enacted by the screamer out where I was sitting. And then more screaming and “I can’t take it!”

It is a sad day for Cheeseheads.

Gee, I believe my mood is not too positive this Monday morning. Ya think?

Remember all the little old ladies on TV shows in the past that referred to Elderberry Wine? No? Well, that’s okay. Well, I have my version of that and it’s worked pretty well to fortify my constitution, dontcha know. However, I have developed a mild cold; at first, I thought I was going to be laid low because my thigh muscles were burning, my back hurt and my nose was stuffing and then running.

This morning, however, I don’t feel too bad – a little scratchiness in my throat and a bit of pressure in my ears, but I do not sound like the people in the area who have been so congested that when they cough, you think their lungs are going to come oozing out.

I think I’m going to start thinking of the supplement as not an extract of Elderberry, but as AmeliaJake’s Elderberry Wine “Recipe.” Sort of like Papa’s Recipe that the Baldwin sisters had on the Walton’s – Miss Emily and Miss Mamie.

Remembering those two, I recall they took turns answering the telephone – only they would get confused on whose turn it was and often never picked up. I miss the Walton’s; Ike’s General Store was like the one close to the LaGrange County house. When I was very little, my parents tucked a coin in my hand and I went over all by myself to get a bag of candy “kern” as I called it. (I think, though, that I did not really go alone; I suspect I had a shadow.

We used to get Pokagon soda pop there. At first they got me orange until I was old enough to indicate I preferred strawberry. I have a very vague memory of trying to figure out how to drink out of the bottle without putting my entire mouth around it. It seemed like a very big deal at the time. Those were the days when the soda pop was kept in a bath of ice water and you slid it along a slot to get it out.

That is one of the reasons I think I like City Barbeque in Beavercreek so well. It is homely like an old general store and they stash their sodas and beers in a long tub of icy slush, not to mention the food is very, very good.

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I was going to indulge this weekend, but decided to put the trip off ’til I felt more energized. Now, I am thinking of Cheerwine and wondering if I am too much of a wimp. That tank looks so inviting and I can just about taste the sandwich.

Yesterday was trash-stomping day. I do this almost every week – get up on a stepladder and use my weight to compress trash bags in the bins. Yesterday I fell off the ladder. I don’t know; I was on and then I was on the driveway on my back.

Nothing broke and maybe the thin bit of packed snow had more give than the concrete. I lay their for about 30 seconds, ascertaining that nothing had broken, and then got up. Actually, I think I knew when I hit that I was okay, but the 30 seconds of just lying there was a break in the routine – no pun intended.

It’s not bad – lying on packed snow, looking up. It was better than the time I fell inside a wheeled trash bin and cut my forehead on a raised rim and had blood all over my face. Worse than the actual event was trying to get the ER doctor who was stitching my head up to grasp how such a thing could have happened. To this day, I doubt that he believed me, but I was not inclined to demonstrate.

So, it is AmeliaJake 0, Trash bins 2. Although, come to think of – I do believe I have backed into them once or twice . . . or more. They say revenge is a dish better eaten cold and yesterday started out at -2.

So the guy at the country club wanted to poison John Boehner because the voices in his head told him to do so.

John Boehner is from West Chester, Ohio, a northern suburb of Cincinnati. We lived there a number of years and I was at one of his first neighborhood fundraising meetings when he started his campaign for Congress. That may be my only brush with fame, unless I hear voices that tell me to do something REALLY bad and I guess that brush would be more of infamy.

Enough of that. No wait. This business about voices in people’s heads: Why has no one had voices that say “Send AmeliaJake all of your cookies? or a portion of your fortune?

Now, enough. We had a day in the high 20’s – and maybe it reached 30 degrees, and now it is -2, which is warmer than it was the past mornings. This cold stuff is a problem because it is a tricky thing, sort of the reverse of of Icarus. “Oh, it’s not that cold; I can go out and grab this or that.” I mean maybe in the first seconds it even feels refreshing. And then there you are with your jeans frozen to your legs.

I have slender, artificial alpine trees of good quality that I first started using a Christmas tree additions and then I took to putting white lights on them and hanging everyday things from the branches and calling them Winter Lights.

Three are clustered by one long series of windows, and today, somehow, after all this time, I brushed against one and it fell, pulling the others with it. I even managed to trip the circuit breaker. I think I have got everything picked up, but I’m going to keep an eye out for things that may have sought refuge from my clumsiness under a table or behind a box.

It started when I couldn’t find my amethyst necklace right off the bat. Okay, it’s somewhere in one of my special places, but it has gone undercover. I usually wear it and the turquoise pendant, but every now and then I take one or the other off and “put it somewhere safe.” Sigh.

Actually, the trees now look pathetic, but my head hurts and I guess I can wait until tomorrow to straighten up the lights, the cows, the sock monkeys, the necklaces, the Salvation Army bell and need I go on? No, not if you know me. Oh, yeah, the old-fashioned small Santas that hang around all year, because, yes, AmerliaJake, there is Christmas Spirit.

I like to listen to Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and performed by The Irish Tenors all year round, just as I like to glimpse views of the cheery Santas. Yesterday, I looked up an explanation of the lyrics. If you try to make sense of them, it’s depressing. So I just listen and hear what I want to hear. The Tenors have cleaned up some of the lyrics and skipped one entire verse that was quite R rated. Sometimes, Googling something is not the smartest thing to do.

The thing about being around is that you end up where you started. That sounds logical, but I know it is just a little trick with words. And that’s okay; I’ve been around.

Touching on the “around” business, I did have to get new tires. That became apparent during the last snowfall and subzero temperatures that made the roads really slick . . . and I really want to thank the unknown pickup truck that compensated when I came sliding on through an intersection by WalMart. That could have been a traumatic shopping trip.

Kathryn had a bad spell and I sat with her rather than going to Clara’s visitation. I figured Clara had known how I felt. She would have been disappointed in me had I left Kathryn to “make an appearance.”

I’m going to have to buckle down on my diet because the nursing home spoiled me. They brought cookies and breakfast bars and offered to cook me whatever I wanted for breakfast. I must watch myself or I will become addicted to Fieldstone oatmeal creme pie cookies. I munched my way through them like a manic squirrel.

This morning is an errand morning, and it is an errand morning with more snow out there. The temperature went up yesterday to the 20’s, but it has slipped back down. I watched the Green Bay game, but skipped the Colts/Broncos. I had a feeling the Broncos would lose, and I just didn’t feel like watching Peyton Manning lose some of his finesse.

Last Sunday evening, while I was dozing off about 8 pm, after having been up to LaGrange, Clara Bender, aged 97 and Kathryn Feller’s roommate at North Ridge Village in Albion, Indiana passed away.

Because of changing circumstances, I had not been to the nursing home for probably a month. I didn’t intend to be away so long; for a long spell I saw Kathryn and Clara very frequently. The last time I was there, I left, telling her to hold down the fort.

She had seven devoted children and many, many grandchildren. She lived and passed away surrounded by love and carrying. I regret missing being there these last few weeks, but I am so glad that one day when I was pushing her to lunch, I leaned over her shoulder and whispered, “You’re a courageous and wise woman, Clara Bender, and I am honored to know you.” Probably that was the opinion of a lot of folks.

As I sat in the room with Kathryn and Clara, she told me many stories and shared private thoughts. She gave me a couple of her necklaces to remember her by . . . and she gave me so much more in the philosophy and conduct of life. I will not forget her.

CLARA BENDER