Trick or treat...

"Apparently, there is nothing that cannot happen today."  Mark Twain

Trick or Treat Day in the Village t’day….tiny kidz ’n mommies ’n in many cases, grandmommies who seem t’be getting younger every year….sort’a like cops ’n firefighters…always a little surprising to find out that they’re passing out those jobs to children these daze…

Anyway, all the little kids, well, almost all, want to pet Rusty ’n Willy…Rusty likes all the attention but if they don’t have food, Willy takes a quick look ’n then ignores them…

Ackshully, I normally don’t wander thru the park on days when we have a lot of visitors but I forgot about the Trick or Treat thing ’n by the time I realized it, we were already there…Nabor Doug could’a told me cuz he walked Rover early to avoid the crowd….’course, Rover, being a Pit Bull, ’n in spite of him being calm ’n well-trained, tends to get more’n his share of parental disapproval…tsk, tsk….

On the back side of our trek, I noticed a ‘cowboy’ walking toward me…black hat, purple shirt ’n neckerchief, black pants ’n cowboy boots…I wuz thinkin’ that in Colorado, he’d be politically incorrect when he called out a greeting ’n I belatedly recognized our former mailman…now, among other things, he is the President of our local Rotary ’n they had a booth set up to pass out treats ’n stuff…..

Trick or treating is serious stuff t'day...back when I wuz a small boy, it wudn't nearly so organized...I recall going to a few of the neighbors, accompanied by my mother, got a few homemade treats...popcorn balls or fudge...taffy...y'know, I'd forgotten all about taffy...people use'ta have parties, taffy pulls they called 'em...anyway, during WWII, store bought candy wuz kind'a hard to come by....then, when I got a little older, kids would gang together 'n go thru the village but we wudn't really looking for treats ('n wudn't have got any if we'd asked)....what we wuz looking for wuz mischief, pure 'n simple, becuz on Hallowe'en, adults let us get away with stuff....'n I ain't even gonna  tell you what kind of stuff we did back in the middle of the 20th century 'cuz it'ud just sound plain dumb in this day 'n age.....

Heady stuff for the end of October in this 21st century….

And The Great O just stated emphatically, "That's the truth!"

HO-Humm.....

(Sighhhhhh…)  Hump day is here ag’in…Yep!  It’s Wednesday, the sun came up as usual, garbage pickup wuz early, as usual…y’know it just has t’be Wednesday when those green monsters come grinding ’n clanking up the hill ’n back down again…ah well, two more weeks to fill up those green barrels again with all the leaves that are coming down to earth…..

Speaking of coming down to earth, I see that Kathleen (I helped Tiller the baby-killer) Sebilius has been titled the ‘most hated woman in America for her actions ’n attitude in the roll-out of the Obama don’t care about health act anyways….(personally, I think her attitude stinks bigtime ’n I don’t care if she gets done in becuz of it)…On that proverbial other hand howsumever, I ain’t at all sure what it sez about Americans in general that we c’n get more pissed that she messed with our pocketbooks than with the fact that she aided ’n abetted Tiller the baby-killer….

Down the street, nabor Doug wuz getting ready to re-fill his just-emptied green cans…I reminded him that he had two whole weeks to get that job done but he said, “The weather’s dry, gotta make hay while the sun shines ’n idle hands are the Devils workshop.” (I think I gotta stop telling him all those old bromides)..

Harry ’n Walter, the two roosters that live at the firehouse, glanced warily at Rusty ’n Willy ’n stepped daintily aside…if they’d’a been people, I swear they would’a sniffed in disdain…Willy loves to chase chickens but it only works when they actually run from him ’n some of those old roosters are awf’ly big ’n mean ’n they c’d do some serious damage to a little dog…’course, Willy thinks he’s a big dog…

Update on the upstairs cat:  She’s spending a lot more time downstairs now ’n she ain’t threatening Willy quite so much but if he gets in her face, she still arches her back ’n spits at him ’n he don’t quite know what to make of her…I think she scares him a bit ’n frankly, I don’t blame him, I’d be scared too…

The Great O is giving another speech in Boston about how great  the Affordable I don’t Care Act is gonna be….at an unspecified point in the future, life is gonna be great, the only true caveat is that you have to do your part ’n live long enough…’course, I just heard The Great O say how great Romneycare is so maybe the world is coming to an end….

And now he just said how good the Obamacare rollout is going in Kentucky ’n Arkansas….he just doesn’t say that in those states, the people signed up for MedicAid which means that they don’t have to pay for it…t’ain’t free, y’understand…sumbody, sumwhere is gonna have to pay for it...

Those Autumn leaves...(sighhhhh)...

“I turn over a new leaf ev’ry day but it don’t seem t’make a lot of difference.”  Justin Other Smith

So, what we got going on this lazy, dazy Sunday ‘long towards the end of October is/are leaves…leaves ’n more leaves…leaves falling, leaves on the ground, leaves t’be raked ’n leaves already raked ’n piled waiting for the old man to come back ’n pick ‘em up ’n put ‘em in the ‘green’ barrel….ah yessss, it’s California ’n out here, we recycle durn near ever’thing imaginable ’n some things that nobody ever imagined before…well, like governors….I understand Governor Moonbeam Brown (sounds like sumthin’ out’a the mind of Al Capp, remember him…’course, y’don’t, you’re too darn young) anyhow, I never read the story, only the headline, but it seems that the Moonbeam gave a speech back somewhere in the land t’other side of the Sierra ’n the sheeple back there loved it ’n him….’course, I read that in one of those liberal sheets so I took it with a grain or two of salt (can’t have more’n a grain or two cuz I’m supposed to be on a low-sodium diet)…

Anyhow, back to the real world:  Millyrose is due back this evening from The Great Disneyland Trek which, I’m told, wuz a great success as the girls didn’t figure it out until the very last minnit….not that I really believe that, y’know, they’re pretty smart gurlz ’n wuz prob’ly faking it for the sake of their Grandmother, Mother ’n Aunt….

Well, I have availed m’self of the opportunity (Gawd! The stuff that passes for opportunity when you get old) to blow leaves, rake leaves, pick up leaves, etcetera ad infinitum, an nauseum…also managed to squeeze in about four dog-walks a day but I ain’t had time to run the durn vaccuum cleaner even once…’n only washed dishes once (Thank Gawd for paper plates)…

Anyhow, Gawd’s in His heaven ’n all’s right with the world…well, right as can be with the Democrat in the White House but if living all these years has taught me anything at all, it’s that “this too, shall change.”

Leaf-blowing for fun 'n relaxation....

“Judge not, lest thou be judged.”  Not sure what book of the Bible that phrase is from, not sure why it matters.  But the phrase matters.  It matters a lot ’n that’s all I’m gonna say about it….

You ever hear anyone say, ‘easy as pie’….well, making a pie ain’t easy at all, it’s darn hard but, eating a pie, that’s a whole ‘nother ballgame…Millyrose made me an apple pie before she took off for Disneyland Thursday…it lasted clear up to this afternoon….making a pie requires talent whilst eating one only requires a bit of hunger…or as my Aunt Mary use’ta say after a meal, “I’m not hungry now but I’ll have just a little piece of that pie just for the taste.”

Late afternoon, Sati’day…just back from walkin’ da boyz…down to the end of the street is a couple white roosters that sumbody dropped off…sometimes it takes awhile for those concrete streeters to figure out that roosters ain’t never gonna lay eggs for ‘em….anyhow, they’re tame ’n not really scared of da boyz ’n have taken up residence outside the firehouse…one of the firemen feeds ‘em ’n has named one of them, Walter…I can’t tell which is which so I just call the two of them, Harry ’n Walter…

The names come from an old movie that I can’t recall except for the title, “Harry and Walter go to New York”…I guess I really should google it….

Harry and Walter Go to New York is a 1976 American period comedy film written by John Byrum and Robert Kaufman, directed by Mark Rydell, and starring James Caan, Elliott Gould, Michael Caine, Diane Keaton, Charles Durning and Lesley Ann Warren…

Good cast but I still can't remember the movie...'n Google gave me more information than any of us prob’ly ever wanted…anyhow, leaf blowers going up ’n down the street…I wuz doing pretty well until Millyrose called me from Disneyland ’n while I wuz on the phone, I saw the leaves drifting down faster’n I could gather ‘em up…’n I still got to pick the durn things up ’n put ‘em in the can…ah well, Indian summer is still one of the nicest times of the year ’n raking leaves ain’t near as hard as chopping out the roots of the damned Chinese stink tree….at my age, I don’t work too hard but I try to make up for it by not working too long either…also…whatever….

I’m waiting for the time change….Fall forward comin’ up…it don’t confuse me any more than it does da boyz….I’m curious what it’s gonna mean for the upstairs cat…she likes to be fed at 6 in the morning ’n 6 in the evening’n I expect she could get churlish about it if I didn’t get up ’n feed her…cats are a lot more demanding than dogs…’course, she’s just a temporary upstairs cat but I’m kind’a getting used to her….she’s black as can be with not a speck of white anywhere and she keeps the darn squirrels away…did’ja know squirrels love to sneak into houses…worse’n damn raccoons….anyway, she ain’t ours, we’re just cat-sitting temporarily…

A dollar down 'n a dollar a week.....

A close study of economics’ll tell you that the absolutely best time to buy anything wuz last year.

Recently had a major lifestyle change here at the Manse…switched from Starbucks French Roast to Starbucks Cafe Verona  (Italian roast)…little different taste, Italian roast doesn’t have that ‘burnt’ quality of French roast but it’s still dark ’n smoky ’n the really notable  difference is that it’s $1`3 bucks ‘stead of $20….

Which means if King O cuts my SS payments, I c’n call up Ami Bera ’n say I’m doing my part, Bub….whyn’t you do yours?

Not that I think he’ll listen, of course, I’m not that much of a dunder-head…

Nabor Doug called Ami t’other day asking about the unAffordable I don’t Care Act popularly known as Obamacare…after a couple calls, Ami’s office (now you just know it wuz someone in the office ’n not the office it’s ownself) returned his call ’n told him not to worry, that the VA would continue to take care of him because it wuz exempt from that law…

The Prez ’n all his cabinet is exempt…so’re most of his big donors ’n the unions, generally speaking, anyone with a little bit of clout with his highness c’n ask for ’n get an exemption….with the exception, naturally, being republicans ’n reg’lar people…’course, that don’t mean that republicans are actually ‘reg’lar people’ in disguise, they ain’t, they’re still the nasty old republicans whose only raison d’etre is the destruction of Obama at any cost….

Ah well, I digress….still, cutting the cost of my morning coffee by a third ain’t t’be sneezed at ‘specially since the overall cost of my grocery shopping has doubled in the last year, thank you very much all those liberal a-holes who seem t’believe that making me poorer will somehow make them richer….

That’s modern economics for ya ’n I’d explain it but I flunked that course…wudn’t my fault, howsomever, since the class wuz scheduled at 6:45 in the A.M. ’n there is absolutely nought t’be learned when your body is in the classroom ’n your brain is still in bed….

It's the GREAT PUMPKIN.....

Rock ’n a hard place….

Well, that’s kind’a where the Grand Old Party is at the moment…that is, if you b’leeve the mainstream media who all seem to agree that Obama has them mean old republicans by the short hair ’n is shakin’ them to their boottops…for the more rational news seekers among us, Fox News, contrary to the liberal mindset, is taking the more nuanced view of allowing pundits from both sides of the aisle to express their differing viewpoints…(the most amusing aspect of this is that liberals will never know this because they never, never, never take their heads out of that nameless dark place to watch that lying Fox News….Ho Hum!)

The fact of the matter, as any schoolboy knows (or did know back in the day when they were allowed t’be boys) having someone by the short hair is a lot like having a tiger by the tail…(it ain't the easiest thing in the world to turn loose of)

On a personal level, I’m beginning to suspect that maybe Obama wants the USA to default…maybe he really is in the pocket of one George Soros who seems to have developed a strategy of pushing countries into backruptcy in order to feather his own nest…

Well, it’s his strategy, of course, 'n it worked in a couple smaller countries, but I don’t think even with all his fabled wealth that George is capable of pushing the USA into bankruptcy all on his lonesome, so it probably ain’t a coincidence that he makes his home in China…

I’m just speculating, of course…trying to come up with a reason why Obama would want to take the USA into default…I don’t believe Obama is smart enuff to come up with a scheme of this scope on his own dime….

I'm pretty sure he cheated his way thru school 'n he surely seems t'be a master of the 'Fake it 'til you make  it' Holly-woody perception is reality thingy...

Well, falling off a log is easy…any darn fool c’n do it’n he don’t even hardly have to try…’n it don’t take any practice at all, it just comes natural…the real trick to falling off a log is being able to stand on it in the first place, ‘specially if you’re a barefoot boy in the Ohio River trying to emulate the log rollers you saw in the Pathe News short at the movie…

I’m just sayin’ that falling off logs is basically a spectator sport...

Those Autumn leaves.....

"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."  Lewis Carroll

If you think of Harry Reid ’n Nancy Pelosi as ‘minions’….well, it puts a whole new face to things, don’t it?  Barack Obama ’n his minions…Barry ’n the gang are responsible for the gov’t shutdown…Barry ’n his minions are responsible for kids going hungry, old people suffering from neglect, hospitals going understaffed ’n national parks closing for no p’ticklar reason….Barry ’n the minions tried to close the ocean ’n open-air memorials (I know, that don’t make any sense at all, do it?)

Back in the ’70’s when Californians passed Proposition 13, California politicians and bureaucrats responded by cutting lean rather than fat ’n that’s exactly what the Feds are doing now…cutting off their nose to spite…well, our faces actually ‘cuz we’re the dopes that put ‘em all in office, ‘cuz you know Barry ’n the minions can’t do it without help…

Barry ’n the minions really do need to go but there’s 535 other A-holes in Washington that need to have their chains yanked as well…they need to be reminded that they work for us (which ain’t been the case for too damn long)…..

Y’know what it is, is that I’ve been blowing leaves around ’n breathing in all that dust ’n I don’t care how many leaves I pick up ’n deposit in the green cans, t’morra there’s gonna be more…When I wuz a boy, back in those uncivilized daze of yore, we raked the leaves (under threat of corporal punishment) into one large pile ’n put a match to it…all over Beattyville, you could smell burning leaves ’n if you took a walk around the village, most of the yards that you’d pass would have a small boy leaning on a rake, looking into a pile of smoldering leaves….Ahhhh, the good old daze……

“I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things ’n I have succeeded fairly well.”  Rob’t Benchley

King of the hill is definitely not a team sport but you can’t play it alone…

Noah told his mother that Grandpa John must’a had a terrible childhood ‘cuz he didn’t have any video games or even a television~’n that’s true, we didn’t have any of those things….Grandpa John explained that in lieu of ‘those things’ that he had to use his imagination, for example, a stick.  Grandpa John told him that a stick c’d be many things ~ a gun, a sword, even a horse…I’m told that Noah just shook his head ’n felt sorry for the old man….

While it’s true that we didn’t have ‘stuff’ to play with, we lived in a village where everyone knew everyone else ’n we could wander from dawn to dusk without fear ~ we had the Ohio River ’n the riverbank wuz sandy ’n overgrown with willows ’n water maples ’n you never knew what the river would serve up….’n the other direction brought us to the hills, tall, steep, ’n covered in honeysuckle….

And every time you c’d get three or more t’gether, one of the fav’rite games wuz ‘King of the Hill’….there wuz a spot overlooking the curve in the two-lane blacktop that separated the village from the hills that wuz steep ’n hard to climb but had a sandy outcrop close to the top….it wuz two or maybe three wide at its widest ’n maybe four feet long ’n we c’d fight for hours to maintain the position of King of the Hill…well, I told you we didn’t have toys ’n suchlike…it wuz an age of make-do….’n not only for the kids, for adults also…it definitely wuz not a ‘disposable’ age…A money source for kids wuz gathering what t’day is known as ‘Recyclables’….we just gathered bottles for the two-cent deposit that had been paid (didn’t have aluminum cans in that stone-age period)…Ah well, seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same….

“Life obliges me t’do something, so I natter on.”  Justin Other Smith

October should always begin with a trip to APPLE HILL!

A bad hair day don’t even begin to compare to a bad foot day ’n Wednesday wuz a baaaaaaad foot day….I hobbled up the street ’n down with da boyz ‘cuz they don’t give a big hoot in….well, you know, don’t you?  Anywayz, I wuz rolling along like a drunken sailor, limping on both feet, feeling picked upon by life in general which ever’body does now ’n then but it don’t help to complain ‘cuz nobody ever listens so it ain’t a helluva lotta use to cry…besides, it come to me that I wuz still walking ’n on the green side of the sod at that so things ain’t never so bad that they can’t get worse…

Anyhow, I wuz up ’n down thru the night as old men are won’t to do  (old dogs also)

popping a few pain pills, washing ‘em down with crackers ’n milk ’n when I still cudn’t sleep, playing computer solitaire…

So it wuz, that I kind’a slept in this morning ’n when I finally got out of bed ’n stumbled into the kitchen, found that Millyrose had made my coffee for me ’n had a couple biscuits in the oven ’n the paper wuz on the table…(I wuz immediately suspicious but I didn’t let on)….what it wuz that I had forgot wuz the planned roadtrip to APPLE HILL with our friends, Annigan ’n Willy ’n that I wuz the designated driver…we, all my fault, ran a little later than the plan called for but only an hour which in the grand scheme of things don’t amount to much at all….

Annigan ’n Willy were sitting on their stoop waiting patiently (I made up the patiently part) ’n we quickloaded them into the little Matrix ’n up the hill we went….wuz a lovely sunshiny day, light traffic, off in the distance the clouds topping the sierra looked like snow ’n as pretty much usual, when we arrived at APPLE HILL, since I only get up there once a year anymore, we drove up ’n down the highway searching for the signs that would direct us to the various ’n sundry apple farms that we intended to visit (y’know, every year I wonder why I don’t go equipped with a map but that, I guess would be another story)….

Anyway, we found the stops we wanted to find…had some apple pie, well, the others had rhubard ’n apple pie ’n I had an apple turnover ’n coffee, well, two cups of coffee actually ‘cuz I spilled the first one all over me when I turned over the pickanick table ’n dumped Millyrose on the lawn…(turns out that wuz pretty much the highlight of the day)…

We got home some six hours later to find that one of the dogs had eaten a book (Sophie’s, I think, not one of mine)…the cat had hidden herself upstairs (I didn’t tell you about the cat…I’m sorry, I’ll do that another time)…and,,,well, that’s pretty much our Thursday…

I know I haven’t been blogging as much as usual but it’s been a stressful September what with one thing ’n another(sighhhhh)...