Finally – a moment in the day to tell you the exciting news. I’m on a diet!

It’s not your typical nutritional fare, it has a musical bent. It’s a “Change the station when the Eagles or Fleetwood Mac are on” diet. I am weary of hearing both bands.

This is nothing new. I’ve been on a Bob Dylan diet since, well, since I first heard him. I’ve banned the Eagles and FM from my station for a couple of years now. I will also change at a moment’s notice for Cat Stevens, Jim Croce (ugh) and Miley Cyrus (double ugh). Can’t we do better than that? If we’re going back in time let’s throw Barbra in there. She had good pipes.

Perhaps tomorrow I will attempt a nutritional diet? My sister is already working on that so I may join her. That requires getting rid of the peppermint ice cream in the freezer though. Better get started!

I hate them. They are unpredictable little buggers, flying and hopping at will. This year? I swear the rains fed them. As I mowed I saw one on the back of the garage that was nearly five inches in length and quite meaty. I’m praying some bird finds him and feeds the family.

Should I have been a prairie woman crossing the plains during a grasshopper or locust invasion (equally disliked as I had one caught in my hair as a kid!) I would have definitely gone mad. However, it’s funny how a child you love will make you readjust those supremely angst-ridden moments.

My granddaughter spent the weekend with us and I squished numerous bugs and batted away insects with nary a thought to my own squeamishness in hearing or feeling that crackle of their bodies when I demolished them in my Kleenex covered hands. “They won’t hurt you, they’re too little,” might have been one of my stupid comments. I merely recalled my grandmother and the famous June bug incident of ‘65. She picked up a gigantic red crawling offender from the basement floor and crushed it with her bare hands.

What year was it really? I don’t know, but I will never forget her bravery when I was a little child. Still inspiring me today, Grandma! Your legacy lives on in bug mitigation. Who knows? Maybe you hated them, too?

I never know where my hippocrene will come from, but I have to seize inspiration when it strikes.

Some of these words have to be rather archaic. I don’t believe I have ever come across “hippocrene” in any novels or articles I’ve read. However I did have a moment of inspiration yesterday while driving.

This guy in front of me made an illegal left turn right in the middle of a major road. It was absolutely brilliant! Had he done it properly, he would have had to go to the intersection, await the turn signal which is interminably slow there, and then proceed to make two more left turns to arrive at his restaurant. One and done with no harm or cameras to catch him!

I’ll probably never get to use the maneuver as I have only frequented that area once before. Maybe one day when I’m looking for a new hippocrene I’ll try it?

It’s a serious consideration. If there were no mirrors we’d have to rely on others to tell us what we look like. Maybe not a bad idea?

Off I go to smile at the world!

The word genius app has me exploring and I wondered if this was a a correct form of the root word? It is and the experience beginning the week was rather verisimilitudinous.

It commenced in the wee hours of Monday, wakening at 5:30 am to slip out of the hotel and into the assisted living residence of my mother-in-law. We “borrowed” the front door wheelchair for the adventure, did NOT sign in properly as we whisked her out of her apartment and into the “getaway car.” It could have been a real abduction or jailbreak? It felt like it.

Upon arrival in Colorado my husband surreptitiously took the wheelchair at the end of the jetway and brought it to the door of the plane, not waiting for the aide to arrive. Whilst those behind us struggled with bags we scurried to the door and hopped in the stolen ride and sailed away to baggage claim. No one stopped us. We proceeded to take the chair outside to the parking lot vans and reveled in our continued “flight.”

Sometimes you have to add some danger to the day to test your wits. We passed with flying colors.

You may have noted the dearth of blogs. I was in and out of venues, hotels, restaurants and traveling. Therefore, I was a tad leery to enter anything in unsecured locations. (I’m sure there are vampiric forces out there ready to abscond my clever observations?)

Returning home last night I realized no one had run the dishwasher for days. I feared the dishes would be zamzawed. (My new term for use when I overcook food now applies to the crusty dishes I had to run on high heat through the machine.)

You know where today is going! I’ll be on laundry duty as well as kitchen, zamzawing along. It’s just a fun word, isn’t it? I have no idea of the origin of the word and I do believe it only applies to overcooked and heated food. But I am sure I can zamza clothing, too. We are taking liberties in this thoroughly official publication.

Happy delayed Monday now on Tuesday. Welcome back!

Okay – some young pup is touting travel tips and I’m scoffing. As one who travels lightly, I think I also travel quite cleverly.

She said to pack oatmeal (of all things!) because every hotel has hot water and a cup. We already do that. But we don’t put the oatmeal in little plastic bags, an unnecessary step. We pack the instant which is already doled out. I have learned that arriving hungry is not good for my travel buddy. The “influencer” didn’t mention my all-time favorite hack, which has come in quite usefully many times. Duct tape.

I wrap duct tape around a tube or can of spray or whatever – not taking the entire roll – because you never know? It has held a raincoat together for me, covered a metal emu traveling from Australia to Kansas with its head poking out of my luggage, and enforced a rip in my bag.

I don’t know. These young ‘uns could still use some edjacatin’.

My Wednesdays are reserved for our granddaughter. They always include a good chinwag, beginning with her sitting, hands folded in her lap, looking at me intently asking, “So, how was your day?”

When she began to master the stairs, me crawling in tow for protection, I began the “chats.” I just had to sit a bit! I always asked how her day was with my hands in my lap. She got the gist of it as I coaxed her to answer that she played, she had breakfast (always oatmeal) and took a nap. Now she rattles off playmates, games, airplanes she’s seen. It’s very endearing. And always, it includes “oatmeal,” whether she’s had it or not!

Today we’re off-duty here as her mother is mastering the art of potty training. I will miss our little ‘wags. My daughter has assured me though, that things are going smoothly, and when they need a little outing, we’re on the route! Until then, I’ll just have to converse with my spouse. Not as endearing, but useful. ❤️

Last night I exited the women’s restroom at the mall only to find myself in the men’s room. I just went the opposite way of the intended path and wondered why a man was pulling down his zipper? Alas, one of the sad facts of living with Directional Dyslexia. I swear it is a condition, one I have had since birth.

In the past I have sworn up and down that I know where I am going, only to find I have walked in the totally opposite direction in NYC, driven on a one-way the wrong way in DC, and ended up backtracking in England on roads littered with roundabouts. Thankfully, someone was always with me to help me find my way back. My little sister, college friends and a polite police officer on Capitol Hill, and my 13-year old daughter. Just a few renowned examples.

It’s happened enough that I don’t even get embarrassed anymore. Often I just go in the opposite direction of what I think and am rewarded with finding my car where I parked it. Perhaps that’s why I landed in Colorado? With the mountains to the west I am usually just fine. And cities that people think are confusing with their wonky streets? I have no problem there.

GPS takes over where instinct is lacking. Yes, I have taken the road less traveled, but not always intentionally. Great poem, Mr. Frost.

The Road Not Taken 

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Ever since those daily deluges ceased my little morning dose of hummingbird has returned. He’s flitting about playfully now. Deer have been literally leaping through fields in the neighborhood or lazing in friends’s yards. The hawk carries on with his evening hunt. And of course, those playful and obnoxious pests we relocate have continued to scamper in and out of traffic and yards.

One of my kind neighbors sent this to me. Even the national parks are aware of the problem!

Enjoying Mother Nature and all her antics.