Upside Ann

 Are you able to guess which I am.  Yes, the one with the cool new shorts!

 Yes.  That is a snickerdoodle cookie.  While it may be my second favorite cookie, it is the one that carries the most love.  No one made snickerdoodles in my family - but one winter day while I was at OSU, I received a care package full of love and snickerdoodles.  Those were the best snickerdoodles EVER.  I think it was all that extra-love.  Thank you. Today's snickerdoodle came home from "Family Consumer Science" class with Zupe.  Poor kid.  He doesn't eat cookies but each year he has to bake them.  Maybe I should tell him that sending a box of cookies to a distant friend is the best long distance hug that friend could ask for.

 If you go back and review (August 18), you will note that after Wisconsin Dells our next stop was Athens, MN and The Spam Museum.  We were cutting the time close and had only an hour to spend Spamming.  It was enough.  The museum was worthwhile with serious Spam history (WW II), Spam geography (Hawaii, Australia, Japan...), Spam pop-culture (Monty Python, Broadway) and just for fun Spam.  It could ONLY have been Better if the Spamettes carrying around various flavored samples of hot Spam had been dressed in black and white miniskirts (to match the floor) and roller skates.  (I should contact them!)  Below, enjoy a taste of The Spam Museum.

  I dreamed we had a pet spider.  Not a tarantula, but one of those whitish-you-almost-can't-see it spiders that find our home a favorite abode.  And the spider - not sure it had a name- didn't live in a cage, but was a free-range spider in our house.  (I think this was Zupe's idea.)  Our spider had spent a week away at camp.  Spider camp? and was back.  It was so glad to see us. It dropped down from a silk from the ceiling in front of our faces.  It wanted to crawl up on my finger.  (I am NOT a spider person.  I once threw a baby gate at a spider skuttling across the carpeting late one night while I was watching Saturday Night Live.  I cannot imagine how I am emotionally surviving this pet!)  Since the spider was being so friendly, I thought I'd take its picture.  I took a portrait.  Just her face. (Wow! This new dream camera has some great zoom lens!)  Ended up being not what I wanted.  There were two imag...

Once upon a time - like when I was still in high school - my father built a section of fence.  The tall boardy kind of fence.  About 6 feet high.  It extended east from the edge of the garage and ran parallel to the fence row.  I do not know WHY he built this fence.  One day I'll dig through old photos and show you what it looked like.  If I'm successful, I'll add it to this post, as well.   But that isn't the story.  That fence is long gone. Growing against that fence was a plant that was brought over from my grandparents' farm.  We called it Loevy's Lace Vine.  (I have NO IDEA how to spell Loevy.  The name is pronounced Low - vee.  If I spell it Lovy, you will likely think it is Love- ee.  A search of Google is no help.  There are people with the surname Loevy, however.)  It grew immense and bloomed like crazy in late summer and early fall.  My best guess was that it was a   "Sweet Autumn Cl...

  So, for like a week - maybe more- maybe a lot more - I had the feeling, whenever I opened the drawer which holds my placemats and napkins or the cupboard below where the pots and pans and housed, that I was smelling something dead.  I couldn't see anything and on Sunday I took EVERYTHING out of both places and found NOTHING.  Weird.   Since it was not Monday and Kevin was visiting, I thought I would try once again to use the dishwasher.  My cousin Steve and I had loaded it up on Poultry Days in June to find that soon after the cycle commences the dishwasher displayed an error message, started flashing blue lights, and dinging quietly but persistently.  As suggested in the guide, we cleaned the filters (which - for the record - I had cleaned thoroughly at a time approximate to my last use of the dishwasher months previously.  Turning off the light and bell - which with enough time starts to make you feel like you are living in a Poe story - requi...