Since going away for a week – and not having “teh internets” to guide my typing hand . . . them gosh darn wheels have popped right off of this – here – blog. I have been catching up – with the catching up – and looking hard into the future – and all I have seen is the nose to the grindstone – only to have my nose ground.

With all of that – lack of excuse – I bring you a tiny nugget of a story – in which no one is either hurt – or yelled at – with the hope being that more stories will flow smoother in the coming days.

My little yellow car – Oscar – has been dutifully sitting under his rigged and ragged house – just waiting for me to return – and rock around town. So when I got to town – and discovered that his key had been left in the temporary headquarters – I was sad . . . and so was he.

Then the key came in the mail – they nice mail person hid the “overnight” package inside of the “security” door by the kitchen – where it escaped my notice for a few hours. When the key was found – I ran to the back yard – where I remembered that a little bird had told me that Oscar was all but out of gas. I opened the shed – and grabbed the gas can that says “lawn mower” on it – and remembered that it has an oil and gas mixture in it – for smaller engines – like edgers and weed whackers and what not . . . so I put it back and grabbed the unmarked gas can.

After I dumped the whole gallon into the car – I realized that the unmarked can was the one with the oil and gas mixture – and that I had potentially killed my poor car. I hopped in and accidentally pumped the gas – which I forgot I wasn’t supposed to do – because it floods the engine and then turned the key. The engine kept going rrr-rrr-rrrr-rrrr . . . rrrr-rrrr-rrrr-rrrr around and around and around. Fear was welling in my stomach. I even went to the lengths of pulling off the hose that leads to the carburetor to pour a thimble full of the life-giving-to-car-fluid (that is gas – in case you needed to know) – but still nothing happened . . .
Next – I grabbed the other (unmarked) can – and dumped all of it’s un-oiled contents into the tank. After waiting a couple of minutes . . . I tried the key again. The engine turned over a couple of times and then roared to life with a thick plume of blue smoke.

Due to the looming potential for rain – I couldn’t really leave the yard – but – boy did I enjoy driving around that 40 (forty) by 40 (forty) foot slab of mud for the rest of the afternoon!

The moral of the story is to always pour a tiny bit of the gas into the top – to see if it is blue-ish (that means oil) – or gas colored . . . and that way – you (probably) won’t injure your loved car.

I am totally back in the building – after a grueling trek down and then back up the Eastern Sea-board – with only the light of Irving B. Socks’ heart to guide me.

I am trying to pick through my frazzled sick-of-being-sick brain to figure out what ti let you know all about – because all kinds of shenanigans happened while I was away – including he best thing to hit this particular website – since bread – bread – sliced – sliced – bread . . .

Until the fog lifts – today is Tuesday . . . and as you know – that means that you are going to have to sit through a little taste of those insufferable ants . . .

Enjoy.