Connect the Dots, Lalalala. . .

If I'm looking at you with a blank stare on my face, it's probably because I didn't understand what you just said, and I'm tired of saying "I'm sorry?" or "What?"

It's been this way all of my life. It's not a hearing problem. When I ask people to repeat themselves, oftentimes more than once, they sometimes raise their voices. Someone once even said to me, angrily, "Why don't you clean your ears out?"

I can hear you just fine. The problem is, I can't understand you. It all sounds to me like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons: "Wa WAH wa waa, wa wa wa WAH."

When I was a little kid I couldn't understand most of the dialogue in movies and on TV; I followed the story visually, and if it was something that couldn't be followed that way, like, say, A Man for All Seasons (which traumatized me as a kid because it was nothing but people yammering for two hours and then they cut off his head), I would just tune out and disengage.

It didn't start to get better until middle school, when stations started running things like Batman and Star Trek in the afternoons, and I could watch the shows as much as I liked, picking up something new every time.

To this day, I still have trouble with some people and certain words and certain kinds of voices. I don't always "get" all the dialogue in talk-heavy movies. In a group conversation, I still oftentimes miss a lot of what's said and end up withdrawing emotionally from the conversation.

It's one of the reasons I hate the telephone. I have a hard enough time understanding people when I can see their lips move. The only person I can really talk with on the phone for any length of time is my friend BC, who speaks quite clearly and distinctly.

If I appear not to be engaging with things that are being said, it's probably because I am not even "there."

As a kid they called this "daydreaming." Now I wonder if it wasn't something else.

I have to be careful here, because I don't want to make any claims, and I don't have the knowledge or experience to make a diagnosis. I'm certainly not looking for sympathy. What I'm about to type, I'm not saying that it's so.

It's just that every time I see a news story, as I did last night on The PBS News Hour, about Autism or Asperger's, I listen carefully to the symptoms and inevitably I think, "Jesus Christ, they're describing me as a kid."

When I look at pictures of those little boys, I could be looking at pictures of me.

My parents carted me to doctors who checked my hearing and told them that it was a little bit better than normal. They took me to a school behavior therapist who, as far as I know, never told them anything. Meanwhile, I lived in my own little world, read a lot, and interacted with other children only in one-on-one situations. When I got involved with groups, the other kids would inevitably make fun of me or beat me up and I'd go home crying.

The Hulk was my favorite Marvel Comics character because I could understand him: both what he was saying and what was going on in there.

Just now I Googled "undiagnosed autism in adults" (yes, I'm aware that this is about as unscientific as you can get), and once again, reading down through the articles I had the uncomfortable sensation that I was reading about myself.

Again, I'm making no claims; additionally, if this was true, then I feel it would have to be classified as a minor case -- probably trending more in the direction of Asperger's than autism.

But it would explain so much: the inappropriate reactions, the emotional outbursts, the sensitivity to heat and the sun, the frustration and anxiety, the manic / depressive spells, the feeling of constantly being overwhelmed by the daily things of life that most folks take for granted,  the occasional physical ticks and stammering, the anti-social feelings (when I was little I would actually hide behind the sofa when people came to the house; I'm too big to do that now, otherwise I would!), the single-mindedness, the discomfort I feel in group situations and the difficulties "maneuvering through complex social cues at school, at work, or elsewhere."

The things, in short, that I often write about on this blog.

Could it be? Maybe not. I'm lousy with numbers and math, no Rain Man here!

Do I even want to know the answer?

I'll have to think on that a while longer.

-- Freder.

Revenge is Sour

Yup, you guessed it... I got sucked into another TCM Programming Vortex tonight.

The Outlaw Josie Wales is a movie that came out in what I'd laughingly refer to as "My Heyday," and one that I never saw at the time. So this was like filling in a gap.

On the one hand, I had to admire the craftsmanship. This is a really well-made picture, kudos to Mr. Eastwood, who took over directing in hard circumstances. Just to compare apples to apples, The Outlaw Josie Wales is far more skillfully made, written and acted than anything I ever saw by Sergio Leone, whom everyone seems to like but whom I think is a nasty, grotty little sleazeball.

In particular among the cast, Chief Dan George is a delight to watch, Eastwood should get down on his knees and thank god for that man.

But, as you might have guessed by now, I have a problem.

This picture is all done up in Civil War costume -- but (we'll leave elements of the ending out of this) at its heart and for the main part of its runtime, this is a Revenge picture, pure and simple.

And here's the thing: in order to justify the actions of the hero, which are pretty danged horrible, the villains of the piece have to be presented as being absolutely depraved.

I don't like it.

I don't like that the actors do such a good job of being depraved and, apparently, don't have any trouble sleeping at night.

I don't like watching it, and I don't like being made to feel as if I'm morally complicit because I'm watching, as "entertainment," acts that go beyond the realm of violence, into humiliation and degradation.

I know that stuff like this actually happened. In a documentary context, I could watch and not feel like I was being manipulated, used and abused.

And -- what do you say about a director who asks his GIRLFRIEND to participate in some of the scenes that Sondra Locke endures here?

There are some redeeming scenes. Wales's confrontation with the Comanche chief that saves lives all around -- that's a great scene. And the ending, with Wales and the Southern officer more or less coming to terms rather than blasting their way to one or the other's death -- that is Exactly Right.

But in nearly every other aspect, The Outlaw Josie Wales caters to, not to say glorifies, not to say revels in the conventions of the very nasty Revenge genre. And it's frustrating to see so much talent being thrown in the direction of Plain Ugliness.

-- Freder.

Brick by Brick

Another really good and productive weekend. I got so much accomplished! Not that there isn't a lot left to do before I can say the house is Ready for Prime Time, or even that there won't be some tweaking to be done when it is, but the All-New, All-Different Duckhaus is really starting to come together.

I'm finding that it's kind of a Zen thing; you solve some problems and other problems solve themselves. As you unpack, things come to light that you know exactly what to do with, other things come to light that you don't have a clue how you're going to use, and then you have days like the one I had yesterday -- the coin drops on a number of fronts and things begin to snap into focus.

Case in point: my laundry room. I hadn't planned to work in there this weekend, it just sort of happened. On Sunday I needed to be at the estate lawyer's office by 3:30, and I wanted to leave earlier to check out the local Agway for landscaping bricks (which they didn't have). I didn't want to get involved in anything where I might lose track of time. So instead of working in the Studio, I decided to hang a curtain in the laundry room.

This was made necessary by the ugliness of the wall against which the washer and dryer are standing. Plugs, the drain pipe, a thermostat, coils of ducting, and a gaping hole in the wall that used to be a vent for something but has no purpose at all anymore.

Well, it was a fiddly, fussy job, but I got 'er done. That was two things off the floor. I moved a bag and spotted a rolled-up poster. This was for the release of the Disney Co.'s Three Musketeers, starring Mickey, Donald and Goofy, given to me by an old friend, and it's poster sized for a mall window, so huge that I never had a place to hang it in the old house. I'd never even thought of using it here, but there I was staring at a huge blank wall and the lightbulb went on.

In order to hang it, I had to move two boxes and a trunk, and that meant looking at the contents. I realized that I knew where all the contents were going (wouldn't have been able to do that even a couple of weeks ago) and that they would be easily unpackable.

Couldn't do it just then, but when I got back from my errands I started in. Three empty boxes and two empty trunks later, with the carousel horse sitting on one of the trunks and a funky lamp installed on top of the apothecary chest, and suddenly I had a real room on my hands. A dirty real room, but a room that a person could conceivably spend time in.

As a result of my efforts over the whole weekend, three rooms are significantly closer to being done. I put one of my mother's lamps out on the porch, and kept it open well into the evening hours; Honey loves it and it's going to be a great place for relaxin' and romancin' -- the latter assuming that one of these Earthquakes tips the world far enough off its axis to throw a woman into my lap!

*

Anxiety is still a factor in my life, especially on gray mornings like what we've been having lately. It doesn't seem to be focussed on anything in particular: I am an Equal-Opportunity Dread-er. The biggest factor really does seem to be the Sun, or lack of it. My moods and emotions are definitely impacted by whether or not Mr. Sun chooses to make an appearance, and it's getting more pronounced as I get older. The best remedy is simply to keep an eye on the windows, and when the sun does some out, to get out there and catch some rays, even if it's just for five minutes.

Are human beings nothing more than Portable Solar Panels? Some days it feels like it!

-- Freder.

Curse You, TCM!

Does Robert Osborne think that I don't have anything better to do than sit around and watch movies?

There was a good stretch over the past few weeks where I got a few things done, because TCM was running pictures that I'd seen before, or things that weren't so appealing that I was willing to take the time, or else just running the good stuff at an hour that didn't work for me. This week they could almost have been thinking, "Let's target that idiot up in Maine! He hasn't been watching for a while!"

First came So Evil My Love, with Ann Todd and Ray Milland, part of their tribute to Milland going on this month. It was a good contrast to The Uninvited; Evil being the operative word, Milland does it like a champ, making his seduction of Miss Todd credible enough that her own descent into evil takes on a level of inevitability. Todd gives a marvelous performance herself, going on a deep journey with some ups and a whole lot of downs. Her looks give her a natural advantage, as she has a kind of cold beauty, the Ice Princess ready to melt, given enough reason. Soon she's up to all manner of trouble, including murder for the sake of an undeserving love.

The ending is that rarest of things, a shock ending that really is shocking, both in its unexpectedness and its detached savagery. Had the same scene been filmed today, it would have been much more graphic, and far less effective. Leo G. Carroll (Mr. Waverly from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) gets the last word, and he ain't just whistling dixie, Missus.

Wednesday night was A Southern Yankee. I broke a rule for this one: Never come into any movie from the middle. Out of pure monkey habit, I am compelled to watch Survivor in all of its idiot incarnations, oftentimes marveling at the stupidity of the players while blithely ignoring the level of stupidity it takes to watch the thing. On Wednesday nights I don't even check the listings. Redemption Island, here I come! Just don't ever call it a "reality" show.

So I missed the first third or so of A Southern Yankee and now I want to watch the whole thing. I'd never seen one of Red Skelton's movies before, knowing him only from his decades on television (he was a favorite of my wee years) and stage. I think Red must be one of the hardest working comedians in the biz, but he is an acquired taste: with his facial ticks and his crossed eyes and his arms cocked this was and that, it's a little bit like the School of Schizophrenia. It was nice to see him not doing Clem Cadiddlehopper for a change, and this picture, while far from a classic, goes down easy and pleasing with some real laugh-out-loud moments. According to Osborne, Buster Keaton worked as a consultant on this picture -- so Red had good taste in advisors, although there's little of the trademark Keaton manipulation of reality on display.

The plot? I'm not sure that there was one. Anyhow, if you glanced at the poster above, you get the drift. Civil War spoof, just an excuse to hang gags on. Most implausibly, Red gets the girl in the end, or she gets him. I'm not sure which.

Then last night my plans for the evening were foiled when The Glass Key appeared on my menu at eight o'clock. Before last night I never knew that this had been filmed, much less twice, and the second time with such a great cast including Brian Donlevy, Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd and William Bendix (the kind of actor who, once you've seen him do comedy, is hard to take seriously in dramatic roles like this one). 

I don't think that The Glass Key is one of Hammett's more compelling novels, and that shows in this screen adaptation. It's hard to really fall in love with a movie when absolutely everyone in it is a villain, including Ladd, albeit a villain who goes through a kind of violent redemption in the hands of the Bendix character. But it does have all the hardboiled elements including a hero who can take a lot of punishment (and does) and a femme fatale capable of giving looks, as Raymond Chandler writes, that men "can feel in your hip pocket."

Actually the thing I found most remarkable about Veronica Lake was how very young she seemed. Before this, I'd only ever seen her in Sullivan's Travels. and although that picture was made earlier, somehow she looked as though she'd been around the block a few more times.

Apparently Ladd is one of the few actors who didn't mind working with Lake; whether or not that's true, they certainly do perform some chemical magic together on screen, and the sparks between them are the picture's main draw. Unfortunately, John Huston or Michael Curtiz didn't direct this, and it shows. Except for a few scattershot scenes, the movie lacks both the mood of The Maltese Falcon and the lightness of touch in The Thin Man series. 

It's interesting to watch the way violence is portrayed in The Glass Key, and I strongly believe that, nine times out of ten, this is the way it should be done. We never see the actual beatings in any great detail: the director inevitably cuts to reaction shots of the bystanders, and by watching their faces we are allowed to sense the brutality of the scene. Only the consequences of the beatings are shown in detail, and this is pretty much unflinching, as real as they were allowed to get in those days.

I liked all three of these pictures, although I didn't love any of them. I'm hoping that tonight the TCM programmers will opt to go with something along the lines of "Giant Gorilla Night." I've seen all the giant gorillas I need to see, and Getting Something Done tonight sounds like a good direction to head in!

-- Freder

Things that Make you go "GAH!"

As an alumni of C____ College, Cicely von Zeigesar came to speak and read from her books this week.

She has her fans among the student body, although, as it was pointed out to me by one of my student workers staffing the event, they all tend to look like the people on the covers of her books.

I wrote about von Z. a couple of weeks back just to say that the kind of people she writes about are exactly the kind of people that the movie Heathers so gleefully kills off! Which is kind of harsh -- sometimes I think all they really need is a good spanking.

It turns out that she never thought about becoming a writer and that Gossip Girl just dropped into her lap, was not even technically created by her. .Again, as reported to me by my student informant, the way von Z. tells it is that she was working in a cushy job at an Agency or a Syndicate where her duties were basically to do nothing all day. Until the time when an editor came out of his or her office, handed her a sheet of paper and said, "Write up an eight-page outline about these characters and send it to Little, Brown." At that time, there was "nothing on the market written for or about rich kids in the city," and this was the beginning of a loose concept to -- I'm already starting to gag -- fill that void.

von Z. had never written anything professionally before, and didn't know how to make anything up, so she sat down and wrote about the people she went to school with.

The publisher loved the presentation. The editor said, "Great, we'll hire a writer and start cranking them out." The publisher said, "No, we want the person who wrote the presentation to do it."

And another rich and famous "author" is born.

Do I need to tell you how galling this is to someone who worked for years to pursue a writing career and got nowhere?

She was literally at the right place at the right time. God waved his magic wand, said, "The world needs a series about arrogant, rich brats," and there you are!

But there is something worse I have to tell, and surprise! von Z. is actually the victim.

I am told by two separate students that the English Department, the very people who presumably invited von Z. to speak, have been publicly mocking her to their students both in the days before the event and during the event itself.

One professor was quoted as telling her entire class how awful the Gossip Girl books are and what a joke von Z. is. Which may be true -- in which case, why did you invite her? Presumably no one was holding a gun to your head.

During the event, while von Z. was talking (and talking and talking -- this was to be a co-reading, but von Z. took up the whole time), the English Department, I am told, sat behind her where they could not be seen, and snickered, and gestured, and mocked her literally behind her back.

I don't care how bad the books are, this is just bad form and not something that a college professor should stoop to. If nothing else, the woman is an Alum and as such the Professors should act as an example to the current students.

I'm sure that they are just as jealous of von Z. as I am, and that this is how it manifested itself. But for my part, I reserve the right to post honestly about her on my personal blog, but when she came to the store to sign books for me I damn sure took a respectful tone. It's what you do.

Robert B. Parker was another egregiously untalented writer who happened to be an alum of this college. I had the displeasure of typesetting some of his books when I worked in the production department of Thorndike Press. His novels were labor intensive because every one of them consisted of about a hundred and eighty-seven chapters of two pages each. I sell his books here, and I'm not a fan, and I tell people so, but that's the way I say it: "I'm not a fan." To go into detail and make fun of his work to another alum or anyone associated with the college would be inappropriate.

Rule number one: a professional person should behave like one. No matter what we think about her work, von Z. handled herself with grace (even inviting one of my students to visit her office in New York this summer) and the English professors could take a lesson from that.

-- Freder.

Not that kind of Vet. . .

Kennebec Vet has gone all Yuppity on me in the last few years. They used to be a real country Veterinary, owned by a couple of crusty old gents who did the best that they could and treated the animals well, but who didn't believe in mollycoddling the pet "owners," if you get my drift. A while back they were bought out by a significantly younger crowd, who moved the office into a flashier, upmarket location, spent a lot on money on bells and whistles like computer touch screens for the visitors to play with while they're waiting, and so on. The assistants are now called "techs" and they wear hospital uniforms and specialize in telling you obvious things in soothing tones -- it stops just short of hand-holding. Caring and Sharing is now as much a part of their agenda as rendering your Quat heat-free.

I hadn't been there since Mom died, and so L____, the only holdover from Kennebec Vet's pre-Valley Girl Days, got the news for the first time. It's funny how taking my little Honey to the Vet dredged up a lot of emotion that, obviously, hasn't been put all that far behind me.

I'd noticed that Honey was drooling a little bit in the past couple of weeks, but it didn't appear to be anything serious until this weekend, when a lower canine suddenly jutted out of her mouth and started causing her some trouble. I thought that it might just drop out (they sometimes do) and she'd be fine. On Sunday night she still seemed pretty normal; but by Monday night she was clearly in pain, and not eating anything even though she wanted to.

On the one hand, as Whitey had shown us a while back, the tooth-pulling procedure is fairly straight forward, and something that cats bounce back from pretty well. On the other hand, I've learned that surgery is surgery, and any time you take a cat to the vet (or a human to the hospital) Complications can arise, and you may end up not seeing your loved one ever again. Of course you should never think along those lines, so of course I did. The Quats are just about all that held me together during the last year, and Honey is extra special to me. In some ways I am still smarting from the last Big Tragedy, losing Honey would be another blow that couldn't be shaken off easily.

She cried and cried on my lap all through the (thankfully) short drive, but once we were inside and being cooed at by the Designer Vets she behaved like a regular sweetheart, even through indignity of having her temperature taken. A lot of time was spent explaining this and that to me (they now charge a walk-in fee -- when did that happen?), but the actual checking in her mouth was cursory, as I knew it would be, I knew where we were headed well before the vets did.

What surprised me was that they could take her right away, and that I wouldn't have to leave her overnight. That was a relief.

During the drive home it was my turn to cry and cry. Like I said, this opened up a whole fresh can of Emotions.

They ended up pulling ten teeth, and they didn't even need to suture her because they came out so easily. The operation was over by ten-thirty or eleven, and I picked her up on the way home from work. She was out of the anesthesia, alert, looking cute and obviously happy at being out of pain. Of course she cried and cried all the way home, but it was a sign of how well she's adapted to the new house that when I set her down she sniffed the air and went around checking it out, just to see that she was Actually Home.

She was eating soft food in nothing flat, purring and making her little rolling mew sound just as if nothing had happened to her.

By this morning the pain killer they'd given her had clearly worn off, and she was working her mouth a little bit. I gave her the antibiotic and the pain killer that they sent along with me (she's not the easiest quat to give medicine to, but not the worst, either); then I had to hie me into work.

It all meant another $340 hit on my credit card, but some things you just can't question. When it comes to my little Honey, who still wants to snuggle with me every morning, the Stepford Vets have me over a barrel.

A Common Theme

 

At the beginning of the DVD commentary for The City of Lost Children, Jean-Pierre Jeunet comes right out and says "This opening scene is perhaps a little confusing," and Ron "Hellboy" Perlman, who plays a major role in the film, chimes in with: "You think? And the middle and the end, too!"

It is confusing, but that's one of the things I like about the picture. The City of Lost Children forces the audience to pay attention and become an active participant in the story. Everything makes perfect sense in the end, but Jeunet and his then-collaborator Marc Caro don't spell much out: the audience must make some connections on its own.

In a separate interview, Jeunet expresses dissatisfaction with the film. "It has not enough story," he says, and reveals that the design and visuals were created first, forcing them to come up with a story to match. The only place where this is really evident is in the element of the oddball fanatic group known as The Cyclops: that the real villains of the piece are using them to kidnap street children barely justifies the amount of screen time spent on them. 

Perlman plays a type common to nearly all of Jeunet's movies: all grown up on the outside, but still a child on the inside. Even when he adopts two street urchins, he refers to them as "Little Brother" and "Little Sister." The Strong Man in a street fair, Perlman's character One is drawn into the story when his "Little Brother" is kidnapped by the Cyclops, literally ripped from his arms, and sold to a vile old man who lives on an oil rig and tries to regain his rapidly waning youth by stealing the dreams of the kidnapped children. 

As a two-person rescue team, One and his newfound "Little Sister" Miette (charmingly played by the young Judith Vittet) almost make a complete person: He provides the brawn and she provides the brains. 

Visually, it's pure Steampunk, although I'm not certain that word had been coined yet in 1995. But its theme is all Peter Pan, although Jeunet seems to be giving the opposite moral:  childhood should be clung to and coveted, because once it's gone you can't get it back, even by injecting yourself into a child's dreams. One remains marvelously pure and untarnished by the movie's end, while Miette defeats the villain by making the impossible journey.

Marc Caro was the designer and co-director. That the collaboration between Jeunet and Caro effectively ended here (Caro started out as co-director on Alien: Ressurection, then dropped out) is probably the best thing that could have happened to Jeunet. City of Lost Children is a wonderful movie of its type, but if he had continued to work with Caro, Jeunet could never have grown as director, and would never have given us his masterpieces, Amelie and A Very Long Engagement. Both films have the visual style and playfulness that's already present in City of Lost Children, but both also have the added elements of Romance, and Juenet's careful layering of plot and event.

*

I did not expect to be so strongly affected by D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation that I had to switch it off shortly into its runtime.  But then, neither had I expected the picture to be so myopically non-objective, so fawningly supportive of the Confederacy and all that it stood for.

The opening scenes depict a glowing, rosy dream of the Southern Aristocracy, a staunch declaration that it was a Better World, balanced in perfect harmony, the belles and the Southern gents swirling about in a glow of opulence and happiness while the merry Darkies danced their joyous Coon Dances, because they were so happy, so very honored and privileged, to be the chained and whipped and raped slaves of such Delightful People. Why, they even came out into the streets and cheered when the Gay Boys rode off to war, waving their hats and rattling their sabers, to defend the Nigger Right to being Enslaved.

Well, Mr. Griffith. Of course those were Halcyon Days. Your people drifted like junkies in a dream world of Privilege and wisteria -- that they built on the backs of an enslaved people. 

I'll never watch another Griffith picture again. It's one of those terrible contradictions of life that the man who so revolutionized an industry that changed the way the world lived and the way people think about themselves turns out to be a deluded, chest-thumping bigot at heart.

-- Freder.

Plunder

Yesterday I went out to the old house again for what I can honestly say was the next-to-last time. I wanted the rest of the ornamental rocks and I wanted the giant children's blocks in the little barn. No, I don't have the keys anymore (and anyway they have changed the padlocks). But I lived in that place for more than thirty-five years, I know its idiosyncrasies, if I want to get in, I can.

It took some of the sting out of the drive to take a different route. I needed to swing by my lawyer's house to pick up a sign that my mother had painted many years ago. I hadn't been able to fit it into my car on the last day.

This was a nice drive that ends along the south edge of C____ Lake. Pulling into her driveway I passed a sign reading WHAT PART OF NO TRESPASSING DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND? and the near-lifesize plywood cow that I had given J___ earlier. I found my sign standing outside of her garage. She wasn't at home. When I looked into her garden I got a rude surprise: there on the end of a metal pipe was my mother's large copper rooster, the rooster that had been her shop's trademark and was a feature in our front yard for many years.

This just didn't seem right. She must have bought it at the auction, because I certainly didn't give it to her. It's one thing to part with some of Mom's treasures and know that I'll never see them again; it's quite another thing to have a special one re-appear in a completely new context. Well, it was J___'s right to buy anything she wanted at the auction, of course, and I knew that she had bought several pieces. But this felt like a little bit of a slap in the face. I stood and looked at it longer than I needed to or should have. Then, metaphorically at any rate, I shrugged and got into my car. It's not something that can be helped.

I had another shock when I reached the old house. The nice copper mailbox that I was thinking, at the suggestion of my friend L____, of swapping out with the black one that my mechanical man is holding, had been completely destroyed.

This must have taken some doing. Even the very strong, swinging iron "arm" that the mailbox had been mounted on was mangled. This thing has withstood years of being battered and hit multiple times every winter by the town snowplow, so I don't believe it was that. Either it had been worked over by someone with a lot of determination, spite and elbow grease, or someone had crashed a vehicle into it.

I would have been crushed to see this if I were still living out there. Even so, it made me sad. But once again, it was something about which there was nothing I could do.

The yard seems quite strange without any quats in it.

I loaded up the rocks. This was not an easy job. When I took two of them the last time I was out there, I hadn't imagined how much I would like seeing them at the end of my walkway here at the new house. Technically, they belong to the new owners. Not any more.

I also took my garden hose. I'd been planning on leaving it for them, but . . . I changed my mind. As my friend BC has been known to say, "I bought it, I paid for it, it's mine."

Then I got into the barn. There were two old advertising umbrellas that I had forgotten about, but needed for the yard. There were some small things, a set of Donald Duck bowling pins, a children's book, that I decided not to leave behind. I filled a couple of the giant blocks with these, and loaded them into the car. I could only fit three of the blocks inside, they were so huge. So, two remain behind. I'll get them when I pick up the jailhouse.

Back home once again. I off-loaded everything, set the rocks out along the front sidewalk, made a run to the supermarket. It was such a nice day that my neighbors had pulled out their lawn furniture, and instead of working some more in the house I decided to do the same.

I made good on my promise to the wooden deer and fixed his antlers. Then I carried him around to the front of the house. The Panda Bear, The Turkeys, The Indian, The Concrete Dog and his Doghouse, the Gas-Cannister Pig, a large ornamental pot, the second concrete bird bath, the Boinger, trellises, the Chickens, a wooden Blue Jay, the Crocodile, all came out of the garage and took up places in their new home. The Indian needed his headdress remounted and the male turkey needed to have his head glued on, so I did that. I brought out the metal table and chairs and carried them up onto the deck. I had opened most of the downstairs windows, so the quats sat there watching me whenever I came around with something new.

By the time I got done with all of this I was so pooped that I wasn't good for much more than flopping onto the porch couch. I put my feet up on The Thurber Carnival. Patches, Honey and Pooky all came to join me.

Today hasn't been nearly so productive. I've been on edge, fussing with little things.

But there's still time.

-- Freder.

ADDENDUM: Accent on the DUM. I left out the best part of the story! As I was collapsed on the porch trying to gather up enough energy to, say, stand up, a couple of kids came walking down the street. They were probably between the ages of ten and twelve. As they passed my front yard, one of them jumped up onto the rocks and skipped from one to the other all the way to the end. I thought, "Yesss!!!" That's exactly what they're for! That's exactly what I used to do when I was their age! I'm glad I went to the trouble of carting them over to a place where they will see their proper use.

Also, I finished in the Halloween Room this afternoon. It looks great if I do say so myself. And I do. Now there's just  just the Studio and the Laundry Room remaining with piles of boxes. Oh, and the upstairs hall. Still, things are coming along.