This Old House

The history, charm, and character of old houses
is great. I can't imagine not living in an old
house. My house was built in 1924. Unfortunately,
I know next to nothing about the history of this
house. I am pretty sure no one ever died here
because I've never gotten the heebie-jeebies here.
Not that I believe in ghosts, because I don't.
However... at my old house there was one bedroom
that always gave me the shivies. I always thought
it was all in my mind, until... when I sold the
house my real estate agent told me that she didn't
like "that blue room". She "felt a presence" in that
room. I had never mentioned how I felt about
that room to anyone, so I thought it was a little
strange when she said something about it. Then
I had a cleaning lady come in and she refused
to clean that one room. She said there was
someone there and it scared her so she wouldn't
go in the room.

Yeah anyway, this old house of mine is falling
apart. The porch steps were really bad. The porch
decking was squishy.

I'm having new steps and decking built as I write this.
Sigh. All my dreams of any sort of vacation in the
near to somewhat near future have flown out the
door. I was hoping to go to Paris and Barcelona.
Humph. C'est la vie.

I built a lightbox. http://www.ourmedia.org/node/253481

Willy loves it.



I've had a bit of fun with it.




Have you ever wondered about the origin of "heebie-
jeebies"? It seems pretty certain that it was invented
about 1923 by the American cartoonist Billy De Beck. Its
first appearance, in a slightly different spelling, was
in one of his Barney Google cartoons in the New York
American on 26 October 1923: “You dumb ox — why don't
you get that stupid look offa your pan — you gimme the
heeby-jeebys!" De Beck is also known for coining other
slang, such as hotsy-totsy and horsefeathers.

This got me thinking about the words that have been
used and coined by The Simpsons.
D'oh!
Meh.
Okily-Dokily.
Yoink!
Jebus.

The way a wheeler trips in a hole

I took my daughter to a dog event. As much as I
didn't want to go, I did because my daughter really
wanted to go and I'm such a good mom. :D

It was at a dog park and it wasn't much of a wheelchair
friendly place. At one point we started to head over
to the opposite side of the park. All of a sudden I
was thrown forward and my back wheels were in the air
spinning to nowhere fast... Damn hole. Time slowed down.
Various thoughts ran through my head:

Oh shit, I'm going to do a face plant in some doggie
doo.

I hope I don't break any bones, scrape up my face, or
crack any teeth when I hit the ground.

This is going to be so embarassing. I hope people
don't freak out too much.

I hope this fall wil be as graceful as possible.

Why do I have my sweater, my daughter's sweater, and
free junk we collected on my lap as well as two dogs
at the ends of leashes while my daughter carried
nothing but the balloon hat on her head?

Why didn't I see that hole?

Gus is going to think it's really cool that I'm on
the ground and he's going to lick me like crazy.

And then, I realized that I was sitting there with my
front wheels in a hole and my back wheels off the
ground, but I was still in my chair. I threw myself
back, popped out of the hole, readjusted, picked up
the junk I dropped and looked around to find absolutely
no one running to my rescue. Only my daughter was
looking at me, and if her expression could talk it would
have said, "Would you hurry up?"

Having an iBOt would've made everything so much easier.

So then I was thinking about how now is the time in
my life that I would get the most use of an iBOT. In
just a few years she probably won't want to do these
sorts of things - especially with her stupid old mom.
A few more years and she for sure won't be interested
in doing those things with me. And then a few more
years and she'll be off on her own, at which point
my iBOT will be worn out. That's okay though because
I'll be living in some low income housing project and
I'll be staring at the four walls wondering what to
do next.