This morning Ozzie woke me up at 0530, a fairly certain indicator that we need blackout blinds for our bedroom. It’s getting light earlier and earlier and it’s pretty obvious that’s what gets him going. I learned a couple of days ago that Diane has been playing possum in the morning because Ozzie tries to wake her up first by walking up and down her body. She tuffs it out, however, knowing I’ll eventually get up and let him outside. Then she goes back to sleep for 3-4 hours. Tomorrow I’m going to try that and see what happens.

I slept on the couch until 0830, when Diane got up. She said Doug had called about golfing this morning so I went out and we teed off at 0945. I took Cedric’s Ping driver to see how well it worked, just for fun. I’ve never hit anything with a Ping club because I’ve never been in close proximity to one of them. Turns out it really does make a “ping” sound when you hit the ball just right. That’s not something I did with consistency, but I have to admit I did manage to whack a few tremendous drives. Straight, and everything. Very un-Jerrie-like.

After a fun, but bad round of golf with Junior and Doug, we went to Scappoose for lunch at Fultano’s Pizza joint. I knew Diane was going to be in Scappoose because she told me. That meant she would be at Goodwill, about 300 feet from Fultano’s so I couldn’t very well go to lunch there without alerting her. I’d planned to do that, anyway, but forgot my phone. So, I borrowed Junior’s to make the call. She agreed, of course. Who wouldn’t? We ate pizza and salad, and visited.

On the way home I stopped by Junior’s place to get some fresh dead clams so I could deliver them to Jack & Wynette. He’s always doing that because they really like dead clams. I was happy to do it for him because he was tired. Also, the story about how he got those clams was pretty exciting according to Doug. He told me that while hunting the tell-tale clam signs on the beach, Junior had to get closer to the ground. Too close, it turns out, because he was tumbled by a rogue wave. If he hadn’t been broadsided, the outcome may have been a little better, but he was. Doug said Junior rolled around in the water for a while, embarrassing him so he had to finally go get him and move him to higher ground. Doug said it wasn’t easy because Junior’s boots were full of water and he was hard to drag up the beach. But, he did it, and he salvaged the clams Junior had painstakingly gathered. That was the important part. So, sharing them with J & W has more meaning because Junior put his life at risk to capture some poor unassuming clams, trying to make a living in the sand. Now they will never see their babies again. If they had babies. Maybe they didn’t.

After visiting with J & W for a while I went home to dig out more stumps. It’s a grueling job, but it had to be done. So, I donned a new set of dirty clothes and went out to getter done.

The chore began in a normal manner but it was terribly tiring. Made me breath hard, like a pretty girl does, or going up the stairs. And I rid myself of a lot of excess sweat. Because of my tendency sweat at the sight of a pretty girl, I’m not allowed to watch any of those Victoria’s Secret commercials, or the Blazer dancers. Any dancers, actually. Especially those nearly naked ones on Dancing With The Stars. It’s a terrible affliction. Honest, it is.

When the sweat ran out, I had to find a better way to eliminate the stumps and decided to use the truck to pull them out. I found the towing strap in the garage, hooked it to the bumper hitch, wound it around a stump and wallah! Out it came, simple as could be, making me wonder why I didn’t think of that before. Such a simple solution, until the truck ran out of gas. I found a couple of gallons in a can in the garage, dumped it in the truck … and the battery was dead. It wouldn’t start. Being a believer in Karma, I took that as an obvious sign that it was time to quit.

So, I did. I quit, went out back and mowed the yard. That went fairly quickly because I didn’t bag it. I had to get it mowed because it’s going to rain tomorrow and I was prevented from mowing it completely because of events a few days ago. Don’t remember what events those were, but they kept me from mowing.

Once I was clean enough to enter the living room, we watched the new “24” show.

Jack’s back!