Dang.

It is so hot where I live.  I just got home from an intermittently rainy, cool mountain town.  The sun is killin’ me, Smalls.

Maybe it’s me.  Maybe it is this head-cold I woke up with today.  But I am trying to “catch up” on posts and tweets and mail and email and life and Sandy-the-Dog time and I am dazed and and perhaps ~ a bit confused.

But I was wondering…?

Why does my house smell like some one else lives here after it has been shut up for a few days?  I swear it’s like some one was here in my absence.  It just didn’t smell like my house.  Not horribly bad necessarily, just not mine.

I signed up to follow Twitter accounts for the newspapers of every town I have ever lived in and then couldn’t take how many posts they generated, so that little idea only lasted about 16 hours.  I just do not need to know every single lightening sighting in Cedar Rapids, IA or traffic jam in Gary, IN every 3.2. seconds.  Some were so oppressive I remembered why I don’t live there anymore.

But I cannot seem to un-follow the Des Moines Register.  Because they twist my brain and I find them most fascinating.  I was born there.  Just when I went to unfollow them the other day, this:

First – there are no mountains in Iowa.  Then, I mean – who would shoot a stuffed mountain lion? And where does a homeless mountain lion hang out?  Obviously in Des Moines, I guess.  It is now at home at the police station – where there are many, many people with guns.  Be careful, stuffed mountain lion, not to get shot again.  :)

There was this newsworthy tweet:

I am not sure what the breaking point is?  Can you go 49 feet and be safely within the parameters of the law?  What is the cut-off for how far you can drive into a corn field before an arrest is made???  Because it seems like we all need to know this!  The article failed to mention whether or not the stuffed mountain lion had gone along for the ride for the arrest.

Then, of course, there are the arts in Des Moines.  I bet you had no idea you could do this with hay bales, did you?

Or this with actual pigs?

I’m just being silly.  I love Iowa.  I was born in Des Moines, lived in Davenport, Cedar Rapids and eventually Sioux City (where Stormie was born).  The fields there are gorgeously planted and groomed to perfection.  I used to buy corn on the cob, as fresh and sweet as is humanly possible, 18 ears for $1.  I am an Iowa girl.

But it is true, Denver does not have the same headlines you find there.  So I shall keep up with the Des Moines Register for now.

I need some cold medicine.

P.S. Sandy-the-Dog loved Jon and she lived to tell the story.  Good job, Jon-Jon!