First a word of apology. If any of you are planning on attending an event at the Redmond Public Library today, it doesn\u2019t exist. That was listed in error, and as soon as the mistake was noted, we said so on the schedule. Believe me, I\u2019m sorry for the inconvenience. Better luck next time for all of us.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, Bill wanted to know what this week\u2019s blog would be about, and I told him I had no idea. For one thing, I was finishing the editorial letter corrections for By Reason of Insanity<\/em>. It\u2019s a good book, but it\u2019s about to undergo a name change. When I came up with the idea more than forty years ago, it seemed like a great title. Turns out, in the intervening years, several other authors arrived at that same conclusion. As a result, my By Reason of Insanity<\/em> is about to become something else, but at this point I don\u2019t know what. It\u2019s a baby without a name.<\/p>\n So today, with the soon to be former BROI in the hands of my editors, I went out to get my daily steps by walking laps around the pool deck. Fall is coming on in Seattle, so over the last few days I\u2019ve seen several creepy-crawly slugs outside, a number of which, for no apparent reason, have determinedly set out to cross my walking path\u2014at a snail\u2019s pace, as it were.<\/p>\n As soon as I saw one today, my head immediately sent me down a rabbit hole of all those age-old jokes about “Why did the chicken cross the road?\u201d Why were the slugs crossing the pool deck?<\/p>\n As I said, it\u2019s fall. Those fat, brown, slow-moving slugs bear an uncommon resemblance to fallen brown leaves, so as I set out, I gave myself a talking-to, telling my walking self to \u201ckeep my eyes peeled.\u201d I\u2019ve inadvertently stepped on one of those on occasion, and removing a deceased slug from the bottom of my Skechers is almost as difficult as getting rid of doggie-you-know-what!<\/p>\n As soon as those words about \u201ckeeping my eyes peeled\u201d came to mind I asked myself, where did that term come from? Presumably it means keeping your eyes wide open, which I did, but that little mental trip reminded me of my mother. She was full of songs and funny little verses which could send us kids into gales of laughter.<\/p>\n \u201cAin\u2019t we crazy\u201d included a verse about <\/p>\n \u201cWhile the organ peeled potatoes And then there was the one that went this way:<\/p>\n “Can you sit in the shade of the palm of your hand Those are thoughts that ran through my mind when I was puzzling over the need to keep my eyes peeled.<\/p>\n Then I began considering about what purpose slugs serve in the greater universe, so I came inside and looked them up. As far as I can tell, slugs don\u2019t really serve a higher purpose. They exist. They reproduce. They have thousands of tiny teeth which they use to devour rotting vegetation which makes them good additions to compost heaps, but with thousands of teeth, I suppose we should all be thankful that they aren\u2019t any larger than they are. The sticky trails they leave everywhere they go mark their territory telling other slugs that a particular area is already fully occupied. <\/p>\n Which, as far as I can tell, is pretty much all you need to know about slugs other than to try to keep from stepping on them. <\/p>\n By now you\u2019re probably wondering, \u201cIf this is the way her mind works, with one thing leading to another, how the hell does J.A. Jance write books?\u201d<\/p>\n Trust me, I\u2019m wondering the same thing. But now, I think I\u2019ll be a slug-abed and go take a nap. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First a word of apology. If any of you are planning on attending an event at the Redmond Public Library today, it doesn\u2019t exist. That was listed in error, and as soon as the mistake was noted, we said so on the schedule. Believe me, I\u2019m sorry for the inconvenience. Better luck next time for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-OW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3159,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158\/revisions\/3159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLard was rendered by the choir
\nWhile the sexton rang the dishrag
\nSomeone set the church on fire
\n\u201cHoly smoke\u201d the preacher shouted
\nAs his wig flew in the air.
\nNow his head resembles heaven
\nFor there is no parting there.<\/p>\n
\nOr beat on the drum of your ear?
\nCan the calf in your leg eat the corn on your toe?
\nThen why not raise corn on the ear?<\/p>\n