Bill Gramley and the Pickle

First a note on the art: Mr. Doobins turns 6 this week. The picture above is the one Sparkle Girl drew for the card she is making for him.

On to our story for the day.

Garnet was selling her art at a table set up at a community festival at Brookstown United Methodist Church. Artist Bill Gramley, who does pastels that I really like to look at, had the table directly behind Garnet's.

During lulls, we would visit, talking about whatever came to mind, throwing in an anecdote here and there.

Next time you see him, ask him to tell you about the time he stepped on a nail.

Somewhere along the way, we got off onto things you can eat with peanut butter - bananas, bacon.

Bill mentioned that he is fond of peanut butter and pickle sandwiches.

One day, when his grandson Evan, who was 7 at the time, was visiting, he tried to talk him into trying one.

"Nah," Evan said, "you can't trust a pickle."

The Queen of Comedy

Sparkle Girl and I are working on a book called "Sparkle Girl and the Fairy Note Mystery." It's going to be in the form of an illustrated diary. I'm not posting the entries related to the mystery to His Dogness & Friends but some of the other entries can be found in the archives.

The pictures are all Sparkle Girl's. We're working on the words together.

At the moment, the plan is for the book's cover to say, "By Sparkle Girl with hardly any help from Kim Underwood."

But that may change.

By the time the book is done, the cover may say, "By Sparkle Girl with only marginal contributions from Kim Underwood."

Whenever I write anything, I read it to Sparkle Girl so that she can tweak it as needed. (We do the same before I post anything to His Dogness & Friends that has her in it.)

The other day, as we were going through one of the diary entries, she added something that made me laugh.

"That's funny," I said.

"I know," she said. "That's my job - to add the comedy."