Month: August 2017

The Nagging Fitbit

I’ve been going under during the last few days, consumed by smoke and heat. Hard hit with a sinus infection that induced impressions that my head and eyeballs were due to burst open with an alien presence, I had no energy and needed rest. Sleep, though, contemptuously dismissed my efforts.

My Fitbit, however, didn’t care.

The Fitbit doesn’t have an atom of empathy. Noticing that I was walking less on Friday, it said, “Come on, let’s step,” in its usual friendly manner that morning. By the late afternoon, its tone shifted to, “Are you going to move, you lazy slob?” On Saturday, it was asking, “Why do I bother to count? You’re not doing anything. Come on, get up.”

Instead of pestering me once every hour, it took to dinging me about every ten minutes. “Are you going to do anything today?” it asked with a sulking cadence.

“I told you, I’m not feeling well,” I answered it.

“So you’re not going to do anything.”

I popped Advil, and then gargled with warm salt water before answering. “I’m going to try to do something, just not right now. I’m having some tea first.”

“Malingerer,” it muttered back. “I want to go out.”

I put it on the cat. “There you go.”

“Hey,” the Fitbit said. The cat shook it off its paw with an angry, offended look. Neither of them were happy with me.

At three thirty that afternoon, I left the house to walk to a friend’s place to assist them with a computer problem. The weather was remarkably cool, and the smoke had dispersed enough to clearly see the Grizzly Peak across the valley. We experienced a temp spike while I was there. Coming home, it was much hotter, and I was much sweatier.

“Oh, you’ve at four miles,” my Fitbit said. “Why, you’re an Olympic athlete.”

There were no fireworks from the Fitbit that night. It settled into a sullen silence. Finally getting a few hours of sleep, I renewed my determination to reach my goals today. I noticed that the Fitbit hadn’t said anything.

“What’s the matter?” I asked it.

“I’m feeling a little under the weather,” it replied. “Do you mind if we just stay in today?”

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Meownemy

Meownemy (Catfinition): A feline’s sworn nemesis, whose appearance immediately triggers a high (and noisy) state of alert. These relationships often defy logic, and are embedded in the murky world of felmotions.

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Tailtalk

Tailtalk (Catfinition): The way cats communicate with humans via a flexible appendage on their rear.

In Use: Jade was a tailtalk queen, easily and especially demonstrating her displeasure via her tail. This made her an easy mark. When she was asleep, we would draw close and whisper her name. She would respond with a few brief tail tip flicks – “I hear you.”

Increasing our volume, her tail responded with more movement. So it was repeated until we said, “Jade,” and her tail wildly beat, demanding, “WHAT?”

She always had the last word in this. Waiting until we were soundly asleep, and then leaping from the dresser to the bed at three in the morning.

Her tail was up with happiness during that time.

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Today’s Theme Music

I awoke with, “Hey mister tambourine man, play a song for me,” streaming through my head. It’s a mellow classic, innit? Yeah, and much too mellow for me that morning. I’ve not really been a mellow music man. I prefer something harder, with screaming vocals, slashing guitars, and a hailstorm of drumming.

Ah, what better than “Highway Star,” by Deep Purple, from the “Made In Japan” live album. It’s not soulful, but elemental, and probably in the top five on my fave list of live rock albums, due to the sentimentality of who I was when I first heard it. I had it on eight track, and wore that mutha out. It became first, comical, and then, irritating, as the eight track slowly lost its fidelity and developed lots of warble, wow and flutter. It was, like, woof. Eventually, I quit listening to it, but once CDs came out over a decade later, I hunted down a remastered copy.

Listening to it, I’m back in high school, with the lights off and the music up, riding a sonic wave.

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The H.S. Football Dream

I dreamed I was a teenager. It was bright and sunny outside, and I was inside a well-lit building. I learned that my high school football team was short of players. Coach Thomas came to me and asked if I’d play. I’d quit the team the year before, after an accident.

Pleased, I quickly agreed. He gave me some instructions. A game was starting soon. I needed to get there fast. “Don’t let me down,” he said, in a joking but serious style.

I raced to prepare. People were giving me things. It took longer than expected to get ready. A player – a real-life buddy from high school – came in. “Coach Thomas sent me in to see what’s going on. You need to get out there.”

I looked out a window. From there, I could see and hear things happening. Part of that was Coach Thomas talking to the ref, who was warning Thomas, “You need to field a team.” Coach Thomas was irritated and impatient as he asked for more time, insisting, “He’s coming, he’s coming. I need him.”

“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying,” I told the player. He left.

I don’t know what I needed to get. It seemed like that’s an extension of confusion I felt in the dream. Finally, I was out there, with the team, and in the line-up, nervous and uncertain. I had a piece of paper with instructions in my hand. The ref made me give that up. A player beside me, Daryl, told me he’d help me know what to do. A whistle blew as I jumped offsides. I wasn’t pleased with how it was going. I lined up again in a different position. The game commenced without any significant highlights, except players would suggest things to me. I’d do those things, and my confidence grew.

That’s how the dream entailed. I took three lessons from it.

  1. Don’t sweat the mistakes. You’re going to make them but you can overcome them.
  2. You have more to learn.
  3. Others will help.

A very positive dream to remember.

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Shopping

I’d just been thinking, if a sales person asked me if I needed assistance, I would answer, “Yes, I’m taking up cross-dressing. Do you have suggestions on what I should wear?”

Running into another interrupted my innertainment. In the Eileen racks at Kohl’s in the women’s department, we were intent on the garments being offered, ironic, as we’re both sixty something white men. Yet, bang went our heads.

We drew back, rubbing the afflicted areas and gazing at one another. “Oh,” I said. “Fancy running into you here.”

Shrugging, smiling, and still rubbing his head, the bespectacled bearded fellow replied, “Yes, you never know what’ll happen in a dream.”

Then he went on.

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Today’s Theme Music

The music today is a product of a triple coincidence. There could be some causality, but it might just be linkage.

I’ve been streaming the song, “I Will Buy You A New Life.” It’s part of my mental shuffle set. I like the lyrics, and often sing or hum it to myself as I meander through activities. Everclear members wrote the song, and the band released it back in nineteen ninety-seven, a year that puts thoughts in pause to reflect on how much time has sneezed by since that song came out. Everclear had a number of terrific albums with fab songs like “Santa Monica”, and “Father of Mine,” but it’s amazing it’s been twenty years since I was driving around Half Moon Bay listening to them, dude.

Please, join me and observe a moment of silence for nineteen ninety-seven.

Zoning back into this post, the three coincidences that lands the song in the august position (get it?) as today’s theme music is one, I was singing it several times this week; two, Everclear headlined at the Jackson County Fair last month; and tres, I read that Everclear, from Portland, Oregon, is the state’s highest grossing musical act ever. With that power of three pushing the nomination, victory was assured.

 

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