Thursday’s Theme Music

A sublime rollout of sunshine woke the valley at 7:21 this morning. True, large swaths of the valley’s population were already awake or now retiring to sleep. Depends on your species and intentions, doesn’t it?

October 13, 2022, has arrived, a Thursday in the common era. A mountainous presence lowered the air’s temperature to a pleasant mid-fifties Fahrenheit overnight. Our meteorologic oracles say temperatures will climb to the high eighties. They said the same yesterday but our sector never saw anything above 81 degrees F. Not that I’m complaining. It was coolish but sunny, comfortable weather for short sleeves and short pants. The lower temperature seems to be a collateral impact from the Cedar Creek smoke veiling the sun. Not too smoky, it’s a moderate haze that manages to pull our air quality to less than ideal level, 63. The solar system’s movement will bring us sunset at 6:32 PM.

Now it’s up to the daylighters to decide what to do in this time and environment. I have a variety of chores and actions needed to catch up with modern demands, which is often known as ‘paperwork’ even when it comes in electronic form. We had a celebratory beer for our departed member, Chris, and planned our annual celebration of being which will be in November this year. Paella is the featured dish.

Of course, I’m sitting here as sunshine completes its morning takeover thinking, okay, it’s time to do this and that. Time to get cleaned up and dressed. Time to make some phone calls, check some emails, read some blogs, write some fiction. Time to watch the Jan 6 hearings, time to —

Well, the point has been driven in, hasn’t it? It was ‘the time’. The Neurons leaped onto the words. “Oh, oh, oh,” they shouted. “Here’s a song about that.”

They began playing “It’s Time” by Imagine Dragons from 2012. That delivered me to now, where the song continues rolling through the morning mental music stream. And here I am.

Yes, the coffee is brewed and ready to drink. It’s time to get on with the day and get things done. Stay positive, test negative, and carry on with what you need to do. It’s time, don’t you know.

Cheers

October 13, 2022 0

October 12, 2022 0

Wednesday’s Wandering Thought

The organized chaos of commercial air travel reminded him of several things. Number one, always read the fine print. When he bought his ticket, he also bought a seat for a few extra dollars, reasoning, he’d never seen anyone standing up for an entire flight. What he didn’t see anywhere in the seat description was that the seat he selected didn’t recline. He found that out the day before, when he reviewed his flight details.

Naturally, he entertained getting a seat for the five plus hour flight. Several were available for an extra $130. Being one that often spites himself to prove a point, he refused to buy one.

He was sure, though, someday the airlines would figure out a way to start charging for air.

October 12, 2022 1

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Sunshine skirts the trees and licks the sky into fresh blue shades. Familiars remind me that I’m home. People say, oh, you made it, as though the standing in lines and sitting in seats that frame commercial air travel in this era was a slog. The slog is behind the scenes, where they’re building and maintaining the machines and coordinating the actions. I’m just a passenger on that plane, just as I’m a passenger on starship Earth.

Sunrise in Ashland today came over us at 7:20 AM. Cool mountain air, measured at 54 F, put a shiver in my body. Gonna be 88 F, the weather wizards say. Smoky haze covered the valley from the Cedar Creek fire further west in the state. Not heavy smoke but enough for you to see it’s there, a reminder of the fire’s existence. Sunset, they tell me, will be 6:34 PM.

Being home is a comfort. Having my wife chatting about all she’s done and is doing and is to do brought me into the groove. Tucker and Papi did their feline duties, purring welcomes, permitting me to show my affections through liberal scratches of their ears, heads, and backs.

Traveling was the mix of fun, weariness, anticipation, and frustration that I’ve come to expect. Being in flight, taking off before sunrise and then having the sun chase us down over the Rocky Mountains delivered plenty of thought fodder. As you know, many sings exist about traveling, aircraft, flight, and sunrise. Plenty for The Neurons to say, oh, there’s a theme song and stick it in my mental music stream. But I found myself watching people, splitting time between clothes, shoes, body language, and faces. Out of watching faces, The Neurons pulled up “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” by Pearl Jam. A song released six million years ago or more, it tells of a woman struggling to remember another’s name, wishing to say hello, and failing. The Neurons were right to pick it up off of the organic reflections generated from my visit home, to places that were and now aren’t, and faces filling with aging’s shifts.

So here we are. Cats are fed, breakfast is eaten, coffee was brewed, its scent inhaled, its pleasant bitterness introduced to my tongue as another fresh experience. Stay pos and test neg, and do the vaccines needed to overcome and move on. I’m with you there.

Here’s the tune. Hope you can enjoy your Wednesday and build on it. Cheers

October 12, 2022 5

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Early dark thirty. Far before the sun’s scheduled arrival after seven. I’m waiting for my sister to pick me up and convey me to the airport. I’m always depending on my family and their kindness. She is one of the best.

It’s Tuesday, October, 11, 2022, exactly, without planning, one month since my arrival in Pittsburgh. Mom was in the hospital when I arrived, fighting COVID as it attacked her heart, lungs, and everything else it could lash out at. Nurses told my sisters it was very possible that Mom may not survive. It was one of the worst COVID cases they’d seen since the pandemic’s start for that hospital staff. Besides COVID and fluid in her heart and lungs, her appendix had a perforation and was pouring poisonous material into her body. Her pacemaker was only functioning at 20%. Things looked ugly.

She fought back and came out of it. Now she’s home, recovering, rehabbing, and I’m going home. She is struggling with bouncing blood pressure with a diastolic dropping below 100 too often. She’s on meds to promote good blood flow, keep her blood pressure at a healthy level by lowering it because of what she endured in the hospital, when it was skyrocketing. Now they’re backing those meds off, readjusting them, but her blood pressure is erratic. That’s a concern.

Other than that, she’s recovering her strength and balance, eating well, and so on.

My work here isn’t done but life dictates other needs, so, here I go, back across the country, back home.

It’s a travel day, in the car for thirty minutes, airport for two hours, aircraft for five plus, another hour in another airport, another two hours in a second aircraft, then in a car to reach home, an eleven-hour trip. That’s much better than the pioneers, and not as hazardous.

I feel like a little bit of a basketcase dealing with Mom as I hear her tell me one thing and bend her words so it doesn’t seem as bad when she’s dealing with her medicos and my sisters. Irritating as hell to be honest; makes me feel like an unreliable witness. But alas, these things are not within my control, so I let them go like the air from my lungs.

However, The Neurons jumped all over those feelings, dumping “Basketcase” by Green Day into the morning mental music stream (trademark pending – not really, but it feels like it should be added). So here we go.

My ride is here. Stay pos and test neg. I’ll try to do the same. Here we go. I’ll have coffee at the airport, thanks. Cheers

October 11, 2022 0

October 10, 2022 0

Floofclamation

Floofclamation (floofinition) – 1. An animal’s takeover of a place, activity, item, or food.

In use: “Loudly growling, the tiny kitten made the floofclamation that the chicken leg was hers.”

2. Orders given to an animal.

In use: “Helplessly and, she felt, hopelessly, Kerin told her dog not to jump over their six-foot privacy fence, but as soon he was released, he leaped over the fence and then back, as if telling her what she could do with her floofclamation.”

October 10, 2022 0

October 10, 2022 0

Monday’s Theme Music

Monday sprang into action, moving with balletic grace, like River Tam going after reavers.

Yes, it’s Monday! October 10, 2022, for those checking schedules and appointments, the day of the week generally engraved with a moment to see what we have going on in the coming days. I take air travel for a thousand, Alex.

Pittsburgh’s fall finds another cool morning, 45 degrees F with broad and full sunshine. The morning has been building its structure since sunrise kissed the area at 7:26 AM. Temperatures will kick up into the 60s. No rain today. Planetary rotation will shut down daylight at 6:46 PM. Back at home, it’ll be 84 degrees and smokey.

Yesterday’s morning delivered a pleasant interlude. It’s my daily habit to take a cuppa hot joe onto the front porch in the early AM to breathe the air and admire the world. When I stepped out yesterday, a grazing doe across the street raised her head and greeted me. Two chipmunks and a squirrel dashed away, and a ground hog scurried for safety. I regretted interrupting their moments, but the deer returned to her business and the rest drifted back a short while later. Later, the squirrels and chipmunks had some kind of race going on in the backyard. Don’t know if they were the same characters that I saw in the morning, though.

Mom pulled The Neuron’s attention. She was talking about what music she’d like at her service after her demise. One of the songs is “I Call Your Name” by The Mamas and the Papas. She’s been having Alexa play it at least once a day, singing along with it. Naturally, The Neurons became enthralled with it. Mom and I talked about the song. We both remembered watching it on The Ed Sullivan Show. So The Neurons pushed it into my morning mental music stream, fitting, since it’s my last day here. That show episode is available on Youtube, so here it is.

Mom would have been in her early thirties back then, less than half of my current age.

Stay pos, test neg. Yes, I need coffee, how ’bout you? Mom’s home is a decaf zone. My BIL bought me this coffee when I was COVID isolating. I’m brewing the very last grounds today. Perfect timing, right?

Here’s the music. Have a fine one. Cheers