Monday’s Theme Music

Okay, that’s it, we’re takin’ it up a notch.

It’s 60 degrees F. Monday, 6/5/2023. Temp is gonna git up to 86 F today. This gradual climb by day of sunny heat is pleasant, acceptable. Heat isn’t crisping us to overcooked pizza crusts within a minute. Cool morning breezes descend from the mountains, whisper, it’ll be okay. We appreciate it.

Noisy out there. Air is lousy with work machinery noises. Don’t know where it’s from or who are the villians. Stirred me to arise — “Arise, arise” — and make flapjacks for breakfast. I always enjoyed the word, ‘flapjacks’, from childhood till now. The works isn’t easily pulled apart for morning. Not one of those expressions which you hear and immediately understand. See, like ‘pancake’, you have two familiars: pan and cake. Sounds already. ‘Flapjacks’ also have two familiars, flap and jack, but neither make me think food on their own merits. That doesn’t change by putting them together.

Got “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding” throbbing through the morning mental music stream. It’s a regular song in the rotation. Came to me while I was trimming bushes and doing odd jobs around the house. Far as I know, no particular activity or thinking was being done to cause The Neurons to say, “Hold up! We have the perfect song for the moment.” Nope, they just brought it on outta the blue. That’s how the mind sometimes works, hey?

While I was looking for a video to link, I saw another regular song I often hear in my head, “A Change Will Do you Good” by Sheryl Crow. As I listened to it for a bit, I saw that she’d done a version of Peace, Love, etc, so I dialed it up — yeah, I clicked on it. Her rendition became my choice for the day.

Be good out there. Be safe. Stay pos. Ima gonna pop down some coffee and go off with my wife to deliver Food & Friends. Then it’s on to writing, yardwork, housework, reading. Just finishing up reading Six of Crows. Really enjoying it.

Here we go. Let’s start with music and coffee. Cheers

June 5, 2023 0

June 4, 2023 0

The Writing Moment

He enjoys writing, especially science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction. Been entertaining himself with it on computer since he first bought a Kaypro in the 1980s and installed WordStar. Many of those stories are trapped on old floppy disks stored in a container in a closet in his home office.

He still uses a computer but MS Word is now the program, and all is saved on a hard drive regularly backed up. One feature in Word both helpful and bugs him is autocorrect. Making up words, planets, languages, names, of course, is fun. Autocorrect usually marks it as wrong and tries ‘fixing’ it for him. What’s weirdest is when it takes one of manufactured words and turns it into a real word which he doesn’t know. Always sends him to the net to see what that word means.

June 4, 2023 0

Frontfloof

Frontfloof (floofinition) – The animal who stands up to represent other animals as act as figurehead presenting their requests and complaints.

In use: “Three cats, four dogs, two birds, and multiple fish, amphibians, and reptiles, Lemon the goden retriever — named for her habit of stealing lemons and eating them — was the household’s unquestioned frontfloof and their respected enforcer. One woof from her brought treats out and ended fights and arguments.”

June 4, 2023 0

Sunday’s Theme Music

Happy National Cheese Day! Yes, it’s Sunday, June 4, 2023, which, as all know in the US, is National Cheese Day. Yes, America’s founders, Washington, Adams, Franklin, and the like, loved cheese. They regularly ate cheese while working with Jefferson on the founding documents. Jefferson practically lived on cheese during those days. Whenever he got stuck, someone would say, “Get Tommy some cheddar.” One of the reasons why we have problems with the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights was because of the Great American Cheese Shortage. They were trying to come up with the right words but ran out of cheese. Quoting T.J., he wrote in his journal, “I can’t think without my cheese. I crave colby so deeply that it plagues my dreams. Damn it all, when will we get more cheese?” Today’s conversations about gun rights may have been much different if they hadn’t run out of cheese. That’s also when the expression, “Cut the cheese”, was originated when someone passed gas.

I hope that cheesy tale didn’t curdle your spirit. Mozzarella with you, can’t stand a little weird humor? I know, calling it humor might be slicing it thin. Remember, just brieth and move on.

Yesterday went so well with the weather, we’re doing it again today. 60 F now, we have expectations to pop into the mid 80s F, a lovely summer prelude. More yardwork on the agenda. With all the late rain we had, the bushes and trees went nuts and need trimmed back.

Jimmy Eat World is in the morning mental music stream. I was taking in an eyeful of luscious full moon last night, recalling how, during cheese shortages, people looked up at the moon and saw cheese. “Oh, if only we could reach it,” they’d tell one another. “We’d have all the cheese we want.” Sometimes they built great edifices, like towers and pyramids, in an attempt to reach the cheesy moon, or climb the highest mountains. They’d come down from the mountains and people would greet them and ask, “Did you get some cheese?” But no; they usually came down empty handed, except one guy, who came back with some tablets. People were furious with him. “Tablets? We can’t eat those. We want cheese.”

Anyway, while taking in the moon, the night’s beauty took my breath away. From that, The Neurons began feeding different songs with the phrase, ‘take my breath away’, in it. There are a few, and my mind busied itself, eventually branching out to songs about breathing or with the word breath in them. Eventually, The Neurons rediscovered “Pain” by Jimmy Eat World from 2004. The song landed in the morning mental music stream and has been going ’round and around in it until now, when I free myself by offering it to others. Don’t know why, but that’s how it works.

Stay pos and carpe Sunday. Time for more coffee, don’t you think? Yes, The Neurons agree, it is. Here’s the music. Cheers

June 4, 2023 0

Saturday’s Wandering Thought

He bent to the bathroom sink to wash, brush his teeth, and shave. Movement made him stop. A small spider was trying to climb up the sink’s white porcelain surface. Each time the spider came within an inch of the top, he slid a few inches back down.

He put his finger out to help the spider. The spider darted back and slid all the way back into the basin. After a three-count, the climb back up was begun again.

He looked for something to use as a spider lift. But as he finally found something, he saw the spider was almost to the top again. He leaned closer to the arachnid. “Come on, you can do. Just think of yourself as the little spider who can. Tell yourself, I think I can, I think I can.”

The spider made it. After a pause — orienting himself or catching his breath? — the spider turned and marched along the counter top and on to another adventure.

June 3, 2023 5

June 3, 2023 0

FloofsNotes

FloofsNotes (floofinition) – 1. Abbreviated notes and pamphlets prepared and maintained by animals summarizing people, places, and events.

In use: “The stray didn’t have FloofsNotes so a local floof shared his dog-eared copy. Using it, they were able to find a house where the lady took her in so she could give birth in safety.”

2. Records or notes kept about animals as an aid to people’s knowledge about an animal.

In use: “Adopting two new rescue kittens, Karla immediately invested in a lab notebook to use as FloofsNotes to record the health, activity, and behavior of her new fur friends. They could come in handy if something happened later.”

June 3, 2023 7

Saturday’s Theme Music

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Sunshine and blue skies. Presently on the mid side of 60 F, up from 52 F overnight, we’ll be hunting the mid 80s before the sun skirmishes with the falling night and carries us into a new day.

It’s June and Saturday, June 3, 2023, for more exactitude. The cats are loving this weather, right? Mostly out there sleeping in part shade, part sun. Seeing them out there, and I drift through memories. Tucker has always been a little strange about doors. He goes to the linen door, coat closet door, garage door, pantry door. A drawn out merow is issued. His meowing is either very loud or barely a whisper. No midpoint for him. When it’s a loud meow, he draws out the sounds and employs several syllables.

I ask, “What? You want into the <insert location here>?”

Head nod (yes, by him), mumbling mew sounds, a head tilt at the door in question, his look shooting from it to me, back to it, conveying his desire.

Head shake (yes, by me). “Okay, buddy.” Sigh. Door is opened. He heads in for investigation, sometimes dwelling in wherever for fifteen to twenty minutes. He’s old now, a long-furred black and white stray who chose to stay with us, showing up with matted fur and bad teeth almost ten years ago, I think. Need to check the histories to know with certitude. Point is, these demands have been incorporated in his behavior since his first year with us.

The Neurons planted “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” into the morning mental music stream. 1966 Yardbirds song. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on lead guitars, I thought this song was so cool when I first heard it, one of those radio offerings that had me jumping for the radio and reaching for the volume knob. Never heard it much on the radio in the years since. Don’t know when I last listened to it. But this morning, walking out of dream sleep and into the other room to begin standard morning practices, the first lines broke out of memory and into conscious thought.

Meeting people on my way
Seemingly I’ve known one day
Familiarity of things
That my dreaming always brings

Happenings ten years time ago
Situations we really know
But the knowing is in the mind
Sinking deep into the well of time

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Wasn’t long after that before The Neurons delivered the song to a loop in my head. I think it’s a related-to-writing thing. I obsess over time, reality, and questions of what we know vs what happened vs what we think we know is one that in my novel writing. Memory is a mischief maker and history is written by the winners and then revised, leaving many of us floundering about it all. So here we be.

Stay pos. Coffee drinking has commenced. Big old cup is a quarter down already. Goes well with a cool summer morning on the patio, sunshine blazing down, cats washing in the green grass, jay yelling at us all from different perches as he surveys the yard and lands on chairs and trees. Could be a good day, you know?

Here’s the tune. Cheers