Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Just finished with our monthly food and friends deliveries. Run by the county, it’s a thing where hot meals with milk and dessert is delivered free for people’s lunch. They don’t need to be sick nor elderly; they just need to have a home, even if it’s temporary. Clients can chose to pay, if they’re able. Monday-Friday are the delivery days. Clients can decide which days they want it. Frozen meals can be added to cover holidays and weekends. My wife and I do one route, but it’s one of many routes, and two of many volunteers. One friend does it twice a week, every week. Respect.

I always end up wondering how people reached this point in their lives and what were they like before. I wonder about their relationships, marriages and divorces, careers and schooling, where they were born, how they came to be here in Ashlandia, and if they have family. Ours is a small route, normally nine to fourteen people. Some are temps but others have received food assistance for years. When their name is dropped from the ranks, we wonder what happened to them. Sometimes we learn, and it’s what’s expected, they passed away. Other times, they’ve gone into assisted living somewhere, hospice, or moved in with family.

I’ve seen others can do this path. Most of us in the US are on it. My mother-in-law’s route was through Parkinson’s Disease. Then a fall really undermined all aspects of her coping mechanisms, leading to a long demise. While Mom and her BF don’t have meals deliver, visualizing a day when that happens is easy. He’s in his nineties, she’s in her eighties. Both have health issues but cope. Still, they’re declining.

I even see myself on that road. I’ve suddenly gained weight. Energy level has dropped. Lethargy has risen. I see a practitioner, and they sympathize but empathize, I’m in good health. Hypertension and enlarged prostate is all that afflicts me. What I’m feeling is just the general demise of aging. It surprises me because that’s not what I’m used to being like. I have a hard time accepting it.

I imagine all the rest are the same, wondering, what in the hell happened to me?

July 10, 2023 0

Mootday’s Theme Music

Cool morning. Love the smell and feel of cool mornings like we’ve been going through. This one twitches my senses in a mildly different way, coming at me with a watery smell to it. Know what I mean? The cool air and smell reminds me of Korea. Not Seoul, but out in Pusan or Osan. Seoul, like many large cities, often just smell like food and vehicle exhaust to me. Not a great smell.

It’s Mootday, July 10, 2023. Moot, because it’s uncertain how it’ll turn. Most days start moot. Even by the end, they feel moot, with some things accomplished, some small personal victories to be celebrated, but more things just hanging over your head.

Current temperature in Ashlandia, where the air is clear but the trees are dying, is 67 F. Yes, the Douglas Fir trees are dying. Infestation and the stress and strain of drought are given as a reason. You feel for them, but all we can do is cut the down and clear them out because they increase our fire danger.

It’ll be in the mid to high eighties today, just as it was yesterday.

The Neurons have installed “Heat of the Moment” by Asia in my morning mental music stream. It might be associated my thought that the morning air reminded me of Korea. I went to Korea for the first time in 1981, and visited the country several times during the next several years, either on vacation or on Air Force business.

Stay positive and make the best of the moments. Thread them together into a good day. Coffee helps me in that goal. I’m gonna have some now. Here’s the music. Cheers

July 10, 2023 0

Another Space Traveling Dream

I dreamed again I was in my home. It’s the third dream in the series. I’m my current age, appearance, and so on. I’m aware that my house, with its yard, has been lifted from the earth and is traveling through space. Like before, I have a cutaway scene where I see this.

As in the prior dreams, my windows are open. Space’s darkness is beyond their screens. Unlike the previously experienced dreams about this, I’m unconcerned, because I know there’s some kind of protection around the house and yard. We are safe, traveling through space.

I’m at my desk, typing on my computer. I’m aware this time that a man is present. Off to my right, he’s not a shadow but is in like a shadowy orb. I don’t know who he is. He doesn’t bother me; he just seems to be a present to know. I also understand that he’s not grounded but hovering in the air. I think about speaking to him, but I don’t. I just continue typing.

Dream end.

July 10, 2023 0

July 9, 2023 1

Floofnoulli’s Principle

Floofnoulli’s Principle (floofinition) – A principle of floof culture which states that the increase in a human’s stealthiness when they’re preparing, getting, or consuming food directly relates to its tastiness or desirability, and a floof must therefore use more energy to try to get their share of the food as quickly as possible.

In use: “Although apparently asleep, Daisy heard the subtle kitchen sounds. Instantly recalling Floofnoulli’s Principle, she leaped from sleeping position to dead run, sliding to a stop in the kitchen in front of Lisa, who was just about to eat a potato chip.”

July 9, 2023 0

Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s Mood: weary

Q: Is weary a mood?

Sunday, July 9, 2023, has landed on us. Fact of the day: the 14th Amendment was adopted on this day in the US back in 1868. Part of the amendment was dealing with reconstruction, black voters, and the Dred Scott decision. Northern Republicans preferred that blacks not be allowed to vote in the structure and demographics established before the Civil War because southern states would have gained substantial power, creating its own set of problems. These southern states just fought a war to leave the union, and their loss was going to be rewarded with more power? No, that didn’t fly. Hence, the 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” And off we went, all fixed, right?

Yeah, it’s been a helluva merry-go-round. There are always groups against others having equal rights under the law. More recently, GOP legislators have led creative ways to make voting a problem for the people who don’t vote for them, citing the US Constitution. It reads, in part, “When in the course of human events, political leaders decide they don’t like what people are reading, or fear that some other race will come to dominate, or don’t like it when people declare themselves to be some other gender or prefer a sexual orientation other than what’s spelled out in the First Amendment of the Bible of the United States, then that party and its political leaders have the right to pretend that in the name of freedom and God, they have the right under said document to restrict others from doing these things because gosh, darn, those things are different than what they grew up with, and they don’t have to take it, and have the right to cry and throw tantrums about anything they don’t like until they’re blue in the face, just like Jesus would do.”

And by using that authority as provided and intended, and wholly in the Founding Fathers’ spirit, that’ll fix everything. Everyone will be happy, and peace will rule, and the United States will be Great Again, #1 in everything in the world, which can be achieved by just pretending that other countries don’t really exist, and if they do, they can’t be as good as America because they’re not America.

Whew, glad that’s all cleared up.

It’s cooling this week. 68 F now, the mercury won’t rise to 90 F today. Fine by me. I enjoy cooler hot summer days. I should be happy, then, because the weather conjurers have proclaimed that our high temps will be in the 80s most of the coming week. Side note: we’ve yet to reach 100 F this year in Ashlandia, where the sidewalks are cracked and the people are pissed off. Hope I haven’t jinxed us by mentioning it.

The Neurons have plugged Elton John’s cover of “Pinball Wizard” by The Who into the morning mental music stream. The Who song came out in 1969, part of the rock opera, or ropera, as we say in these days, called Tommy. I was thirteen, and just loved that song with its story of a blind kid being a pinball champion, a story backed by dramatic guitars, swooping bass lines, and crashing drums. A few years later, a movie was made of the album, Tommy, and Elton John was selected to sing the vocals on “Pinball Wizard”, and Bob’s yer uncle.

Stay pos, keep a sense of humor, and lead us not into temptation. I’ve had coffee, thanks, but do help yourself to some. Here’s the music. Cheers

July 9, 2023 0

July 8, 2023 0

Sa’day’s Theme Music

Talk around the coffee table yesterday was that everyone wants to go see Asteroid City. Terrific cast. Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks. If you’re a Wes fan, critics suggest you’ll like the film. If you’re not his fan, you might want to pass. We are his fans, so we might go. The subject is in the air. Don’t know where the currents will take it.

It’s Sa’day, July 8, 2023. Lots of room left in July at this point. Summer has slowed for us here in Ashlandia, where the day gets hot and the nights get cool. 66 F now, we’re expecting 92 around our homestead by mid-aft. I miss the annual blueberry pickin’. It would’ve already been done, and we’d have pints of fresh blueberries in frig and freezer. Some baking would’ve been done. But the drought and wildfire smoke killed it two years ago. Too hot, too dry, then too smoky. All conspired to take production down. Bushes died, and COVID took the heart out of it for the folks running it. Gone are those 6:30 arrivals at the gate, sipping hot coffee in cold mountain air as the sun pulls itself clear of the mountains and turns on the heat. Gone is the cold feel of wet berries in your fingers and the hunt down the rows for a bush that speaks to you. Gone is the hushed laughing and gossiping, more expected in a church than in a field picking berries, but all seemed to approach it as a solemn event. Well, almost all. There seemed to be one each year who had to be talking loudly on their cell phone while picking berries.

Thinking of those things reminded me of “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders. Released in 1982, it’s about change. I’d been discussing change with others on a previous evening. I’ve seen change in Ashlandia, a shift in priorities, the decline of traditional events, the rise of doings that don’t matter to us. Our connections with the city and area are loose and breaking. We’re drifting away from it and no longer feel like we’re a part of it. Not as we were before.

I thought of Mom’s place in Penn Hills, PA, after that conversation. Her place has changed through the years, certainly. New siding, porches replaced, etc. Yeah, those physical changes took place, but its essence has remained steadfast. That’s what disillusions us with Ashlandia: its essence seems to be changing. Anyway, Les Neurons wedged “My City Was Gone” into the morning mental music stream, so here we are.

Well, stay pos, and muster the courage and strength to do it again. I’m building my energy to get out there with a strong dose of coffee. It’s what’s for breakfast, along with oatmeal. Here’s the music, and awaaayyy we gooo.

Cheers

July 8, 2023 2

A Space Dream Again

I dreamed again that I was in my home office but my home and yard had been lifted intact to travel through space. I dreamed that, as I had done in real life, I awoke and looked at my open windows. For a moment, in the dream, I worried that my windows were open to the vacuum of space and that all would be sucked out and destroyed. Then I knew, no, a bubble around the house enclosed and protected me. It provided me air and kept me and my household and its members safe even as we flew through space. Stepping to the window, I raised lowered my blinds and gazed out as the house rushed through black space, destination unknown.

I woke up happy.