Thursday’s Theme Music
Mood: committed
Thursday, October 19, 2023, slid into its slot. Indian summer has re-commenced in Ashlandia, where the battles over how to help the homeless still rage.
With a sky full of sunshine and a wind full of promise, it’s 72 F right now. Forecasters assure us that our temperature will achieve the low to mid 80s today, a solid complement to the blue sky and fall foliage.
Had a stray cat encounter at home last night. I saw something wink past the front door windows. Investigation was demanded.
I opened the portal to see. In trotted a white and gray cat. An orange splash marked their back like an island in that white sea while its thick, bushy white tail waved like a friendly neighbor.
The cat seemed healthy and friendly. Without a mew, it worked through the house, exploring everything. Some nibbles of kibble were taken. A lengthy investigation of the kitty litter zone followed.
We were concerned. Was this cat lost or cast off? I’d never seen the cat in our neighborhood. That’s limited in how meaningful that is, because I have a limited view of the street and general area. It’s also possible that the cat lived in one of the nearby residences and never got out, but now had, and was confused.
Anyway, we couldn’t keep them. Our male cats barely tolerate one another. They never tolerate any outside cats. The sole exception to that was the late Pepper. A dark tortie, she carried herself with a majesty that asserted royal privilege. She also didn’t hesitate to hiss and swat, should any other feline venture too close. Pepper seemed to make peace with all, eventually; I used to find her and Tucker sleeping side by side on the front porch. I’ve never seen Tucker do that with another floof.
It’s odd to me that Tucker and Papi don’t get along. After all, they actually co-existed with three other cats for several years. When Tucker came, Scheckter was approaching the Rainbow Bridge. We still had Lady and Quinn. Sweet Boo, an onyx shorthair with a white star on his chest, then came along, a stray in need. I searched for his home and people without success, so he joined as a stray in residence.
Papi next joined, and that’s how the family stood for a while until Lady, Quinn, and Boo were each taken. So, I thought that Papi and Tucker were okay and even hoped that they would become friendlier.
Well, flooftente was achieved but they still issue threats and warnings to each other. Happened just the day before yesterday; Papi stepped up behind Tucker and leisurely sniffed over Tucker’s tail and rear. Tucker turned to reciprocate, sending Papi into a yowling, hissing frenzy, like, “Oh, no, he’s going to sniff me.”
So the sweet stray couldn’t be put up. We did set up a bed for them on the front porch and fed it again. The food needed to be brought in because outside pet food invites other creatures: skunks, raccoons, coyotes, foxes. The smell of food might attract one of the bears or cougars who roam our neighborhood. So, very, very reluctantly, we let the cat stay out, hating it all the way.
I posted about the cat on social media last evening but haven’t had a response. They haven’t been spied today. I hope they’re alright; I hope they’re safely home. I put food and water out for them on the front porch, in case they return, and let the boys out into the backyard.
I will also note that Papi returned from his morning patrol at about eight AM. He may have encountered the stray and chased them away. That’s Papi’s style.
While tending the stray last night, I picked up Tucker after he started after the stray. Hugging, kissing, stroking him, reassuring him that he wasn’t being replace, I told Tucker, “You need to stay calm.”
Picking up on that, The Neurons began playing Taylor Swift’s 2019 song, “You Need To Calm Down”. Without surprise, I can report that it’s continued playing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark disputable). That’s how the MMMS generally works: once a song is in there, if stays until another song displaces it.
I do like the message out of “You Need to Calm Down”. The song’s message of people acting out in hate because of others’ genders when they’re not binary, or their choices of pronouns, or sexual orientation is exactly as needed. Too many people — many who seem to be right-wing — have gone over the top in their need and eagerness to deny others the freedom and right to be who they are. Right-wingers blast anyone who is not cisgender with surreal claims about how children are prey, or how the emergence of people who identify themselves under the umbrella of LGBTQ+ are destroying the world.
Witness, as a prominent example, Florida, led by Ron Desantis, and their absurd “Don’t Say Gay” law.
‘The bill’s sponsors have emphatically stated that the bill would not prohibit students from talking about their LGBTQ families or bar classroom discussions about LGBTQ history, including events like the 2016 deadly attack on the Pulse nightclub, a gay club in Orlando. Instead, they argue that the bill would bar the “instruction” of sexual orientation or gender identity.
‘But the text says both.’
Stay pos, be strong, and remain calm. I’m having coffee, which should sustain my efforts to do the same. Here’s the music. Carpe Thursday. Cheers
Perspectives
My wife shared a friend’s anecdote.
She hadn’t seen the friend in a while. They have a regular gang that meet for coffee at Growlers after exercises classes each M-W-F morning.
Converted from an old gas station, Growlers, nominally a purveyor of beers, is in downtown Ashland. It actually shares its space with a small coffee shop. It’s normally not busy in the morning. That allows the coffee gang to pull together tables and make noise as they please. Outdoor seating with firepits is available, and that’s where they’ll typically be.
The gang is a flexible group with active lives, so the group meeting ranges from four to fifteen people. They’re mostly women. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers, retired teachers, programmers, nurses, musicians, accountants, architects, artists, firefighters, college professors, and so on. They’re characters, and have been coming to the same exercise class, with the same instructor, Mary, for over thirty years. My wife, in her mid-sixties, is the youngest. She started the coffee gant back when she began taking the class after we moved here in 2006. Always pursuing fitness, when she arrived here, she began looking for a new exercise routine, and heard about Mary’s Y class. That’s where she was told this tale this morning.
Weirdly, my wife doesn’t like the coffee at Growler’s, so she has tea.
“We’ve downsized,” L said. L is the friend. “I’m 76 and my husband is 82. We had a 3,000 foot home and five and half acres just outside of Ashland. We were talking and agreed, we don’t need all this property. So we sold our place and bought a smaller one here in town.
“Well, after we’d sold our property, the new owners called us. They wondered if we could meet at our old house and walk the property line with them so they can learn about their new land. Naturally, we agreed, so a time and place was set.
“We’d never met them. Well, we got out of the car to wait, and then they arrived. Well, they were older than us! Both had walkers.
“Then they told us, they were downsizing, too. We were speechless.”
I laughed when I was told the story and wondered, moving into a 3000 square foot home with some land while downsizing, just how big was their last place?
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Mood: inspired
We’ve gravitated to Wednesday, October 18, 2023. Will it be one of those days? you ask. Thinking about what’s going on, I wonder as well. How will this day be remembered by us in five years and more? History will have one perspective, and each of us will have our own variation of what this day was like in hindsight, just as we do with absolutely everything that happens.
I believe that in a year, this day will be lost in the existential mud for me.
It’s 61 F with fog out there in Ashlandia, where the rockers are old, and the dancers are above average. From my window’s vantage, there’s not a scintilla of fog marring the blue, sun-fed expanse. Temperatures promise to live up to the sunshine; forecasters are announcing with some pleasure, it’s going to be in the low eighties today.
I was thinking about how difficult getting out of bed was when I was sick during the last two weeks. Every day was worse until something broke on Sunday. Then it gradually improved until it’s much better today.
The Neurons heard me thinking. That inspired them to inspire me with “Moving in Stereo” by The Cars in my morning mental music stream (Trademark inspired). The song’s forbidding techno beat always gives me pause. Combined with the voice inflections in the song’s early verses, it inspires robotic movements.
The words themselves capture some of the essence of my life views. I hear in them my thoughts about how we so easily succomb to our problems and often magnify them.
It’s so easy to blow up your problems
It’s so easy to play up your breakdown
It’s so easy to fly through a window
It’s so easy to fool with the sound
[Verse 3]
It’s so tough to get up
It’s so tough
It’s so tough to live up
It’s so tough on you
[Verse 4]
Life’s the same, I’m moving in stereo
Life’s the same except for my shoes
h/t to Genuis.com
I hear myself magnifying my issues in things like me muttering to myself, “I feel so sick.” Well, it’s a relative thing, innit? I was not dying, just coping with some mild to strong symptoms that affected thinking, breathing, and moving.
I ended up mocking myself about those things. I always like to see those you-are-here depictions of our planet as a miniscule dot in the galaxy, and the galaxy is a tiny dot in the universe. That restores my perspective. Or some of it. It’s a relative thing.
Stay positive, be strong, and cling to whatever optimism you can muster today. Fortified with black coffee, I will do the same.
Here’s the music. Cheers
The Maze Dream
This dream began as a military variation.
I was in the US Air Force in the dream, as I had been for twenty plus years in real life. Arriving at a new assignment, I was created warmly by new co-workers. They’d been looking forward to my arrival.
After settling into a room, I change into my uniform to go meet my new commander. My pants an shirt were crisply sharp and mustache and hair cut were aligned with regulations. Very satisfying. Putting on my highly polished shoes, I discovered I had no shoe strings.
No shoe strings. The situation flummoxed me. How could I have shoes with the strings to tie them?
It was late, I had an appointment, and nothing was open to buy new laces. But needing shoe strings, I went around fast, knocking on doors and talking to people, looking for shoe strings to borrow. I found a pair of shoes with purple shoe strings but rejected them; purple shoe strings with a dress uniform wouldn’t work. I’d rather go without shoe strings.
Co-workers came to the door, urging me to hurry. I told them about my problem with the thought one of them may be able to help me.
They laughed it off and urged me not to worry because I wouldn’t be needing my shoes. Plans were afoot (sorry) for me to wear different clothes and footwear.
Mystified by that, I went with them.
I met the commander, a light colonel. After welcoming me, he immediately asked, “Didn’t they tell you about your new assignment?”
“No details,” I answered, hiding confusing.
He chortled and gestured. “We’re going to make you big. Then you an help monitor the maze and guide people through it.”
Those words completely confused me but I reigned that it and responded with a respectful, “Sir?”
Seeing my confusion, he continued smiling and answered, “You’ll see.”
The next I knew, I was very large. I guess I was twenty-five feet high and proportionately as broad as a fit young man. No longer appearing as I had, I’d lost my mustache, and was very pale skinned, with short, razor-cut hair. My clothing and shoes were now tight black pants, a tight white tee shirt, and black canvas shoes.
And I was in a maze.
Lined with white cement, the waist rose to about my waist. The walls were about a foot thick. I could see people wandering through the maze. I then understood, oh, I’m supposed to be helping them because they can’t see where they are, nor where they should go. Others large individuals, like me, male and female, of various ethnicities were finding lost individuals and calling out directions abut where to go.
Finding a young woman near me in the maze, I began doing the same.
Dream end
I often have dreams which focuses on my military career. I always think of it as a subconscious yearning for that period of life, which was ordered and structured, but also full of purpose and direction.
The twists, of needing shoe laces, and then becoming a large person, helping others through a maze, were quite unique in my dream experiences. I arrived at the conclusion that I’m trying to tell myself that I’m worrying about something which doesn’t matter, and that I’m ‘bigger’ than that. It’s not others I’m helping through the maze, but myself.
Or The Neurons were yet again just messing with me.
Floofgestible
Floofgestible (floofinition) – Easily influenced by animal requests, behaviors, or presence. Origins: 1890, borrowed in Middle English floof and directly from Latin adjective suffix -ibilis (-able).
In use: “The new cats, Scout and Snickers, quickly established that Carla was floofgestible, and soon had her wrapped around their tails.”
In use: “Many people who declare that they’re aren’t ‘animal lovers’ and find themselves with a innocent animal needing assistance quickly realize that they’re floofgestible, doing anything to help their new fur friends to keep them alive and comfortable.”
Recent: “One friction point between Cameron and his wife in an otherwise idyllic marriage was that he was floofgestible, and always donating to animal causes such as rescues after an earthquake in Turkey and the war in Ukraine.”
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Mood: spirited
The crescendo you might have heard earlier today was Tuesday, October 17, 2023, arriving. We’ve now passed half of the tenth month. Many are gearing up for the holiday season to launch.
It’s 53 F in Ashlandia, where the animals are feted and the people drink coffee all day. It feels curiously warm and pleasant. Forecasters expect our temperatures to crest at 71 F. We may see another degree or two at our house. Where and how we’re situated in relation to mountains and sunshine often results in a little more heat found in my space.
Beautiful out there, though, with stingy white clouds drifting through a strong azure sky and an invigorating sun.
A friend forwarded some humor to me. I plucked a few out for your morning jollies. They seem relatable to modern life and might distract us some from the wars and political messes swirling through October.
I’m feeling much better today. It’s been days since I’ve had any energy. This illness drained and wearied me, and became a stanch reminder of how often we don’t appreciate things until they’re gone. In my case, it was energy, willpower, clear thinking, and being pain free. I hope I never reach that state on a regular basis. So many people live like that with diseases and sickness. I saw it regularly when I visited Mom and witnessed her enduring and coping with multiple issues.
I also see it with my buddy, Larry, who lives on an oxygen bottle these days, Most painfully, I see it in my wife as she fights with flares of pain and stiffness delivered by her auto-immune issues. I took my own decent health too much for granted.
The Neurons have “Love Will Keep Us Together” looping in the morning mental music stream (Trademark flabbergasted). Although Neil Sedaka was co-writer and originally released it, I have the Captain and Tennille cover from 1973. As I said the last time I shared this song, back in 2018, it’s not my style but it was being played frequently on the radio stations where I lived, so I heard it all the time. I don’t know what prompted The Neurons to bring it out of the music vault but I fear I must play it for others or it will keep going around my head.
If you read a previous post this week, you might remember that my wife and I couldn’t remember what I thought I might buy Mom for her birthay. Well, one happy tidbit is that my wife pulled enough out for me to recall all the details. See, two brains are better than one.
The converasation was about genealogy. We were specifically talking about the Mayflower and William Brewster. Three of us are related to him via DNA. In my case, he would be my great-grandfather by ten. From that conversation, I thought buying Mom a gift to the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. I wonder if they shorten that to ‘the society’ or ‘the descendants’ in private conversations?
Stay positive, be strong, and keep optimistic. I’m up for coffee. Anyone else?
Here’s the music. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 