Tuesday’s Theme Music
Mood: Wonstalgic
Thwump thwump thwump thwump
The copter continues the watershed cleanup. I can watch him manuever through the kitchen window. Sounds give clues of his comings and goings. Right now, he’s resting in the air above the peak of a conifered-blessed mountain.
Looks like a good flying day out there on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. Sunshine gleams off windows and cars. Full-fledged green leaves on trees dapple lawns and houses with shadows. A few clusters of cloud islands hold steady on the western horizon.
It’s 17C outside, about 62 F. We’re heading for a 76 degrees F high. Rain has a chance but it’s less than 40% chance. Usually at those odds, we don’t see it.
Mom is supposed to be heading home today. She should actually be there, per the schedule, as she told me she was being released noon Eastern. Which was almost an hour ago. I find that most hospitals are optimistic about when things will happen. Like the military and DMV, there’s a lot of waiting at a hospital. I’m living on a hope that she’ll go home today and be relatively healthy and happy for a while and put some of these health scares to rest.
With that thinking, I tripped down the trail of what it used to be like back home, when I still held the flowers of youth in my appearance. The Neurons responded by conjuring a jazzy Stevie Wonder song that speaks to that essence, “I Wish”. The 1977 song is echoing through my morning mental music stream (Trademark drifting). I found an online offering of him doing the song live in 1982. Sweet. I hope you enjoy it.
Here we go. Stay positive and be strong. Vote Blue in 2024, and let’s see if we can stem the retreat of rights and sanity. Coffee is brewed and ready to be introduced to my body.
Here’s the video. Cheers
Floofsumptive
Floofsumptive (floofinition) – 1. Descriptor for an animal’s approach who assumes they are the apex resident in a household. First noted use circa 1970, New York, USA.
In Use: “Closed doors impinged Queen Champ’s floofsumptive foundation that something must be happening on the other side. This was her empire and announced her displeasure with loud caterwauling and scratching.”
2. An animal which takes for granted that they are authorized to go anywhere, do anything, and eat everything. Origins: 1740 colonial America.
In Use: “As soon as food was set down, Sheldon made a presumptive claim with his chompers, no matter the food group.”
3. A belief that animal’s movements, activities, or behavior is expected and predictable. Origins: AOL, late 1990s.
In Use: “Following a floofsumptive bias, Kelly expected Hannibal to trot out and greet her, but the little pup was nowhere in sight, inducing floofxiety in her that something had happened to him.”
Monday’s Theme Music
Mood:
Thwump thwump thwump…the helicopter goes on, up above the mountain high, hovering and waiting, waiting and hovering, picking up its load, going away again, dumping the load, coming back again.
Gotta be boring up there. Least the pilot should have a nice view, up above the trees so high, like a moon in the sky.
It’s a clear Monday, with blue running infinitely on and back again. Sunshine drenches the scene. 69 F now after an overnight low of 40 F, the thermometer is scaling the degrees. Probably stop at 76 F, they tell me. It’s April 22, 2024, for those keeping score at home.
The cats are as happy as floofs lazing in sunshine. An ear sometimes stirs. Another moment witnesses an eye cracking open a hair width. Other than those infrequent movements, they seem set for the next few hours.
Back in Pittsburgh, a new report has Mom feeling unwell again. Tests are being run. She’d been doing well and was scheduled to return home tomorrow. We’ll monitor all for the outcome. Little sister, aka grandma G, provides me with updates. She and her hubby had been sick herself recently. But they’re better know. Just seemed like a mild flu. I think we live in an era of health uncertainty. Sure the pandemic plays a role. I notice that many people around Ashlandia grow angry but resigned when they get sick. Wonder if that’s must my bias, or does this happen elsewhere?
Musically, The Neurons have “For All the Cows” ringing in my morning mental music stream (Trademark backtracking). Utilizing that song’s melody, I’d been singing about coffee. Actually, it was about my coffee cup. Like, I need a cup, a coffee cup, I’ll fill it up, if I had a coffee cup. I’d been wandering with the cup. It mindlessly departed my hand as I slipped through rooms and tasks. Found it in the third place I looked, my bathroom. Yes, I drink coffee in the bathroom while I’m shaving and dressing, okay. Although I didn’t shave today. Didn’t feel the need for a blade on my skin.
“For All the Cows” is a Dave Grohl/Foo Fighters production. Came out in 1995. It’s soft quasi-jazz opening and strange words are beguiling. I listen to it and search for some kind of meaning for what he’s singing about. I’ve always tentatively concluded it delivers an analogy comparing people to cows but also addressed success and the changes success brings to the herd, how you change herds with success. I don’t know. My understanding shifts, depending on my moo-ed. Heh.
Stay positive, strong, optimistic (that the same as positive?), and lean forward. Please Vote Blue. Now, more coffee and cow music. Cheers
The Writing Moment
Still at it with the manuscript in progress. Its working title remains Memories of Why.
As I began rev 6 — I think it’s rev 6 — I saw that I’d gone too meta. The beginning was too abstract. I understood things, sure; whether muses created it, or I did with my imagination, or it’d flown into my being from some other dimension or alternative reality, I was familiar with it.
But it wouldn’t work for other readers. I’m sure the great mass of others would ask, “WTF?” I didn’t want to put that on them. I needed to create a more substantive setting for them.
As I worked on the last revision, another aspect of the situation had emerged. I could weave elements of that arc into this one. I felt it would cement the story, provide a solid introduction to the main character, and create greater empathy for him.
So that’s what I did. Feeling a need to couch it all in the best words and phrases I could, there’s been a lot of stop and go. Lot of deleting to begin again and a great deal of going off page to write myself into understanding. I think, therefore I write, so I know what I think. I perceived how I sometimes overthought myself into paralysis. Made things too difficult for myself. Tried to be too clever or too precious.
Intriguing to me, when I began each time, the world would form, the characters would drop in, sounds would be ladled in, and the place and its story would be. Then I’d wipe it out and commence again. And again, all would fill in, like I was opening doors and walking into other worlds.
The aspect of the process is stunning and mesmerizing. Once I felt sure of the scene and moved on, I felt the weight of that existence as surely as I know impact of the real world that I inhabit.
So, there were detours. There usually are in any effort. But I advance. So does the manuscript. And the pleasure and satisfaction remains.
Cheers
Floofdant
Floofdant (floofinition) – 1. Person who is always telling stories or sharing facts about animals.
In Use: “A foster mother for kittens, puppies, birds — just ’bout any critter except humans — Jen could easily be drawn into being a floofdant via a question like, ‘How are you animals doing?'”
2. An animal who insists on doing things the same way every time, not moving until the matter is corrected.
In Use: “Queen Precious was a floofdant who demanded her food bowl be positioned just so, along with her bed, insisting that everyone go to the bed at the same time every night, becoming annoyed and vocal if this wasn’t observed.”
Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts
I was skateboarding the net yesterday, swerving from click to click. An ad bounced up for an Ashlandia coffee shop I used to regularly frequently. It permanenly closed due to the pandemic, Jan 2021.
My backstory is that I enjoy coffee shops as a place to write. I began doing that when I started working from home and began writing short stories in parallel. I use the process of going to the coffee shop as a method to put on my writing hat and throw off the rest of the world. Finding the right place is a challenge. There’s the taste. Location. Prices. Staff. Decent writing surface and a place to plug in. Wifi is a nice convenience to add.
The coffee’s shop closure during the pandemic was the abridged edition. Located in a hotel, a husband and wife team managed it on behalf of her father. He owned the hotel He came in one December day and told them that plans were changing. They protested. The exchange grew angry and loud. The husband and wife were fired.
I’d been loyal to them. The staff walked out with the managers in protest. Long-time customers like me left and didn’t return. They made changes. I visited once a few months later. It wasn’t the same. Management declared after that that only hotel guests were welcome. That was only in the morning.
Replacing it had been difficult. An ad to come patron it surprised me. I checked online: permanently closed, according to its FB page and website.
But businesses are often shoddy about keeping their social presence online up to date. I drove by. Dark. Empty. Closed.
I went on to my new favorite coffee shop. I’ve already lost four Ashlandia coffee shops in the nineteen years I’ve lived here. Hope I don’t lose a fifth. Yes, it’s all about me.
Still, I had to ponder the business intricacies that had an ad for a closed business riding on the net. Sometimes, it’s still garbage in, garbage out.
Michael Seidel, writer 