Thursday’s Theme Music

Summer’s prelude to summer in Ashlandia has settled into a new weather routine. Blue sky. Plentiful sunshine. Cool, 50s to 60s F, in the morning. Rising to high 70s, low 80s by mid-afternoon. Roll in some clouds. Cue the thunder. Spark some lightning. Now, turn on the rain. Repeat for a few hours.

This is Thursday, June 8, 2023. Yesterday afternoon and evening on the storms squatting on Ashlandia. The climax was a twenty minute deluge of big drops, dense, falling fast and hard. What’s striking about all this lightning (couldn’t resist), thunder, and rain is that it’s so rare for Ashlandia, especially of this intensity, duration, and repetition. But it’s been a growing trend in the last several years. It could be part of a larger cycle and we all just don’t live long enough to experience it, so it strikes us as odd. But it’s also a continuation of an odd weather year.

The cats aren’t pleased. The weather even brought Tucker in, who is usually indifferent to these things. Papi, though, decided the best place to be was with us in a lit room, awakening, waiting, ready to run, and willing to be comforted. Tucker decided that he’d be wherever Papi was.

We’re seeing a lot of deer on our street this week. Two bucks strolling up the street the other evening. Three or four deer — or maybe the same few again and again — wandering around our house and across the street at the neighbors. Well, no recent cougar sightings in our vicinity, so maybe that has something to do with it.

I stood in the front doorway last night, protected by the porch, to watch the rain. Not just watch, but breathe in the fresh petrichor, and enjoy the sounds. Lightning frequently flashed to enliven the experience. As I stood there, The Neurons fired up a 1981 song by The Rolling Stones, “Waiting On A Friend”. Song is still in the morning mental music stream. The Neurons made a good choice. The storm broke me out of my normal routines. The smells and sounds also made me nostalgic for similar times experienced around the world from different phases of life where I was waiting for a friend to arrive as part of our plans to go off somewhere.

Stay positive, and enjoy Thursday as only you can. I have coffee, so I’m pleased for the moment, sipping hot brew, windows breathing in cool air on my back, sunshine slinking around the house, cats wandering in and out to give news updates. Here’s the tune. Love the video’s end, when the band gets up to play in that tiny, tiny space. Cheers

June 8, 2023 1

Wednesday’s Wandering Thought

Today’s household topic is underwear with pockets. They’re for men, of course. Some obscure law was passed in the bronze age that women’s clothing should not have pockets. Also, because men need pockets in everything. They expect pockets. How do we know if it’s men’s clothing if there aren’t pockets? What are we, savages?

The purported reason for pocket is to either carry your phone in your underwear pocket or so you can put treats in your UW pocket. Both suggestions have me scratching my head and thinking, “What the hell? I feel so deprived because my underwear lacks pockets. Not fair!” I must admit that I’ve never been in my skivvies and nothing else, and thought, if only I had a pocket.

I do imagine amorous scenes where an undie pocket comes in handy. Picture this: a man is stripping down before his partner. Now in his underwear, he whispers, “You want some of this?” Then he slowly reaches down to the front of his undies, and pulls out a bag of nuts.

What else were you expecting?

June 7, 2023 0

June 7, 2023 0

The Cougar Dream

Dreamed about a cougar last night. Yes, it was a gorgeous creature, full grown with impressive fangs, and not an older woman out to seduce me.

I was visiting family, and sometimes the four seemed like RL family. But my dream mind played tricks, shuffling different people in and out, disheveling my thoughts.

The four were in a small and crowded apartment. Wearing a harness and chain, the cougar was their pet. The chain wasn’t short and the cougar could go anywhere in the little space it pleased. Often gazing with intense eyes, its sharp teeth on display, the animal scared the hell out of me.

“Oh, he won’t hurt you,” they told me. “Just feed him.” They threw a chunk of bloody raw meat to the cat, who took it up in its mouth and trotted away behind a sofa.

Two large white dogs were also present. I kept worrying that the cougar would attack and kill one of the dogs. They seemed like they were constantly running away.

“Oh, don’t worry,” the people told me. “That cougar won’t hurt anyone.”

I remained dubious about that, trying to keep attention on the cougar’s location and activities. Then I fed him several times, throwing chunks of raw meat to him. That didn’t seem like enough food for an animal of his size. Eventually the huge carnivore came over and lied down beside me. I petted his muscled body and he purred, prompting me to wonder in the dream, do cougars purr?

June 7, 2023 1

Wednesday’s Theme Music

It’s rainy out there, lads and lasses, a perfect presentation of a rainy late spring day. A procession of thunder, lightning, and rain drove through yesterday’s afternoon, carrying on into the early evening. Got right on top of us around six PM. We had a pink, purple, and blue marbled sunset with a rainbow bisecting it. Trippy.

Smoke on the mountain spotted yesterday morning was confirmed as a small fire being fought. A few miles north west of my kitchen window, in the city’s watershed. I could smell it through the night as the air mixed petrichor and wet wood smoke. More thunderstorms and rain is forecast for tonight, unusual for us. I’ll happily welcome the rain as long as there are lightning streaks. Everything is a’ppreciated to keep the land wet and ward off wildfires. It’s 62 F now, and the air gives a comfortable embrace, but the high will be 81 F. This is Wednesday, June 7, 2023.

Wild dream last night. Woke up with “Enter Sandman”, Metallica, 1981, dominating the morning mental music stream. So that’s my theme music today.

Take my hand. We’re off to never-never land for coffee. Stay pos and brave and upbeat. I’ll do the same. Seatbelts fastened? Here we go.

June 7, 2023 0

June 6, 2023 0

Lost Button

Where is my button?

I can’t find it now.

Don’t know where to eat, what to eat,

And I’m beginning to forget how.

Where is my button?

How do I get through the day?

What will I do when others come around,

Asking me to play?

Without my button, I don’t know where to go,

I have nothing smart to say.

Oh, where is my button?

How did I lose it this way?

People say they never used to have them,

But that cannot be true.

How did they know how to dress,

How to act, what to learn,

Without a button to show the truth?

Oh, where is my button?

It’s driving me insane.

How can I be me, without my button to say?

June 6, 2023 0

Okay, that’s enough, weather wizards. Gonna be 88 later today. Already 70 F. Let’s just put the pause on the rising heat.

Today is Tuesday, 6/6/23. Yesterday afternoon delivered us waves of thunder. When that begins, we eye the horizons and sniff the air, wondering if lightning strikes have started fires anywhere. Then you get on the news and net, searching for reports. Your mind actively engages everything for signs of fire. Is that haze over there? What’s causing that?

So far, so good, though, knock wood, release breath.

When I arrived home yesterday from the writing session, I glanced out to check on Tucker. He likes sleeping out front around the porch where he can move from sun to shadow to warm or cool himself as desired. He was asleep behind the front pillar. Two feet away from him was an adult doe. I let them be, of course, checking every half an hour. I imagine when she first arrived, Tucker quizzed her in floofish — name, species, intentions. She asked him for particulars about this him, this house, and the neighborhood. Then both chilled. Eventually, the thunderboomers seemed to put her on the move.

Papi, of course, was immediately shifted into the house when the thunder came. Papi no like loud noises. Thunder is second only to fireworks on that list.

I have the Thompson Twins with “Doctor Doctor!” rising into the morning mental music stream from 1984. Just came to me as I was puddlin’ around through morning tedium of feeding, eating, dressing. Not a bad song, so I let it stay (as if I have a choice). May as well use it for a theme song.

Stay pos and be comfortable. Hope all works out for you today. Here’s the music. I’m shifting into the kitchen for a little roasted bean water. Cheers

June 6, 2023 2

The Writing Moment

Now I’m at that exciting, challenging, edgy time during the writing process. I’m in the first draft, and the middle. It’s all flow, bursting out like fast-moving magma. Like witnessing a huge event. Think seeing a disaster, a political rally, a football game. It’s almost overwhelming; focus must be found and kept. Everything is sucked in for processing, to be written in coherent fashion, coherent enough to keep moving the story toward the end.