He had a dream that he was going in the right direction. It didn’t feel like the right direction today. Maybe the dream was wrong. Or maybe going in the right direction was going to be harder than expected.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Feeling under the weather this AM. The old nautical expression has always amused me. We never respond, “I’m feeling over the weather” when someone asked and we’re feeling pretty good. One of those expressions used that don’t have a corollary to it. It’s interesting how expressions like this shift from being used out in a ship or boat dealing with bad weather and feeling its effect to land folk getting out of bed and experiencing illness. People began using it on land, and it spread, becoming commonplace, and here we are.
It’s the last day of May of 2023. Feels more like the normal weather for the last day of April out there. Springy, with a 51 F temperature that will muster the will to hammer itself up to 73F. Cloudy as hell. The comparison with the antipodes of heaven is another of those expressions that entices me. “Angry as hell.” “Hungry as hell.” “Thirsty as hell.” “Poor as hell.” Hell really is the worse, isn’t it? But could it be one of those old Greenland/Iceland tricks. “It’s really so nice here, but we don’t want it to become overcrowded, so we’ll call it hell and make it out like it’s really bad to dissuade others from wanting to come.”
I asked the Bing’s AI chat where hell comes from.
“The word “hell” refers to the nether world of the dead or a place of torment for the wicked after death. It comes from the Proto-Germanic *haljō, meaning “concealed place” or “one who covers up or hides something”. It is related to the Germanic mythology of Hel, the goddess of the underworld. It has cognates in other Germanic languages, such as Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Dutch, German, and Icelandic. It originated in the Anglo-Saxon pagan period, around A.D. 400 – 1100 1.”
So there we have it. It’s a concealed place. Of course, Hades and the underworld gets involves from other religions and myths. How we express ourselves and what we believe are interesting blends and adaptations.
All that hell thinking so early AM has AC/DC singing “Hells Bells”. Released in 1980 as part of their comeback effort with a new singer, the bell tolling and song was a direct response to their lead singer’s earlier that year.
Alright, off to do other things like chug coffee to see if that lifts me. Stay pos, okay? Here’s the music. Cheers
Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts
Monday morning. 6:15 AM. She awoke to an alarm. Her phone. Yes, time to get up and go to exercise class.
But there was no class today. She could sleep in. She found the phone to turn it off.
The phone was already off.
The alarm had stopped.
Must have been her beautiful mind trying to take care of her.
DIY Once Again
Latest DIY is almost done. An annual thing, it’s preparing the sprinkler system for use. Phases One and Two are done every year: find the sprinklers and uncover the dirt and weeds which grew over them, clean and adjust the heads.
Phase Three, raising the heads, was new. Should’ve been done several years ago but I was intimidated. It was a job I’d never done nor seen done ‘live’. I saw potential disaster in trying it, along with a lot of shoveling and work. As we’d experienced several years of high heat and unhealthy wildfire smoke, it was easy to rationalize not working in that environment and putting it off. I finally ordered myself to do it this year. What do you know, it was easier than expected.
Since I’d stalled, ten sprinkler heads needed raised now. After watching Youtube videos, raisers were purchased at my local Ace Hardware, $1.59 each. Over three days, a doughnut of sod was dug out around each head. The sprinkler body was then unscrewed, the raisers screwed into the body’s bottom, and then screwed into place with the new raiser attached. The sod doughnut was then restored.
It’s easy when you put it like that, but it was sweaty work done on my knees. First though, I cut the grass. That smoothed the process.
The first sprinkler head and body being removed was done tentatively and took about thirty minutes, because I worried about all the things which could go wrong. Second one was about half of that time, and then the rest were usually done in less than ten minutes. My neck felt the most impact from the work as I muscled the bodies off their perches. Screwed on for almost sixteen years, they resisted my charms as I strove to remove them, and the work was being done in mud. Keeping the area around the body intact was paramount so dirt didn’t get into the pipes. I developed a style of sliding a dandelion fork along the body to loosen the mud’s hold on it. After everything was done, the heads required cleaning and adjustment again.
Just one backyard sprinkler head remains to be raised. That’s this afternoon’s chore. Like most DIY, it’s satisfying to finish a job and mark it off my mental list of things to do.
OFWB
OFWB (floofinition) – Floofhand for ‘one floof wrecking ball’, an animal which creates more destruction, mischief, or chaos than other animals.”
In use: “As a puppy, Chloe was a OFWB, destroying pillows, shoes, toilet paper, plants, and shower curtains, a trait which didn’t change as she matured; she only became more clever about her chaos.”
Tuesday’s Theme Music
A cool spring morning, 65F, has settled on Ashlandia, where the men have beards and the children are above average. It’s May 20, 2023, a quiet morning. Activities are slowly cranking up. Summer unofficially started for many in the United States, kicked off the by somber sales, cookouts, and celebrations associated with Memorial Day. The needle on the thermometer will get tugged up into the upper seventies, and might even broach the 80s. As difficult to predict as whether the Biden-McCarthy debt limit bill will be passed.
There have been no more cougar signs in our sliver of Ashlandia. Papi and Tucker are still kept inside at night. Papi no like. He was better last night. Surprise, I fed him midnight-ish, which induced him to wash and sleep. Clever of me, isn’t it? I don’t know. He’s smart enough to manipulate me with what he’s learned.
My wife and I grilled out yesterday. Nada fancy. Portabella ‘shrooms, onions, asper-grass, squash, and red peppers, along with Impossible Burgers, our plant-based meat sub., coleslaw, and ranch style beans from a can. All were excellent. I’m not a great griller – my BIL and ex-BIL are both superb in that skill – but I muddle through. Yesterday’s muddle turned out great.
The Neurons have inserted “The Long Run” by The Eagles out of 1979 into the morning mental music stream. This is a direct result from reading political news and some personal projects underway. As so many frequently ask, “What’s going to happen? Will this work? What’s going to be the outcome?” To which frequently comes, “We’ll find out in the long run.”
Stay pos. Try to treat yourself better. Coffee drinking is underway, freshly brewed, black, untouched by cream or sugar, just the way it should be. Brekkie — oatmeal with cranberries, topped with granola — has also been completed. The cats have eaten and washed, and are now sunning. Here’s the music. Cheers
Monday’s Wandering Thoughts
She entered the coffee shop, stopping by the door to peruse her phone. She resembled his younger sister so much that he studied her in depth, thinking of the similarities. Then, he realized, he wasn’t thinking of his sister as she now was, mother to two teenagers, but she’d been, fresh faced out of high school, so young and pretty.
Michael Seidel, writer 