Friday’s Wandering Thought
He’s used to people looking at him and saying with some surprise, “Your eyes are so blue today.” Sometimes green or brown is substituted for blue.
He nods and replies, “That’s the Tyndall effect, which is when particles in a colloid scatter the beams of light and reflect different wavelengths. All eyes are really just brown.”
That always causes people to give him another look. He’s kinda getting used to that. Maybe someday…
Friday’s Theme Music
Coffee has arrived. The first two sips of the gorgeously hot brew invigorate my senses and awakens my palette. Here we go, The Neurons sing.
Today is Friday, October 14 of the common era year 2022. I skim headlines and press on to other matters before the news blunts my energy and takes my soul. 57 and chilly under a pristine blue sky, sunshine began its daily visit at 7:22 ante meridiem. Sunshine will linger until 6:38 post meridiem. Temperatures are again foretold to have a high in the upper eighties. After a windshift yesterday, the smoke cleared and we struck 86 F around my house, a wonderfully warm, comfortable day, with a faint breeze and mild humidity. Our leaves haven’t done much turning in this area, nor are they dropping yet, a huge contrast to where I stayed in Penn Hills, PA. during the move from September to October. Guess the trees decided to wait for my return before launching their fall show. Gracious of them, innit?
For theme music, given that it’s Friday, The Neurons loaded that golden oldie, “Friday Friday”. I grew up on those lyrics. “Friday, Friday, how I love that day. Out of school and work at last, and free to play.” Nipping on that song’s heels comes a familiar favorite, “Black Friday” by Steely Dan.
Yes, Friday is on my mind. Instead of those songs, though, The Neurons re-introduce me to “Slide” by the Goo Goo Dolls. Released two or three lifetimes ago, which can be calculated as 1998, it’s another song in the catalogue created as I commuted to and from home to shop and work in the SF Bay Area and peninsula at the end of the last century. Why that song, I query The Neurons. It’s about a pregnant girl and her boyfriend debating choices about what to do. Jimmy Neuron answers, “It’s just those words, I’ll do anything ever dreamed to be complete, or something like that.” Oh, I answer. Oh. It’s about the dreams and the quests, huh? I see.
Test negative and stay positive, or as The Neurons call it, negapos. So be negapos. Sorry, that’s the coffee. It’s taken over The Neurons. Here’s the music. Hope you own Friday and it doesn’t end up owning you.
Cheers
Twofer Dreams
I had two memorable dreams last night.
The first came to me in red and black. It was all seen in silhouettes. As short and simple as its color palette, I was going for a run. Going less than twenty to thirty yards, I encountered a force field which wouldn’t let me go further. Annoyed, I turned and ran back the other way, past my house, only to be stopped by another force field. Three times this happened. At that point dream thinking burbled up, I’m not supposed to go further. I guess ‘they’ want me to stay home to get better. Wait, am I sick?
After awakening and pondering that one for a few dark minutes, I rolled back into sleep and to another dream. In this one, I wore a blue and white checked shirt with blue jeans. A teenager, I was visiting a girl, blonde, bubbly, friendly. I was attracted to her, so this was essentially the early days of courting to see if she had any interest in me.
She became friendly and flirtatious. We didn’t kiss or anything, but I went home pleased and then returned the next day. At the end of this visit, it was suggested that I stay the night there as a precaution against something going on that wasn’t clear. I wasn’t real comfortable with that but the girl and her Mom convinced me. Stripping down to my undies, I slept on their game room sofa. The game room was essential a finished basement. After spending the night, I dressed, thinking that I’d go back home now. But no, the girl had plans for the day. We stayed at her house but I only saw her off and on.
Now I was becoming concerned about her father. He’d been gone but was now back. I didn’t relish encountering him in the early morning, especially in clothes which I’d been wearing for several days while trying to get romantic with his daughter. Instead of leaving the game room, I stayed down there in hiding. By now I’d convinced myself that I needed to get home and was plotting how to sneak away.
Guests arrived. I eavesdropped, learning that they were neighboring women who were friends with the mother. It was mentioned in passing that I was staying there. I guessed that something had happened at my house and this was a ruse to keep me here. They all agreed that I was a ‘very nice boy, very smart and kind’, and that this was better for me. Wanting to know what was going on, I slipped out and headed home through a sunsplashed fall day where all the trees had already lost their leaves. The change of season was a surprise; I thought it was summer.
Dream end.
Thursday’s Theme Music
A sublime rollout of sunshine woke the valley at 7:21 this morning. True, large swaths of the valley’s population were already awake or now retiring to sleep. Depends on your species and intentions, doesn’t it?
October 13, 2022, has arrived, a Thursday in the common era. A mountainous presence lowered the air’s temperature to a pleasant mid-fifties Fahrenheit overnight. Our meteorologic oracles say temperatures will climb to the high eighties. They said the same yesterday but our sector never saw anything above 81 degrees F. Not that I’m complaining. It was coolish but sunny, comfortable weather for short sleeves and short pants. The lower temperature seems to be a collateral impact from the Cedar Creek smoke veiling the sun. Not too smoky, it’s a moderate haze that manages to pull our air quality to less than ideal level, 63. The solar system’s movement will bring us sunset at 6:32 PM.
Now it’s up to the daylighters to decide what to do in this time and environment. I have a variety of chores and actions needed to catch up with modern demands, which is often known as ‘paperwork’ even when it comes in electronic form. We had a celebratory beer for our departed member, Chris, and planned our annual celebration of being which will be in November this year. Paella is the featured dish.
Of course, I’m sitting here as sunshine completes its morning takeover thinking, okay, it’s time to do this and that. Time to get cleaned up and dressed. Time to make some phone calls, check some emails, read some blogs, write some fiction. Time to watch the Jan 6 hearings, time to —
Well, the point has been driven in, hasn’t it? It was ‘the time’. The Neurons leaped onto the words. “Oh, oh, oh,” they shouted. “Here’s a song about that.”
They began playing “It’s Time” by Imagine Dragons from 2012. That delivered me to now, where the song continues rolling through the morning mental music stream. And here I am.
Yes, the coffee is brewed and ready to drink. It’s time to get on with the day and get things done. Stay positive, test negative, and carry on with what you need to do. It’s time, don’t you know.
Cheers
Wednesday’s Wandering Thought
The organized chaos of commercial air travel reminded him of several things. Number one, always read the fine print. When he bought his ticket, he also bought a seat for a few extra dollars, reasoning, he’d never seen anyone standing up for an entire flight. What he didn’t see anywhere in the seat description was that the seat he selected didn’t recline. He found that out the day before, when he reviewed his flight details.
Naturally, he entertained getting a seat for the five plus hour flight. Several were available for an extra $130. Being one that often spites himself to prove a point, he refused to buy one.
He was sure, though, someday the airlines would figure out a way to start charging for air.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Sunshine skirts the trees and licks the sky into fresh blue shades. Familiars remind me that I’m home. People say, oh, you made it, as though the standing in lines and sitting in seats that frame commercial air travel in this era was a slog. The slog is behind the scenes, where they’re building and maintaining the machines and coordinating the actions. I’m just a passenger on that plane, just as I’m a passenger on starship Earth.
Sunrise in Ashland today came over us at 7:20 AM. Cool mountain air, measured at 54 F, put a shiver in my body. Gonna be 88 F, the weather wizards say. Smoky haze covered the valley from the Cedar Creek fire further west in the state. Not heavy smoke but enough for you to see it’s there, a reminder of the fire’s existence. Sunset, they tell me, will be 6:34 PM.
Being home is a comfort. Having my wife chatting about all she’s done and is doing and is to do brought me into the groove. Tucker and Papi did their feline duties, purring welcomes, permitting me to show my affections through liberal scratches of their ears, heads, and backs.
Traveling was the mix of fun, weariness, anticipation, and frustration that I’ve come to expect. Being in flight, taking off before sunrise and then having the sun chase us down over the Rocky Mountains delivered plenty of thought fodder. As you know, many sings exist about traveling, aircraft, flight, and sunrise. Plenty for The Neurons to say, oh, there’s a theme song and stick it in my mental music stream. But I found myself watching people, splitting time between clothes, shoes, body language, and faces. Out of watching faces, The Neurons pulled up “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” by Pearl Jam. A song released six million years ago or more, it tells of a woman struggling to remember another’s name, wishing to say hello, and failing. The Neurons were right to pick it up off of the organic reflections generated from my visit home, to places that were and now aren’t, and faces filling with aging’s shifts.
So here we are. Cats are fed, breakfast is eaten, coffee was brewed, its scent inhaled, its pleasant bitterness introduced to my tongue as another fresh experience. Stay pos and test neg, and do the vaccines needed to overcome and move on. I’m with you there.
Here’s the tune. Hope you can enjoy your Wednesday and build on it. Cheers
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Early dark thirty. Far before the sun’s scheduled arrival after seven. I’m waiting for my sister to pick me up and convey me to the airport. I’m always depending on my family and their kindness. She is one of the best.
It’s Tuesday, October, 11, 2022, exactly, without planning, one month since my arrival in Pittsburgh. Mom was in the hospital when I arrived, fighting COVID as it attacked her heart, lungs, and everything else it could lash out at. Nurses told my sisters it was very possible that Mom may not survive. It was one of the worst COVID cases they’d seen since the pandemic’s start for that hospital staff. Besides COVID and fluid in her heart and lungs, her appendix had a perforation and was pouring poisonous material into her body. Her pacemaker was only functioning at 20%. Things looked ugly.
She fought back and came out of it. Now she’s home, recovering, rehabbing, and I’m going home. She is struggling with bouncing blood pressure with a diastolic dropping below 100 too often. She’s on meds to promote good blood flow, keep her blood pressure at a healthy level by lowering it because of what she endured in the hospital, when it was skyrocketing. Now they’re backing those meds off, readjusting them, but her blood pressure is erratic. That’s a concern.
Other than that, she’s recovering her strength and balance, eating well, and so on.
My work here isn’t done but life dictates other needs, so, here I go, back across the country, back home.
It’s a travel day, in the car for thirty minutes, airport for two hours, aircraft for five plus, another hour in another airport, another two hours in a second aircraft, then in a car to reach home, an eleven-hour trip. That’s much better than the pioneers, and not as hazardous.
I feel like a little bit of a basketcase dealing with Mom as I hear her tell me one thing and bend her words so it doesn’t seem as bad when she’s dealing with her medicos and my sisters. Irritating as hell to be honest; makes me feel like an unreliable witness. But alas, these things are not within my control, so I let them go like the air from my lungs.
However, The Neurons jumped all over those feelings, dumping “Basketcase” by Green Day into the morning mental music stream (trademark pending – not really, but it feels like it should be added). So here we go.
My ride is here. Stay pos and test neg. I’ll try to do the same. Here we go. I’ll have coffee at the airport, thanks. Cheers
