After taking some meds, he learned again that if some is good, more isn’t always better. The rule of moderation was proven again. The question for everyone, with everything, was always, what constitutes moderation? Difficulty comes because it changes with age, health, and circumstances. Re-consideration and adjustments are often required.
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
Sunday’s Wandering Thought
After days of sunshine and warm air, it’s cloudy today. Sunshine can barely get anything in edgewise. Only 62 F, it feels amazingly cold. Fascinating how the body acclimates so quickly with the warmth, forcing it to struggle when it gets ‘chilly’. It’s all part of the theory of relativity of feeling warm.
Learning
One of the finest aspects of having a partner is the impact it has on learning and memory. In my case, this spot is filled with my wife, a woman. She’s smart, reads many books, and researches matters. Most of which she researches involves women rights, social justice, and health. She shares all that she learns with me, often piquing my interest to go read more on the subject. Not infrequently, some of what she teaches me ends up in some character in a story. For instance, she taught me two things today.
- Men have more collagen and thicker skin than women, in general.
- Women donate more kidneys but receive fewer kidney donations. When you think about it, it kinda makes sense. If men are having kidney problems, they can’t donate them. So the next step would be to look for information to vet that.
We also act as memory augmentation for one another, covering the other’s weakness. She’s great with social memes, voices, faces, poetry, cooking and baking. I’m passable with math, science, history, pop culture, and technology. It works.
I think it’d work for most, regardless of gender or pronoun, sexual orientation, and maybe even political persuasion. Everyone should at least should not have the right to try taken away from them. Who knows what we all could learn?
Saturday’s Theme Music
Rain! Rain for sale, precious rain available. Come on and all, get your rain whilst it lasts. Will trade rain for sunshine.
It’s Saturday, May 6, 2023. The clouds have overtaken Saturday as the sun shows reluctance to be here. The sun is all like, “I was just in Ashlandia a few days ago.”
Sunrise was about six hours after midnight. Dawn began an hour before, I saw as Papi changed locations from inside to out again. Sunset is after twenty hundred hours. We’re seeing 46 F with our rain right now, little wind, with an expected peak temperature of 53 F. A sort of dreary day out there.
It’s been announced that the COVID-19 pandemic health emergency will end May 11 in the US. Don’t know if parties are being planned. We’ll probably continue wearing our masks in grocery stores for a little longer. Play it by ear, see what happens.
Love that expression, play it by ear.
The weather and morning’s general feel brought The Neurons to the song, “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd. A personal fave, it’s found itself in the morning mental music stream. A net search brought up a gem of a recording from Remember That Night from 2006. David Gilmour, PF guitarist and vocalist, was doing a solid act, but with several members of the Pink Floyd team, including one of the founding members, Richard Wright. Guest starring as a vocalist for “Comfortably Numb” was David Bowie. It’s a terrific and well-executed guitar solo which steals the show, though.
Stay pos. Coffee up and get it on. If it helps, play “Get It On” by T-Rex. Here’s the theme music. Cheers
Tuesday’s Wandering Thought
He was hot. She was, she said, “Freezing.”
This wasn’t new.
But her fingers were white and waxy, like bloodless white candles. Their appearance stunned him into silence. She said they ached.
He merely sweated. So it was not the same thing. For her, it was pain. For him, it was comfort.
The New Toothbrush
We bought new toothbrushes a few months ago. A Costco impulse buy, I’d seen it advertised on Hulu at night. We’ve had our Phillips Sonicare for a decade plus and weren’t really looking for a change but the display for the new Sonicare Smart Brush just past the television displays pulled me in.
I called my wife over to check it out because it was full of interesting features. The brushes look almost invisible. I had to really squint, holding them up to my eye to see them, but they glow pale white when the brush is turned on. Its battery pack is very small and holds a charge for up to three months of standard use. Yeah, right, like I believed that. And it’s supposed to take under 54 minutes to fully recharge, which I can confirm, it does.
But what really interested me was that you attach a toothpaste pod to it. The toothbrush will automatically feed the right amount of cleaner to the bristles for you to get the best mouth-cleaning experience. An amber light blinks when it’s time to refill the pod. The ‘cleaner’ is less like a paste and more like a spray. Different flavors are available. I use spearmint but my wife uses cinnamon. Tests show that this cleaner also wipes out plaque. Cool.
A small blue light comes on and it softly chimes whenever you’re at a ‘problem area’ where you need to brush longer. The light goes green when you’ve done the area enough. The brush turns itself off when it detects that your mouth is cleaned and tells you, “Spit and rinse”. I know, it sounds crazy. My wife was dubious but a two pack with extra heads was less than eighty dollars, including the cleaner pods, so we agreed and bought them. Do I need to tell you who really loves it? Yes, her.
The one thing she still doesn’t like is that it’s black, as is the ‘paste’ (I still don’t know what to call it), so when you’re done brushing, your teeth and mouth are all black, but she agrees that the toothbrushes are great. The black all rinses off and our teeth look amazingly white. It still surprises me when that blue light goes on. It also has an app for your phone to remind you to brush. It dings and vibrates and then displays a message, telling you how long it’s been since you last brushed. It’ll also send those messages to smart watches and Fitbits, if you set it up.
So, yeah, we love them, and I recommend them. The worst aspect of this Smart brush to me is that it only exists on April 1st.
Cheers
Keep Dancing
An acquaintance died. Over eighty, he lived a solid life. He’d been diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer not too long ago. He and his wife were getting ready to go for a walk. She said something to him, behind her, as she put her shoes on.
He didn’t answer.
She looked around and found him dead.
She’d prepared herself. Still, a shock that it was so sudden, without preamble. She has kept on with all her usual activities. I learned of his death through my wife. She went to exercise class and heard the news. When she saw the widow, she hugged her.
The woman asked, “What else can I do?”
My wife replied, “Keep dancing.”
“Exactly.”
Smiles, hugs, and tears went on.
Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts
He hated to do it. It seemed shameful. But.
He was helping a friend, staying in contact, checking on her, trying to encourage her. But she’d become belligerent lately. Combative. Seriously negative.
It exhausted him. He decided he needed a break. Had to take care of himself so he could take care of her. It felt like a rationalization, but he knew he was right.
Sacrifice
She brought me a small white plate.
Two dark pieces nestle on it. I stare at them, then shift the stare to her.
I had been smelling them since I came into the house after my coffee house writing session. Chocolate.
K is on a diet. Today is day 30. She is allowed to add one thing today. She added vegan honey to her breakfast amaranth. Now she waits three days to see if there’s a reaction. If a reaction — pain, a flare, stiffness — is experienced, that item is banned from her diet. Forever. Then she resets for a few days and adds another item. If no reaction is felt, she adds another item and waits three days. So it goes.
This means that she can’t eat what’s on the plate.
She’s hosting book club next month. The moderator opted for something lighter for March. Lessons in Chemistry. Bonnie Garmus. Kay is making vegan brownies studded with chocolate chips. These are vegan chips from Trader Joe’s. Vegan butter was used. This is a test batch. A Ghirardelli mix was used.
“Taste these,” she tells me. “Tell me what you think.”
She can’t have them. Diet. Two of the Ashlandians in the book club are vegan.
I force myself to eat a chewy, gooey vegan brownie.
“Wonderful chocolate taste. Not too sweet. Greasy,” I announce. That makes sense to her. There was something about the vegan butter melting and then measuring it again. She didn’t do that. “And they’re not done enough.”
“Five more minutes?”
“Maybe just three.”
She nods. She’ll make another test batch this week.
They go great with black coffee on a winting Ashlandia afternoon. An entire tray waits for me in the kitchen.
I’ll need to pace myself or it might be death by chocolate.
Michael Seidel, writer 