Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Mom didn’t know that Visine could be used to kill people, so I explained what I knew of it.
Next day, I went out, returning after a few hours.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“Drug store. I needed some Visine.”
She laughed but gave me a nervous look.
Later yet, she asked, “Did you really buy Visine?”
Take them in and grin, giggle, and guffaw at existence. I particularly enjoy the Presidential goals. True yet funny, it aptly encapsulates GOP goals and progress for most of the last forty years.
Mood: Percoffeecatiated
Happy Mother’s Day in the U.S. Hope all you mothers enjoy of celebration and joy.
Today is Sunday May 12, 2024. Clouds without breaks occlude the sun in the Churchill Valley where the cities I’m visiting are located. It’s 50 F now. Weather elements will lift our temp to 65 F. That sullen winter taste in the air has melted away. We’ve returned to a cold, wet, spring essence.
My Mother’s Day mental perambulations are searches for how to help Mom. She’s tired, often in pain, fighting to moving and thinking, but everything tires her to deep levels. She wants and needs help. Finding it is now my mission.
There are agencies to help. They’re mired in bureaucracy. Nothing has an easy approach or quick timelines. Phone calls, emails, and chats will be the upcoming week’s norms.
Her own habits, experiences, and expectations are a significant obstacle. She expects to bounce back but the bounce is gone. She wants or needs, which I guess should be married as a word, waeds, to do the cleaning she has always done, to be hygienic and neat. These things take hours and hours. Her zip has diminished to a lumpy trundle.
Her decline has been going on a while, since ‘The Fall’. That seemed to trigger everything; she’s been fighting against its ripples for over a decade. Classic story, definitely in America, probably in many other countries as well. She confided to me last night that she fell hard five times in the first three days after returning home. That is no good.
The morning mental music stream (Trademark flailing) has a song called “Paralyzer” orbiting it. The Finger Eleven beats started my mental journey while I was still abed. My brain was gyrating around the things wanted and the things needed, and the destinations and journeys of all the players when the 2007 tune kicked in. It’s not an even matchup between the song and the morning, except I was dealing with a sense of paralysis and a resistance to moving. Then I told myself I’d treat me to a cuppa coffee if I left the bed, dressed, and started doing things. I’m a sucker for a promise of coffee.
Stay positive, be strong, lean forward against the winds of resistance, and Vote Blue in 2024. The promise of coffee has been fulfilled. Here’s the music video.
Here we go. Cheers
Infloofpacitate (floofinition) – Movement, positions, or activities limited by an animal or animals’ presence. Origins: Early Common Floof Era, from Middle Floofish. First noted use in England, circa 600 CE.
In Use: “Many people find themselves infloofpacitated by an unwillingness to disturb a furry friend napping on their body”
Mood: Rainflective
Today is May 10, 2024. Sis’s 70 bday is tomorrow.
It’s spring with a wintry flush in Pennhillia, PA. The air is cold and wet. Last night’s rain lowered the temperatures, and clouds keep them down. I don’t know where this front came from but it feels like it was overnighting with winter somewhere.
Light rain is dripping down on us. Temperature is 53 F, which is about our day’s high.
Mother’s Day Cookout planning is ongoing. How many people? How many and what desserts? What about side-dishes, meats, buns and breads and salads, oh my.
Good weather isn’t a call we can make. Sunday is expected to be rainy and chilly, rising into the low 60s F by the mid afternoon. Little sister Gina is hosting us. Besides her husband, children and grandchildren, two other sisters with their husbands, children and grandchildren will be there, along with Mom, me, and Mom’s beau. Fingers crossed and knock on wood that we’ll have a good time.
Today’s music is Avril Lavigne’s “My Happy Ending” out of 2004. The Neurons parked it into my morning mental music stream (Trademark drifting) after my early AM cogitations. Besides dream surveying, I was out on the porch, tasting the cold air, listening to the rain, sucking down coffee and reviewing our family history. Highlights and lowlights came like breaking waves. I remembered this and then that.
2004 became mired in my mind. Mom was my current age in that year. I was but 48. So young, so young. Only two of the many the grands were born. Mom’s beau was justing coming into the picture. She was a healthy, energetic 68 year-old. No evidence of what was to come with all of us, but then how often do the harbingers of what’s to be appear to present a head’s up?
Anyway, from that came the 2004 song, “My Happy Ending”, a succinct song about what was tried and how it failed.
Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. I have coffee, thanks, and I’m sucking it down like it’s the elixir of the gods. Here’s the music video. Cheers
I’m visiting Mom, and staying at her house. I used her washer and dryer to wash my clothes this morning, informing her after the fact.
She looked at me. “You washed your clothes?”
“Yes, Mom.” I mean, wasn’t that what I just said?
Then Mom, born in 1935, just out of the hospital, asks me, her almost 68-year-old son, “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have done it for you.”
I guess as her child and only son of five children, she will always want to take care of me.
Just more first world blues, but I’m bummed out by those automatic toilets which flush while I’m still doing my business. Then, when I do finish my biz, it doesn’t flush, forcing me to search for the magic button to make it happen.
I mean, what exactly is that thing sensing when it flushes and doesn’t? Or is it just messing with me?
Apfloofrition (floofinition) – A rare or unusual appearance of an animal.
In Use: “People enjoy sharing photos and videos on Flooftube of apfloofritions, particularly cats showing up in their house, when they don’t own a cat!”
Mood: Coffexcited
Sunshine rules Penn Hills and Monroeville this morning.
The clouds haven’t been dismissed like a MAGA claim. Oh, no. But they’re broken white and blue-grey pieces of what they once were.
This is May 8, 2024. Current temp here is 71 F. 82 F is our ceiling today.
We had a terrific thunderstorm around 1:30 AM this morning. Sky played cracked the whip with its sounds. I’d heard its soft rumbling beginnings as I was faded. Thought, what is that noise? Animal? Rain? Nope; thunder.
I listened to the storm progress and leave, then dropped into slumber land. There, the storm found its way into my dreams. Fun dreams, though. Nothing sinister or scary.
Mom had a good day yesterday. Physical therapist came by and spent time most of an hour watching her movements, talking to her, teaching her new exercises, closing with checking on the requested wheelchair and hospital bed for her. He was Jim, a nice guy. Man informed me that Jim also tends to clients in prison. I suggested that’s why Jim was selected to help Mom. A good laugh ensued.
Tonight, we attend my nephew’s final high school jazz ensemble concert. Other than that. preparations for a Mother’s Day cook-out at my sister’s house are in full bloom.
Conversations of note with Mom: she was talking about a meal her father used to make in the winters. This was a tangent from some jokes about goulash. She told me about slumgullion: ground beef, tomato sauce, macaroni or pasta, sometimes vegetables. I realized I’d eaten it throughout my life without knowing what it was called.
Another topic was the coal deliveries and the backbreaking work the boys in the household were required to do to get it into the house for its use.
It was absorbing talking to her and Frank about their youths, once again absorbing the mammoth changes in American living compared to eighty years ago. It definitely promotes speculation what people in America will be living like 80 years from now.
Today’s music comes from the dream. “Hang Fire” by the Rolling Stones was released in 1981. The Neurons released it to my morning mental music stream (Trademark stalled) after I contemplated my dreams this morning. It was a pretty good matchup. The song is a lightweight, pop offering. Not my favorite among the Stones’ offerings.
I would write about the Trump trial featuring Stormy Daniels, but I’m a little burnt out on it. I followed it live yesterday, discussing it with Mom. Now the trial has a day off, and I’m taking a day off from thinking and talking about it.
Nor do I feel especially inclined to bring up Gaza and the cease fire agreement, or the campus protests and crackdowns, politics in general, or the bad weather in some parts of the country and world. Just not up to it. More coffee is required before slipping down those muddy paths.
Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music video offering. Look at those youngsters!
And away we go. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 