Category: memories

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Inspiring sunshine scored the morning clouds, lighting the valley and the house’s eastern face. I put my face to it and breathed in cold, fresh air, admiring birds, squirrels, and chip monks as they took up business.

This was 7:30 AM, just after Tuesday’s sunrise at 7:12 on this 27th of September, 2022, in the Common Era. Umbrellas are called for this day as clouds have taken over and rain scents pepper the air. 55 F now, they tell us not to expect anything over 60 today. Yet I’m in shorts. Wear jeans, back to shorts today. Not like they’re glued or stapled to me. I can always swap my shorts for pants before sunset at 7:09 PM, if needed.

Mom had a rough morning. So did her partner, and my sisters, and me. That’s how it rolls. Diarrhea caused as a side effect of her antibiotics debilitated her. That all happened before 6 AM. She was to see her cardiologist but he went out sick. They still wanted Mom to come in and see the cardiologist’s nurse, but she convinced them that she was too weak, and the appointment was cancelled. They’ll reschedule after the cardiologist returns. A health care nurse is coming by at 2 to check on her, per a schedule set up yesterday.

My younger sisters vent a lot to me. This has impacted them, along with their children. All regularly visit Mom as they live in the area. I act psychologist to them, listening without giving advice. Seems to help.

Their thoughts about change and mortality prompted The Neurons to pull up a favorite song of mine. “Breathe (In the Air)” by Pink Floyd was part of the monumental album, “The Dark Side of the Moon”, released in 1972. I saw the group perform the album in concert. It felt like a transcendental experience. I’ve since seen them in concert several more times. I originally had the album on 8 track, then got it on cassette tape, vinyl, and finally, a digitally remastered CD. Yes, I like the album.

As the song says,

Run, rabbit, run
Dig that hole, forget the sun
And when at last the work is done
Don’t sit down, it’s time to dig another one

h/t to genuis.com

So life seems to be for so many, dig a hole, and then dig another, metaphors for work, work, work, work, work.

Hope you enjoy it. Stay positive, test negative, take care of yourselves and others. I’ve had coffee, thanks. I am ready for lunch and will have leftover chicken tortellini soup which my sister made and brought over yesterday. There’s plenty, if you care to have some.

Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Autumn has turned down the temperature here. Nights are cooler. So are days, despite a sunshine filled sky that chased out darkness at 7:20 AM. Speculating about others around the world watching sunrise and sunset is an intriguing engagement. Someplace is always experiencing a sunrise or sunset. It’s a never-ending mechanism and inspires and instructs us in multitudes of manners, as it’s been such we first realized as creatures that a sun is in the sky.

The sun’s tenure for my area will end at 7:25 PM. Temperatures will float up from its current 46 F t0 62 and back down to 45 tonight. This is Friday, September 23, 2022.

I was thinking about the toss of the dice this morning, a stretch out of a previous conversation with others about rolling the dice and how arbitrary results seem on the surface. And while we were speaking, I thought of chaos theory, but didn’t speak to that group about it. Anyway, The Neurons, observant as an NFL ref, picked up the thinking and pitched “What It Takes” by Aerosmith from 1990 into the morning mental music stream.

Stay positive, test negy, and so on. Now, I must hunt down a cup of coffee. Hope your Friday rolls up the way you need it. Here’s the beats. Cheers

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Thursday’s Wandering Thought

Looking back on his life, he was amazed by how lucky he was in where and when he was born, and the gifts and talents he had. He didn’t cultivate or use many of them, something he was realizing too late, as many people. He always thought there was a little more time.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Sunshine slanted across the flat valley at 7:17 AM in Pittsburgh before clouds bullied it into disappearing.

Hi, fellow sentients. Today is Wednesday, September 21, 2022. September is going apace. Seems like another day comes up about every twenty-four hours. Viewing hours for daylight will end today at 7:30 in the PM. 63 F is the moment’s temperature under serious clouds. Drumroll as we open the envelope and read the omniscient they’s projected high: 28 C.

The groundhog has emerged for breakfast in the backyard. I enjoy watching him traverse and search, imagining his personality and voice from his waddle, pauses, and gazes. Really looks like he might be a retired British major. He likes a peaceful, easy way, and prefers the solitude of his own voice.

Mom is doing better, thanks. Was moved last night from hospital a nursing home to begin rehab therapy. Voice, spirit, attitude have all improved. She’s cleared of COVID, fluid gone from lungs and heart, pacemaker and heart are both stronger, her appendix healed, and infections are vanquished. She remains on anti-biotics while she gains mass back, but she’s off the blood thinner. Thanks for your support, it is appreciated. Going up to see her in a while.

On my end, I removed my Ziopatch from my chest this morning and I’m mailing that back today. Good to have it off my chest.

The Neurons are wild with music this morning. Huey Lewis and the News, Metallica, Bush, Tony! Toni! Toné!, The Climax Blues Band, and others. I finally settled on “She’s Just My Style” from 1965. I couldn’t recall who had it as a hit and did the google thing to bring back Gary Lewis & the Playboys. I always like this song’s vocals, and that brief guitar solo. I was nine when it came out but its words were easily heard and understood. I always enjoyed the small vocal flourishes it incorporated. It’s another one of those songs from basement adventures where we pretended to be famous performers.

Got some Peet’s Major Dickason on deck. Stay positive and test negative. The alternative sucks. I speak from my own experience; yours will be different. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thought

Years have passed since he’s spent much time at a place with cable television. Flipping through the channels, he’s astounded how many of the stations offer hours of the same thing, such as sitcoms like “Everybody Loves Raymond”, “Friends”, “Seinfeld”, and “The Office”, along with movies shown again and again. The Shawshank Redemption and Top Gun have been the offerings he’d seen time and again. “Mannix” is there, and Perry Mason. There are live game shows and the news and weather. But it’s mostly a wasteland lively with the reruns of yesteryear.

It has expanded. There are many more shows offering more specialized insights. None of them on retirement, cross-dressing, or cooking, seized his attention.

It reminds him exactly why he cut the cable over a decade ago.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Center stage was the sun’s at 7:05 AM in Pittsburgh, and she used it to full, rousing effect.

Today is called September 20, 2022. I awoke thinking about dreams and then shifted to news, feeling concerns about all the storms hitting. Japan. Alaska. Puerto Rico. How are things there? Is help on the way. Politics are a little suspended as I wait for pieces of information to be released, and wait for mid-terms. Wait. Read. Listen. Think. Wait.

I feel like I’m on a low boil here in PA as the stout sunshine finds my skin. 19 C again, high of 77 F expected before the sun’s curtain falls at 7:21 PM. Clouds lurk and plot, meeting and muttering with one another, but the sun owns the stage in my zone.

Since it’s Tuesday, The Neurons have planted “Tuesday’s Gone” by Lynyrd Skynyrd in the morning mental music stream. First heard it when it was released in 1973 and I was a high school junior at Shady Spring High School. The song strikes deep chords in me, sealing another longing fit for what was and what never came to be. ‘Tis always been that way.

So, you know, have some coffee and enjoy Tuesday before it’s gone. Stay pos, test neg. Cheers

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The Reminiscent Drive

He cruised old familiars. This is where he lived from sixth to nine grade – only four years? But that was in child years when time stretched for him. Aging math is often astonishing. In this case, fifty-one ellipses around the sun were done since he’d last lived in the red brick ranch house with the single car garage. It was a laughingly small place to the mind of these times but had worked for a family of two adults and five children. Yes, bedrooms were shared. One bathroom provided service for all. But there was also the basement, converted into a laundry room and family room. That gave a little more space.

Seeing streets and houses, he plugged in who lived where, wondering where each now lived, or if they lived. Oddly, houses remained almost identical to what lived in memory. It felt the same. If cars weren’t parked in the driveway, it could be the same year that he last lived there; no other differences marked the elapsed time. Temptation seeped in to park and walk up to a door, knock, see if a friend was available. “Hi, is Curt home?” Or Bruce. Rick. John. Chuck. Their remembered faces light up like a game in his mind.

Then he notices that the large old oak where he and Vicky first kissed was gone. With that seen, he knew, time to drive away. Home was somewhere else.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Sunrise in Pittsburgh on Saturday, September 17, 2022, brought diffused yellow light to the steel city. 7:02 AM, it would take time to heat the chilly air. Summer was heading south for the winter. Fall was making its move.

Now at ten AM, heat has stirred the thermometer to 16 C. 81 F is where the air temp is expected to go before the sun’s impact shuts down at 7:28 PM.

Staying in Mom’s home, where she’s resided for over thirty years, I’m struck by both change and stasis, again. Some things about the house are so familiar and have been as they always were. That’s not in the architecture or layout but in the details of décor and organization. Mom’s authority and control is seen in every niche and nook. She decides all. This allows me to visit as if I’ve always been here. Just remember her habits and how she organizes, and everything can be found. Probably true for most people, especially when they’ve inhabited a space for so long, but I feel it more deeply with this place of Mom’s. Of course, it’s absolutely clean – cleaning is her therapy as writing is mine – she has told me that she loves to clean, because I thought it something imposed on her, but no, she says, no – and also inside that organized structure is bizarre chaos. Wild how the two co-exist.

Thought of change prods The Neurons to resurrect a favorite song in the morning mental music stream. “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke came out in 1964, when I was eight. It’s been part of existence’s fabric for almost my entire life, and it has always spoken to me. I’m not alone in this; Sam plugged into something special when he created this song. For today, though, I’m going with a Beth Hart version. She infuses it with that same strength of belief and sincerity that I hear in Sam’s voice. Hope you hear it, too. In some ways, she reminds me of Janis Joplin with this song.

Stay positive and test negative. Here’s the music. I’m off for a second cup of coffee. I’ll go out on the porch into the sunshine-warmed breeze to enjoy it. Enjoy the world in the best way you can. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

I was surprised to discover today is Friday. It’s also September 16, 2022. The month is storming through. It’ll soon be another memory, haphazardly stacked alongside my other memories. “Do you remember…?” The question begins the conversation. I hear it reverberating from the future. “Do you remember?” A little mental scratching follows. Pieces are put together and then answer comes, “Yes, I remember.” Then each contributes details. Whether it’s all accurate or real, well, that’s for another philosopher to address.

Sunrise’s stealthy crawl began at 7:01 AM. Temperatures continue along a short spectrum of low sixties to mid-seventies. Pittsburgh’s sunset will be at 7:31. The daily slice of sunshine gets shaved a little more every day.

I spent thirty minutes outside today, on the porch in sunshine, drinking coffee. Wonderful to have a full and warm sun as a companion. My body drank in that vitamin D. While out there, I reflected that my mental image of myself remains as a man thirty years younger, or more. I wondered, do our self-images get created and captured when we first visit a place? Is that how we’ll always see ourselves in conjunction with a specific place?

I remember once when I was sixteen, with Dad, shoe shopping. Dad was flirting with a young female sales assistant. It seemed clear to me the woman was embarrassed. I found it all cringeworthy. But Dad didn’t see and hear himself as we saw him that day. Reality is such a tasty and beautiful variable, isn’t it?

For music, “A Horse With No Name” by Americ in the morning mental music stream. I started singing it to myself, shifting lyrics to, “It felt good to be out in the sun.” I took it past there but you don’t need those deets. Make up your own.

Stay positive and test negative, and do what you can with the day. As the floofs say, carpe diem. Lunch is calling, I think. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Thursday, September 15, 2022, dawned at 7:00 AM with variable results. Chaotic cumulus clouds mixed with sunshine and blue sky to create a sullen envelope for the day. 17.7 C now, 76 F will be today’s peak temperature. 7:31 PM will see sunset take place.

I’m busy with a personal project, building a mountain of used tissues and cough drops. I’m very proud of my accomplishment. It’s not a bad way to deal with COVID compared to others’ suffering.

Haven’t seen Mom due to my sit. Her abscess was drained and she’s being moved from the step down unit to a normal private room. She’ll remain in isolation.

The Neurons plugged “Open Arms” by Journey (1982) into the morning mental music stream. Drifting in and out of sleep in the dark room last night, I’d listen to my heartbeat. The Neurons picked up on that and began playing with songs which had heartbeat or darkness as part of the lyrics. Yeah, The Neurons are a crazy beast. The song was released while I was stationed at Kadena, Okinawa, Japan, so it’s attached to that era in my thinking. This is one of those songs that forces memories of our small off-base apartment to my mind’s forefront. I remember the cats who came to us then and lived with us. We took them back to America with us, and then was forced to leave them there when we went to Japan. My SIL took care of them for us. But once we returned, we took them with us to California. Both passed away there, Crystal, a Bombay black was twelve, while Jade was 21.

Stay positive and test negative. No coffee, thanks, I’ve already had a cup. Mark me down for another cup later. Here’s the song. Cheers

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