Category: miscellaneous

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A Car Dream

Despite a nightly barrage of dreams, it’s been a while since I shared one here.

Today’s offering began as my wife and I were driving on a highway. I was at the wheel. Looking ahead, I saw a car coming and knew an accident was about to happen. So, as it began, I turned to avoid it and announced, “Accident.” Cars collided and spun. I went around them and had managed to get us through. My wife told me, “Way to go. It’s a good thing you saw that.” Her tone told me how impressed she was.

Just then, a car came up, slewed around the other wreckage, and hit us in the rear. It wasn’t heavy, and the car didn’t seem greatly damaged, but we were on our way somewhere so I said, “Come on. We’re going to go get a new car.”

I went to a car lot. They sat me down in a room, purportedly to complete a survey. An attractive young woman was seated close to me. Almost immediately, she began flirting with me. I felt she was there to entice me into spending more money than I’d planned to buy more car than I wanted. So while I joked with her, I wasn’t letting her comments steer me. In the end, I told them my selection from what was offered. They glumly completed the transaction, and off I went.

After I left, I discovered I’d purchased a BMW. It was a small, sporty model. I picked up my wife, and she was pleased. Only after driving for a while did we realize that it was white, a color neither of us liked on a car. I chastised myself for not looking at the color before I bought it.

We went to a house, which turned out to be a modular home. I drove the car inside and down the halls. My wife came to the car window and told me we had to go but a RL friend arrived and asked for a ride. She was checking out the car, and complimented us on the purchase. In order for the other two to go, I needed to back the car down the halls and out the front door. I did that. Clouds were darkening the day. The friend commented, “I think rain is coming.”

I agreed with her. They entered the car. As I began driving, the sky turned black and a downpour struck. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. I drove down the highway into the rain.

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Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts

He likes to be on the edge. Not on the edge of his seat, nor the edge or insanity, or the edge of disaster. He likes sitting in a chair that’s on the edge of crowds, restaurants, coffee houses, and other venues. Likewise, he prefers to stand on an edge’s crowd. It can be the front edge, although he’s more comfortable with no one behind him but wall.

That’s the thing. It’s about comfort. There’s no logic or emotion associated with his choice. He’s just more comfortable on the edge, the fringe, even. Just how he is and has always been.

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The Writing Moment

All-consuming, a new novel is being written. He suffers from the usual issues. Eating is put off even though he’s hungry. His backside endures extended periods in a chair. Coffee cools, virtually untouched. Blog posts are thought of and dismissed. To converse with others means he must forcefully shift attention from the book to the people. He resents their intrusion.

The novel keeps hypnotizing him, drawing him in with its character, worlds, scenes, progression. He feels helpless. To resist the novel goes against everything he’s trained himself to do, because he wants to write.

He suffers; others suffer. It’s an odd conundrum because chasing words also exhilarates him. It’s the old writer’s curse.  

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

He always found himself waiting or planning for the next thing, as if he was trapped in some personal version of “The Jolly Corner”. The next season, the next birthday, the next death.

The next marriage, the next divorce, the next trip, the next vacation..

The next election, the political scandal, the next mass murder.

Next step in finishing a novel, the next novel to write, the next meal, the next task, job, bill, the next expense.

He kept reminding himself, stop. Stay in the moment and enjoy. But the next always kept coming.

Always.

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