Pet Peeves
I probably ranted about this before, because I’m a natural ranter.
While inconsiderate/inattentive drivers have long commanded a top spot on my pet peeve register, a new one has steadily climbed the chart. Now I find myself annoyed with people walking while looking at their phone. Don’t know what they’re considering on it – videos, photos, games, text messages, whatever. I guess they think they’re multi-tasking.
Doesn’t matter. What matters to me is that others must move aside for these self-absorbed individuals as they silently peruse stuff while walking. I’m tired of standing aside for these people who don’t even acknowledge others with excuse me or thank you. I’ve now just taken to stopping in their path — which is my path — forcing their attention away from the phone and into the world. And then, when they realize I’m there, I say, “Excuse me.”
I know. It’s petty. Passive aggressive. I accept that. I’m just fed up with standing aside for them. Let them stand aside for me.
Tuesday’s Wandering Thought
Kind of weird to hear “olden times” used in reference to the “yellow pages”.
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Mood: focused
I live partway up a hill that heads on to mountains. The street ends a few hundred feet beyond my house. That’s where the city ceases. South of the end in a few miles is where California’s border with Oregon rests. Distant barking, distant sirens, a distant small airplane, distant truck and car sounds, shape the city to my west and north.
It’s a robust 57 F outside. Today’s top end will be 77 F. Fires dot the rugged land east and south of us, feeding us a perpetual smoke diet. Smoke is worst to the west, suffocating towns like Grants Pass and Medford.
A blood red moon rode our night sky last night like some bad omen. Today’s sun is clearer than other recent days, more of a yellow cast to its brilliance. Sunrise is earlier, sunrise is later as the shifts brought up by our journey through the solar system are reinstated again, part of the annual journey. It’s Tuesday, August 29, 2023, in Ashlandia, where the children are polite, and the adults are political.
I don’t know what’s going on with Les Neurons this AM. They’ve switched on Donnie and Marie Osmond’s cover of “I’m Leaving It Up to You” 1974. That was the year I graduated HS and joined the military. Donnie & Marie are not part of my usual musical palette but that was one of the day’s ubiquitous songs in my region. The part which goes, “I’m leaving it all up to you. You decide, what you’re gonna do. Now do you want my love? Or are we through?” That’s how I remember it. Maybe The Neurons are feeling nostalgic for an earlier life period, when I was young and things were simpler. Who knows what those rascals are up to.
Coffee has been picked up, sniffed deeply, sampled for quality. Time to get on it. Stay pos, be strong, and remember, 42. Here’s the music. Cheers
Wednesday’s Wandering Thought
So the coffee shop had food made in error, a type of breakfast sandwich on an English muffin. A barrista walked around the business, inquiring of customers if they would like the free food. Explaining what it was, he said, “It’s not piping hot, but it’s still warm,” in a mildly apologetic tone.
That made me smile.
Garbage Dream
I’m outside, kinda young. Rolling deep green grass, where a music festival is due to start. I’m excited about it but worried about unspecified stuff. I’m alone, don’t know anyone there. A few others are starting to arrive. They’re all younger, with my teenagers among them, mostly female.
I’m busy, though, boxing up containers of trash. Collecting it, putting it in boxes, sealing it up. Don’t know why I’m specifically doing it; seems to be a compulsion. People keep arriving but I keep boxing up trash. By the time I’m done, hundreds have arrived, and I have about thirty small, square boxes of trash.
I need a place to put them, and that worries me. I have some of them stacked on a small peeling white trailer which is attached to a small green minibike like one I had in my early teens. I plan to use the bike to pull the trailer and unload the garbage boxes somewhere else, but where?
There is a small white frame house. Single story, white siding, two windows on the front, a screen door in its center. I know that this is the office of the young men organizing the music festival. There are three, dark-haired young white men in their early twenties. I know this without seeing them. I can hear them talking and laughing. Part of their conversation is about me and my minibike pulling the scarred white trailer loaded with boxes of trash.
Piles of trash are not far from the house. I’m thinking about unloading my trash into this collection, but I feel guilty, as if I’m breaking a law, and that holds me back. Yet, racing around, watched by a growing number of people, I can’t find anywhere else to put the trash. I feel like this is my only choice.
Aware that I’m being watched, that others are commenting about what I’m doing, I try pulling my trailer of trash. It won’t go. I reattach the green minibike with its fat knobby tires. The little bike easily tugs the trailer across the way.
From inside the trailer, I hear the organizers discuss this development. One suggest, “It’s alright, let him be.” I feel better about that. I start unloading the trailer. People are commenting about how fast and hard I’m working. Some appreciate that I’ve cleaned up trash. Buoyed by what I hear, I quickly unload the trailer, drive back, and fill it again. Now finished, I stand still, sweating and breathing hard by my little minibike and its empty white trailer.
