SoCS – Sweet
This week, Linda Hill’s prompt was sweet for the Saturday Stream of Consciousness. Here we go.
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Sweet, I thought, go to the coast, get away, enjoy the weather and eat something different and just be someone different somewhere doing something different watching waves, breathing the air, smelling it –
Hope it all goes well. Why shouldn’t it? Well…yeah. Life.
Maybe I should eat something. Cookie? Scone would be nice. Blueberry. Lemon.
Time to go home.
The Discussion
Four women were chatting at a nearby table at the coffee shop. Appearing similar in age to me, two women dominated the talking. One was short and slender, with fair skin and dark, bobbed hair. The other was tanner and smaller. Smiling a lot, her silver hair fell around her shoulders.
They were talking about toothpaste. Looking up from my writing, I tuned in as the first woman said, “I put a pea-sized amount on my brush.”
One of the other women, heavy, with dry brown hair that came to her shoulders, loudly, sharply scoffed. “That’s not enough.”
The first woman replied, “That’s what the directions say to use.”
The brown-haired woman snorted. “Everyone knows you’re supposed to put toothpaste on all the bristles, from one end to the other.”
The conversation fell still for several seconds. “Anyway,” the first woman resumed.
I returned to my writing.
Thursday’s Theme Music — State of things
Ashland, southern Oregon — Thursday, May 14, 2026.
It’s blue out there, full of sunshine. Clouds are absent. 50 F with a high in the mid 70s today.
Thunderstorms looked possible yesterday but it didn’t happen. Just as in the previous days of forecasted activity. After the winter snow drought, May is at 3% of its average rainfall.
Our snowpack is at about 7%. While the reservoirs are above 80%, without snowmelt to replenish them, it’ll be a hot, dry summer. Stack the El Nino predictions, many of us are bracing ourselves for a rough year ahead.
Mom’s state is not good. She wasn’t responding to my sister’s texts. Sis called the assisted living facility, Heritage Grove, to ask about Mom. They said Mom went to bed before dinner and had not felt well all day.
On the optimistic side of the board, two neighbors are reportedly interested in buying Mom’s house.
My wife and I had new tires installed. For the record, we replaced a set that we’d bought in 2019. Got 35,000 miles out of them. Not great, not bad.
We bought them at Costco and had them installed there, shopping while we waited. As we were in the Medford area, we decided to eat out and chose the Texas Roadhouse Restaurant. My wife likes the salmon they serve there.
We couldn’t eat there. The way was blocked by ambulances and firetrucks. Wondering what’s going on, we took to our phones to learn. Nothing at the fire department, alert system, social media, or local television stations could give us that info.
This duplicated a Tuesday incident, in my mind. Driving home from writing at the coffee shop, one lane of traffic was blocked off in front of an SOU building on Siskiyou Avenue. What happened? I searched for information after I got home and couldn’t find anything. 24 hours later, the answer came: a woman had driven across the median strip, up a walkway, and into a building, breaking a gas meter along the way.
Miserable headlines fill my feed. When will there be good news? I’m not sure what I mean by good news at this point. An end to wars would be nice, along with a return to normalcy. Normalcy to me is let’s take action against polluting our air and water. Action against climate change. But the cynic in me says that PINO Trump would take credit for whatever and enough brain-dead people would slurp that down and bray about how great Dozy Donnie is that I’d regurgitate everything taken in during the last three days.
But here’s the state of things in the United States nation in one sharp observation someone else made:
Your Trump Quote of the Day:
Paraphrasing, Trump lies, says this isn’t so bad, Biden! Because that worked well previously under Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!
Enough people with brains are responding, screw you.
You started a war, Donald J “No new wars” Trump.
The economy is a mess, gas prices are rising, all the prices are rising, Donald J “We’ll cut prices on day 1” Trump, and the country is going in the wrong direction.
And you, DONALD J TRUMP, YOU ARE THE REASON WE’RE IN SIX MILLION MESSES WITH NO WAY OUT EXCEPT TO FIRST GET RID OF YOU AND YOUR CRONIES.
Now stop building the damn ballroom and release the damn Epstein files so we can feast on your political corpse.
The Neurons inserted “Mind Games” by John Lennon into my morning mental music stream. This actually came about from Papi’s state of mind this morning. I played with him and his favorite nemesis, the red dot. The play began abruptly. As soon as he engaged, I stopped for about a minute. He kept peeking left and right, waiting for it to reappear. Just as he started walking off, I blinked it back on. Off Papi went, chasing it across the room, then stalking it.
I hope your Thursday brings you some good news and fair winds, assuming you need winds to get somewhere. Like you drive a sail car and need to have wind to blow you along the Interstate.
Have my coffee now. Cheers
Tuesday’s Theme Music – Turn to stone
Ashland, southern Oregon — Tuesday, May 12, 2026.
It’s 66 F in Ashland. Clouds have painted a thin white veneer over the blue. Thunderstorms are forecast, along with an 87 degree high as spring moves toward summer.
Papi and I went out back. As I was stretching and yawning, I looked down and saw him doing the same. I laughed. “Nice stretching, oh great fur being.” He sat down and began grooming places that I groom in the shower.
News from home is that Mom is sick again. Details are shared. Her sciatic nerve has flared up and she’s back in her wheelchair. Also suffering from diarrhea. Sis says that’s been going on for a week.
My sister has been in content with estate sellers. Familiar with them? They buy the contents and then sell it to the public. They really want to know if there’s anything there besides furniture. Yes, there’s all the things you’d find in house where someone lives. I know that there’s a new movement on about ‘vintage’ stuff. Corning Ware is very popular now. Old clothes. Mom has all that stuff.
Strange and humbling to think simultaneously of all that stuff being bought, used, and sold to others. Decisions made about each purchase. I’d rather that someone else finds and uses the stuff rather than having it going to trash or recycled for its materials.
Today’s music has a two-prong inspiration. One, Jill Dennison recently played ELO’s song, “Turn to Stone”. A good song, it brought to mind another song called “Turn to Stone”. As soon as I read “Turn to Stone” on Jill’s blog, The Neurons introduced Joe Walsh’s “Turn to Stone” song.
I also remembered that I once read that Walsh said the song was about frustration. In true ‘net spirit, Wikipedia.org has a good quote about that from Walsh.
“‘Turn to Stone’ was written about the Nixon administration and the Vietnam War and the protesting that was going on and all of that. It’s a song about frustration. Also, I attended Kent State. I was at the shootings. That fueled it, too. In those days it felt like the government’s priority was not the population. They had an agenda that was about something other than doing what was necessarily good for the country.”
That last line echoes through Trump’s agenda. Driven by ‘right-wing values’, also known as racism, sexism, and greed, and orchestrate by the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, Trump’s agenda is about him and not at all anything necessarily good for the country.
As Joe sings, “Read the writing on the wall.”
Your Trump Quote of the Day:
Inflation news grabbed headlines this morning. Driven by Trump’s non-war in Iran, inflation jumped 3.8% in April. Rising gas prices were a big factor.
Trump’s disapproval rating keeps climbing. The NYT’s page summarizing polls and their Trump ratings are a column of red, showing net disapproval in every poll.
One another piece of news was that Epstein survivors are testifying in Florida. Standing by for another salvo from Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL to distract us from these pieces of news.
On to the music. Hope your day is full of good intentions and good results.
Got my coffee. Time to fly. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 