Tag: childhood

A Race Car Dream

I was a young man. And I was at some kind of car race where I was to be a participant. Several emerging factors swirled and fell and rose. Nobody was expecting me. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I then confirmed, gosh, I am in this race.

Employing strange dream logic, the race was sometimes played as a card game with a board track. Other times, it seemed like a slot car setup, but then it was sometimes full-sized race cars. I’d seamlessly skip between those motifs but the dream itself was mostly centered on race control where I’d check the time sheets, find out where I was on the track, and learn my position. The people populating race control were all tall, older, and white. Most seemed British. I never saw any of the cars so I can’t comment on their colors or livery. But I would identify them. Like I told some once that another driver was piloting a Porsche 917 and another was driving a P3 Ferrari. Someone else was wheeling the Silk Cut Jaguar XJ9.

I swapped cars. I don’t know what I was driving but I suddenly announced, grinning, “I’m driving a Ford GT.” This is a car which won LeMans and the world championship in the mid 1960s and helped seduce me as a racing fan when I was nine. I didn’t specify which variant I was driving.

I learned that I’d qualified fourth but some bureaucratic snafu shuffled me to the pack’s tail end. That didn’t bother me; I shrugged it off with a grin. I was confident that I would win, as I’d qualified fourth with minimal effort. Now, recalling, I actually did have one segment where I was in the car, on the track, during the race, passing clusters of other cars. I then left the car, blink, and was back at race control to check my standing. They didn’t know who I was. I was certain I was leading but they dismissed it. I was told that I’d done something incorrectly and my laps hadn’t been counted. I didn’t know I was supposed to do that, I protested, but that wasn’t their issue.

None of that fazed me. Grinning, I told them, “But I have all these chits.” The chits were small red paper rectangles, like the old-time ticket stubs given at movies in decades past. I received them every time I completed a lap. As I told them about the chits, I held up a fistful of them. Expressing astonishment, they counted the chits and announced that I was in the lead.

I met the news with a happy grin and readied myself to keep racing. Dream end.

I enjoyed discovering this footage of the 1966 LeMans race featuring the Ford GTs. Nice to hear the voices of Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney, Denis Hulme, etc., and see them. Of course, the staged Ford 1-2-3 finish was made famous in the movie Ford vs. Ferrari, where Ken Miles (played by Christian Bale) was first across the finish line but was deemed not to be the winner because another car started further back, so it covered more distance.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: Rocknmemorin

‘Sun’ day is just an honorific at this point today. It’s a beerlovers’ choice out there, cold and frosty. Parts of the streets are drying as the rain has finally ceased. Traces of snow have migrated in when the rain was petering out and the temperaures descending. Was 28 F when I rolled out on his ‘Sunday’, December 15, 2024. Now i’s up o 33. Ten more degrees and we’ll be at the high.

Last night’s Swedish Smörgåsbord was entertaining. Delicious food (although I passed on the lutfisk) and bracing Glühwein. Our hostess reminded me that they serve the same thing every year, part of their Swedish heritage, so she’s had some practice. Conversations revolved around the Gospel Choir concert which we’d already attended. My wife was singing its praises and several others had tickets for today’s matinee. Beyond that, last week’s quake and tsunami warning was discussed as two people were at the coast when it happened. Next, we went into the anticipation of a dark and depressing 2025 under Trump. One woman, a Quaker and Peace House member asserted that she was going to maintain a positive attitude no matter what happened. A second woman insisted that we would not see a 2026 eleciton as Trump and the GOP would go into full Hitler mode. I disagreed with that extreme pessimism. I think Trump’s adminstration, filled with alpha billionaires, few with government experience, will self-destruct with a flailing economy, and Republicans will turn on Trump. While I hope I’m right, I’m too often wrong. Fingers crossed, right?

We’re off to Sunday brunch in a little while. Up into the southern elevations where some serious snow already resides. Then back home to get cozy, read, watch football, and decompress. I like to say decompose rather than decompress; my wife always corrects me.

Today’s music was gonna be “Ventura Highway” by America. Started with the line, “You can always change your name,” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark decomposing). I don’t know why that song or line were called up. However, I walked into the living room. Sunshine was beaming in at all the windows. Flipping a switch, The Neurons called up, “Good morning, mister sunshine. You brighten up my day.” Then, yes, we were off with “Lonely Days” by the Bee Gees from 1970. The song’s variations between what almost felt like a dirge to its upbeat, jazzy rhythms always stirred me. I remember listening to it on an AM/FM radio alarm clock I had. I’d asked for it for my birthday and Mom granted my wish.

Get positive if you can. My coffee buddy helps lift me in that regard. Here’s the music. Hey ho, let’s go. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Mood: temperate

It’s another Friday. This one is December 13, 2024, which triggers some, especially if they’re Knights Templars. But I’m not one and I’m not bothered by the date. Except, there’s less than two weeks until Christmas, if that’s your celebrating avenue. More importantly, the end is near — the end of the year, that is.

Today’s white blob of a sky blends in over the mountain and tree tops, fuzzying our edges and spitting on the eastern windows. Temperature is 42 F and as with yesterday, we’re just four degrees of separation from our high. Unlike yesterday, which morphed into a pleasant autumn day with wintry overtones, a brisk wind is moaning the blues, prompting a high-wind advisory.

Papi the ginger blade despairs of this wind. He beat at the door as soon as it rose. Fattened by brekkie and at least floofmentarily aware of the wind, he’s stretched out in the living room, a pretty orange and white furry binkie.

Several politically-connected matters caught my eye. One, Andy Borowitz put his humorous spin on Hegseth as Drumpf’s nominee to head Defense: “Hegseth Offers to Connect Breathalyzer to Nuclear Arsenal”. Feels hysterically funny because there’s too much truth in it. The second item was one pointed out by on Scottie’s Playground: Study: Republicans Respond to Political Polarization by Spreading Misinformation, Democrats Don’t. Some of us reacted, yes, and water tends to be wet. To see it hardwired as actual study results is satisfying because it underscores our observations that the modern American right wing can’t handle the truth and make shit up.

Finally, also out of Scottie’s Playground, is a tale of Not Good News in Florida. “Earlier this fall, Florida officials ordered transgender women in the state’s prisons to submit to breast exams. As part of a new policy for people with gender dysphoria, prison medical staff ranked the women’s breast size using a scale designed for adolescents. Those whose breasts were deemed big enough were allowed to keep their bras. Everyone else had to surrender theirs, along with anything else considered “female,” such as women’s underwear and toiletry items.”

Yes, we know that besides making shit up when they feel threatened, American Republicans tend to become crueler and treat others who aren’t like them with greater contempt and inhumanity. They’re such a misguided, fact-aversion, hate-filled, group of lying fantasists. If we had greater involvement and better critical thinking from more voting-age Americans, we wouldn’t be in this mess. But a large swath of indifference and lethargy has given power to fools, and all of us will suffer.

I have a weird song in the morning mental music stream (Trademark dated). “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” originally came out in 1935, twenty-one years before my birth. It’s literally been around all my life and then some. The Neurons inserted it into the mmms after a dream in which I wrote myself a letter and then mailed it. A busy dream night, all I remember of that dream is that I as a young teen wrote myself a letter and posted it on a sunny day. Then this song begun. It’s been covered by two and a half gazillion performers. I have females and males singing it in the mmms because this was one of those songs Mom often played on her stereo hi-fi, and she sang along to it. I just surfed the net for a version which I like. Hope you know the song and like it. So here’s the late Jeff Healey with his cover. Jeff Healey and his band were in the movie Road House staring Patrick Swayze, Sam Elliott, Kelly Lynch, and Ben Gazzara in 1989.

Rain is spitting on the western windows now, and the wind’s mutterings have turned louder, angrier, and more prolonged. Coffee and I have made our daily agreement. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Soonday Morning

Mood: Soontobe

It’s Soonday, December 9, 2024. We’re enjoying a clear sky loaded with sunshine and an outdoor tempy of 28 F. Frost has shadowy places airbushed with white influences. A dense fog warning is percolating while 49 F is being dangled in front of us as a high. Should say that it’s my local system calling out 28; in other parts of Ashlandia, sunshine has cleared the forests and mountains and 42 is already being experienced. A friend’s weather setup, available via Wunderground, has his temperature at 31 F. Dress appropriately.

Moving slow this morning. That’s why I’m calling this soon day. Soon, I’ll get up and do things. Soon I’ll leave and get my hair cut. Soon. Night fraught with dreams and restlessness are keeping the go pedal from getting engaged, even though coffee and I have said our hellos. One dream featured me as a young man with young friends and relatives, traveling to another place. Along the way, I stopped to visit with others. There, I rested in sunshine and told people of other people’s businesses failing, along with places such as airports not being built. It ended with me trying to pull a nuisance weed, which then bloomed, leaped out of the ground and ran away, freaking us out. Then we laughed.

This cold weather and clear sky put me into a whirlpool of childhood memories. Once, while going outside to play football with friends when I was almost a teenager, I was accosted by mom. “Put a heavier coat on, for God’s sake,” she said. “It’s winter outside.”

Wise me replied, “It’s not winter yet, Mom, until the solstice, December 22.”

She answered, “It’s winter when it’s cold and the snow starts falling to me.”

We were living in Penn Hills, a Pittsburgh, PA, suburb. Snow had been falling since before Thanksgiving. Therefore, it was winter.

I used to talk to her about her winters in Iowa. She loved those days, she said, because they would stay in the house, where it was cozy and warm, and play games, listen to the radio, talk, cook, and clean. Winter remains her favorite season for those reasons.

Those memories crystallized into two songs for me last night. Both are called “Our House”. They’re very different. The first was dropped into the morning mental music stream (Trademark frozen) when a television show featured it ysterday evening. This is the “Our House” by Crosy, Stills, Nash, and Young. My wife sang along with it; that stirred The Neurons up, and triggered that memory whirlpool. But a rebel group of Neurons countered with “Our House” by Madness. Two very different songs. The CSNY offering says, “Our house is a very very fine house. With two cats in the yard. Life used to be so hard. Now everything is easy cause of you.” Madness sings, “Father wears his Sunday best, Mother’s tired, she needs a rest, the kids are playing up downstairs. Sister’s sighing in her sleep. Brother’s got a date to keep, he can’t hang around.” The CSNY version is about a young couple’s domestic tranquility. Madness offers a portrait of hustle, growth, and noise.

Let’s get positive (sung to Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical) and move forward. 2025 is almost here. Here’s the music to help you along. Cheers

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Fogday’s Theme Music

Mood: Indeafoggable

We landed on Sunday, December 8, 2024, or maybe it landed on us.

Light rain graced us most of yesterday. We’ve been rewarded with a chilly, damp 38 degree F morning with silvery-gray fog as thick as my breakfast oatmeal, and I like my oats thick. No worries, as they tell us the valley’s high temperature will crack the low forties.

Papi the ginger blade is driving us nuts with this weather. My wife claims that he expects me to change the weather for him, and is disappointed that I haven’t. But rain, wind, fog, chilly weather, he keeps going out one door and returning to the other to tattoo his message to us, “Let me in.”

My wife and I watched the University of Oregon Ducks take on Penn State’s Nittany Lions yesterday. I lived in Pennsylvania for a decade plus when I was a child and have live in Oregon for months short of twenty years, and have family living in Pennsylvania, so there’s a flimsy personal attachment to the game. This is football, BTW, where the Ducks are undefeated and nationally ranked #1, while Penn State wore the #3 ranking and one loss. The game was the Big 10 Championship. The Ducks won but I’m amused how often I heard that they ‘held on to win’ as Penn State, seven points down, was trying to drive the field in the last two minutes and score a touchdown and get a point after (or two) to win. My preference for how it should be stated was that Penn State lost.

My wife had two questions about the game; what is a Nittany Lion, and why is Oregon’s team called the Ducks? Well, my wikipedia researched revealed that a Nittany Lion is made up, based on eastern U.S. mountain lions and a local geographic feature, Nittany Mountain. As for the Ducks, they were originally the Webfoots. These were fishermen who became Revolutionary War heroes who settled in the Williamette Valley. As ducks have webbed feet, some writers began referring to the Webfoots as ducks. The name was eventually changed.

I read a summary of the highlights and statements emerging from Drumpf’s ‘first network interview’ since he won the election. First, it’s wearingly to read this and think that anything he says is worth its weight in air. I mean, he has a history. Second, he sounds like he’s still disconnected from reality. In example, he still plans his mass deportation plans because, “You have no choice. First of all, they’re costing us a fortune. But we’re starting with the criminals and we’ve got to do it. And then we’re starting with others, and we’re going to see how it goes.” But economists tell us otherwise, that illegal immigrants do not cost us as much as he claims and actually add to the economy. Likewise, stats and studes show most illegal immigrants are not criminals and are less likely to commit crimes [1] [2] [3]. Doesn’t matter in Drumpf world. Likewise, he still insists on “Drill, baby, drill,” to increase oil production and drop prices, even though U.S. oil production is at record levels and oil prices are dropping due to a global lack of demand. But dinosaurs like Drumpf — and his MAGA GOP — cling to disproven and outmoded ideas.

We’re attending a holiday concert today. I was making the bed and thinking about what I would wear when The Neurons began playing “Secret Agent Man” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark chillin’). Naturally for me, it was the Johnny Rivers version of the song, which we had in our household on a 45 RPM record when I was still a singleton. I know and like the guitar oriented song. But hearing it in my head this morning, my reaction was, WTF? Where did that come from? I asked Les Neurons, what brought this on? They said nothing. I thought of what I’m writing in my fiction, and it’s not at all related. I’m reading several books but none of them mentioned secret agents. Now, I am watching “The Agency”, “The Diplomat”, and “The Day of the Jackal”. Maybe their combined weight slipped into the liminal cracks and stirred memory of the song out of its slumber in its grey cell nest. I was surprised, as other songs and ideas had been stirring in the mmms, but here we are.

Let’s get positive and move forward. I’ve moved forward with my morning coffee and feel better for the effort. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sa’day’s Wandering Thoughts

When I was a child, I asked Mom, “Why are some streets named streets, and some are boulevards, avenues, drives, and roads. What’s the difference?” Mom replied with some vexation, “I don’t know.” Wasn’t my first disappointment with the realization that Mom didn’t know everything.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited when I heard Steven Wright ask, “Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?”

Yes! Finally, someone is going to explain. He didn’t answer it, though. Bummer.

I’m always hungry to learn something new. I’m fortunate that my wife has a like spirit, athough hers vectors toward learning about women’s rights, social justice, and sex and dating trends. So she keeps me covered in that area. We share responsibility and coverage on politics, literature, and pop culture. I’m on my own regarding STEM and history.

Over the years, I’ve gleaned insights into streets and all the variations. An e-letter I received, Word Smarts, shed more light on the differences between Interstate, freeway, expressway, parkway, highway, turnpike, and frontage road. It’s a start. Meanwhile, here’s some classic deadpan Wright one-liners.

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Thanksgiving’s Theme Music

Mood: Thanksthinking

Football and parades are on television. Dawn cracked open a blue sky this morning. Sunshine spilled out across 28 degrees F. It’s 43 and feels like 53, with a high of 48 projected. It gets windy, driving Papi to floofishly beat on the front door window for immediate entrance. His tail highpoints in salute as I let him in. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) gives the ginger blade an askance look of pity as Papi passes him.

Thanksgiving memories erupt. Going to my paternal grandparents on cold and gray Pittsburgh days. Greeting cousins, aunts, and uncles seen only four times a year. Sitting at one of several children tables. Warm house, laughter, cigarette smoke, beer, and whiskey sodas. The children are herded into the cellar to contain noise. The problem: there’s nothing to do in that cellar except mill around. One by one, we quietly sneak back upstairs.

Mom and Dad separate and divorce. Mom remarries and becomes host and cook, but man, she can cook. Thanksgiving meals are always delicious feasts around traditional offerings. We play card games after the meal and gorge on leftovers for days.

Basic training saw me in San Antonio. Luckily, I had Uncle Paul and his family there to host me for Thanksgiving. Danny White led the Dallas Cowboys to victory. Later, I’m stationed in the San Antonio area. Uncle Paul’s family still lives there and my wife and I visit them for Thanksgiving.

A Thanksgiving follows in the Philippines, where my crew invites me into their house for an American-Filipino Thanksgiving. We play a new electronic game called Pong on television.

Our tour in Okinawa is broken into two phases: pre- and post-base housing. In the pre-phase, food prep is shared between several houses. We barely fit into one of the small apartments to eat. Once we’re in base housing, we’re in a large, comfortable space where my wife plays cook and hostess in Germany. As we return to America, Thanksgiving gets more complicated. We’re alone sometimes, or I’m on shift working. Later as I become more senior in rank, we become host for young co-workers and friends. We do the same after being assigned to California.

Out of the military and tired of hosting, we go out for dinner on Thanksgiving for a year or two in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Palo Alto, California. My wife has become a vegetarian. An awful attempt with tofurkey is made. Stuffed acorn squash. We end up buying turkey breasts and having much smaller meals. Thanksgiving transitions to Friendsgiving. Friends host others like us and we collect at their homes. The meals feel like the ones I enjoyed as a child. I’ve gone full circle.

I’m going with “Alice’s Restaurant” by Arlo Guthrie for today’s theme music. It’s a staple of my existence, and The Neurons are okay with it. Alice Brock, the Alice in the song, passed away earlier this month. RIP. It plays in the background of my morning mental music stream (Trademark roasted) as I go about preparing to go to Friendsgiving at our friends’ farm. We prepared our food contributions yesterday. Corn souffle, prepared with my wife carefully watching me, is my contribution.

Coffee and I continue renewing our daily relationship. The house weather system says its 50 F out. Plentiful sunshine baths the street. Hope you have a memorable Thanksgiving if you’re participating, and a great day no matter where you are.

Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Foggedinmemories

We climbed into a Wednesday November 27, 2024. Day before Thanksgiving in the United States. I know a large of people who will be muttering, I don’t have anything to be thankful about.

It’s foggy and cold, 30 F, in Ashlandia, white with frost and ice, but it will get warmer, with the temperature rising to about 48 F. Blue sky can be spied through the thinning fog. I enjoyed cold, foggy days as a child. Encountering days like this in Penn Hills, PA, I’d step outside and let that cold whip my face. I found it exhilerating. And the fog made the world narrow, small, mysterious. It was also usually quieter. People didn’t go out into it. I soon knew my friends wouldn’t go out into it. Some just didn’t want to, complaining that it was cold and foggy. Others said their mom wouldn’t let them. I’d tramp on my own, verifying that the world still was beyond the fog’s envelope, feeling like an explorer. Being careful about your steps were important. Yards dropped off into steep hills and cement culverts lay in wait. I’d sometimes get lost in that fog, and when it burned off, I’d find myself surprised at where I was. I always thought it was fun. Guess that’s why I was considered a little strange, LOL.

Daily Kos delivered some news to my inbox. “If a Woman Dies from Pregnancy and Texas Refuses to Investigate, Did She Really Die?”

The Texas committee that examines all pregnancy-related deaths in the state will not review cases from 2022 and 2023, the first two years after Texas’s near-total abortion ban took effect, leaving any potential deaths related to abortion bans during those years uninvestigated by the 23 doctors, medical professionals and other specialists who make up the group.

Texas, led by Republicans, doesn’t want to know why women are dying in pregnancy-related deaths. I think they know they will find that their draconian fucking laws are killing women. Then they would need to spin that in a way that makes sense, and they know they can’t. Worse, it would provide facts about how poorly the GOP goes about ‘protecting women’. I’m sure if you read this, you recall that Trump declared as a candidate that he would protect women if elected POTUS. Now firm evidence is emerging that the climate, culture, and policies that he promoted is doing just the fucking opposite. Rather than trying to address the evidence, Republicans are doing what they do best: ignoring facts and creating a fake reality by pretending that all is well. “We just won’t investigate those deaths,” they nod and tell each other. “Then they’ll go away.” Dipshits.

Looking out at the fog this morning, The Neurons kept trying to recall a song about fog and confusion. For a while, “Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World Is Today)” by the Temptations in the morning mental music stream (Trademark hazy). Then, Foghat crowded in, because it has fog in its name. But I wanted to remember that song. Not much of it would come back. I was finally forced to turn to the Internet to restore the details. With about four minutes of searching, the Meat Puppets and their song, “Confusion Fog”, was finally restored to my operating system. A co-worker at PAS in Palo Alto, California, where I worked in the mid to late 1990s, turned me on to them. It’s a unique sound the Meat Puppets provide, more like country from the early 1970s than punk to me, but I like the vocals.

Coffee and I have reached detente. The fog has burned away. Sunshine and blue sky rule the day. Hope you find a better way, to make this one to remember. With fondness, here’s the music. Cheers

1

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Determoptimistic

November 20, 2024, finds us on a Wednesday. Gray and white clouds plaster the sky. 38 F and rainy out there. High will be four degrees north.

Winds are smacking the trees around. Tall conifers take the worse, swinging back from each punch, drunkenly rebounding. Began yesterday afternoon. By dusk, the wind was crooning around windows and corners. Then came sounds of winds running like tractor-trailers down the Interstate.

8:10 PM, blink, out went the power. People reported a bang. Others saw a large blue flash. Investigating crews found a surrendering tree had taken on a major power line.

My wife and I were in the snug when it happened. We turned off our computers. I moved through the familiar dark house, phone in hand in case I needed a light, to get a flashlight in a cubby by the foyer. Armed with it, I fired up the gas fireplace. We dug out candles and lit them, and several more flashlights, then checked messages and learned the tale of the outage via emergency texts.

Unknowing of how long the outage would be, my wife bathed by candlelit. The bath water was saved in case it got worse and flushing water was needed. Then she dragged out the Trivial Pursuit cards. We spent thirty minutes answering those, then we each armed ourselves with a flashlight and read. Fortunately, the gas fireplace kept us relatively comfy at 68 F.

Texts sent at 8:55 PM informed us the power would be back up within two hours. 10:35 PM, and the house beeped, chirped, and lit up as the power was restored. We learned we were the fortunate; a small section didn’t get their electricity back until this morning. Hope they all endured the night well.

Papi the ginger blade did not like this storm. Comfort couldn’t find him with all the noise. He finally decided outside, in his patio condo, was his safe space, staying there until just after midnight. About that time, the wind reset to a calmer level but rain poured out of the darkness. Papi came in to escape the wet, staying until sixish. Duty as patrol floof called then. Tail up, he bravely marched out.

Locally, I don’t spy damage on my street. Snow resides on pines and firs on the upper ranges. News reports are in that they’d closed the pass for snow on I5 from our southern exit to the California border.

Without revealing their reasoning, The Neurons invested the morning mental music stream (Trademark damp) with “Folsom Prison Blues”. Johnny Cash wrote the song, then recorded and released it n 1955. That was a year before my birth. It’s literally — and I ain’t talkin’ hyperbole here — been around my entire life. And I heard it. Mom had JC albums, so it was on there. Television liked Cash, and he showed up singing the tune on the small screen. Featured in movies, the rockabilly tune was heard on AM radio in cars and houses.

The Neurons may have pulled this up in response to a dream. I had a caper dream. Working with two other guys, we were stealing something but we’d been forced into it. They were setting me up, I found, so worked to subvert their plans. At the end, after all successfully passed and I was leaving, I found that one of the others knew of my plans and used them to save himself, in effect aiding me as he did. Fun dream.

Alright, let’s muster some positive energy. Coffee is in mug, ready to wash down my negativity. Here we go. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: Watersloshed

Rain hammered the rooftop. The furnace blower sang along. Slowly we crept toward the dawn of a new Thursday. This one is blessed as 11/14/2024. Or 14/11/2024. You get it.

When the lights came up and the blinds followed, our lovely tree lit the back yard, a red and gold exclamation point on a gloomy fall day. Weather hipsters, aka weathings (weather beings, if you need it spelled out) said, this is the day, take it or leave it. 42 F now, and that’s it. Rain is the main course, with a small plat of sunlight later.

We bundled into my wife’s car as the digits clicked toward nine thirty. Had to be there by 10:05 for the 10:20 event. Traffic was light and the rain little slowed us. We were there early. There, our destination, was my post op meeting with my care team ’bout my ankle.

By 11, it was all done. Bloody bandages were cut away, stitches removed, foot and ankle examined, and all deemed good enough to be done with the boot and crutches. Work it out on my own going forward. Elevate if there’s swelling and ice. Otherwise see you in four more weeks. And the boot, the cumbersome black and blue wet suit for my foot and ankle with its velcro tentacles, was no longer needed. I could sit upright if I wantd. The things we take for granted.

Walking was weird. The foot was a little misshapen by the bandages but that worked itself out after an hour. The toes are like they belonged on the tin man and cry for a lube job. That’ll work out, too. But the legs weren’t ready to accept a normal gait. I mildly tilted to the right and still cautiously favored that foot. Bending my knees as I took steps was a mindful process.

Next up: driving.

I’m looking for a place to buy in the northeastern United States and visit Zillow for possibilites. We’re tired of living so far away from our families that we need to travel by car and plane for a day, giving to the weather and technology gods so they’ll favor our journey. Doesn’t seem like it used to be so bad…

Anyway, I checked out a house and realized that it was a street I once live upon. That sent me down memory paths via Google streetview. Naturally, I recalled friends from the time and neighborhood. One of them was Richard. Seeing his tiny house on the screen and his face in my mind rekindled memories about one Sunday morning spent in Richard’s presence. All he wanted to do was sing “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles. Wasn’t high or anything; just how he was. I offer it now as today’s theme music.

Be strong and hold fast. Haven’t had coffee in two weeks. Didn’t want to partake of my dark friend’s energy while I was laid up. That’ll change tomorrow.

Cheers

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