Tag: coffee

Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: Persistfee (a sense of persistence fueled by coffee)

It’s a day of indifferent clouds and sunshine, this Monday, June 3, 2024. Rain spits and dries. Temperatures fall and bounce. 76 F, thermometers declare, but a chiller feel hangs in the air. Today’s high temperature is at hand.

Spoke with Mom this morning. She related bureaucratic issues keeping her hospital bed from coming on. I depend on her for the info so I can only accept her explanation. According to the PCP’s nurse, aka John, everything has been forwarded to the company who will deliver the bed. But they claim something is missing and hold that the bed can’t be delivered until this unknown element is delivered. It all has Mom and I swearing and wondering.

She sounds good, spirited and energetic. She’s been cleaning, she said. So what will the hired help clean when she comes this Thursday?  Mom declares, “I’m not going to pay her to come if there’s nothing here to clean.”

My sisters and I predicted this as a real possibility. Mom prides herself in a clean house. It’s a large part of her persona. Once the cleaner began coming, Mom rose up and began cleaning in anticipation of the cleaner’s arrival. She’d already said the cleaner wasn’t allowed to clean the kitchen because that’s Mom’s territory. Nor could the cleaner help with the laundry; Mom is very particular about how her clothes are washed and dried.

I think Mom is taking a narrow view of having a cleaner come in every week or two. Mom has rallied now but is that sustainable? When will she overdo her poor stenosis-plagued back and cause herself a new injection of pain and immobility? What if she falls – again – and hurts herself? Those are what-ifs, and pieces of logic. Mom’s issues with cleaning are emotional and psychological. Just one son’s opinion. I hope that these worries never see light.

Today’s song is “Green Tambourine” by The Lemon Pipers. The 1967 psychedelic pop hit is playing in my morning mental music stream (Trademark freeze-dried), and I don’t know why. Following the usual course, I interrogated The Neurons, but they closed ranks and shut down. Couldn’t even get a word out of them after plying them with coffee. Stupid little boogerheads.

Off to the coffee shop to let the muses play with words. Be strong, stay pos, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: flightrupted

It’s Thursday, May 30, 2024. Beautiful light blue sky with a little haze is outside the window. Sunny and 52 F.

I’m seeing the world through the Pittsburgh airport windows waiting for my Alaska Air flight. I was supposed to be leaving at 7:50 AM. About six minutes from now. Instead, estimated take off is now 9:18 AM.

That prevents me from my next leg, which was to be my final leg, Seattle WA to Medford OR. Now I’m going from Seattle to Salt Lake City to Medford. Instead of arriving about noon in Medord, I’m arriving about midnight. That sucks for my wife, who is picking me up.

Yeah, it’s all first world blues, innit? Still have food and a decent life. Just a series of bumps on this travel day, so I’m whining about it. I mean, I’m not out in a storm or getting shot at. I’m wired with a computer and reading the news.

And there’s a comic aspect. As I cope with these fight changes, the airline is urging me to start planning my next flight with them.

With this skewed schedule echoing in my head, The Neurons have Molly Hatchett performing “Flirtin’ with Disaster” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark delayed). The 1979 song isn’t quite right for the situation but I’d need to feed them more java before The Neurons will come up with something better.

Thank you to my sweetheart of a little sister and her daughter for getting up and picking me up and driving me to the airport. They’re both awesome people. They’re always doing things for me and treating me like a friggin’ prince, so I’m always in debt to them.

I’m coffeeing up. Stay positive, be strong, and lean forward. Let’s Vote Blue this year, shall we?

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: Sunfresh

Today is Monday 20, 2024. We’re paddling toward May’s end, on course to the middle of 2024.

I awoke to a broadside of sunshine. High white clouds faint as a fading spring breeze streak the blue sky. 68 F already, we’ll brush up against the mid 80s once again.

Yesterday was flat-out wonderful for me. We feted a new sixteen-year-old’s milestone at the littlest sister’s home. Talking around the kitchen table, playing with sis’s wonderful dog (Chloe), and eating made up the gist of the five hours we were there. It was the standard teenager fare of pizza, hoagies, chips, and cake with ice cream. All participants got along well. No fights were heard and very few disagreements. All of this was done under a light summer feel. It was a day of happiness where worries were scarce.

I’m going to brush aside politics and world news for now. I know it’s out there but I’d rather maintain a posture of innocence and hope for one more day.

I had a terrific writing day yesterday morning as well. Disliking breaking away from that activity, I thought, I could use more time. That prompted me to get up earlier today and out the door to get more time. While I was dressing, eager to have more time, “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon (2008) was plugged into the morning mental music stream (Trademark faded). I accepted it as the day’s theme song even though I was about using more time and not using somebody.

Stay strong, be positive, lean forward, and experience a good day. Coffee has begun its journey through my physical being and I’m feeling solid. Here’s the music. Hey, ho, let’s go. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: Rainified

Saturday, May 18th, 2024, came upon us in the Churchill Valley with a load of leaky clouds. Rain was doing a heavy metal drum solo against the house. Dressing for it, I thought, maybe it won’t be as bad outside our slice of Penn Hills. Turns out our situation was better than others. Rain just increased with no evidence of mercy coming.

It’s part of a trend. Yesterday’s day of intermittent rain ended with tornado warnings and alerts, and a long downpour. Then there were tornado sightings and videos on the news and social media, and flash flood warnings. Potholes became lakes. I appreciated all the drivers’ calm and patience. Only one driver was witnessing doing something stupid. (Cue Frank and Nancy Sinatra singing “Something Stupid”.)

As for temperatures, it’s 66 F now and supposedly climbing to 77 F today. So, it’s not an overly cold rain.

Mom continues to seem to do well. Except for back pain from stenosis, and this weird cough. The cough could be associated with GIRT. She’s just hanging in there. While she often expresses disbelief in others, she has a powerful belief in herself. So, she tends to endure until she’s forced to ask others for help. I recognize it because I’m her son, and I’m the same as her in this regard. Decently intelligent, she (we) wear obstinance like it’s armor.

I am beginning to plan my return to home and my wife and floofs. One segment of last night’s dreams had me petting Tucker, my toothless black and white floof. When I walked away, he clamped onto my hand with his mouth and drew me back. That scene happened three times.

Being here, staying with Mom, watching over her and trying to help, has The Neurons playing “Victim of Love” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark flooded). The 1976 Eagles song is apt, in my cogitating. See, I wish to be back home, pursuing life, but here I am, across the country. It’s love, but also an aggravated sense of loyalty and duty. I really appreciate my wife’s support in this.

Hot, black coffee is blessing the system. Stay positive, lean forward, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thought

Been watching the Starbucks Grand Prix.

It’s a flat Mickey Mouse circuit. Enter from the main road. Then into the quick left right complex. Hard 90 follows. Accelerate up the short side straight.

Then a fast lefthand sweeper into to the end of the line. Creep up, order, and shoot back out into traffic.

Or, the less used option. wheel around and rush into a parking slot. Park, jump out. Fast walk to the door. Get inside and then —

Options: pick up order at the counter and hustle back out. Or order at the counter. Stand back, cross arms and wait, hip thrust out, staring as they prepare your order. Tap foot as needed.

Rare option: enter, order, sit. Pull out ‘puter. Do typy/clicky things.

Watch the Starbucks GP.

Rarest option: sit. Open book or newspaper. Read.

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Tueday’s Theme Music

Mood: Bureausilized (when activities are rendered useless by bureaucracy and become fossilized)

Good morrow, gentle folk and fellow coffee guzzlers. Today is Tuesday, May 14, 2024.

For the record, we’re fully overcast in Penn Hills, PA. It’s comfortable out, 61 F, with rain and thunderstorms chugging our way. They’re scheduled to arrive noonish. Today’s high will stroke out at 72 F.

Trump on Trial (the hush money/business fraud business) holds my family enthralled. Details are reiterated and explored. They’re also enjoying Trump’s latest tax issues, whereby he seems to be on the hook for $100,000,000 in taxes.

But doubt has been expressed that anything significant will emerge from either of these matters. Trump is white, male, and wealth, even if he may not be as wealthy as he claims. He’s also an ex-POTUS and the woeful GOP’s current candidate. Looking at the crime and punishment Venn diagram, significant punishment and karma don’t seem likely. The lesson reinforced for most of us, I think, is that the U.S. has a tiered justice system that mocks ‘and justice for all’.

The Hunt for Mom’s Caregiver goes miserably. All agencies contacted have suggested other agencies to contact. It’s a quagmire of links and promises, but little of substance is ever found. Others have found caregivers, so it is possible. Just need to moving out of expectations that any government agency will be useful.

Likewise, there’s no movement on Mom’s hospital bed request. In his case the road goes through her PCP’s office. Calling it is like shouting into a sewer. There’s not even an echo in response.

Today’s theme music veers to remembrance of David Sanborn’s work. The saxophonist died this week, robbing us of another wonderful musical talent. While more talented musicians keep emerging, the ones who marked us with their style should remain recognized and appreciated.

One of the first songs The Neurons pulled up for David Sanborn was David Bowie’s “Young Americans” from 1975. Then, as I read appreciations about him, many more people mentioned this same song. Sanborn’s body of work was much better than that, though.

I like this video which I found to showcase Sanborn. Not the best sound quality, but there’s a lot of talent on display here beyond Bowie and Sanborn. So many of them have passed.

Stay positive, be strong, lean forward, and Vote Blue in 2024. Meanwhile, create and adhere to a vision of a better world. We make it happen, yes, we can make it happen.

Coffee is being chugged. Here’s the video. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: Percoffeecatiated

Happy Mother’s Day in the U.S. Hope all you mothers enjoy of celebration and joy.

Today is Sunday May 12, 2024. Clouds without breaks occlude the sun in the Churchill Valley where the cities I’m visiting are located. It’s 50 F now. Weather elements will lift our temp to 65 F. That sullen winter taste in the air has melted away. We’ve returned to a cold, wet, spring essence.

My Mother’s Day mental perambulations are searches for how to help Mom. She’s tired, often in pain, fighting to moving and thinking, but everything tires her to deep levels. She wants and needs help. Finding it is now my mission.

There are agencies to help. They’re mired in bureaucracy. Nothing has an easy approach or quick timelines. Phone calls, emails, and chats will be the upcoming week’s norms.

Her own habits, experiences, and expectations are a significant obstacle. She expects to bounce back but the bounce is gone. She wants or needs, which I guess should be married as a word, waeds, to do the cleaning she has always done, to be hygienic and neat. These things take hours and hours. Her zip has diminished to a lumpy trundle.

Her decline has been going on a while, since ‘The Fall’. That seemed to trigger everything; she’s been fighting against its ripples for over a decade. Classic story, definitely in America, probably in many other countries as well. She confided to me last night that she fell hard five times in the first three days after returning home. That is no good.

The morning mental music stream (Trademark flailing) has a song called “Paralyzer” orbiting it. The Finger Eleven beats started my mental journey while I was still abed. My brain was gyrating around the things wanted and the things needed, and the destinations and journeys of all the players when the 2007 tune kicked in. It’s not an even matchup between the song and the morning, except I was dealing with a sense of paralysis and a resistance to moving. Then I told myself I’d treat me to a cuppa coffee if I left the bed, dressed, and started doing things. I’m a sucker for a promise of coffee.

Stay positive, be strong, lean forward against the winds of resistance, and Vote Blue in 2024. The promise of coffee has been fulfilled. Here’s the music video.

Here we go. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Coffeevescent

The spinning never stops. Despite this, activities on Earth shift and a new day arrives. This one is May 7, 2024.

In Penn Hills, PA, we all awaken to light rain and 50 degrees F. Rain is expected to command the day. Cloud cover makes me think, yes, that’s going to happen. But the weather seers say that it’ll be 79 F before Penn Hills is spun away from facing Sol today.

Mom had a rough day yesterday. ‘Bowel matters’, you know? Apparently drained her pretty well — that pun is totally inadvertent — as she napped through the afternoon. I’d ordered Echo Pops for her house so we can use her Alexa as an intercom. That will end the need for her and Frank to bellow across the domicile at one another. Alexa can also be used to call others, including an ambulance. As Alexa is voice activated, if they fall and can’t get up, they can still call for help.

The Pops were a breeze to set up. Three were added to the system. At less than $20 each, they seem like a simple and inexpensive intercom solution. Because issue will be conditioning Mom and Frank to use them.

I’m at the coffee shop now. I’ve established a basic routine. Up a 7:45. Mediation, exercise, dress. Out the door to the coffee shop. Back before noon.

Mom and Frank are usually sleeping until tennish. Incidents in the night frequently break their sleep. Mom gets out of bed, dresses and comes downstairs by noon. I relieve Frank. He takes off to visit his family and work out at the gym. I visit with Mom, make her ‘breakfast’, and help her with her needs. Breakfast is marked like that because it’s usually after one before she wants to eat.

It’s a crowded coffee shop today, so I’m in my spaceship fantasy, where we’re not a planet hurtling through space, but a human made machine destined for a new planet.

Today’s song has unknown origins in my morning mental music stream (Trademark confused). The Neurons ordered up “Little Miss Can Be Wrong”. They’re treating their reasoning for that song choice as double top-secret closehold information.

Not that I mind the song. Released by the Spin Doctors in 1992, it’s energetic and beaty. Not bad music to be revolving over and over and over again in your mind, right, right?

Coffee is being inhaled. Be strong, stay cool and positive, and Vote Blue n 2024. That’s my current plan. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: coffeemistic

I’m ensconced in Penn Hills, PA, an eastern suburb of Pittsburgh, visiting family. A light rain is scenting the 64 F air with petrichor. Temp should peak at 67 F.

Weirdly, the weather seems ‘right’ to me. I emerged from my cocoon in this area and first spread my wings. Lived with Mom and grandparents when I was a child not going to school, moved away in conjunction with Dad’s military service, then returned here. Attended school in several small burghs for second grade through my high school sophomore year. Since Mom and a buncha extended family live here, I’ve been returning again and again on my own cycadean rhythm.

Tragically, Mom only serves decaf. She and her man only drink decaf. So, they make a big pot of coffee. Once it’s done brewing, they draw from it for days and doctor it with cream and nuke it in the microwave. Gag gag gag.

So I slipped away for coffee and writing, heading for a Starbucks. That works for Mother and I and the general household, since Mom and her BF sleep in late these days. She said she doesn’t emerge from her nocturnal seclusion until almost noon. Then her BF, already dressed, ensures she’s set up for the afternoon, and goes out on his errands. His first stop is the gym, where this former boxer, now in his early nineties, works out.

The Starbucks was chosen because it’s where my niece and her boyfriend work. Both are college grads with bachelor’s degrees. Her’s is in business administration. She speaks several languages and plays the violin and is still attending college, going into software and database administration.

So guess who served me? Yes, she looked up with widening eyes when I said, “Morning, Amy.” I hope to have more of a visit with her than that, of course.

Amy and I have a running joke from when she was a child. There’s a movie called The Mothman Prophecies which came out in 2002. It’s about a bridge collapse in Weirton, WV, and a mothman warning it was gonna happy. A brother-in-law (not Amy’s father) saw the movie while traveling in West Virginia. It freaked him out because after watching the movie, his hotel room phone began ringing, just like in the movie. He and I and Amy talked about it in subsequent years. I began calling her Mothgirl. She dubbed me Mothman.

Today’s music arrives via a conversation about me living on the west coast. Everyone hearing hat immediately asks, “California?” No, I’m from the Pacific Northwest, Oregon, to add more precision, Ashlandia, to get granular. But the California suggestions kicked The Neurons into filling the morning mental music stream (Trademark with “Californication”. The Red Hot Chili Peppers released the song in 1999. I immediately took to it. It’s a drool commentary about how Hollywood sells California as the place to be. Several little plays on pop culture are woven into the song.

On to the day. Stay strong, be positive, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music video. Cheers from Pennsylvania.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Mood:

Thwump thwump thwump…the helicopter goes on, up above the mountain high, hovering and waiting, waiting and hovering, picking up its load, going away again, dumping the load, coming back again.

Gotta be boring up there. Least the pilot should have a nice view, up above the trees so high, like a moon in the sky.

It’s a clear Monday, with blue running infinitely on and back again. Sunshine drenches the scene. 69 F now after an overnight low of 40 F, the thermometer is scaling the degrees. Probably stop at 76 F, they tell me. It’s April 22, 2024, for those keeping score at home.

The cats are as happy as floofs lazing in sunshine. An ear sometimes stirs. Another moment witnesses an eye cracking open a hair width. Other than those infrequent movements, they seem set for the next few hours.

Back in Pittsburgh, a new report has Mom feeling unwell again. Tests are being run. She’d been doing well and was scheduled to return home tomorrow. We’ll monitor all for the outcome. Little sister, aka grandma G, provides me with updates. She and her hubby had been sick herself recently. But they’re better know. Just seemed like a mild flu. I think we live in an era of health uncertainty. Sure the pandemic plays a role. I notice that many people around Ashlandia grow angry but resigned when they get sick. Wonder if that’s must my bias, or does this happen elsewhere?

Musically, The Neurons have “For All the Cows” ringing in my morning mental music stream (Trademark backtracking). Utilizing that song’s melody, I’d been singing about coffee. Actually, it was about my coffee cup. Like, I need a cup, a coffee cup, I’ll fill it up, if I had a coffee cup. I’d been wandering with the cup. It mindlessly departed my hand as I slipped through rooms and tasks. Found it in the third place I looked, my bathroom. Yes, I drink coffee in the bathroom while I’m shaving and dressing, okay. Although I didn’t shave today. Didn’t feel the need for a blade on my skin.

“For All the Cows” is a Dave Grohl/Foo Fighters production. Came out in 1995. It’s soft quasi-jazz opening and strange words are beguiling. I listen to it and search for some kind of meaning for what he’s singing about. I’ve always tentatively concluded it delivers an analogy comparing people to cows but also addressed success and the changes success brings to the herd, how you change herds with success. I don’t know. My understanding shifts, depending on my moo-ed. Heh.

Stay positive, strong, optimistic (that the same as positive?), and lean forward. Please Vote Blue. Now, more coffee and cow music. Cheers

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