Planning for Easter Brunch is underway. I am fortunately a passive participant. My wife keeps me apprised of developments. She was searching for some Easter-themed drinks. I found some for her. She rejected them. I did find Chocolate Bunny Coffee. She laughed at that.
“Prude wants to have a Prosecco bar,” my wife says. Prude and her hubby, Carl, are hosting the Easter brunch for the third consecutive year.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I’ll chat with her. The brunch is getting big. Twenty-seven people are going to be there.”
“Twenty-seven.”
My wife nods in confirmation.
I do the math. “That’s almost twice as usual.”
“I know.”
My wife gives details of new invitees. Many are people I don’t know. I’ve heard about some of them via my wife’s recounting of ‘Tales from the Y.’ The main characters are all members of the Y, like my wife, and they bring a guest, like me. Most participate in Mary’s exercise class. Mary is celebrating her 50th anniversary of her class next year. The Y wants my wife to organize something for them. Mary’s exercise group has given birth to multiple friendships and activities, including a book club, New Year’s Eve gatherings, and nights out to go dancing.
“Deborah is in charge of the coffee,” my wife says. She’s talking about the brunch. “I mentioned the Chocolate Bunny Coffee. She laughed but said she is not buying that.”
I’m not surprised. Deborah takes her coffee as seriously as I do.
“Mary told me that she has champagne left from a party at her house last year that she’ll donate,” my wife says. “I told her it’s supposed to be Prosecco. Mary said that Prude told her that you and I are going to be there at 10:30 to help set up.”
“We are?” I helped with that last year. Everybody prepares and brings food. A buffet is set up in the kitchen and dining room. The drinks and coffee and dining tables are outside.
“I don’t know,” my wife says. “I’ll talk to Prude.”
I have to decide what to make. Last year I made a potato casserole. It seemed pretty popular. I don’t know what I’ll make this year. I was thinking about a French toast casserole.
April 12 of 2025 begins with a sense of rain. Clouds loaded with grays and blues swell over the western pines and ridges. It’s 42 F. Rain serenaded us through the night. We’re dry for the moment but the wind carries a wintry stick, and humidity puts a clingy wrap on us. The high for today will be 58 F. This is Saturda.
As I loll in bed and think about dreams, I consider nesting a little longer. It is Saturda. I was busy yesterday.
Fresh reminders bolt in from the awakening neurons. It’s Saturda. Green Bag Day!
Checking the time, I relax. There’s plenty o’ time before the scheduled pickup of the bi-monthly emergency food bank donation. But I’m awake and energetic thanks to the momentary panic whipped up when I remembered that the green bag must go on. I get it done, just because.
Papi is again at a loss. The ginger cat was adjusting to warm and sunny naps among the bushes. Now, this stuff again, this wind, this rain. The cat comes to the door and gives me a look to come back in. “I know,” I tell him. “You don’t want to come in. You want to follow your nature and remain outside. But you don’t like the wind.” A wintry glance passes from the cat to me as he drifts past. Once inside, he breaks into a quick trot into the dining room. A grooming sit commences. This is what I had in mind all along, he projects in that way that cats do.
The cat is right, though. We were being groomed for nicer weather. Whatever plans involving involve the outside that arise today, I’ll need gear to block that wind. With that thought crossing the finish line, The Neurons begin chanting, “Block that wind, block that wind.” The Neurons can be an irritating group.
Clive’s Tuesday Tunes 246 was about music about dreams and dreaming. He offered a solid Dream Five. After listening to them and remembering, I woke up this morning with Heart singing “These Dreams” in the morning mental music stream. According to the wiki thingy, Martin Page and Bernie Taupin wrote this song. Stevie Nicks passed on it, but Heart went with it. Released in 1986, the song is about living another life while sleeping at night.
Today’s video offering features a different take on the song. Alison Kraus is on lead vocals with Heart’s Wilson sisters offering backing vocals.
Coffee is wending its way past my lips and down my throat, past the epiglottis and down the esophagus to finish its journey into my stomach. Papi has gone back out to see if the weather is any better yet. With coffee’s encouragement, I’ll hit the news. Hope your day is full of things which make you sing, dance, and be happy. If not those, may nothing kill, injure, or sicken you. I know; it feels like I’m hoping for a lot in these times. But we gotta keep hoping.
I’m feeling trèsupbeat today. I’m not sure to what I attribute this mood. Maybe it’s just something in the stars and the moon. It could be coffee lifting my spirits, I suppose. I’ve also had very productive writing and editing sessions this week and immensely enjoy the novel in progress.
It might be sunshine. Loads of it washing through the wind waving trees. Maybe it’s just my hormones, some cycle, or due to the series of terrific dreams dropped on me while I slept.
Query: do the dreams cause the mood, or does the mood cause the dream. Feels like a chicken and egg thing.
Whatever it is, hope it stays a while. Such a terrific feeling, ya know?
“That’s CNN,” I add for her. “I know why I’m fed up but I want to see if CNN knows why I’m fed up.”
This is an Analysis by Harry Enten. I don’t recall the name. Doesn’t mean much for me. I may have read Harry Enten’s work before but didn’t realize it. I’m often ignorant in that way.
Harry Enten began, ‘Americans just feel like they can’t catch a financial break. You know the feeling. You go to the grocery store, you look at the prices and you want to channel your inner Vince Lombardi: “What the (heck) is going on out here?”’
I read that to my wife and subject her to my opinion. “He’s a little wrong on that. I know what the heck is going on. It’s inflation, protecting profits, supply and demand, tariffs, among other things.” Yes, I’m in a quarrelsome mood. That often takes place as I read the news in 2025.
The analysis continues.
“Worst of all, it feels like it’s only going to get worse. There’s a very good reason for that: Americans may, in a way, get taxed more when they go to buy things – more than they have for a long period of time.
“No matter what some people will tell you, tariffs are, in fact, taxes. When you combine the potential tariff rates that the Trump administration could impose on us, the consumer, with the inflation that raged out of control coming out of the pandemic, it feels like things have gotten away from us.”
That earns an eye roll from me. “Yes, no kidding.”
“Take a look at a recent report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. It estimates that under President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs, the effective tariff rate will be 8% in 2025. That’s so high that it would go off the page if you were charting tariff rates over the last 55 years.”
“Yes, but those are facts and history. Trump deals in prejudices and myths,” I tell my suffering wife.
She relates a story abut Wall Street. “This says that men working on Wall Street are happy with life under Trump because they’re free to sexualize women again.”
I grunt dismay and keep reading the CNN analysis. Prices are going to go up. Yes, no kidding. I read aloud, “Keep in mind that an estimated 25% to 30% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck.” Right, I know.
Of course, what I’m doing is validating my opinions. Experts tell us that’s one reason why politics are so divisive these days. While I’m reading this, people reading Red State read nothing about prices and tariffs. They’re busy writing up Trump’s glory, how great his cabinet is doing, and demonizing Democrats. Their targets these days are Fetterman, Pelosi, and Walz.
It’s a bleak and featureless Sunda morning. Like winter and spring both decided not to show up. The sun complained, “If you guys aren’t in, I’m not either.”
The gray feels like a weight pressing down. I wonder what the weather was like when Robbie Robertson wrote “The Weight” for The Band.
It’s three quarters through March, 22 of 2025. 46 F now, the weather ‘they’ are trying to sell me on mostly sunny skies and a high of 66 F. I’ve gone past skeptical about that. Then I read that we’re hitting the seventies for Monday through Wednesday here. My heart harbors doubt. Do they mean the 1970s? With Trump still in office, there’s a reasonable question about the reference.
Papi the ginger blade is energetic today. I make a critical mistake. After feeding him breakfast, I give him his blood pressure medicine in some Churro. He loves that stuff and this is our regular process. But stupid me, I think, I’ll do two things at once. Give him his BP med in the Churro and while he’s eating that, I’ll rub his thyroid medication in his ear. That last is something that must be done twice a day.
Except my nose is a little snoggy. I hear myself breathing through it. In and out like a wheezy, broken machine. Were it a machine, I’d think, I need to replace that thing. It’s beyond fixing.
Doing Papi’s morning meds is not a favorite activity for me. Tucker was on the same regimen. He lasted a year. Papi began it the same month when Tucker passed. Lot of burdensome memories organized in this task.
I bend down to administer the thyroid med. Papi hears that breathing. Thinking a bear or something must be after him, he hits reverse like he’s a Corvette in a police chase and speeds through my legs. I bend over double, trying to grab him while saying, “No, stay there, let me do this, please, Papi. Papi..”
He darts away. I get the gooey white medicine on me. That’s toxic to humans. Cursing, I take off the used finger cap, dump it, and wash off my hand.
Papi has settled by the back door. He did not eat his Churri with his heart medicine. He’s eyeing me the way a quarterback is looking at a defensive end just before the ball is snapped. He is thinking, “Is he coming after me? How do I get away?”
I carry out the Churri bowl like a peace offering. Papi gallops up, all purrs, and bends his head to the task. I back away to give him space.
Papi takes two licks of his Churri and speeds off again. WTF? The Neurons ask. There is no answer.
Okay, I’ll go to the other med. We’re on the clock. This stuff is s’posed to be given every twelve hours. I don a new little finger cap. Put new med on it. Head for Papi.
“Mrr,” Papi says. Watching me, we begin a ballet. I move forward. He moves right. I go right. He backs up and heads left, then turns and prances around the coffee table, saying, “Mrr,” as he does. He looks yearningly at the back door. He wants out. I’ll try to trick him. Heading to the door, I unlock it. Opens it. Papi darts up and skids to a halt. “Mrr.” He knows this trick. Smarter than me, he doesn’t budge when I open the door and brightly declare, “Do you want to go out?”
Papi shies back into the room. I close the door. Verbally cajoling him has worked in the past. That’s the past. Papi’s not having it this morning. He keeps circling me, telling me, “Mrr.” I keep explaining that he knows that I need to give him this med. It’s not that bad. We do it everyday.
He finally decides, okay, here I came. Purring, he edges up to my leg. I slowly bend. Holding gently onto his back, I thank him for indulging me and gently rub the medicine into his inner ear.
Released, he bolts to the back door and releases a plaintive cry. I get what he’s saying. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Time to go out.” I open the door. He’s like a fast wind blowing out. Halfway across the patio, tail up, he turns around, sits, and stares at me. I can’t read that expression. Telling him the usual precautions whenever he’s out, I close the door. Whole thing has taken thirty minutes. I feel like it’s been ninety, ninety five minutes. Back in the office, I take a long gulp of cooling coffee.
Here’s The Weight by The Band. If you read this far, you know why it’s in my morning mental music stream.
I type up this post. Papi comes back in. I set the Churri with his meds down in a different room. He eats it up.
I come back into the office and set. Papi joins me and purrs as I scratch his head and chin.
We’ve touched down on Twosda, March 18, 2023. The rain has ceased. Winter still dominates the seasonal dance off. Those blackened tufted clouds don’t bespeak of spring. Temperature is sticking close to the upper thirties as if it’s been ordered but 46 F is a projected high, the weather ‘they’ say. Sunlight has been flitting in an out on butterfly wings.
News…we won’t get into that yet. Except, locally, a woman died in rural Central Point flooding brought on by our spate of heavy rains. Was apparently clearing branches from a culvert when her waders filled and she was taken into the culvert and drowned. Sad end to a life, fighting water, trying not to drown.
Jesse Colin Young, a member of the Youngbloods folk pop rock group, passed away, 83 years old. Part of the sound of the 1960s frquently heard through a transistor radio’s thin sound as I moved from being young innocent into inquisitive teenager, Mr. Young was also an activist for peace, justice, and the environment. Soon as I read of his passing, The Neurons slotted the Youngbloods’ 1967 cover of “Get Together” into the morning mental music stream.
Coffee and I got together in the kitchen, continuing our brewmance. Hope your day goes solidly your way. Here’s the music. And off we go, into the darkish grayish yonder…
It’s FOFFing* outside in Ashlandia, where the voters are liberal. Munda has fallen on us and can’t get up. A later winter storm is driving through the valley and the temperature is sticking to 35F. Supposed to rocket up to 48 F but that rocket might not get liftoff, if we use those clouds for our reasoning. If we use history and experience, the weather could go in any direction from here.
This is Munda, March 17, 2025. Which is, yelp, St. Patrick’s Day. Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you. Are you wearing green to draw some Irish luck your way?
*FOFFING: Fat Ol’ Flakes Falling
Watching those flakes reminded me of a cat experience. This is about Jade. She came to be with us in Okinawa. She belonged to the people up the hall in our apartment building. They had a toddler, and Jade didn’t take shit from anyone, telling them so with claws and teeth. So she came to us and was with us for 20 years more.
When she was four, we moved from Okinawa to the United States. This would be January, 1985. We were in San Antonio after landing to visit family. Jade was with us, as we’d just flown into the country. It began snowing. Jade had never seen snow, so she went out to experience it. She would take a step and shake a foot. Step, shake. Step, shake. Finally fed up of it after a minute, she returned to inside the motel room. I still grin, remembering her reaction.
Been catching up on the news. Hear there was some wicked weather across the United States and that the Trusk Regime thumbed their nose at a judge. It’s enough for me to groundhog back to bed for six more weeks. But I’ve served myself coffee so that’s not a current option.
Out of all that news catchup, The Neurons direction Twenty One Pilots to play their 2016 song, “Heathens”, in the morning mental music stream.
Sunshine richly soaks Ashlandia’s end of the valley where I5 climbs into the mountain pass between Oregon and California. But this Twosda finds it a chill morning. 42 F, the sun is pulling us out of the mid-thirties trough where we spent the night. Like yesterday, our high will eye the 60s; I saw us at 64 yesterday at my place.
This is Twosda, March 11, 2025. Although spring is closing on us, a winter warning has been issued for tomorrow. That’s wholly in keeping with expectations. Before reading of that warning yesterday, I applauded the spring but then reminded myself that winter likes to make one last, dramatic March appearance in our area.
The Neurons are treating me with “Only You Know and I Know” in the morning mental music stream. Dave Mason penned the song, but Delaney & Bonnie had more of a hit with it in the U.S. I had the Dave Mason original in mind this morning. Comes solely out of thinking about PINO Trusk and his sneering as he ‘makes dramatic announcements’. That’s how the mainstream media often portrays him. ‘Trump Makes Dramatic Announcement About New Tariffs on Canada’. I’ve seen the first iteration and the rest of this song and dance is tiresome. But you and I know how much of his grandstanding is done to keep his base’s attention; he loves it when they thrill over his words, swoon over his actions, orgasm and gasp over his power and prophecies. Never mind that many of his words are lies, his actions are bullshit, and his power is right out of the dictator handbook.
But you and I know. Those of us with some smattering of understanding about history and politics know. Smattering to me is that you learned about these things in junior high or high school, but also that you understood and remember it. PINO Trusk’s base often does not.
Anyway, I enjoy this video of Dave Mason and his group performing a rockin’ rendition of the song. Hope you do as well.
Coffee is purring away in my innards, restoring some of my faith in my existence. Hope you have a royally awesome day. Here we go. Cheers
Someone must’ve pressed the ‘misty’ button on today’s weather menu. 44 F, cloudy, drizzly, misty, a little sunny, the high will jump to 51, 52 F. Not a bad day, just not particularly inspiring or uplifting, here in Ashlandia.
Fortunately, I experienced uplifting, energizing dreams. Returning from them to here was a rough landing. There, I was supremely happy, eager for the day, embracing the future. Here…everything is knotted with uncertainty, fused with irritation and frustration. I keep telling myself that this too must pass. It presently feels like empty rhetoric.
Papi the ginger blade, aka Butter Butt, is doing fab, busying himself around us, scampering about with tail up, sometimes punctuating the moment with his high pitched meep. That sound gifted him his original name of Meep. My SO ordered a change. Didn’t think Meep conveyed enough gravitas. Now she calls him Butter Butt. Like, that has gravitas?
Today’s song is a product of the news. Joey Molland of Badfinger has joined the gig in the sky. Badfinger was an early rock power guitar group. The Beatles fostered them and the group lent their talents to my teenage years. With Molland’s transition, the original group’s lineage has ended. For their part, The Neurons inserted “Baby Blue” from 1972 into the morning mental music stream. The song was written about a woman who showed up and toured with them for a while, Armstrong. It wasn’t a relationship meant to last, though. I went with a recording that’s a little muddy but it shows the most successful lineup during the glory period when they were young, before things began going to crap for them.
Coffee has made another successful landing in my gullet. Let’s rock and roll. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 