Tag: COVID-19

Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: Confloofeed

The world has dropped a Sunday bomb on Ashlandia, emphasis on sun. Little wind stir the heat. We’ll travel from our current relative pleasant found in 69 degrees to the upper eighties. Cooler than yesterday, not as hot as that endured by those under the skillet lid in the eastern U.S. Today is June 23, 2024. Next Sunday will be June’s final day. This means that almost half of 2024 has slipped by the surly calendar.

In bad news, a friend sent me stats on COVID-19, showing that it’s risin’ agin’. He saved me some time. I’d planned to look into it because eight friends reported they had it in June. Their experience was a few days with mild cold symptoms followed by two to three weeks of poor energy of any kind. One reported, she sit down with a book and go right to sleep.

I spent the morning texting with sisters. One is teaching her sixteen-year-old to drive as her newly adult high school grad takes on adulting as he preps for college this fall. She’s going down to Georgia to vacation with our oldest sister tomorrow. Meanwhile, texting me, the older sister tells me she’s had a couple strokes without elaborating on what kind. She’s always had back problems and now there’s stenosis and they want to fuse five of her vertebrae together. She’s also diabetic and has chronic kidney failure, a byproduct of her meds, she tells me.

Then there’s my middle younger sister. She and her family drove down to the Carolina coast yesterday. They’ve rented a beach house with a pool. They’re all hard workers and mo’ def’ deserve and need a vacay. Hope they’re able to relax and chill.

Meanwhile, my mind is floating around calling Dad to get an update on him and calling Mom to get an update on her and pass the update along about Dad. I’m not quite up to that yet. More coffee and some writing, first.

We had a net outage the other night. Actually, two nights in a row. This frequently happens when the heat jumps into the upper nineties. I mean degrees, not years, decade, or period.

With the net out, we read but then I surfed the television offerings. Since I cut the cable back in 2010, we survive on over-the-air digital broadcasts. We receive the big four networks, along with PBS, and the networks’ sub channels. Like NBC is channel 5.1, then there are three other networks broadcasting old shows or documentaries on channels 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4. X-Files, Two and a Half Men, Seinfeld, along with Green Acres and Hogan’s Heros, and several police/hospital/fire department-based dramas from past decades.

Watching Hogan’s Heros and its silliness, my wife and tried remembering what happened to Bob Crane. Was it suicide or murder? Bludgeoned to death, we rather later recalled, and then conneted it. (Yes, conneted is my word for ‘confirmed on the net’.)

My wife follows a tangent, recalling that Naomi Judd ended her own life. It’d shocked her and me; Naomi Judd, a lovely and talented person, seemed to have it all together, resulting in a life of artistic and commercial success. Naomi Judd, though, coped with many mental and physical health issues and decided, enough. Never know what’s happening in another’s skin and what’s passing through minds.

The final piece that evening was a sort of celebration of the Judds’ music, with my wife enthusing about their songs, like “Mama He’s Crazy” and “Girls Night Out”. But the one she particularly relished was “Turn It Loose” from 1988. She played it a few times once the net returned, heavily accenting her favorite lines by loudly singing along to them.

I love the slide of a steel guitar
I love the moan of an old blues harp
I love the shake of a tambourine
I love the bass when it’s low and mean
So put on your shoutin’ shoes
And turn it loose

h/t to Lyrics.com

It may surprise you that The Neurons in my head then loaded it up and sprang it on me this morning in my morning mental music stream (Trademark loose) as I was wandering around the kitchen, just minding my own business. So that’s today’s theme music.

Stay positive, be strong, and make what you can of the day. Needn’t be perfect. Just tryin’ can help. I’ve downed some coffee — the last gulp was cold as stone. Time to go write and roll.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Heard from my wife, who heard from a friend that other friends have been stricken with COVID. See, the annual Easter brunch planning is underway. We’re invited. So are the COVID couple. The wife answered the evite that they have COVID now but were hopeful they’d be better by the end of the month. She — the wife — has it worse.

Concerning, yes. As concerning are the ration of natural questions which come with COVID announcements. How’d they get it, and when? When did they test, and how are they both doing? What are their symptoms?

It’s basically the standard COVID script.

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The Protection Dreams

My wife and I received another round of COVID=19 vaccinations yesterday. We agreed that one kicked us harder than the others.

We received them at 11 AM. Other than pain and stiffness at the injection site, all was going well. After meeting with friends for beers in the late afternoon, I returned home and exercised. Then, about 10 PM, it seemed like someone encased my body in concrete. My newfound stiffness stunned me. Reaching down, sitting down, standing up, movement of any kind was met with defiant resistance.

Next, cold invaded my body. It reminded me of being in Korea one winter. Heavy shivering gripped me. My hands and feet felt so cold, I stuck my hands down my shorts against my groin to warm them and gasped at the shock of my cold hands. I normally sashay through the house in gym shorts and a tee shirt. Now I applied additional layers, including socks. Socks! The indignation. Then came headaches and a mild fever. I woke up at one point soaked with sweat.

Meanwhile though, I dreamed when I slept. I was heading a horizon. Tall, dark walls were being erected. That’s my protection against COVID-19, I told myself. I had variations of that dream three times during the night. The walls were different each time. In the second dream, I said, “I need bigger, stouter walls, taller walls.” Someone — a male — replied, “They’re coming.”

All three of these dreams were short. They felt like they were less than a minute, and in each, it was only me, darkening skies, and protective walls.

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Her Dreams

She says that she vividly dreams all the time and tells him about two. Both were recurring. In one, she was with her ex-son-in-law. He’s in many of her dreams but in this recurring dream, she and he are in a huge house. Others are there but she doesn’t remember who the others are. The SIL says, “We’re going to bring a lot of children here, so we need to start making beds.” She thinks in response that they’re not ready and that’s going to upset her daughter.

The other recurring dream, experienced three nights in a row, was about being in a huge mansion. She said it cost over a billion dollars to build. It’s sealed off from the outside world. But she thinks, there’s no oxygen. There’s no air. She can’t breathe.

She dreamed that one while she was in the hospital on oxygen, fighting COVID pneumonia.

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Thursday’s Wandering Thought

He has a rhythm established to deal with his illness. About every seven minutes, he gets up and pees. Then he washes his hands, followed by his face, dousing his eyes with water. Returning to his bedsit, he drinks half a glass of water and refills it, and then blows his nose.

There’s method underlying the madness. It’s all a matter of feeling better and getting better.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Friday. June 10, 2022. That’s the bare facts of it. It gets interesting when we talk about sunrise and sunset and temperatures. That’s where places show their differences. Here in the Rogue Velly, it’s 72 F with a chance to hit 81 F. Sunny but cloudy, so it’s humid on us. Cats are in floof heaven, coming in to eat and then seeking a pleasant napping space outside, somewhere perchance to do bird watching and insect spying without getting too warm. The world’s spin will take the sun away at 8:46 PM after bringing it around to us at 5:34 AM.

Don’t tell Tucker about the weather, though, he still needs his ration of attention. Entering the office, he fixes a dark stare on me and makes a pitch: “Merow.” Having fed him, refilled all the bowls, and replenished his water, after spending a night petting him whenever the other one, Papi — they’re a tag team — woke me up, I ignore Tucker. He then comes over and sits beside me and asks, “Mmmmw.” I shake my head. A trill is issued and then Tucker jumps up onto the desk, walks around the computer, and waits for my hand to go to the mouse. As soon as it does, he begins rubbing his head and face against my hand, pouring out a purr that would shame an idling dragster.

Received my second COVID-19 booster yesterday, Moderna, and feeling it this morning. Like the body is fighting off a low-grade flu. Aching joints and listless muscles, lethargic brain, and low energy, right? Yeah. Got up late and will probably return to bed shortly. Tucker says, “I’ll join you if you do.”

The neurons are playing “Wishing You Were Here” by Chicago (1974) in the morning mental music stream. There is a chain of events for this. My wife bought me a small pin which says, “Wish you were beer.” I wear it on my Tilly hat. Often while chatting with people, they’ll say, “What’s that say on your hat.” Then they’re read it aloud. Overhearing that happen yesterday, the neurons began with the Chicago song. Why that instead of Pink Floyd, “Wish You Were Here”? Don’t know. They’re not saying.

Here’s the song. Stay pos and test neg, etc. Enjoy your day. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Yesterday was a gorgeous day locally, and today extends a promise that it came be the same. Today is May 17, 2022, a Tuesday, as it goes. The sun crowded into the valley at 5:48 AM. It was already in the mid fifties by then. Now it’s up to the low sixties, and we expect a high around 73 F. As I noted, it’s much like yesterday. Sunset should come at 8:27 PM.

We breakfasted out this morning, the first time we’ve eaten breakfast out locally since Feb. 2020. See, back in 2019, we participated in an auction to support exchange students with our sister city in Mexico. One of the things we successfully bid on was a gift card for one of our local favorite restaurants, Brothers. My wife has some anxiety that COVID-19 will surge back into the area as tourism kicks in and people become complacent, so we took advantage of the low local numbers to use our gift card. She had mushroom and onion omelet while I did the Mediterranean scramble with artichokes, dried tomatoes, feta cheese, kalamata olives, and spinach. It was a pleasant, relaxing, and welcome change to our routines of the past two years.

I ran into a very friendly big black dog while I was out walking yesterday. Muzzle grayed with age, his body went into a hyper frenzy of wagging, like we were favorite cousins encountering one another after decades away. I was in the street so I worried that he was a stray but his person came out and reassured me. The dog and I spent a few minutes together and then he went home with his person, back to his yard. After I resumed walking, the neurons unleased “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin into my mental music stream, where it still resides this morning.

So, here’s the music, and there’s my coffee. Stay positive and test negative, you know? Right. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Gold filled the cloudless sky as the sunblast kicked off at 7:27 AM in our valley on this Saturday, January 29, 2022. With the sun rising, the gold dipped. Blue flooded in as the sun’s beams surmounted the mountains at last. The temperature was 32 F. Now at 36, we expect to see 63 before the sun takes its show over the western horizon at 5:21 PM. Look at that, almost ten hours of sunshine and February hasn’t started it session yet.

In bummer COVID-19, all the county libraries are completely shutting down for a week. All materials due during that period will be automatically extended as the drop boxes will be locked shut. Hold pick-up periods will be extended, too. All this is because of personnel shortages driven by employees or their families sick with COVID-19.

While that’s happening, some genius suggested in an editorial that the best way to deal with the skyrocketing COVID-19 numbers is to open all the businesses and not restrict any of them. Save the economy and give everyone’s morale a boost. But…as the numbers are skyrocketing, people sicken, and the hospitals fill, who is going to be there to work?

Sadly, many see this bizarro logic as an ideal solution. Yet, hospitals across the nation are pressing nursing students into working for free to help with the caseload as personnel fall sick. Other nurses are being ordered to work longer hours, sometimes while foregoing pay, because of shortages. These are the same people who think that bare shelves are a political issue which can be resolved by just making more people work. They completely miss the dynamics engaged.

Enough of that. Sorry for the rant. Haven’t had coffee yet.

Today’s song is a repeat. “Maneater” by Hall & Oates came out in 1982. I was stationed in Japan, on Okinawa, at Kadena AB in the military at the time. That has nothing to do with the song’s occupatoin of my morning mental music stream. The song is there because of the cats. Why, yes, of course.

Sometimes when I’m feeding the cats, maybe just five out of five times, Boo and Tucker will suddenly become oblivious to me. After begging me for their morning meal with patient meows as they follow me around, I’ll put the bowls down and say, “Here you go, Tucker. Here, Boo. Come and get it.”

Hearing that, they’ll sit. Look around. I can hear their minds saying, “Boo? Tucker? Never heard of ’em.”

Papi, the young ginger, will dart pass them to the bowls, give me a meow, and begin eating. I then say, “There you go, Papi, eat up.”

Hearing “Papi”, Boo and Tucker will rise and come. “Papi,” they say. “Why, that’s me.” They say this even though I tell them, “No. You’re not Papi. You’re Tucker and you’re Boo. You two are black and white. He’s a ginger.”

They act like they can’t understand a word of what I’m telling them.

Of course, when they finally came is when I said in my head, “Here they come.” Which started Hall & Oates and the bassline for “Maneater”. Thus is how my mind works. At least before coffee.

Here’s the tune. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, as get the jabs when you can. I gotta get that coffee in me, you know? Cheers

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