It wasn’t one of the places she lived in real life, but I knew it was her house.
No one else was there. The place was messy in many places, totally opposite of anyplace I’ve lived or visited where Mom was in command.
Getting there, I found a narrow bed. White sheets, pink blanket, pillow, but unmade. I decided to sleep a bit.
A long-haired gray and white cat joined me. I talked to it in the way we do with animals, telling the cat, a male, I knew, was very handsome. The cat then *ahem* indicated that it wanted to have sex with me.
Full-blown horror lashed me. I rejected that completely, telling the cat that was sick and disgusting. I added, “You can sleep with me but as a cat, not a sexual partner.”
Unable to sleep after that, I got up and walked around, taking notice of the mess. Part of it on one end was a pond with rocks. Water fed into it but the water was scummy, full of plants and crap. Deciding I would clean it, I went off, found rags, buckets, tools.
My sisters arrived, chattering and laughing, before I could clean it but after a sort pause, I did. In dream fashion, it was miraculously fast and easy.
I showed the others. Everyone was impressed by what I’d done. Two turtles emerged from the pond. My youngest sister exclaimed, “I knew there were turtles in there.”
One turtle puked. Examining that, my sister announced with happiness, “It’s pregnant. I am so happy.”
Mom arrived shortly afterward, the middle-aged person I knew for most of my life. Her hair was blond and she was wearing black slacks with this black and white polka-dotted frilly shirt that she often liked to wear. Smiling and happy, she came in, saying hello to all of us.
Ashland, southern Oregon. Wednesday, August 19, 2026.
August is moving on slow as molasses for me. I’m okay with that.
The claim is that it’ll be 96 F today. Forecasts yesterday said we’d hit 95 but we were four short of that. It’s 68 outside with high clouds clotting across the blue sky.
Our fingers are crossed that Mom’s house will finally close today. The buyers are using a grant to buy. The involved realtors say that the grant review and approval process has significantly slowed this year. It’s a federal program. A large part of me wonders if the Trump administration with its personnel cutbacks is responsible.
I’m not going to go into news and politics much on this post today. Writing a separate post on them.
I’m dedicating this instead to ZZ Top and Frank Beard. ZZ Top is an American rock band which had a heavy blues influence in its early years. They were a trio: Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard. I started listening to them in high school. Saw them in concert a few times. Now only Billy Gibbons, lead vocalist, guitar, and song writer remains as Frank Beard, 77, joined Dusty Hill in that big gig in the otherworld.
I basically divide ZZ Top’s sound into two eras. In their early years was that blues sound. Multiple favorite songs hang with me from that period. For today, I’ll go with “La Grange” and “Jesus Left Chicago”.
The second period moved ZZ Top more into commercial mainstream pop. They became phenomenally successful. My preferred sound from that era was “Sharp Dressed Man”, which my wife and I liked to sing as ‘short, fat man’.
So here we go, into the morning mental music stream. May your day be blessed with happy memories of good music and good times, and optimism for our future.
Ashland, southern Oregon — Tuesday, July 14, 2026.
Gonna be hot today, probably 96. Reached 96 yesterday, too. Today’s sky offers blue, blue, blue, and blue wherever you look. It’s a comfortable 74 degrees F right now with a mild breeze gracing us.
It’s the birthday for one of my younger cousins today, but she passed away from cancer several years ago. I remember her with fondness for who she was, sadness for her reduced life and the disease she endured.
Trump announced another blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in conjunction with his war on Iran. Then Trump said that he was going to charge ships a 20% fee to go through, something well-established as illegal.
Then Trump TACOed and rescinded that announcement.
I suspect it was just another Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! move. Keep us distracted from his many failures and setbacks, such as that other distraction, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool fiasco, and that mess called the Epstein Ballroom, sartorially named after Trump’s good friend.
Your Trump Quote of the Day:
Judge Kathleen Williams blocked Trump’s sweeping IRS settlement. If you remember, Trump sued the IRS, demanding $10,000,000,000 in damages. The DOJ announced a settlement between the IRS and Treasury in which a victim fund of $1.47B was established to be paid out. It also said the IRS agreed never to audit Trump and his family and their businesses or tax returns.
Judge Williams found some problems with the settlement.
I read her 56-page ruling yesterday, skipping many of the footnotes and some of the legal precedents. Fun read, though.
The Federal judge said this is a case of Trump against Trump, with Trump controlling both sides. She cited Trump’s early Executive Orders when he took office for his second term, noting that he made it clear that he was in charge of the executive branch and all of its offices, personnel, and decisions. As the case pitted the Treasury against the IRS and both of them are part of the Executive Branch, and Trump controls both, it’s like arguing with yourself.
Judge Williams also went on to note the lack of evidence, documentation, and statements made by the defendants. All this pointed to a lack of adversity, so the two sides were not arguing about anything. There were also a few comments made about the lawyers, and things the lawyers said in testimony to Congress and public statements.
Along with all that, she found the fund they established as a ‘settlement’ made no sense, because it awarded money to be given to parties unrelated to the lawsuit, and it established no means for controlling it.
I like the way that Judge Williams put it after laying out her reasoning:
“The Parties used the existence of federal litigation as a means of conferring legitimacy upon a course of action that they were unwilling to subject to judicial review. The context of the “settlement,” the relationships of the people involved in negotiating and approving it, the ethical implications of their conduct, and the Parties’ swift efforts to dismiss this case after the Court raised fundamental jurisdictional questions all support this conclusion.”
Other news found the Trump Administration unfreezing money meant for blue states. Trump had the $10B HHS funds for the five states frozen, claiming that they were perpetuating fraud. Standard for Trump, he offered little evidence for his claim and made sweeping allegations.
The affected states sued. A federal judge blocked the freeze and mandated that Trump administration needed to explain why they’d frozen the money and justify their action. Rather than share their thinking, the money was unfrozen.
After all that, I was thinking about Trump and jail. The Neurons noticed and slotted a Thin Lizzy song into the morning mental music stream, “Jailbreak”. *smile*
I hope this day gives you many reasons to smile and be happy.
I was at an outdoor gathering with others. None were ‘real-life’ friends. I knew them casually in the dream, as we’d just completed some kind of training or gathering.
Setup was very casual, and I was much young then my RL age. Just wrapping up, I received notifications and tickets about my travel plans. I glanced at them but didn’t read them deeply, just making myself aware of what they were.
Walking across a large swath of grass towards where the others were with food, grill, picnic tables, I came across a large brown rabbit. It was watching me as I walked by, and I realized, oh, it’s hungry.
So I said, “Are you hungry?”
Wagging it tail, it hopped toward me.
I chuckled to myself. “Why, you’re just like a cat or a dog, aren’t you?” Then, walking on, I added, “Wait here. I’ll get you something to eat.”
The others were sitting around the tables, bullshitting. We’d eaten earlier. I was trying to figure out, what does a rabbit eat? But I knew what a rabbit ate; I didn’t see anything like that on the table or grill. I only saw buns and cookies. Then I did notice a little salad left.
I casually picked up a few things, including a cookie, not wanting to share with the others that I was feeding the rabbit. The rabbit jumped up on the table and began eating.
Pretending to be upset, I chided the rabbit, “Get down off the table, you’re not supposed to be eating that.”
But I thought, that’s what I’ll give the rabbit to eat.
The rabbit jumped down. One of the guys there said, “You were going to feed that rabbit, weren’t you?”
I denied it, but he went on, “You were going to give him that cookie.”
Shrugging, I replied, “So what if I was?”
Giving the rabbit food, I walked away. Remembering my tickets, I pulled them out to check the details. Everything was washed out by water spots.
For a moment, I thought, how did that happen?
Then I was angry about it. One of the others walked past and asked, “How’s it going?”
I explained what had happened, showing my tickets. They said, “Same thing happened to me. What are you going to do?”
I replied, “I’ll just go to the airport. There will be someone there who can help me.” Shrugging, I thought, there could also be an administrator here who could help.
As I began looking around, trying to figure out where to go to find the administrator, the dream ended.
A thick tube of clear water spurted out of the wall. White tiles had been removed above the tub about five feet up. Oh, dear, what a mess, with some black fuzzy thing happening in the opening.
A trio of engineers, casually dressed, of different styles, heights, ages, one woman, two men, came in on behalf of the townhouse association. Because this wasn’t unique to this townhouse. It’d happened throughout the complex. This trio was going unit to unit to assess and strategize. I was just watching them from back by the door, listening as they ignored me. The spoke of how to fix it, what must be done.
Leaving, I headed across a common through sunshine to my own townhouse because, hey, that had been my father’s place, which slightly changed everything. He wasn’t there to look after it, so I was acting on his behalf.
I entered my own townhouse where the same problem existed but seemed to be on a much smaller scale. Some wall had been removed from the bathroom to the right which didn’t seem to have anything to do with the leak. I didn’t understand what that was about but I knew where to go for explanation.
I sought that women and this little rotund blonde explained something that kind of made sense and eased my anxieties. Going off again, I found I had a broken arm. No, not broken, just not working right. I’d been advised to keep it in a sling. I didn’t have a sling, so I fashioned one, and then modified it again and again, decided this was a good place to keep things, like my wallet, keys, and glasses.
So I tucked them in but then needed more material, so I added other things, and reshaped it, and reshaped it. People were going past as I did this and I turned away, trying to keep things private.
I decided to call my stepmother to tell her about Dad’s townhouse. Then I realized that Dad was dead and this was a dream. That I had actually a dream in a dream, and that the townhouse with the plumbing problem wasn’t real.
But I called my stepmother. I said, “I was thinking about Dad because it’s his birthday.” Then I realized, that’s not right. I said, “No, because it was my birthday.”
She was talking but it came to me, this call isn’t happening; it’s also a dream.
As Trump and MAGA break our norms, spread hate, and attempt to rewrite history, Jill Dennison reminds us of the results of such hate, events like the Pulse Nightclub murders.
Michael Seidel, writer 