Tag: ennui

Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: ennui

Hello, fellow trekkers through life. It’s Monday, October 9, 2023.

Heavy clouds clipped in under night’s cover, announcing autumn was ending our Indian summer flirtation. 65 F now, 66 F is the projected high for Ashlandia, where all ingredients are fresh, locally grown, and organic, except when it isn’t. Showers are expected shortly, the beginning of a local rainfest running this week.

Was tired this morning and didn’t want to leave my bed. Not happy news out in the world, in my mind, right? More war rising and escalating.

But, the cats clarified who has the power and how my desires fit into the morning routines when it comes to decisions about them eating or me sleeping. I also remembered that I’d committed to helping my wife.

Said wife — still the first (I know, it’s a surprise to all of us) — had Food & Friends deliveries scheduled that day. She’d be returning from exercise class, change clothes, swig down his coffee and don some lippy, and then she and I would jump in the car. I’m here driver for this monthly volunteer work.

Our last F&F outing didn’t go great. Three people didn’t answer the door or the food. Typical F&F beneficiaries are elderly, handiapped, or people coping with diseases. So, besides delivering food, F&F’s mission includes ensuring people are okay and don’t need assitance.

We picked up the food at the senior center and perused the list. Three people were off it. We talked about them, hoping they’re okay, wondering about their situation. Two new people had been added. Off we went.

It mostly went well, although there were hitches, such as being short one frozen meal. The biggest issue was that one new man didn’t answer his door. My wife called the number provided; not in service. After knocking more, she wrote a note to him on the official F&F slip and we pressed on.

Afterwards, we went back to his place. Still no answer.

The man lives in an apartment complex. The manager’s office was nearby so my wife went over to speak with the manager about the man. Turns out, the F&F client has a motorized wheelchair. He’s a smoker and likes to go out to smoke. The manager had seen him two hours before, buzzing around the campus.

Calling it a day, we returned to the senior center and my wife documented all that had happened.

The driving and waiting seemed to drain me today. Selfish of me, I reflected, but then again, that’s my writing time. Reactions involving writing doesn’t aways flow down normal culverts of thinking and emotions. Also, I volunteer to help her, and I enjoy it. Just one of those days.

I always wonder, though, what brings people to this point. Thinking about why they might be on a F&F client, I pursue the regular courses of reasons. Genetics, giving disease an unfair advantage. Bad luck, like car accidents and house fires. They might have been victimized by others, or made decisions which seemed to be the thing to do, only to have it all go south.

While sitting in the car, I listened to the radio and waited at one point. “Tailwind” by Kenny Wayne Shepherd came on. I’d only heard the song, which came out in 2019, a few times before. I know controversy about KWS was stirred a few years ago over his ‘General Lee’ replica. The General Lee is an orange ’69 Dodge Charger with a CAS battle flag painted on its roof. The car was featured in a television show called “The Dukes of Hazzard”, which aired from 79 – 85. Overseas most of the time, I didn’t see much of it.

Anyway, KWS had a nomination for Blues Musician of the Year (or some honor like that) rescinded because of his ownership of the car. In his response, KWS acknowledged he had the car but had the CSA flag covered up because he knew it represented racist elements. He apologized for it and stated that he stood against racism and oppression for everyone.

Well, hearing the song, The Neurons kept it going in the morning mental music stream (Trademark confusing) after we’d shifted into the afternoon. So, I’m gifting it to you. The Neurons and I agreed that the lyrics fit my mood.

Sometimes I feel like a man in a can
About to go hurtling through
Space, whiplash fast
Soon as the match hits the fuse
Sometimes it seems like I’m making it up
Crazy and crazier days
When fiction ain’t stranger than the truth
Turn the page
Turn the page

Roll around the world
And around again
Someplace we’ve never been
Blow a kiss and
Fly with the sun
See how lightning fast we can run
With a little luck
We might just catch a tailwind
Hey, fellow travelers
Keep travelin’

Somedays I swear that the game must be rigged
Jokers up every last sleeve
And if crooked is straight
Then what the hell does that make me

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Stay pos and be strong. Here’s the music. Off for coffee and writing. Cheers

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On Some Days

  1. On some days, I want to get away by myself to scream at the world. Yesterday was such a day. Stepped into the shower and screamed in silence. Was somewhat cathartic.
  2. I was driving along unlined streets in a residential neighborhood yesterday. Cars were parked along the side but there’s more than enough room for two cars to pass. Yet, so many drivers could not manage that. Driver age, sex, vehicle size…none of it seemed to explain it. People just couldn’t manage it. I thought it was because of the lack of lines. What tended to happen was that folks in one direction would stop so that folks proceeding in the other direction could drive straight down the middle. Young, old, male, female, all exhibited problems with it. “Just move over,” I’d tell them through the windshield. “Just use your side of the street. Honestly, it’s not that hard.” I should be more considerate of others but…on some days…it’s harder.
  3. Contemplating a favorite shirt’s fate. Like everything else, there is a season, turn, turn, etc. Bought this shirt back in 1999. Have photographic evidence of that, for there I am, wearing it in a dated photo. Nothing special, button down collar, long-sleeved, cotton, faded blue stripes on egg shell white. It’s been with me in two states, four houses, five companies, and ten cats (sigh.) (The cats were three to five at a time…) Probably paid about twenty-five dollars for the shirt. Can’t recall that, although I do recall that I bought it on sale at Macy’s. Good jeans shirt. Have gotten some compliments while wearing it, but mostly I like its style and comfort. It’s been gently descending the hill for years, evidenced mostly through armpit stains. I’ve washed those out with a lemon juice and baking soda process a couple times. Now, though…the collar is frayed. It looks like it’s time for the shirt to finally move on. I guess, properly, I’m moving on from the shirt.
  4. I feel like a prisoner sometimes. (Such an exaggeration, right?) I hate throwing things away, but it’s inculcated into my nature and our society. Besides the shirt, there’s now an electric kettle. Probably purchased ten years ago, the spring which helps the lid release and open no longer functions. Can it be fixed? Maybe…if I can find the right spring.
  5. I contemplate the conundrum. Savings are acquired by mass production. Costs are kept down by underpaying people and going to the margin on design and materials. Paying more can gain you more…maybe. You really can’t be sure. But after a few years, when the device or clothing fails, what do you do with it? Where does it goes? The recycling gig seems to be filling up and failing. That’s always been the fallback: recycle or repurpose. I have containers full of used shirts now relegated to being rags out in the garage.
  6. Dad was going to get a new stent this past week. His wife called. He’s eighty-eight. A COPD sufferer, he’d gone into the hospital on Monday to have his meds adjusted for his COPD. Suffering from edema resulting in a swollen left leg and foot, he was kept for observations and a stress test, and given diuretics. The stress test never happened; he was wheezing too much on that day, Wed. He was released on Thursday with plans to have the stress test done in the future. Meanwhile, he and his wife got the COVID-19 vaccination on Friday, which was paramount for them.
  7. I spent an hour on the phone chatting with Dad. He was in a talkative mood and opened up about his youth, something unusual for him. Mom and Dad divorced when I was about ten. He was in the military and oft stationed overseas, so I lived with him for about seven years total, including my final three years of high school. It was just him and me for two of those years. He worked, and I went to school, cleaned, and cooked. We didn’t see much of one another.
  8. Dad revealed that he met Mom in Sioux City, Iowa, when he was stationed there. (She’s from Turin, Iowa, and he’s from Pittsburgh, PA.) This was back in 1952. He was a radioman and she was a seventeen-year-old telephone switchboard operator. Too young to for her to marry in Iowa, they went to Luverne, Minnesota. There he discovered that while she was older enough (fifteen was the age for females there), he wasn’t old enough at twenty; he had to be twenty-one. Naturally, Dad managed to procure a letter with his father’s signature verifying that he was twenty-one. But no, wait. They told him that he had to have his mother’s signature. “Well, Mom is dead,” Dad replied. Then he called his father and said, “Can you tell these people that Mom passed?” That was done but he got grief for it from his parents for years.
  9. Joe Biden has been POTUS for a month and has yet to go golfing. By this point in his term, one month, Con Don had golfed six times. Donald Trump’s aides don’t want to admit the President is golfing – CNN Politics
  10. Enough whining and complaining for now. Got my coffee. Caspa, Uno Dos, and Billy await. They’re just meeting Spag and the recos for the first time. Time to go write like crazy, at least one more time.
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Sunday’s Theme Music

Woke up this morning and after traipsing through the dreams, urged myself, come on, get up. Seize the day.

Not uncommon words. But my brain then latched on to other words, “One more time around might do it.”

I chased the threads while I did morning business, finally realizing that Soundgarden’s song, “The Day I Tried to Live” (1994), was trying to break through.

Singing, one more time around might do it
One more time around might make it
One more time around might do it
One more time around I might make it
The day I tried to live, yeah

h/t to Genius.com

How many times have I told myself, one more time might do it over different projects and efforts over my lifetime.

I don’t usually have such trouble getting out of bed. Cats generally don’t permit such self-absorbed dawdling.

I think it’s just a sign of the times.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Walking with a sense of ennui yesterday, I noticed several blue cars. Teslas, Priuses, Subarus, Volkswagens, BMWs…it was an odd parade of mostly blue cars, with a few silver and green in the mix. All those blue cars brought home the 1996 song, “Counting Blue Cars” by Dishwalla.

I always identified this song with ennui. They’re counting cars and jumping over cracks, like children do, asking questions, like children do, like some people often do without end, searching for an answer, not knowing the question.

Yeah, Happy New Year.

 

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