My wife was stewing. “Papi changed his routine today. For some reason, he suddenly wanted outside at 4:22, more than two hours before his usual time. I don’t know what’s going on but there he was, scratching on the door, yipping at me because he couldn’t wake you up.”
Between us, I had been awakened but ignored the floofcas Papi was causing because I didn’t want to get up.
I thought of the reasons why Papi the ginger blade, aka Butter Butt, changed his hours. May have been a bowel movement thing. Papi prefers to use the outdoors as his toilet, frequenting the area by the fence behind the bushes.
But, him being a cat, perhaps he heard noises outside and felt a need to investigate. Conversely, maybe he realized the noises were coming from inside the house and decided that the outside was safer.
Other ideas are possible. Flooflight savings time may have kicked in. From what I understand from floofotologists, floofs are notoriously independent about FST. Each decides when they’ll switch over — or if they won’t switch at all. Often, though, once one floof changes to FST, other housefloofs do the same. After all they don’t want to miss out by falling an hour behind their floofmate, cause food. They’d rather get up an hour early rather than missing out on food.
So we chug into Fridaz, Feb. 21, 2025. Blue sky has it over my views of Ashlandia. Plentiful sunshine pelts the scene with rays. It’s 32 F with mid 50s likely, ‘they’ say.
All that is my perspective. Per habit, I inquire of the weather for us from Alexa. It says it’s 40 degrees. Tells me about the fog. ? Says it’ll be mostly cloudy today.
What we have here is some kind of failure of something. Maybe it’s in a different reality; perhaps I am. Or Alexa landed in a different Ashland. There’s a bunch of ’em in America. Or…since she’s Amazon…and Jeff Bezos…and he’s getting along so well with Trusk…Alexa is trying to gaslight me. Ah, such possibilities to contemplate on a Fridaz morning.
Oatmeal with blueberries are being consumed. A Chicago song is going through my morning mental music stream. “You’re My Inspiration.” You know the words:
You’re the meaning in my life You’re the inspiration You bring feeling to my life You’re the inspiration Wanna have you near me
I figure The Neurons are calculating and channeling emotions about Tucker’s passing. Seems logical, right? But, The Neurons are not always logical. Then again, neither are emotions. Hell, neither is life.
The music certainly didn’t come from my dreams. They were trippy. I’ll almost certainly write a post about one of them later. It’s ‘almost certainly’ because it’s a busy day planned. So, it’s a time permitting thing. Then again, there’s not a general call for more of my dreams, nor is there a time limit. It’s not like someone sent me memo, “Post about a dream by Fridaz.” If they did, I didn’t receive the memo. I guess I should check my spam and junk mail, see if it didn’t get ditched there.
Coffee and I are doing the morning tango. Hope you have a solid day, and things begin looking and getting better for all of us. Here’s the 1984 music, fresh out of a recording made in 1992. Papi the ginger blade (aka Meep, Butter Butt) has arrived for his morning cuddle session. Gotta go. Cheers
Sunshine rose over the western mountains and trees and waxed into a blazing orb, splashing light and warmth all Ashlandia and the valley where I reside. Blue sky followed like a puppy gamboling on a walk with their human. Temperatures hurried from 25 F to 33 F in fast time. Snow keeps melting. Athough full duvets cover many parts of the land, the thickness on the backyard furniture looks like it’s down to seven inches. A high temperature of 37 F is conceivable, ‘they’ say. They had it right yesterday, so optimism overflows me today. Yesterday was a pleasant winter day.
This is Twozda, February 11, 2025.
Yesterday’s sunshine overjoyed the house floofs. After some geographic jockeying over whether it was better inside or out, they found sunlit places inside and made like melting pools of fur for a few hours. And that is a weirdly rewarding, reassuring sight, to walk in and see floofs deeply relaxed and asleep.
Today’s music was born in a dream, one of three dreams remembered from last night. I won’t go into any dreams here, although I probably will address one of the shorter, sharper ones in another post. The song was written by Laura Nyro and covered by Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Released in 1969, “And When I Die” is circulating my morning mental music stream like music coming in over a grocery store’s loudspeaker system. I always enjoyed the song’s straightforward lyrics and their message. Wasn’t too found of the actual melody, which seemed sort of old fashioned to my young ears. It’s remarkable, though, that she wrote the song when she was seventeen and sold it to Peter, Paul, and Mary. Nyro was such an impressively talented individual.
I popped into the kitchen a little while ago. Coffee was there and said hello. We started chatting and before I knew it, I had a cup in my hand. Hope you have a strong yet restful and satisfying day. It’s not impossible. Hope you enjoy the musical interlude. Cheers
Good mornin’! It’s Sunda, February 9, 2025. Sunshine is crowding the window, pressing its rays up against the glass. We started the AM at 25 F in my locale but the sun soon had us soaring past 33 F. ‘They’ tell us 43 is possible. Don’t know if their fingers were crossed behind their backs.
The sun has been working its magic. Trees and bushes are pushing their heavy lids of snow back and stretching and flexing into their normal postures. Seeing sunshine, both floofs clamored to escape the house. Checking on them later, the two sat, eyes closed, soaking up rays on the patio’s sun-warmed cement. After being sun-doused, they returned to the house. One is now napping on a bed while the other is in a chair in sunshine snoozing.
What a night of dreams. Another military dream was among them. Classic of these dreams, I’m in the military again, and again coping with a uniform malfunction. In other words, I was out of compliance and trying to solve that. It’s my version of being pantless in school. But a twist arrived when an officer accosted me and asked, “What are you doing?” I figured he was going to ladle grief on me for my uniform. I whipped out an explanation and told him I was trying to rectify it. “Why?” he responded, surprising me. Then he added, “You retired.”
Oh, yeah.
That sunshine had me thinking, I hunger for a bouncy, energetic song. Something as an antitdote to PINO Trusk’s destruction. Drifting back into time, The Neurons surfaced with a Who offering from 1972. Although the video is silly with them miming playing their instruments and singing, the infectious blending of instruments stirred the kind of hope I felt when I was sixteen. That — and coffee — is just what my spirit ordered.
Coffee saved me again. Brekkie is done, cats are fed. Time to gen up other activities. Hope your day serves you well. Cheers
Ashlandia is soaking in blue sky and sunshine. The temperature has topped 33 degrees F. But the good weather news is that the conditions causing the stagnant air has ended. Besides causing an accumulation of pollution and reducing the air quality, stagnant air in the winter seems to amplify the cold. Feels like that cold air is just marching walls. Maybe that’s just my impression but when I mentioned it to friends, they agreed that they noticed the same. Anyway, we’ll going to scale the thermometer all the way up into the fifties again. A cold spell is on the way, though. Don’t know if it’ll bring any snow; we still have not had winter snow.
The cats inspired The Neurons this morning. The floofs began singing ‘feed me’ while I was still burrowed in my warm bed. Each took turns entering the room to sing, “Feed me.” Soon, their singing had taken on the cadence of a 1998 song by Sixpence None The Richer called “Kiss Me”. Not long after that, “Kiss Me” chased the dreams out of my head and was circulating in the morning mental music stream. I have no choice but to make it today’s theme music for this Saturday, January 25, 2025. You should mark this day as special, because historians say that there will never again be a 1/25/2025. I don’t know if you believe that, because historians are a flighty bunch, prone to partying and making wild claims.
Speaking of kissing, coffee and I have made up and kissed. There was just a small spate, brought on by my quasi-firm rule not to drink coffee after 4 PM. It hurt coffee’s feelings. So I had to apologize to it this morning, reassuring it, “Of course I’ll drink you after four.” Had to repeat it a few times because coffee was like, “You’re just saying that.” But coffee finally accepted, and now I’m drinking it again.
Hope you have a strong day in your location, no matter your activity, although certain restrictions about murder and abuse apply. Here’s the song. It’s a solid soft rock-pop offering with delicate folksy overtones. Hope it helps your Saturday on its way. Cheers
December 24, 2024 has claimed Twosda in Ashlandia, where the beer is local and cold. Rain fell in clunk drops all night, yielding to an un-Christmasy morning fog. Rain and sunshine have since warred around 43 degrees. Low will be 36 F and the high will be 46 F, cutting a narrow band through the day.
While Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) has shrugged off the weather and remains inside, Butter Butt (previously known as Papi the ginger blade, but also once known as Meep) continues his rigorous testing to verify that better weather is not available through a different door. Several times when he was left in through the front door, he immediately galloped to the back door for egress, as if time was now some critical aspect of his testing.
Beer with friends was done last night as we slid our weekly greet and drink up from Wednesday to Monday due to some holiday happening on Wednesday. Small gathering of the faithful but family members augmented our numbers. A fun time was experienced, as it always is. We raised our glasses in salute of new possible states, Canada, Greenland, and Panama, the latest things PINO-elect Trump has floated. TBS, except for Canada, he hasn’t actually proposed these places be states. As always, he vaguely intones what might happen, suggesting anything is possible. Anything except sanity, sure. Someone suggested Trump has generated more weirdness-based statements because other world events drew the news media’s attention; he thus issued ideas to get the spotlight back on hisself.
I took it on myself to walk the .75 miles down to the watering hole and back. I’ve done the walk many times and know that it used to take me fourteen minutes. Going wasn’t too far of a challenge, as it’s a slight downhill slope all the way, and it was early-ish, and the weather was almost balmy. Returning up the hill, buffeting by wind, spit on by rain, a few pints sloshing around inside me, consumed twenty-two minutes. By the end, my foot was a flaming riot of irritation. Some tender care and soothing words made it right in a while.
In accordance with the rules and customs, I would now air my grievances, as it’s part of that holiday, Festivus. But I’ve pretty much aired my grievances all year, not holding back to wait for one day to spout off. With that out of the way, I turn attention to the music. Staying with the whole X-mas idea, The Noel Neurons brought Eric Clapton singing and playing “Cryin’ Christmas Tears” to the morning mental music stream (Trademark wrapped). Hope you enjoy it.
Hope your days are comfy and joyous no matter what holiday you celebrate, or if you celebrate none at all. Here’s the music. Back to my regularly scheduled coffee and writnig. Cheers
Floofdulum(floofinition) – An animal which swings back and forth between two or more activities, locations, or activities. Origins: From Flooftin, circa 1659.
In Use: “Many pet floofs become floofdulums as they age, rotating between eating and sleeping, eating and sleeping.”
In Use: “Crystal was a staunch floofdulum, sleeping in bed with her people at night, moving to the sunny living room in the morning, and then joining her people on the sofa in the evening.”
In Use: “Wanting to eat everything available, Sir Bear became a floofdulum, dashing between food bowls in search of every last bite.”
The calendar declares that winter has officially entered the stage. Still feels more like a good fall rather than early winter in Ashlandia, where Teslas are found around every corner. A riled up wind is carousing around the neighborhood, stirring things up. Doesn’t sit well with our floofs. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) says, “Merci, non.” But Papi the ginger blade insists on thinking, “Maybe it’s different now,” every fifteen minutes. Temperature isn’t bad at 49 F on this winter day, Sinda, December 22, 2024. Light rain and a high of 52 F are expected. Visuals say, yeah, that can be done. Clouds in varying densities from sheers to cotton layers in heather, oatmeal, off-white, and charcoal, pleasingly illuminated with eastern rising sunshine, set off against brittle blue sky, parade along the sky walk.
Today’s song is “Boys Don’t Cry” by the Cure. I don’t know why it’s in the morning mental music stream (Trademark blustery). I only remember one dream and it seems wholly unrelated to its tale of databases, strawberries, and fried food. Just in the kitchen, bustling about with floof feeding activities as Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) asks again about when he’s going to have his order delivered. Click, clink, bonk, the song is playing in the mmms and I’m humming along.
Done with the morning cuppa. Went down well. Brekkie is finished. Dressing’s final touches of shoes, socks, coat are needed, then I’m off to the coffee shop to cavort with muses and do the keyboard finger dance. Hope your day gives sublime satisfaction, no matter which season or weather elements are encountered.
Yeah, it’s Munday, December 2, 2024. Just a couple notes on it. Temp is rising and falling between 26 and 28 F. Sun is kicking in. First strokes can be witnessed in the dining room’s southern window, which catches the sun’s approach from the southeast as it jabs through and around trees branches. Fog is doing a swirling veil dance. Alexa said it’ll be 56 F today. Same claim made yesterday and we barely topped 43, so I know where I’m putting my money.
Many people don’t realize the Monday as a day of the week comes from Middle English mondeyne which itself is derived from Late Latin, mundanus. It all means ‘common place’ as in ‘nothing special’. Boring. Routine. Mundane. Monday. Munday.
Trump continues with his authoritarian cabinet o’ clowns. Mockpaperscissors shares a scope outta the New Yorker about the dishonorable Pete Hegseth. True grrrspiring stuff about his drunken leadership and how he sexualizes women. Nice note about his drunken chants, “Kill all Muslims!” Bet those Muslims who clamored for Trump over Harris are creaming their pants with pleasure over that. Who coulda known that Trump woulda picked such a piece of meat for a high-rankin’ gubment position. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
My wife asked me last night how old I thought Papi was. We reminisced about his interactions with us. He first showed up on a fence back when Scheckter, one of the original Orange Boiz, was still alive. Papi, then called Meep for his tiny meow (yeah, he’s grown outta that), showed up on the backyard fence like a little Scheckter mini me.
Scheckter
Meep aka Papi
Records show Meep has lived with us since May of 2017. While Schecter was warm and sweet, Meep, I mean Papi, remains guarded and wary. When I informed my wife of my research, she remarked the same about the two floofs. Scheckter was a cuddler and lap dweller; Papi has been on my lap once for three pico seconds.
Dreams inspired The Neurons’ music choice today. I was reflecting about a dream of a levitating train I was driving through an apocalyptic ‘Merica. Thinking about the dream highights, I noted that it was a simple life of travel in the flying train with a small group of people. The Neurons shook my head. Out came No Doubt with “Simple Kind of Life”. “And all I wanted was a simple thing, a simple kind of life” keeps circulating the morning mental music stream (Trademark freeze-dried).
Sunshine owns all the living and dining rooms’ windows now. Blue sky speckled with withdrawn clouds rule the view. It’s 30 F. Coffee and I have found common ground again.Look up and open your eyes. Take a deep breath. Inhale; exhale. Here we go, December’s first Munday. Hope it’s a wonderful one for you. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 