Always amazes me how I arrive home and suddenly need to urgently pee. It’s not like I was driving home and had the urge and ignored it. No, it strikes after I get into the house.
It’s not just me, either. My wife usually reacts before I do, walking into the house, greeting the cats, and then announcing, “Oh, gotta pee.”
I always wonder if it’s another case of event boundaries. Like, oh, you’re home, so you pee. Or is it conditioning built up over the years: you come home, you pee.
Don’t know. Maybe there’s something in the house air that triggers it.
My good ol’ Fitbit, which isn’t that old, actually — I’ll need to look that up — stopped working again.
First sign: at 9:15 this morning, it declared that I’d walked over 18,000 steps.
Had I been sleepwalking, I wondered? Chasing the cats, or saving them from a bear, cougar, or other beasts? Not that I recalled, and I believeI would have remembered that. So, must be something else.
Okay. I added resetting the Fitbit to my list of things to do but it was still nominally functioning, until, ‘lo, in the coffee shop, I tapped it for the time and got nada.
Well, I muttered in my mind. That sucks.
But what was really irritating was that, just a little later, as I wrapped up my reading day, I tapped my Fitbit to check the time.
One of the strangest aspects of life in the United States that I’ve been reading about recently is that a growing segment of men aren’t wiping their asses after doing their business. Or they’re claiming that they’re not. Yes, it’s a strange thing to write about — a strange thing to think about — but it’s out there.
Let’s ponder what’s going on for a minute. Men consciously and deliberately decide, “I’m not going to wipe my rear. Or, “I’m going to tell others I don’t.”
Strange, strange, strange image to cultivate.
But their reasoning is that wiping your ass will make you gay. This is something that they say they claim. Bizarre. Seriously, WTF is wrong with them? Have they lost their minds?
Don’t believe me, then do a search. Go on Reddit. Read the complaints. The insanity is out there, and it’s documented.
She looked at the pen clipped to his shirt. He always wore one there, below his first and second button, a good-luck talisman.
“I notice that you almost always have a pen there,” she said. “Why do you do that?”
He grinned. “Well, it’s not a pen.”
“It’s not? It looks like one.”
“It’s a sophisticated recording device. Links to my phone. I’m always recording everything happening to me, around me, you know, just in case.” He shrugged, noting her incredulous expression. “Just part of the times, you know?”
He picked up his beer and sipped it, debating, should he tell her he was joking?
He wondered which of them had fallen out of love first. He believed that he did. He felt like she was always verbally abusing him and emotionally bullying him. He had a list of trespasses against her. She probably had one for him. The best thing to do is not keep a list, but there it was. They were so much alike, and they both always made lists.
He has his routines. After eating his wet food and his kibble, he heads for the desk. His guy is seated behind it, on the computer. There, on the right, is the man’s mouse, used for his computer, his hand resting on it. Eyeing it, he walks around the computer to the mouse hand, and puts his nose down and starts rubbing on his human’s hand. He usually only wants about two to three minutes of rubbing on the mouse hand before settling down for a nap, using the mouse hand as a pillow. That rarely works because the hand and mouse moves, eventually causing him to jump down to find another napping location. But all is well.
He’s had his morning mouse. It’ll suffice until after dinner. Then he’ll have his evening mouse.
He took his socks off in the office, balled them up and set them on the desk.
His partner had done the laundry earlier. A few hours later, she walked in and tossed a pair of socks on the bed. Seeing them, he put them away in his sock drawer. It was only when he went to put on his socks and shoes to walk up and check the mail did he realize what had happened.
Thickening fog is graying out this Monday morning in southern Oregon.
Hi. Today is February 22, 2021. The temperature is 39 degrees F. Sunrise and sunset are 6:57 AM, 5:52 PM, presenting us almost eleven hours of daylight.
My mind has been busy with dreams, reading, writing, and thinking. Among the thoughts. They mentioned on the radio that, oh, surprise, people are creatures of habit. Surveys show that eighty percent of Americans have daily routines that they follow. They eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, go to the same places to shop, watch the same shows, etc.
Well, hello, yes.Much of this is driven by routines but by prices, selections, availability, health, and convenience. My breakfast, for example, is usually oatmeal. How it’s flavored varies. I add different fruits and nuts to it, or raisins, or peanut butter, or sometimes all of it. Yogurt with granola stands as an infrequent breakfast alternative. Once in a while, probably once a month, I’ll buy a breakfast burrito from a store. Once in a while, maybe every other month, I’ll have a doughnut or pastry for breakfast.
These things, though are driven by nutrition, taste, cost, availability, and convenience. I used to make and eat other things for breakfast. Metabolism changes, life style changes, and weight gain all started nixing how often I do that, along with convenience and laziness. Making a more elaborate breakfast (besides being pricier) is time consuming, and there’s cleaning up afterward.
Boy, I sound defensive, don’t I? But they’re right: we shop at the same seven places for our groceries when we go out. Those seven: Shop N’ Kart, Trader Joe’s, Costco, The Food Co-op, Market of Choice, Bi-Mart and Albertson’s. They’re all within a twenty-minute drive. They have decent prices. The food quality is good. We’re checked out places, but these are the ones we trust.
Enough whining. On to the music. Today’s theme song is “Sowing the Seeds of Love” by Tears for Fear, 1989. Don’t ask me why; it came into my head this morning, and I had no reason to not select it.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get vaccinated. We’re still a few weeks from being eligible for the vaccination, ourselves. Here’s the tune. Enjoy.
Michael Seidel, writer 