I was in the coffee shop — typing, revising, thinking, scrambling through the novel, noticing faults and fixing them. Progress was steady but heavy with challenge.
.Another customer approached my table. Regulars, she and I briefly spoke together a few times. Today she said, “Excuse me, but I love watching you at your table.”
Blinking, I gave her my attention.
She continued, “You become so deeply focused and oblivious to the rest of us, it just amazes me. I’m sorry to interrupt you but I really felt an itch to say something.”
I thanked her with a laugh. “Don’t worry. Interruptions can be helpful. Sometimes a little break is needed to help me think more clearly.”
We exchanged names, then she left the coffee shop, leaving me smiling.
Sometimes it feels good to be noticed as orders are called out, conversations rise and fall, and people come and go.
I’m dreaming of a gray Christmas. Where raindrops glisten, and fog and mist close us in, and the temperatures are neither too warm nor too-oo cold.
And I got my wish! Yes, it’s a dreary day outside my windows. 43 F now, up from 36 F before. Cloudy as cloudy can be. Late posting this because I scoffed off to have breakfast brunch with friends. Yes, I was invited and didn’t crash it. Wonderful time with them, culminating in working on a five hundred piece Christmas-ornament themed jigsaw puzzle. Which didn’t get finished but was about 25 % when we walked after about 90 minutes of effort. Besides that, we compared stories of how we met our sig others, what holiday traditions were observed, and related tales of holiday craziness. Fun time all around.
We got home — I’d worn a dark gray sweater and charcoal pants to honor the gray holiday — ditched our clothes and served up leftovers.
You can guess that we’re not over-the-top Christmas celebrants. We’re not even up to our belly buttons in Christmas. Friends gifted us interesting X-mas theme stuff. Like an Amaryllis. And a pine tree centerpiece decorated in red ornaments and ribbons. Shortbread cookies dolled up with minced dill. Other kinds of cookies and baked goods. But that’s it. We put a couple items up and sent off a few cards and put a few gifts online and the end.
Meanwhile, my little sister sent me food photos of her Christmas setup. She had her nephews, children, grandchildren, sister, and Mom, along with her family. About fifteen people Ham. Mashed potatoes and cheesy hash brown potatoes, corn, green bean casserole, meatballs and stuffed shells, tossed salad, Stouffer’s mac & cheese for the kids. Apple pie, banana cream pie, pumpkin pie. Cookies. Cheesy pineapple casserole. Rolls from Oakmont Bakery along with carrot cake.
Today’s song is brought to you be Der Neurons. They’re always up for a song. In this case, someone said something about being human at brunch. The Ns took that as an brainvite to start “Human” by the Human League in the morning mental music stream (Trademark roasting). Not at all a Christmas song, this is a pop offering of a guy trying to explain away his cheating to his sig other by when they’re away by explaining, “Hey, I’m only human. Flesh and blood. A man.”
Hope your holidays met your needs. Time to start counting down to the new year yet? Here’s the music. Cheers
Moanday is upon us again. That is Moanday as in, “Dear Lord, it’s Monday again.” I understand some people like Mondays. Come back to me and ask after I’ve had coffee.
It’s December 5, 2022. That happens to be my little sister’s birthday. She’s beautiful, intelligent, successful, and highly capable. Things every person should be. Generates suspicions in me about whether I’m related to her, though I was there when Mom brought her home and admired her as she slept. I know her husband, children, grandchildren, sisters, and Mom will all properly fete her.
Don’t you think that should be an expression? “Well, fete me, if I didn’t forget to buy that card while I was out.”
Sorry, lack of coffee is making The Neurons are little freakie deakie this Moanday.
36 F is what my weather station claims it to be. It’s a wet, foggy, gloomy Moanday, something appropriate for the moors. Our high will be 46. The end pieces of sunrise and sun drop are 7:24 and 4:39, AM and PM respectively. All but small, distant football fields of snow are gone from the mountains from what I saw yesterday. Rain is coming, they say. Probably snow a bit in the upper reaches.
Spent some time from being human and reading news to watching the volcano eruption in Hawaii. Being human is a minor theme this AM. Started with the cats. Restless due to weather, they intensely shadowed me this morning, vocally challenging me at every turn. Chatting with them, my refrain became, “Guys, look, I already fed you. I don’t understand what you want. I’m only human. I don’t understand your floofish.”
Paying scant attention, my neural Alexa told The Neurons, “Play Human by The Human League.” The 1986 soft ballad is classic techno pop. Get in a car, close your eyes, and you can be transported to the Reagan years. Of course, I sang the floof version for the cats’ amusement. First, there was, “You’re only human, a pathetic little man.” That’s how they seem to feel about me at times. Later’s version was, “I’m just a kitty, fur and claws, a cat.”
The Neurons are gasping for coffee. I need to end their pain. Here’s the music. Go ahead, drift back in time, if but a few seconds. Cheers
I dreamed I was an ant, but I had my own head and face. It was the face and head from a younger me, maybe one seen on me in the mid 1970s. I was running around, as were other ants. Seemed to be a frenzy going. I was confused because, I was an ant and I’m not normally an ant. As I saw the others running around with their human heads and faces, I wondered if they were going through the same process of self-realization.
A rough blackish wall was on either side. Although thinking like a human, I was acting like an ant, following the white ground beneath me, feeling things with frenzied antennae, following along the others in chaotic urgency. Same time, I’m thinking, “I’m an ant. Can’t I climb this wall and go up and see what’s up there?”
I do that but get up there and can’t make any sense of it. The view doesn’t help. My senses are limited. Then, epiphany, I’m a brick wall. I need to change the way I’m looking at things because up isn’t up, there really isn’t a firmly idealized up or down.
I awaken from that. Oddly, almost instantly, I thought about the novel in progress and experienced a burst of productive creativity.
Propfloofsition(floofinition) – 1. A proposal or idea involving an animal or animals.
In use: “A growing propfloofsition is that animals need safe places to cross roads, so bridges and tunnels for them to safely cross highways are being built.
2. A suggestion made by an animal.
In use: “In deed and sounds, pet owners not infrequently find their fur friends making the propfloofsition that the animal be included in any Zoom meetings conducted.
3. A stand for animal rights through the reduction of animal abuses.
In use: “Cage-free eggs, banning trophy hunting, and shutting down puppy mills are three propfloofistions by which people are trying to make sharing the world with animals more humane.”
I remembered the Killers’ song, “Human” (2008) this morning. The song has never been a favorite, and its success surprised me. Different tastes, right?
Many were enamored by the line, “Are we human, or are we dancers?” The line evolved from a Hunter Thompson throwaway line about the United States raising a generation of dancers, afraid to step out of line.
The whole thing came back to me as I noted, with some pleasure and approval, that young people were heavily involved in the Black Lives Matters protests. One of the most disheartening parts of protesting in my fifties and sixties was the absence of young people. Didn’t they care? Or were my values so out of step with their values?
Older generations often malign younger generations. My generation, the boomers, were no different. It takes time to filter the world and yourself. Bursts of rebellion against expectations and norms are required and expected, but the way each generation finds to act out and express itself remains different. Social media is the thing now, not taking it to the streets, so the protests are a throwback, old school.
Yeah, rambling. Not sufficient coffee yet to form coherent sentences. Here’s the music. See if you can spot the line (hah!).
Floofmidity (floofinition) – A humid warmth generated by having one or more animals resting on or against a person.
In use: “Despite a cramping leg and rising floofmidity that made him feel hot and sweaty, he didn’t move, unwilling to disturb the cat and dog using him as a mattress.”
Looking out, sipping coffee, I questioned myself, seeking the day and date. Wow, the sixteenth, half of April is already gone. Thursday again, already? It seemed like we just had one. Pretty soon, it’ll be the weekend all over again.
The weekend doesn’t have much true meaning for me. Military existence as a shift worker made them moot. When I joined management, it changed, and I kind of got the hang of it, mostly due to my wife saying, “It’s the weekend. We should do something.”
Everyone seemed to have a mindset around the weekend – do something, or do nothing. Meanwhile, since dropping out of the employment world to enter the sinister world of being a novelist, I’ve drifted back out of the weekend thing. Everyday is for writing in my world, but I still clash with the rest of the world and its idea of the weekend (along with those pesky interruptions called ‘holidays’).
Weirdly, out of all this, the song by the Killers, “Human” (2008), splashed into my thought stream.
Tail Tickle (floofinition) – The response felt (sometimes with itching or light laughter) when an animal’s tail touches or sweeps across a human’s face.
In use: “Jumping up onto the desk, the cat hopped over the laptop’s keyboard, giving Michael a tail tickle as he passed.”
Floofality (floofinition) – The quality or condition of being a floof.
In use: “Discussing floofality, the pet owners agreed that the most common trait to floofality was that each animal was unique and different, regardless of the similiarities among individuals, as unique and different as humans.”
Michael Seidel, writer 