Jill Dennison has done it again on Jolly Monday!
I listed my favorite five below. Hope you go check out the rest!
Yes, that was seven.
It’s Trump math.
Awesome! Jolly! Monday!
The Cork Dream
I dreamed I was at my mother’s house. It wasn’t her real-life house but I knew what it was in my dream. Although everything was white, there was little light.
I was trying to open some kind of cistern. As it transpired, I knew that it was wine I tried opening, to see how it was. It was supposed to be red wine.
I was being very careful, meticulous, because I worried about the cork falling apart. But it wasn’t the ‘traditional’ cork stopper, but a round, flat circle.
My youngest sister joined me. She asked what I was doing and I softly explained it as she leaned over me and watched. I had just gotten the safely out when something fell into the wine.
I asked my sister, “Did you see that?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“Was that a piece of the cork falling in?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.” I sat back. “All that work and I got it out and then it broke and fell in.”
I smiled at her. “Oh, well.”
Laughing, she replied, “I know.”
Logging In
I had to go ‘incognito mode’ and log into Gmail. Don’t ask.
I give it my identification. My password.
Okay, my computer tells me. “Go to you phone and click on the link texted to you so we know it’s you.”
I did so.
The computer showed me three numbers in circles. “Now,” it said, “click on the number that corresponds with the number shown on your phone.”
I did so.
“Now,” the computer said. “Hop up and down on your left foot three times and bow to your right.”
I did so.
“Now,” the computer said, “Say Rumpelstiltskin is my name.”
I did so.
I was finally able to log in.
Seriously, I did it all until the hopping part. But I don’t think that’s too far off in the future.
The Discussion
Four women were chatting at a nearby table at the coffee shop. Appearing similar in age to me, two women dominated the talking. One was short and slender, with fair skin and dark, bobbed hair. The other was tanner and smaller. Smiling a lot, her silver hair fell around her shoulders.
They were talking about toothpaste. Looking up from my writing, I tuned in as the first woman said, “I put a pea-sized amount on my brush.”
One of the other women, heavy, with dry brown hair that came to her shoulders, loudly, sharply scoffed. “That’s not enough.”
The first woman replied, “That’s what the directions say to use.”
The brown-haired woman snorted. “Everyone knows you’re supposed to put toothpaste on all the bristles, from one end to the other.”
The conversation fell still for several seconds. “Anyway,” the first woman resumed.
I returned to my writing.
Saturday’s Theme Music — Back in time
Ashland, southern Oregon — Saturday, May 16, 2026.
Clouds block the sunshine and dirty the blue sky. Our weather temperatures continue their slow backward slide. Today’s high will be 58 F. Fed by wind gusts, it’s currently a chilly 46 F.
Papi the ginger wonder isn’t happy. He’d like to be outside but, wind. Wind is his enemy. He sat for a bit, feet all together, tail wrapped around him, motionless except for ear flicks. That lasted three or four minutes before he was back inside, washing himself and recovering.
Our weather is better than other places in the US, where a May spring snowstorm is complicating plans.
What did Trump’s visit to China do for the nation. We won’t know for a while. Trump has made some claims about what China agreed to do. We’ll see how much of them are true, and which are just hot air. Remember, Trump has made vows and claims before that carried nothing but his air:
- Mexico will pay for Trump’s southern border wall
- His new healthcare plan was coming out in two weeks
- No new wars
- He’s the peace president and unifier
- The Ukraine-Russia War will be over before he takes the oath of office
- Trump said he would release the Epstein files on day one
- We’ll have lower prices on day one
- The US taxpayer will pay nothing for the Epstein ballroom
Trump also likes claiming he got 80,000,000 votes. He didn’t. Officially, Trump took about 77.3 million votes in 2024, beating Vice President Harris by about 2.3 million votes. Trump is confusing himself with President Joe Biden, who took over 80,000,000 votes, soundly beating Trump.
Make no mistake, Trump and his MAGA base are trying to take the United States backwards. In the latest move during the Trump Golden Age of Ignorance, Knox County, Kentucky, schools are removing the historic novel “Roots” by Alex Haley. It’s truly a WTF period for many of us.
Your Trump Quote for the Day:
With Trump’s reactionary thinking dragging us backwards and the weather losing its summer luster, The Neurons plugged “Back In Time” into the morning mental music stream. The 1985 song was performed by Huey Lewis and the News and featured in the movie, “Back to the Future”. Seems right for the day, except the time I want to go back to is before Trump ever ran for office in 2015.
I hope your weekend is progressing well and you keep moving forward in good ways.
I’m moving forward with my coffee.
Cheers
The Stuff
Mom has moved out of her house and into an assisted living facility.
A household of things have been left behind that we need to move to sell her house. That includes clothing, paintings, vases, dishes, appliances, furniture, electronics. My sisters contacted liquidators and estate sales businesses to see if they would do it for a cut.
Short answer: no. Not enough of value to make it worthwhile.
I wasn’t overly surprised. Mom has tons of clothing and shoes but none is really vintage. She has furniture but the agents said that furniture is a hard sale these days.
My wife and I talked about this in relation to our own life. Adverse to an estate sale after she passes on, my wife has been doing a slow-roll death clean: a drawer a day. A closet. Organizing, tossing, donating. She used to refer to it as simplifying; now she just calls it the death clean.
It’s one of the places where we diverge on our philosophies. I consider my life busy and frantic enough to do without going through my belongings to see what I still want and want I need to throw away or donate. I do so sometimes, but I don’t make it part of my daily or weekly routines.
This exchange summarizes it for us. My wife said, “I don’t want people having to come through the house to get rid of things for me.”
I replied, “I don’t care. I won’t be there.”
As I walk around the house, I wonder, what would the estate sales agents say to me?
I suspect they’ll tell me the same thing they said about Mom’s stuff.
Tires & Food
We bought new tires for one of our vehicles yesterday.
I took a memory train back to the first time I bought new tires after I was married.
That would be 1975. The car was a 1968 Camaro. Sweet, small, fast car. RS, 327 V8, automatic. I bought it for $1100 after I arrived at my first permanent duty station in my Air Force career, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Ohio. Paid cash.
I married later that year. My wife and I have wonderful memories of being together in that car.
Buying new tires for it was a major financial decision. Recaps were cheap, $20-$25 each, installed. But recaps? I distrusted their safety and reliability.
That meant new tires: $40 each.
$160.
Ouch.
We didn’t have credit cards, so we’d need to buy the tires with cash. I had that in savings but that would severely reduce the balance.
I remarked about this to my wife at dinner last night.
She remembered, adding, “Yes, the things we couldn’t afford then that we needed, and the things we buy now, that we really don’t need.”
I paid for the dinner with my credit card. Leaving, I thought, I could have bought two new tires for the price of that dinner.
Of course, I could have bought the Camaro for the price of the new tires I put on the car.
It’s all part of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
