Tag: life

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Mood: hopindreamin

Sunshine burst in, a sumumnal morning surprise, antidote to the gray chilly dominance of the previous days. 53 F here now, the sun is expected to induce the air into the mid 70s before the world turns.

This is Wednesday, September 18, 2024.

Got our new insurance done yesterday. After doing quotes online, reading and reading and reading, and speaking with others, we ended up with State Farm. One, as some suggested, there’s a local agent. Two, they’ll provide the insurance we need at a reasonable cost. Three, in the aftermath of the huge Almeda fire several years ago, which destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, friends raved about how well State Farm handled the situation.

That done, I called American Family Insurance to cancel. Auto insurance cancellation was an eyeblink — or, thanks for calling, have a pleasant evening. Home insurance, she thoroughly identified me and the property in question. Next, she said that she needs to bring up a script to read me. She told me she was going to record the transaction, and was I okay with it? Then she ran through a script which verified again my identification and the property and the flat fact that I was canceling my insurance with them.

I get this. It’s an age of scammers and cheats and pranks. Anyone could theoretically call in, claim to be me, and cancel my insurance. They could do it just to be assholes. Anyway, the company was protecting itself. But it also protects me.

When I finished, I felt like comfort food was in order. Lot of stress and anxiety in researching insurance and making that change and the multiple decisions involved in prices, coverage, and options. It’s serious adulting. But the comfort food was skipped. Sitting there, reflecting as we went through it, I compared it to how it was when I was younger. When income was less and savings were thinner.

The agent remarked on our history. Almost twenty years with that other company and no claims made on home or auto. Yeah, don’t jinx us, I said. Knock on wood. He found it remarkable. My wife, laughing, said it was because we’re boring. I think it’s a blend of caution and luck.

If you know anything about reading this blog, you won’t be surprised to discover that thinking about luck cause Der Neurons to start firing with songs about luck and being lucky. It abated overnight but this morning found them playing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in the morning mental music stream (Trademark lucky). The 1982 song, “You Got Lucky” is playing in snatches around eating, nursing coffee as it nurses me, and reading, writing, and thinking. The song is about love and relationships but as a general song about being lucky and how good luck can affect your life, it works. I’ll take good luck whenever it comes and will try to dance around the bad luck when it happens.

Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue. Just 48 days until November 5.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

We were out delivering food to people who need assistance this morning. It’s a small route, thirteen homes. We’re one of several routes.

My wife returned from delivering a hot meal and drink to a resident and entered the car, shaking her head. “I understand that adults make bad choices and end up at places like this. It’s full of crap. Pot is being grown, a sofa is in the front yard, there’s a broken refrigerator with a missing door that’s ben sitting there for months. But when I see those children’s toys cluttering the living room, my heart just aches.”

Yes, as I drive to each place, I ponder what brought each person to where they’re at, struggling to the door to accept a donated hot meal. Sometimes, it’s a bad choice but diseases and genetics can deal body blows. Other times, it’s a Venn diagram of life — Wrong Place/Wrong Time – you are here.

But sometimes, you’re born into it, beginning at the bottom, trying to work your way up and out.

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Tuesday’s Political Thoughts

Trump’s latest is — hold up.

This is Donald J. Trump. Felon. Just to verify who I’m writing about. He’s the Republican nominee for President of the United States in 2024. One-time POTUS, elected back in 2016, he failed to hold onto the office in 2020, but he refuses to go away.

Trump’s latest declaration is that children are getting sex change operations at school. Going in as one sex, coming home as another.

“Kamala supports states being able to take minor children and perform sex change operations, take them away from their parents, perform sex change operations, and send them back home,” Trump said in a Mosinee, Wisconsin speech.

That’s one of the greatest most out of touch things I’ve heard of him saying. Crazier than his speculation about getting killed by sharks versus being electrocuted if your electric boat sank.

Crazier than his declaration that Mexico will pay for a border wall. Crazier than his lies that wasn’t what he said.

Crazier than windmills causing cancer.

Crazier than his recounting of how the American military took the airports during the American Revolutionary war.

Crazier than his idea that raking forests may help prevent forest fires.

Crazier than his assertion that he actually won the 2020 election, even though he also admits that he lost it. Crazier than his assertion that he has ‘every right’ to interfere in the election results. Crazier than his declaration that he’d been dictator on day one. Crazier than his insistence he knows nothing about Project 2025, despite the evidence of him bragging about it.

Do you realize how crazy and out of touch this latest is? Schools don’t have the money to buy school supplies, and he thinks they have enough money for surgical operations?

C’mon, man. Where are the operating rooms? Are teachers doing this surgery or are they hiring surgeons on the sly? Maybe he thinks the surgeons are volunteers, right?

Seriously, though, this is the best the GOP has to offer the nation, the world, and themselves, a man claiming without any evidence that children are being operated on in schools?

That party has lost its way.

Vote blue in 2024. Please, please, please. Are you seriously willing to accept a person who makes such baseless claims?

If so, I have an airport to sell you. It’s secret, though, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Trump goes there all the time. You’ll love it.

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Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

I’m at the coffee shop. For a period, I was the sole customer sitting at a table. Seeing the empty chairs reminded me of regulars who I haven’t seen in a while.

I wonder, what happened to Patty? She was homeless but welcomed here. She kept to herself but I know from overheard conversations that she had a support group helping her, and she’d gotten a job. I hope she’s off the streets and okay.

Austin is another I wonder about. I haven’t seen him since my return at the end of May. He disappeared for a while last year. Always sporting his backpack, I used to see him wandering the city. There’s been no recent sightings.

The third missing regular is Bob. Bob, older, retired teacher and athlete, was succumbing to hip and knee problems. He was nearing 80, I think, and looking tired when I last saw him. Maybe he’s just recovering somewhere.

That’s the thing about seeing regulars and becoming familiar with a small slice of their habits. They’re not an open book. Their story is rarely fully learned by casual observers like me.

But then, that’s true with most of the people we regularly encounter, isn’t it? Cashiers and servers, students and coffee drinkers, we’re a momentary presence in others’ lives.

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

I think I better understand the expression, “Mind the gaps.” Although originating with trains and subways and the gaps between train and platform, or between cars, it’s found other life as an expression. For me, minding the gaps is about recognizing the gaps left by change. Like, a friend is gone, and suddenly, there’s a gap shaped like them in your life. Gaps emerge from favorite things being discontinued — television shows, products, foods.

If those gaps get too large or too many, we can just start falling right through them.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: Sundated

We’ve crashed into another Sunday. It’s August 11, 2024. Jays are busy arguing outside. A whipperwill keeps some background song going. Distant car travel are reminders that others are out there and on the move.

60 F now, 92 F will be the high. It’s a comfy 74 in the house. Meanwhile, the air quality is in the moderate stage again, 82, but smoke discolors the blue sky mountain tableau. Thin smoky tendrils are slithering into the windows so I’ve shut ’em.

Not sure where our fire is from. Haven’t seen any recent models for wind and smoke. The Park fire still blazes away down in California, less than a hundred miles away. Started by a man rolling a car down a ravine, it’s closing on 400K acres of burned land.

Dozens of fires are burning in my state, Oregon. None are too close at this point. Fingers crossed and knock wood that that won’t change. Burning more than 459 square miles, the Durkee fire on the state’s eastern side along the Idaho border, is Oregon’s largest. Started by lightning, it ate through the hot, dry vegetation, killing cattle and wildlife and forcing evacuations. It’s 95 percent contained.

Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) and Papi have entered a new state of floofproachment. First, Tucker was giving chase after Papi a few times. Then, as Tucker sailed past Papi, Papi sniffed Tucker’s nethers and tapped his tail. Next, Papi was sitting at the open door. Tucker, walking by to leave, paused and leaned his had Papi’s way. Papi politely tapped Papi on the head, signalling, move on, buddy. Then the two were seen touching noses in a classic flooformational exchange. This is only what we’ve witnessed but we’ve not found any signs of more intense encounters, so we’re assuming they’re moving closer to trusting one another and maybe getting along. It’s only been almost a decade. Time is sometimes needed for these things.

The dancing theme continues for the time being. Pausing to think of songs with dance in the title and songs about dancing, a scroll of titles are unrolled. The one The Neurons seized and plugged into the morning mental music stream (Trademark tapped), “And We Danced”, a 1985 song by The Hooters. Why that dance song, oh Neurons of Mine, I politely inquired. Have some coffee and think about it, they replied. I’m still sipping the coffee and thinking. I got nothing.

Stay positive, be strong, and lean forward. Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Tidbits

The Next Summer Games

My wife and her friends were talking about the Olympics and the new events that were added. She said, “We’ll probably see pickle ball at the Olympics in four years.”

Laughter rang out. Then one wag added, “And all athletes will be over sixty.”

The Squirrel

My wife and I are driving down the road, a little over the 25 MPH limit. My wife yells, “Watch out for the squirrel.”

“I see it.” The squirrel, like most of them that I see, has darted halfway across the road. After a pause, they took a few more hops toward the road’s other side. Now they’re paused in our lane. It’s still far down the road. There’s plenty of time for the squirrel to get out of the way. I’m reading to toot the horn and brake. “Don’t worry, it’ll be alright.”

“No, it’s a crazy squirrel or it has a death wish. It doubles back.” My wife is intensely leaning forward. “I see it all the time.”

I’d never seen it before, that I know. “How do you know it’s the same squirrel? It cou — “

“It’s the same squirrel, I know it.” She hammers the windshield. “Get out of the road, you crazy squirrel. Move faster. Don’t come back.”

The squirrel clears the road and disappears into bushes on the other side of the sidewalk. “There, they’re gone,” I say.

“You never know.” My wife sits back. “It’s a crazy squirrel. Sometimes I think it wants to get run over. Well, it’s not going to be me.”

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A Wysocki Completed

Another jigsaw puzzle was completed last night. I worked this one alone. Started last Saturday night, I finished Thursday evening. It was fun and easy. I enjoy his stylized simplicity, how he minimally incorporates shadows and textures as lines. It’s such a contrast to my style was I was painting and drawing. Somewhat like my fiction writing, I always focus on the interplay of shadows and uncertainty. It reflects my personal philosophy that most life is part of a large band of gray confusion.

Apologies that my photo isn’t sharper and clearer. Those are pumpkins on a wagon above the hat store on the right, and white chickens in the road.

Many more Wysockis were available at the library of things. I’m passing this one on to a friend because I think he’ll enjoy it, and picking up another.

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts

A middle old person — 75 to 84 years old — has a penny. He asks several other middle-old people if they can read the date on that penny. “My eyes aren’t good enough,” he proclaimed.

Three other middle old people gathering. No, not without my glasses, they were all saying, chuckling. Glasses were pulled from purses and pockets. More folks moved in to try to read the penny’s date. Soon it’s a crowd of seven.

They all fail. The original gentleman takes his penny to the counter and asks the young barista for help. She studies it for several seconds, shifting the penny, squinting, bending her head lower.

A result is announced but I don’t hear it. He pockets his penny and thanks her.

It’s life.

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