Tag: life

Munda’s Theme Music

A silky blue sky weaves hope and optimism in Ashlandia. A gorgeous spring day is being promised. 63 F now, ‘they’ tell us it feels like 71 F. I agree with them. Plentiful sunshine, as ‘they’ say. 73 F is the predicted high.

This is Munda, March 24, 2025. I dig this kind of sunshine. Especially after months of rain and clouds and the kind of chilly weather that makes me feel older than I am.

The cat is also quite pleased, I think. He zooms around furniture and through rooms. “Sun recharge your batteries?” I ask. He stops, sits, stares. Classic 3s floofhavior. After three seconds of this, he sticks a rear leg out and washes its underside. I begin for the kitchen. He pauses the washing to gift me with a scrutinizing stare. “You’ll get yours,” I say, because I know that whereismyfood look.

In the kitchen, I’m doing my morning things. Gotta move faster today. Leaving to do Food & Friends deliveries at 10 AM. Everything must be slightly accelerated. Nanoseconds must be shaved away from routines. I don’t feel like shaving time off today. I’m not a Formula 1 driver doing qualifying laps.

I give Papi his first feeding. That’s misleading. He’s already eaten from kibble bowls several times. This is a wet food offering. Eyes bright, he chirps at me as I lower the food bowl toward him. “Yes, you love me now,” I say. His purr vibrates the floor.

Time is flying. I eat. Make coffee. Drink same. Clean and dress. Examine my lower limbs for swelling and find none, knock on wood. My compression socks are easily drawn over my feet and up my legs. I’m becoming very proficient getting them on. It’s the other end, taking them off, that’s the challenge. I might have made a mistake by turning down the doffing stick. I reassure myself that not using the doffing stick gives my wrists, fingers, and hands a needed workout. My self is as suspicious about that as a cat might be.

We hit the Senior Center for the food pickup and schedule. Cars surround the center. Parking is limited. “That’s a bad sign,” my wife declares. “The food must not be ready.”

I’m resigned to wait. “Go check.”

She returns with the first load of food within a minute, surprising us. We’re off and running with a minimum wait.

“Only ten stops today,” she says.

“Ten stops. I remember when we had twice that.” Yes, people have disappeared from the list. We usually don’t know what happens to them. They’re Schrödinger’s elderly people. That’s a miserably depressing thought for such a sunny, bright day.

Today’s morning mental music stream inhabitant is the Pat Benatar offering, “Invincible”. Released in 1985, it was quite a hit at that time and stays on classic rock stations as an offering for the elderly still feasting on the past. The Neurons called it up today to support the April 5 Hands Off actions rising. Annie commented on a post, “I just read that the April 5 coalition includes at least 83 organizations, among them the Communications Workers of America and the Service Employees International Union. It’s gonna be big!!”

We need big energy to combat the Trusk Regime and GOTP. We need the energy of “Invincible”. Written by Simon Climie and Holly Knight, the song was made for the movie The Legend of Billie Jean.

[Chorus]
We can’t afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It’s a do-or-die situation
We will be invincible

[Verse 2]
This shattered dream you cannot justify
We’re gonna scream until we’re satisfied

[Pre-Chorus]
What are we running for?
We’ve got the right to be angry
What are we running for?
When there’s nowhere we can run to anymore

h/t to Genius.com

It could be that I’m overwrought by the Trusk situation in the United States.

Hope your day satisfies you in some meaningful ways. I’m writing and then planning long-delayed chores. I’ve always blamed the weather. Now that the weather has improved, my excuses are gone.

Here’s the music video. Cheers

2

Goldilocks

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite type of weather?
View all responses

I’ve become a sunshine person. It wasn’t always like this. When I was young, I’d go out in weather that had others questioning my sanity. As I grabbed coats, shoes, whatever was needed, people would eye me with aghast expressions. “You’re going out in that?”

“Sure,” I’d answer, “it’s just a little rain.” Even if was a monsoon. Rain, snow, sleet, wind, nothing kept me in. Not even thunder and lightning. “Just going for a walk.”

I loved pitting myself against the elements. Felt like a hero out of a 19th century novel, just a rugged individual surviving against the elements. I thought myself quite heroic. Especially when I knew there was somewhere safe, warm, and secure to retreat to when I had my fill of being heroic.

Different these days. “Where’s the sun?” I ask. I search all of the sky, even though I know where it’s supposed to be. I know where east is. I know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I know those directions. Still, I sweep the sky in search of the sun, in case it got off its leash.

I don’t usually get an answer to my question about the sun’s location. Others always think it rhetorical. Probably because everyone knows where the sun is going. Not like it’s a wandering cat.

I used to be more indifferent to the sun. Now, I’m very picky. I don’t want it too bright, too hot, or too much. I have become Goldilocks sampling the three bears’ stuff.

I like a good warm sunshine. Not enough for sweat these days. Used to be — but you know. I don’t want to sweat. I want to be warm, with enough sunshine that wearing sunglasses make sense. Not that it really matters to me: I’m almost always wearing sunglasses outside. Sometimes I wear them inside.

“Why don’t you take off your sunglasses?” my wife will say. “You’re inside now.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look ridiculous.”

I shrug. I’m used to that.

5

Sunda’s Theme Music

It’s a bleak and featureless Sunda morning. Like winter and spring both decided not to show up. The sun complained, “If you guys aren’t in, I’m not either.”

The gray feels like a weight pressing down. I wonder what the weather was like when Robbie Robertson wrote “The Weight” for The Band.

It’s three quarters through March, 22 of 2025. 46 F now, the weather ‘they’ are trying to sell me on mostly sunny skies and a high of 66 F. I’ve gone past skeptical about that. Then I read that we’re hitting the seventies for Monday through Wednesday here. My heart harbors doubt. Do they mean the 1970s? With Trump still in office, there’s a reasonable question about the reference.

Papi the ginger blade is energetic today. I make a critical mistake. After feeding him breakfast, I give him his blood pressure medicine in some Churro. He loves that stuff and this is our regular process. But stupid me, I think, I’ll do two things at once. Give him his BP med in the Churro and while he’s eating that, I’ll rub his thyroid medication in his ear. That last is something that must be done twice a day.

Except my nose is a little snoggy. I hear myself breathing through it. In and out like a wheezy, broken machine. Were it a machine, I’d think, I need to replace that thing. It’s beyond fixing.

Doing Papi’s morning meds is not a favorite activity for me. Tucker was on the same regimen. He lasted a year. Papi began it the same month when Tucker passed. Lot of burdensome memories organized in this task.

I bend down to administer the thyroid med. Papi hears that breathing. Thinking a bear or something must be after him, he hits reverse like he’s a Corvette in a police chase and speeds through my legs. I bend over double, trying to grab him while saying, “No, stay there, let me do this, please, Papi. Papi..”

He darts away. I get the gooey white medicine on me. That’s toxic to humans. Cursing, I take off the used finger cap, dump it, and wash off my hand.

Papi has settled by the back door. He did not eat his Churri with his heart medicine. He’s eyeing me the way a quarterback is looking at a defensive end just before the ball is snapped. He is thinking, “Is he coming after me? How do I get away?”

I carry out the Churri bowl like a peace offering. Papi gallops up, all purrs, and bends his head to the task. I back away to give him space.

Papi takes two licks of his Churri and speeds off again. WTF? The Neurons ask. There is no answer.

Okay, I’ll go to the other med. We’re on the clock. This stuff is s’posed to be given every twelve hours. I don a new little finger cap. Put new med on it. Head for Papi.

“Mrr,” Papi says. Watching me, we begin a ballet. I move forward. He moves right. I go right. He backs up and heads left, then turns and prances around the coffee table, saying, “Mrr,” as he does. He looks yearningly at the back door. He wants out. I’ll try to trick him. Heading to the door, I unlock it. Opens it. Papi darts up and skids to a halt. “Mrr.” He knows this trick. Smarter than me, he doesn’t budge when I open the door and brightly declare, “Do you want to go out?”

Papi shies back into the room. I close the door. Verbally cajoling him has worked in the past. That’s the past. Papi’s not having it this morning. He keeps circling me, telling me, “Mrr.” I keep explaining that he knows that I need to give him this med. It’s not that bad. We do it everyday.

He finally decides, okay, here I came. Purring, he edges up to my leg. I slowly bend. Holding gently onto his back, I thank him for indulging me and gently rub the medicine into his inner ear.

Released, he bolts to the back door and releases a plaintive cry. I get what he’s saying. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Time to go out.” I open the door. He’s like a fast wind blowing out. Halfway across the patio, tail up, he turns around, sits, and stares at me. I can’t read that expression. Telling him the usual precautions whenever he’s out, I close the door. Whole thing has taken thirty minutes. I feel like it’s been ninety, ninety five minutes. Back in the office, I take a long gulp of cooling coffee.

Here’s The Weight by The Band. If you read this far, you know why it’s in my morning mental music stream.

I type up this post. Papi comes back in. I set the Churri with his meds down in a different room. He eats it up.

I come back into the office and set. Papi joins me and purrs as I scratch his head and chin.

I need more coffee. Cheers

0

A Chaotic Mom Dream

Not surprising, given my conflicting attitudes about Mom, a chaotic dream had her front and center. My family was also there; not just my real life extended family. My dream added a few extras.

We were at some huge get together. This was at Mom’s place. It was a place I’ve never seen in real life. Ramshackled, part park and house, the boundaries between inside and out were nebulous and ever-changing. So were the rooms. I kept getting a little lost but then recovering and figuring out where I was.

Meanwhile, my relatives were a chaotic bunch. A person who dislikes chaos as much as cats dislike loud noises, I took charge and imposed order, telling each what they should do. I couched it in a way that it sounded like advice. Agreeing to my suggestions, they packed food, piled into cars, and left.

Ah, the silence was comfortable. Then Mom hurried in. Loose piles of money had been on one table. I remembered seeing it, I agreed. It was all gone, Mom said, frantic. She thought someone broke in and stole it.

I challenged that. She didn’t see anyone break in. No evidence of a break in was there. It was possible that the family took the money. Wasn’t that why the money was there? Mom bickered with me about it a bit, changing the history and the reason the money was there. I grew weary of it as I realized that nothing I said or did would appease her. Suggesting she call the other family members and talk to them, I wandered off.

Then came the dream’s climax. I sat down and picked at my little toe’s toe nail. This would be toe number five. The small toe. I picked at the nail; it felt like the nail was loose. Like something was under it. Unable to help myself, I conducted some prying with a finger nail.

My little toe’s top lifted off. Like the top quarter inch.

It was a bloodless event. Beneath it was another small toe nail. My toe was intact, just stubbier. To cap matters off, I did the same thing with the other toe.

Then I tossed the two toe tips aside, amusing myself with how Mom would react when she saw them, chuckling to myself about what my wife would say about my new truncated toes. I was dubious she would notice.

Dream end.

0

So Easy

Daily writing prompt
What do you wish you could do more every day?
View all responses

This is such an easy question to answer. I wish I could write more every day. Yes, fill my cup with coffee and let me write without end. I’m talking about fiction writing. Novels and such. I really enjoy writing fiction.

I also wish I could eat more every day. I’m limited in my eating by obscure factors like sodium in foods, gaining weight, and staying healthy. So I’m restricted in how much I can eat every day. It’s a shame, too, because there are many foods which I really enjoy and would like to eat more every day. Like, right now, I could really go for a piece of pie. Blueberry. With ice cream.

Of course, I’d also like to socialize more every day. I’m writing, and that’s not a social activity, speaking for myself, of course, so that limits how much time I have to socialize. A few more hours of socializing every day would be good for me, I think. So I wish that I could socialize more every day.

Spending more time reading is also something I’d wish to be able to do more every day. I love reading, and there are so many awesome writers out there. So many great novels, books, essays, and articles to read. While I’m at it, I also wish to study more every day. I would love to be able to spend time deeply studying art, architecture, and history, along with literature and quantum mechanics.

Then again, if I could, I wish I could spend more time with my wife every day. She’s an intelligent person and a lot of fun.

Another wish I’d have is to be able to visit with my family more every day. They live in other parts of the country, so it takes time and money to visit them, and doing so interrupts my other wishes. But if we had a teleporter, I could probably make it work.

While I’m thinking about it, I also wish I could travel more. I’ve done some traveling, mostly around the United States, Far East, some northern Africa, and Europe. I’ve rarely been south of the equator, so I’d like to visit ruins and cultures in the southern latitutes. I wish I could travel more every day and go to places like Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and Antarctica. I’ve also always wanted to visit Sri Lanka.

I also wish I could time travel more every day. I’ve learned through hard experience that time travel has a lot of perks but man, when you screw it up, it’s downright hard to fix. There’s a lot of things I need to apologize to the world about which has happened because of my botched time traveling. I feel really guilty about it, too, but if I can just find the time — ha, sorry about that, that pun wasn’t planned — I wish I could time travel more every day.

Since I’m confessing, I’d also wish to be able to see the future more every day. You know, predict things. But time travel has screwed that up, too, as has my dimension clones. If it wasn’t for them bouncing between dimensions, I’d have a much better life and would be way better at seeing the future. I think we all would. But, anyway…

Other than that brief list, there’s nothing I wish to do more every day. Oh, except exercise. And paint. I painted a great deal when I was young but not so much as an adult. I wish I could paint more every day.

Oh, and go fishing.

Other than those few things, there’s nothing.

Oh, except sleeping. I really wish I could sleep more every day.

But that’s all.

Except, I wish I could just relax and do nothing more every day. Because I really am lazy at heart.

And that’s it. There is no more.

Well, except for a few DIY projects around the house. I wish I had time to do more DIY every day.

And that’s all.

I think.

0

Thirstda’s Theme Music

Bold sunshine lured my eyes open. It’s summer, this hoople head’s addled neurons suggested.

It’s not summer. This is Thirstda, March 20, 2025. We’re stepping into spring’s threshold. I went onto the back patio with Papi the ginger blade, aka Butter Butt. The Butt did a little springish frolocking. “I agree,” I said. “It feels like a cold spring morning.” Daffs have pushed their yellow heads out. It’s 37 F but feels like 51 F, and is expected to climb to 45 plus F. Clouds have already hustled in, least we get too optimistic about the blue sky and sunshine. The weather ‘they’ couch their forecast with rain warnings. Not bad for Ashlandia’s first day of spring in 2025.

The addled Neurons have snuck a 2014 John Mellencamp song into the morning mental music stream. It’s a bit cynical. “Lawless Times” rails against the lack of trust that had begun emerging twenty years ago, the latest in many cycles of distrust – the trust in banks, business, goverment, trust in ourselves and one another, were all going down in flames, and here we are. It takes a certain amount of vetting to reach a point where you trust someone. Even though, you keep an eye on them. They might Schumer you.

The song started because I was in a Walmart the day before yesterday. My wife was looking for a kitchen item. Walmart was supposed to have it. I don’t think I’ve been in a Walmart in over a year. It’s not one of my regular shopping stops. Talk about a police state. Cameras everywhere. Signs at the end of every aisle reminding you that cameras are watching. And so many items were physically locked behind glass doors or in cages. Like all camping gear. Cosmetics. Vacuum cleaners. Is this the common American experience now? And that’s when “Lawless Times” first fired up. Walmart sure as hell doesn’t trust its customers. Of course, I do not trust PINO Trusk and his regime. I don’t trust the Roberts Court. I don’t trust the GOTP. I especially don’t trust Elon Reeve Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. I sure as hell don’t trust JD Vance and Tommy Tuberville, MTG and Lauren Boebert.

Well, I don’t trust myself
I don’t trust you
Don’t get too sick
It’ll be the end of you
Don’t expect a helping hand
If you fall down
And if you want to steal this song
It can be easily loaded down
My, my, my
These are lawless times
My, my, my
These are lawless times
So you might ask yourself
Hey, what can I do?
I can’t trust the future
What’s been promised to you
Learn the rules hard and fast
Take care of yourself
And keep your eyes open
On everybody else

h/t Genius.com

Too much truth in that song but it has a catchy rhythm. You might end up, as I do, singing it to yourself as you go through your day.

I’ve invited coffee in again and it’s lit a small flame under The Neurons. Hope you day starts with promise and ends with satisfaction. Let’s rock it. Cheers

2

Twosda’s Wandering Thoughts

I went to the store yesterday. AAA batteries were on sale at a good price. My modern life depends on AAA batteries. At my house, they’re employed in flashlights, remote controls, and the medical devices I use to monitor my health. I don’t run out of AAA batteries often but when I do, I end up having to hustle to a store and pay whatever pain to get them. It’s not much but my wife and I are deeply ingrained frugal beings. We like sales.

So I hit the battery display. Problem is, I saw the sale in a flyer at a glance. I didn’t drink in details like the brand. I thought that the store would make it evident.

There I stood, gazing at the racks of batteries. Have you shopped for batteries lately? There’s an amazing variety among sizes, intentions, brands, etc. It’s almost as bad as shopping for cereal, cough medicine, and ice cream. The offerings can be overwhelming.

As I considered it all, a store employee popped up. “Need any help finding anything?”

“Yes, I’m looking for AAA batteries on sale. Supposed to be a 16 or 18 pack on sale.”

“Hmmm.” He leaned in to help, pointing out different batteries. About the only other detail I’d noted besides the batteries’ size was the package size and the price. So I kept responding, “No, it’s not a four pack. No, it’s triple A. No, they were a less than eight dollars.”

Hope waning, I suggested, “I’ll just go to the front of the store and check the flyer.”

Suddenly, the store clerk pointed at a sign at the top of the display case. There was the info on the battery sale.

I laughed. “I can’t believe I didn’t see that. Thanks.”

He laughed. “You know what’s bad? I put that sign up there yesterday.”

“One of those days, huh?”

He grinned. “More like one of those weeks.”

“I hear that.”

As we both laughed, I took my batteries and we parted ways.

0

Three Out of Five Times

Daily writing prompt
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
View all responses

I’ve gone across the United States a few times. Furthest was from San Fransisco to New Hampshire via New York. I did that a few times in the military, always by train, and then SF to Connecticut via NY a few times for business, also by train.

I’ve always loved traveling by car. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, my parents loaded us into cars and off we went! One trip, barely remembered, was in a large Chevy station wagon from California to Pennsylvania. I think I was three years old. What I best remember about that was that I shared space in the station wagon’s back end with my older sister and a large black trunk. The trunk was useful as a fort and a table. Traffic being what it sometimes was, peering out the windows and waving to others was a recurring pastime. There were many coloring books involved with that trip, too.

My wife and I took a few almost cross-country trips. After I returned from my military assignment in the Philippines, I traveled to West Virginia where my wife stayed with her parents via commercial aircraft and Greyhound bus. Some of the logistics are a little foggy in my head, but I ended up visiting family in Pittsburgh and bought a used Porsche 914 there. I drove it down to West Virginia, and then my wife and I drove it across the southern United States to my new duty location outside of San Antonio, Texas. The first five hundred miles was through a blizzard. We then drove the reverse trip eight months later, when I decided to exit the military.

Funny enough, years later, there we were, in Texas again. This time we’d returned to the United States from an assignment in (on?) Okinawa. We’d been there for almost four years. Two things to know about driving in Okinawa was that it was on the left side of the road, with a right side steering wheel and the fastest speed we’d gone was 100 KPH, about 61 MPH. Renting a car in San Antonio at the airport, we were suddenly driving on the other side of the ride, the steering wheel on the other side, in the rain, at night, at 70 MPH. It was an awakening.

We then bought a new car, a Mazda RX-7, and drove it from San Antonio, Texas, to…ready? West Virginia. A big blizzard struck Texas that year. Interstate 10 was closed. Fortunately, Texas has Interstate ‘access roads’. We drove out of San Antonio through the blizzard via the access roads until we could get onto I-10. Man, I’ll tell you, traffic was pretty light.

I’ve flown cross country multiple times since then. The last time that my wife and I drove across cross country was from West Virginia to California. This was 1991. We’d been assigned to a base in Germany. She returned a few months early and was living not far from her parents in West Virginia. She’d bought a little Honda Civic. We loaded her and our three cats, Rocky, Crystal, and Jade, into the Honda, along with her belongings, and drove to Sunnyvale, California, via the Rocky Mountains. Let me tell you, the Honda, with its 1.5 liter engine, wasn’t happy about the Rockies. We’d swooped down the mountains as fast as we dared to build up speed to get up the next one. Geez, what a trip.

Not our actual car. Our car looked just like this, except it was gray.

I’ve also gone from Texas to Pennsylvania via Greyhound bus after finishing military basic training in 1975. But the one thing I always wanted to do was take a train across the country. We traveled by train in Japan and Europe, and loved it. It’s hasn’t come to pass in the U.S.

Maybe, someday, though, maybe someday…I’ll get to take a train ride across the United States.

0

Munda’s Wandering Thoughts

Mom isn’t speaking to her live-in boyfriend again. Hormones? Mom is 89 and her boyfriend is 95.

The cause of the rift is ‘his girlfriend’. His best friend died last year. Mom thinks her beau has a thing for the man’s widow. The widow called him last Saturday. Mom said she and her boyfriend haven’t spoken since that phone call.

I blame it on drama. Mom lives for being the center of a dramado. If one doesn’t naturally occur, she’ll conjure it.

Take her falls. She falls a lot. ‘Bout every six weeks by my estimate. Ends up injuring herself. She generally falls while cleaning or dressing herself.

Now, the situation can be changed. Mom can move into assisted living. My sisters and I encourage her to do that. We told her we will pay for it. But nope. Mom won’t because her boyfriend — the one she isn’t speaking to, because, per her, he has another girlfriend — says he doesn’t want to move out of the house and they are a package deal.

Okay. How ’bout if we have someone come in and help her? I did hire someone to come in and clean. Originally twice a week. Then once a week. Then every other week. Then once a month, Mom slowly moved her back out. The cleaning person then experienced her own health issues and has never returned.

How ’bout having some medical assitance come in a few times a week then, etc? No, Mom doesn’t want to have anyone coming to the house. That would mean she would need to clean herself up first, clean the house, etc. No, no, no.

Bottom line, she has established her path and remains firmly on it.

Yes, I’m writing simplistically about the routines, emotions, psychology, etc., of these decisions. I do sympathize and empathize with her position. But this challenge has been going on for half a decade. My sisters have each bowed out of the discussions. It’s only Mom and I talking about it now, and she doesn’t really talk. She just says no.

She wrote last week and asked, when can I come back again? Sadly, my life is out here, in Oregon, with my wife and my own issues. So, sorry, Mom, can just vacate my life again, as I’ve done a couple times before.

So there we sit, awaiting the next drama.

0

One More Time

Daily writing prompt
What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
View all responses

I regularly endure negative feelings, but weirdly, I consider myself an optimist.

Dealing with negative feelings, though, had to be, um, dealt with. By the time that I was in my teens, I knew that I tended to be negative. I’ve always felt like an imposter, less capable, less intelligent, less talented, than others give me credit for being. It’s difficult for me to accept praise. I literally cringe from it.

I found answers in books. From them, I evolved some coping mechanisms.

One, I write down the worse that I think can happen from a given situation. Somehow, writing that down like that lays bare my concerns. It helps me visualize that the likelihood of many of my fears are not as great as they loom in my mind. Secondly, writing them down helps me develop insights into how to counter these fears and make them less likely to come about. It also helps me perceive the emotional side, where my negative feelings reside, and the intellectual side, where the wherewithal to learn, try, and succeed, actually resides.

Next, I learned to grit my teeth and accept that I will not succeed at everything I attempt. I will often fail. But if I don’t give up and try again, then I can learn from my mistakes, keep trying, and maybe, just possibly, succeed.

Third, I let myself rail at myself. I do this alone and I’m pretty hard on myself. But after railing, I feel an emotional release. I’m ready to take a deep breath and try again.

Lastly, I let myself procrastinate. I know that probably sounds flimsy as hell, but giving myself time to find the right energy to take things on has proven to help me overcome my fears and worries. Along the way, hand in glove with that, it gives me time to think back on similar situations where I thought I would fail or something bad would happen, but then ended up with a good outcome. That fosters encouragement that maybe this isn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be.

And now, really, lastly, I learned to laugh at myself. To not take myself and my failures or my successes too seriously. I learned how to have fun while trying these things, to admit that I screwed up, to mock myself for screwing up.

That always made it easier to try one…more…time.

1

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