Meeting my sisters again, I reflected on happiness and success. Each sister has demonstrated at one time or another that they seemed supremely happy and successful only to have disaster, devastation, upheaval, foisted on them, forcing them to begin again. It’s always a journey. You can find and lose it all repeatedly. Learning to keep your balance as it swirls around you remains key to me.
Neighbor Tale
Friends of ours who live about a mile away in another neighborhood related that they came out to a bloody yard the other morning. They speculated that a bear got a deer. Seems both animals enjoy the apple tree in their yard. No carcass there; I suggested it may have been a cougar but it was related to me, no, they found a huge bear dump in their yard, so they thought it was a bear.
Then they remembered, hey, they have security cameras! Let’s see what they show. Well, they showed a deer bounding up to the apple tree and a cougar pouncing on it immediately. The camera recorded the scene as the cougar carried the carcass down the street, across into a neighbor’s yard, and into a wooded ravine.
That’s life, some days. Made me want to order my cats, you are never going outside again. But the young ‘un makes life miserable for us when we keep him in. Poor excuse, but that, too, is life.
Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts
Monday found me helping my wife deliver food to elderly, incapacitated, and disabled people, part of a community effort. Someone does it everyday Monday through Friday. Meals are provided for weekends and holidays on request as part of the system.
We were delivering six frozen meals to a new person on the route. We were instructed to call him first, to let him know we were on the way. He came out of his house as we pulled into his driveway. Obese, on oxygen, in a wheelchair, he looked about fifty years old, at least ten years younger than me.
Sad and shocked, I wondered about the circumstances of luck, genetics, work, and habits that brought the guy to that point. Most of life seems like a lottery, and the health lottery seems like the cruelest and most random of all.
Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts
It’s amazing. When he was a kid, he usually had two pairs of shoes, known as his ‘good’ shoes and his play shoes. Good shoes were also known as ‘dress-up’ shoes and ‘nice’ shoes. Play shoes became gym shoes and good shoes became school shoes. Dress shoes were added into the mix.
This trio — gym, or ‘tennis’ shoes, as they grew to be called — school shoes, dress shoes — were the status quo for years. A second pair of school shoes was added, along with cleated shoes for sports.
During his military years, he stayed with the triumvirate of shoes for his personal life. Gym shoes were still tennis shoes (though he didn’t play tennis), along with dress shoes and ‘jeans’ shoes. He began playing racquetball, so racquetball shoes were added to the mix. So were sandals. Then running shoes joined the shoe group. Military requirements dictated three more pairs of shoes: low-quarters (which were a super-shiny version of dress shoes), chukka boots, and combat (or paratrooper) boots. So it mostly stayed for his military career, except slippers were added through Christmas presents, and jungle boots and desert boots were added to fit his mission needs. The three pairs of military footwear were now five, because they’d done away with the chukkas.
Civilian life post military retirement brought on more shoe requirements. Aging helped. And shoe marketing. Now he added beach shoes, boating shoes, hiking shoes, walking shoes, and several pairs of ‘jeans’ shoes, also now called ‘casual’ shoes. There were work shoes, so he looked the role in the ‘business casual’ environment, but the military shoes were gone.
Going into marketing added more shoes to go with suits. Brown, gray, and black shoes were needed. He still had running and hiking shoes, along with walking shoes, jeans shoes, and casual work shoes. He was wearing cargo shorts frequently, and needed shoes to go with those. Moving from a pleasant year round clime to a snowy and wet environment brought up needs for wet weather and cold weather shoes.
Now he’s come to retirement. The suit shoes sit in boxes on shelves, but the rest have become so complex and numerous. He purged his shoes regularly, giving them away. His feet had widened and his feet’s needs had changed through the years, and that dictated changes as well.
Like so many other things, it’d become so very, very complicated. He wished for the days again when he had just two pairs of shoes. Given how life goes, he figured that circle would complete itself when he grew older.
Next: socks.
Saturday’s Wandering Thought
We were talking about classes we wished we’d had when we were young. Like, explanations about how much your body might change as you age. We knew that would happen, of course. Saw it in mother and father, aunts and uncles, etc. But how do you impress how much of it’s within and outside of your control, and how there is an accumulative impact? Despite exercise and health, some of these things take you by surprise and take you down, mentally, physically, emotionally.
Maybe such information is now being taught. Of course, with the net and technology, more of it is available.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Mood: uncertain
It’s morning in Ashlandia, where the children aren’t sure but the parents are very confident. Current temp is a little warm for the AM, 74 F. Low 90s are kicked around as the high although one source says it’ll only be 89 F. Like, where do they get that? Well, we’ll see, won’t we? Cool breeze just started kissing my neck, trying to coax me into a better mood. I’ll see what they have to offer.
Another battle of the dreams for my night. Long dreams but once again, I had the one about the house flying through space. Wakin’ from it, I argued with myself. The dream self was worried ’bout the cats being out in space again. Wakin’ self told dream self, relax, we’re not in space. Real tug of war as The Neurons would take one side and then the other.
In world news, things are bad and getting worse. Over to you, David.
Well, that’s how it feels with so many weather disasters underway, along with the war in Ukraine. In good news, many companies are seeing excellent sales. Because that will really matter in the long run, yeah?
Sure. The world will be burning and flooding, almost devoid of glaciers at the poles, and the news headlines will be, Amazon had record sales. And everyone will be like, thank god they can deliver by drones.
Of course, I still write. The world is burning and flooding, but I write on. Just like everyone else, pursuing my own agenda. It’s all crashin’, so what will help me cope and get on by? Well, give me a cuppa coffee and let me write a tale.
See, that’s the thing. While a greater mess happening to the whole of us and our world, each of us are dealing with our private addictions and desires. The big stuff happening is so big and abstract in many ways, so debilitating and demoralizing, we respond by turning to something which we can try to control. At least, that’s my theory. Probably wrong as the decision to end “Firefly”.
Writing has inspired The Neurons’ song choice today. I’m like, what happens now, all the while, entertaining different directions in me head, worrying about where I’m at with it (this feels like a box), trying to bring it all together and to an end without losin’ the plot. Out out that came the James Gang with “Walk Away” from 1971. Makes sense if you look at the song words. Think they’re called lyrics.
“Takin’ my time, choosin’ my lines,
“Tryin’ to decide what to do.”
And that’s what I’m doing, trying to decide what to do, searching for the words and sentences. They’re there, just waiting for them to emerge, kind of worried because they’re not what I expected.
Stay pos and be strong. Here we go, another day in the life of (insert your name here). Coffee is up; let’s go. Cheers
Twins
After leaving the garage, he looked down the street. There, in the middle, was a doe with her twin fawns. Appearing almost brand new, they were adorable. He called his wife out so she could see. Watching together as the doe and her fawns came up the street — mama walking slow, the fawns galloping in spurts — they wondered if she was the same doe who’d been hanging around their yard.
After the family disappeared behind the neighbor’s house across the street, he left in his car. Arriving at a stop light, he saw a mother with her twins on a bicycle. Wearing helmets, blond curls sticking out, the twins looked like they were about two years old, tiny perfect human replicas.
It was a good day for twins. It felt like the world was making a statement. As often with the world’s statements, he just wasn’t certain what the statement was.
Michael Seidel, writer 