Tag: memories

Monday’s Theme Music

June showers bring chilly temperatures. It’s Monday, June 19, 2023. Raining. Started about midnight and has been singing from the skies since. 45 F. Not heavy stuff, but still wet and, sporadic. High today will be about 55 F. Yes, here comes summer.

Big battle between our house floofs at 4 AM. Tucker likes to sleep in front of the pet door. Papi enjoys going in and out said pet door. I can only imagine what the ignitor looked like for this incident but battling high notes snapped me out of sleep and launched me across the room yelling, “Hey,” once in a loud and irritated voice. That voice always stops their actions. Learned it in the military as a senior NCO. Worked there, too.

Lot of fur, mostly Papi’s, was left behind. Neither seemed injured. They’d separated themselves. I isolated them for a while as cool down and closed the pet door for business. Letting in cold air anyway. They’re in the house, Tucker asleep back on a bed, Papi asleep on the sofa.

I was remembering a friend this morning. Something about the weather and date triggered thoughts of him. About a year older than me, he passed away seven years ago. An interesting guy and fun to be around. Big Van Halen fan. So after thinking about him as I tended to morning duties and requirements, The Neurons kicked in a Van Halen song, “Runaround” from 1991. Don’t know why they slipped that Van Halen offering into the morning metal music stream. Randy enjoyed watching it being performed while smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer. He’d be outside, window open, watching through it, as smoking in the house wasn’t permitted. The song’s words make little sense. Lots of innuendo but it’s all about Eddie and the guitar, isn’t it?

Stay pos, if and when you can. Bounce back if you fall. I’m about to embrace a cup of coffee and study the rainfall for a bit. Then it’s get up and move, move, move.

Here’s the tune. Cheers

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Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts

I’m beginning a new DYI. Our GE Profile dishwasher stopped delivering the desired efficacy. Six years old, though, very old in modern appliance age, I guess it’s showing its age. Troubleshooting was done last night and I think I’ve identified the problem. Repair plans are in place for later today. Since the dishes were still dirty after three washings, my wife and removed the dishes. She washed them, then we dried and put them away.

I remembered when Mom bought her first dishwasher. A white portable unit with a faux blonde wood top. This was in the late sixties when we lived on Laurie Drive in Penn Hills, PA. Purchased from Sears, I think it was a Kenmore but I’m not pos.

The dishwasher was on wheels. She parked it over beside the backdoor where its top was useful for storing napkin holders and the salt and pepper shaker, along with pens and a notepad for the phone. Cherry red, the phone had been updated to a pushbutton device. Hung on the wall separating the kitchen and dining room, the phone had an extra long cord which let Mom cradle it against her ear as she cleaned, cooked, or sat at the dining room table or in the living room.

Her new dishwasher really pleased Mom. She employed it every night after dinner. Eventually life forced her to move, several times as it turned out as fortunes waxed and waned. Eventually the dishwasher was sold. She lamented its absence and when she finally bought a house for herself a decade later, my sisters and I came together and bought her a new portable dishwasher. Eventually, my brothers-in-law, both in construction, renovated her house for her, including the kitchen, and the dishwasher was installed under the sink, where it remains.

As I remembered all this and talked with my wife, she pointed out that her Mom never had a dishwasher. Always did it by hand. We often ‘did the dishes’ as it’s phrased when we were visiting.

Funny thing about dishwasher one and two. Neither gave her any problems through all those years, even though that second one has now been in service for almost thirty years.

Different times, friends, different times.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

After popping the appropriate meds, we woke up as humans on June 15, 2023, a Thursday. As none of us remembered popping the meds, except poor Gerard, all was well. A technical glitch saw the sky as green and the grass and trees were blue, but that was fixed. Everyone but Gerard was given another med to fix their memories.

It’s cool again in Ashlandia this morning, rising from the 40s F to the mid 50s F now. Blue sky now, completely unbroken by clouds. Last night was also clear of clouds and full of astronomical wonders, great to admire as I called Papi. The ginger lord had broken our agreement and was MIA for a while despite calls for his return. He showed up after two plus hours, tall up, happily greeting me as though nothing was amiss, asking for lovin’ and kibble. How could I scold that face? He was back and that mattered.

The Neurons have piped “Yer So Bad” (1989) by Tom Petty into the morning mental music stream. Yes, it’s about Papi. I told him, you’re so bad, and The Neurons said, “You got it, boss.” They always hear a order or request to start a song, whether one was given or not, but they never hear the order/request to stop. I always enjoyed this song’s lyrics about the singer’s sister and her marriage to a yuppie. Some of the later Travelin’ Wilburys songs reminded me of this song. Not a huge surprise, given that Petty is Charlie T. Wilbury, Jr., and Jeff Lynne, who played on the song and produced it, is Otis Wilbury.

Stay pos, fresh and chill. Use coffee. Coffee; it’s what’s for breakfast. Also good for snacks. Here’s the tune.

Adios

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Friday’s Theme Music

It’s raining again, a light falling, bringing up SuperTramp’s song from fifty years ago. Today is Jun 9, 2023. Friday. Last night’s thunderstorms skirting us. We could hear them like someone shouting from far away. “What?” You should back. “I don’t know what you’re saying.” You strain to hear and then just shake your head and walk away, muttering, “I can’t understand them.”

As for rain last night, it spit on us a bit a few times, but left us alone. Temperature topped 84 F locally, for the record.

Of course, yesterday started with a blue sky. Blue is as rare today as snow on a summer lawn. Clouds of different colors, depths and textures, ranging from flat white with a tincture of gray to billowing, curly, unkempt clouds edgy with dark pockets, have blanketed the sky. It’s 61 F now and the weather gurus tell us 79 will be the high, and there will be rain and thunderstorms later today. As always with weather, we’ll see.

Several songs inhabit the morning mental scream. “Wipe Out”. “Sweat Pea”. The Neurons are mixing weather, writing, and dream inputs. But I went with the song which came up after the dream sequences finished, “Fly Like An Eagle” by The Steve Miller Band, 1976.

Hope you stay pos and enjoy a most excellent Friday. I’m enjoying a most excellent cup of coffee. Establishes my baseline for the day. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Summer’s prelude to summer in Ashlandia has settled into a new weather routine. Blue sky. Plentiful sunshine. Cool, 50s to 60s F, in the morning. Rising to high 70s, low 80s by mid-afternoon. Roll in some clouds. Cue the thunder. Spark some lightning. Now, turn on the rain. Repeat for a few hours.

This is Thursday, June 8, 2023. Yesterday afternoon and evening on the storms squatting on Ashlandia. The climax was a twenty minute deluge of big drops, dense, falling fast and hard. What’s striking about all this lightning (couldn’t resist), thunder, and rain is that it’s so rare for Ashlandia, especially of this intensity, duration, and repetition. But it’s been a growing trend in the last several years. It could be part of a larger cycle and we all just don’t live long enough to experience it, so it strikes us as odd. But it’s also a continuation of an odd weather year.

The cats aren’t pleased. The weather even brought Tucker in, who is usually indifferent to these things. Papi, though, decided the best place to be was with us in a lit room, awakening, waiting, ready to run, and willing to be comforted. Tucker decided that he’d be wherever Papi was.

We’re seeing a lot of deer on our street this week. Two bucks strolling up the street the other evening. Three or four deer — or maybe the same few again and again — wandering around our house and across the street at the neighbors. Well, no recent cougar sightings in our vicinity, so maybe that has something to do with it.

I stood in the front doorway last night, protected by the porch, to watch the rain. Not just watch, but breathe in the fresh petrichor, and enjoy the sounds. Lightning frequently flashed to enliven the experience. As I stood there, The Neurons fired up a 1981 song by The Rolling Stones, “Waiting On A Friend”. Song is still in the morning mental music stream. The Neurons made a good choice. The storm broke me out of my normal routines. The smells and sounds also made me nostalgic for similar times experienced around the world from different phases of life where I was waiting for a friend to arrive as part of our plans to go off somewhere.

Stay positive, and enjoy Thursday as only you can. I have coffee, so I’m pleased for the moment, sipping hot brew, windows breathing in cool air on my back, sunshine slinking around the house, cats wandering in and out to give news updates. Here’s the tune. Love the video’s end, when the band gets up to play in that tiny, tiny space. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Okay, that’s it, we’re takin’ it up a notch.

It’s 60 degrees F. Monday, 6/5/2023. Temp is gonna git up to 86 F today. This gradual climb by day of sunny heat is pleasant, acceptable. Heat isn’t crisping us to overcooked pizza crusts within a minute. Cool morning breezes descend from the mountains, whisper, it’ll be okay. We appreciate it.

Noisy out there. Air is lousy with work machinery noises. Don’t know where it’s from or who are the villians. Stirred me to arise — “Arise, arise” — and make flapjacks for breakfast. I always enjoyed the word, ‘flapjacks’, from childhood till now. The works isn’t easily pulled apart for morning. Not one of those expressions which you hear and immediately understand. See, like ‘pancake’, you have two familiars: pan and cake. Sounds already. ‘Flapjacks’ also have two familiars, flap and jack, but neither make me think food on their own merits. That doesn’t change by putting them together.

Got “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding” throbbing through the morning mental music stream. It’s a regular song in the rotation. Came to me while I was trimming bushes and doing odd jobs around the house. Far as I know, no particular activity or thinking was being done to cause The Neurons to say, “Hold up! We have the perfect song for the moment.” Nope, they just brought it on outta the blue. That’s how the mind sometimes works, hey?

While I was looking for a video to link, I saw another regular song I often hear in my head, “A Change Will Do you Good” by Sheryl Crow. As I listened to it for a bit, I saw that she’d done a version of Peace, Love, etc, so I dialed it up — yeah, I clicked on it. Her rendition became my choice for the day.

Be good out there. Be safe. Stay pos. Ima gonna pop down some coffee and go off with my wife to deliver Food & Friends. Then it’s on to writing, yardwork, housework, reading. Just finishing up reading Six of Crows. Really enjoying it.

Here we go. Let’s start with music and coffee. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Sunshine and blue skies. Presently on the mid side of 60 F, up from 52 F overnight, we’ll be hunting the mid 80s before the sun skirmishes with the falling night and carries us into a new day.

It’s June and Saturday, June 3, 2023, for more exactitude. The cats are loving this weather, right? Mostly out there sleeping in part shade, part sun. Seeing them out there, and I drift through memories. Tucker has always been a little strange about doors. He goes to the linen door, coat closet door, garage door, pantry door. A drawn out merow is issued. His meowing is either very loud or barely a whisper. No midpoint for him. When it’s a loud meow, he draws out the sounds and employs several syllables.

I ask, “What? You want into the <insert location here>?”

Head nod (yes, by him), mumbling mew sounds, a head tilt at the door in question, his look shooting from it to me, back to it, conveying his desire.

Head shake (yes, by me). “Okay, buddy.” Sigh. Door is opened. He heads in for investigation, sometimes dwelling in wherever for fifteen to twenty minutes. He’s old now, a long-furred black and white stray who chose to stay with us, showing up with matted fur and bad teeth almost ten years ago, I think. Need to check the histories to know with certitude. Point is, these demands have been incorporated in his behavior since his first year with us.

The Neurons planted “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” into the morning mental music stream. 1966 Yardbirds song. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on lead guitars, I thought this song was so cool when I first heard it, one of those radio offerings that had me jumping for the radio and reaching for the volume knob. Never heard it much on the radio in the years since. Don’t know when I last listened to it. But this morning, walking out of dream sleep and into the other room to begin standard morning practices, the first lines broke out of memory and into conscious thought.

Meeting people on my way
Seemingly I’ve known one day
Familiarity of things
That my dreaming always brings

Happenings ten years time ago
Situations we really know
But the knowing is in the mind
Sinking deep into the well of time

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Wasn’t long after that before The Neurons delivered the song to a loop in my head. I think it’s a related-to-writing thing. I obsess over time, reality, and questions of what we know vs what happened vs what we think we know is one that in my novel writing. Memory is a mischief maker and history is written by the winners and then revised, leaving many of us floundering about it all. So here we be.

Stay pos. Coffee drinking has commenced. Big old cup is a quarter down already. Goes well with a cool summer morning on the patio, sunshine blazing down, cats washing in the green grass, jay yelling at us all from different perches as he surveys the yard and lands on chairs and trees. Could be a good day, you know?

Here’s the tune. Cheers

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There & Gone

The floof is there and then he’s gone,

And then back beside me like a remembered song.

Pleasing me with his looks and presence,

Causing me to give him treats and attention as presents.

So it goes for a number of years,

Feeding him, tending him, addressing worries and fears.

Till it comes, a day so still,

Death has finally broken his will.

And he’s not beside me because he’s gone,

Till my mind brings him back like a remembered song.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Made it to June — June, when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to — well, that depends on the young man. We’re all different you know. Some ask, “What’s love got to do with it?”

Now that I’ve reached June, I’ve set my sights on July. As was said in the military on performance reviews, “Set low goals and failed to achieve them.” A cynic’s coven, they were.

Sunrise was about 5:30 on the AM side of the day and the setting part will be on the B side after 8:30. Temperatures for the nocturnal portion dipped into the mid 40s F but we’ve strutted into the low 60s by now, making our way to the low 80s in Ashlandia. How do you describe a sky this blue, not smudge by dust, smoke, or cloud, just sun-kissed and beckoning?

This, ladies and germs, is Friday, June 2, 2023.

Re-installed the pet door last night for Papi’s use. T’was removed for the winter. Some trepidation clings to the decision. Cougar, you know, seen in these parts. Well, there are several ranging our town’s streets and yards. Wife suggested, “Put the pet door back on so that you can get some sleep.”

“Cougar?” I responded, a one word summary of the six sentences said to remind her of her worries about a cougar getting Papi.

“This will give him an escape route. He can run in through the pet door if he gets scared.”

Sure, in a perfect world, I didn’t answer. That assumes Papi lounges around the back yard, close to him, instead of chasing moonbeams around the block. It also assumes that Tucker doesn’t passive-aggressively sleeps in front of the pet door, blocking it. Whatever. I am like water.

Today’s song is a product of glancing at the TV and seeing something. That something — I don’t know what it was — prompted The Neurons to select Dire Straits and “Lady Writer” (1979) from the memory bins and play it through the night. It still plays in the morning mental music stream, a classic DS sound to me. Catchy tune, upbeat, with intriguing words. Hope it stirs something for you.

Speaking of stirring, I’m stirring to get some java. The coffee low level light is blinking, and a top-off is the cure. Stay pos and bounce into the weekend, wherever your are and doing. Here are the lads and the song.

Cheers

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

She entered the coffee shop, stopping by the door to peruse her phone. She resembled his younger sister so much that he studied her in depth, thinking of the similarities. Then, he realized, he wasn’t thinking of his sister as she now was, mother to two teenagers, but she’d been, fresh faced out of high school, so young and pretty.

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