Tag: memories

Monday’s Theme Music

I listened to Alexi’s report. My wife joined me. We were at the breakfast bar, where Alexa nests. “What she say?” my wife asked. I asked Alexa for the weather again.

She finished her report. My wife and I checked the windows. East, south, west. Alexa had said it was mostly sunny. “I don’t see any sunshine,” K said. So it wasn’t just me.

It’s Monday, Feb. 13, 2023. Not a speck of sun is visible past the battleship sky. 34 F out, we anticipate rain and clouds all day and a mid-40s high. Sunrise was at 7:11 this morning and sunset will come at 5:41 PM. Snow warnings are out for tomorrow.

Taxes were filed yesterday. Bedding washed. Smelling the fresh bedding as I climbed into bed summoned childhood experiences. Mom would tuck us in and say, “I washed your sheets today. Smell them. Don’t they smell fresh?” I would do as directed and smell the sheets, and agree, they smelled fresh, like sunshine and wind.

I watched Superbowl LVII, which makes me think, liver. That was Superbowl Liver. Just a weird brain tick. KC Chiefs won, and no serious injuries were reported, so far. K was pleased that KC won. She thinks Mahomes is a cutie pie. She didn’t watch because she didn’t want to jinx him.

From the Superbowl, via The Neurons, I have Huey Lewis and the News singing, “If This Is It” from 1984. The Chiefs lined up for a field goal to take the lead. Eleven seconds left. “This is it,” the announcer said on Fox. “Playing ‘If This Is It’ by Huey Lewis and the News’,” The Neurons said. And so it still plays in the morning mental music stream, and I pass it on to you. Not a bad theme song. It’s Monday – if this is it, fill in the blank.

Stay positive. Cats returned from their outdoor recon. They report that it’s cold and there’s no sunshine. “Tell that to Alexa,” I tell them. “She needs the input.” Reporting live from Ashlandia, here’s the music. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Wednesday has broken. Feb. 8, 2023 has arrived on the calendar’s red carpet. Sunshine splashes through all the southern and eastern windowpanes. Cats find floor beams. The weather advisors say it’s 36 degrees F in my Ashlandia slice, sunny with few clouds, and a high of 56 degrees F on the plate. Sunrise cracked the night at 7:16 this morning while sunset is out over 5:34 PM. That’s enough daylight to lift my spirits and unplug me from that SAD cycling.

Springish clues turn my head to yard clean up and prep. Bushes and trees to be pruned and tidied, more leaves to be cleared from the yard. Want the house painted this year, too. Hiring folks for that.

Breakfast — oats with walnuts and raisins, flavored by cinnamon — has been consumed, cats attended three or four times. Half a cup of coffee drunk, black, no sugar.

My hospice friend is no longer on hospice. He finished the journey, eighty years old. On the other hand, Mom keeps fighting on, delivering news that she has ‘abdominal cocoon syndrome’. Fascinating what happens in our bodies.

I have a song in mind today from 1968, “Pictures of Matchstick Men” by Status Quo. It’s a classic in the sense that it brings home that sixties psychedelic sound. Hope you give it a listen to see if you know it, remember it, like it.

To the clouds and beyond. Stay positive. Make this day yours to remember. More coffee, please. Cheers

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Friday’s Wandering Thought

I called to make an appointment. Speaking with the agent, I heard her typing fast. Her keyboard’s clickety-clack sounded like a train going by, reminding me of all those moments of sitting in a car behind the red and white boom barrier, bells ringing, red lights flashing, waiting for a train to pass.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Give me an F. Give me an E. Give me a B.

Well, that’s enough of that.

Yes, February has arrived. Today is the first day of our shortest month. At least, it’s the shortest month in the U.S. It’s also Black History Month. Feb. has several holidays embedded in it and will be home to Superbowl LVII. Not bad for a short month from the sticks.

I personally like February. Not because it’s short, or the holidays, nor Black History Month, but because I can feel that transition from winter to spring begin in Feb. Daylight spreads into more hours with earlier sunshine in the morning and later sunsets at night. The air warms a few traces, and a feeling of hopefulness arises. That’s just me, I suppose.

It’s also Wednesday. Now 32 F outside, the sky is bluish and rich with sunny promise. Sunrise was at7:24 AM but it was nice walking into the living room at 6:40 Papi Standard Time and be able to see and walk about without problem because natural light was squeaking in through and around the window blinds. Sunset comes ten hours after the sunrise was noted, giving Ashlandia’s first ten hours of daylight in 2023. More to come, I hope.

Fuel is in the morning mental music stream with “Hemorrhage (In My Hands”. The song was released back when the century rolled over from the 1900s to the 2000s. It’s one of those that I often heard while commuting to work. I later read that the songwriter’s inspiration was his grandmother’s death from cancer, which made me listen more carefully to the song. Today it’s here in my head due to one string of lyrics: “Memories are just where you leave them, drag the waters, ’til the depths give up their dead.”

And no, that’s not about my life but about plotting, writing, and characters.

Stay positive. Make February a month which counts. My coffee has been swallowed and the bottom of the cup lays bare, damp, and sad. Here is Fuel. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

A taut white sheet covers the valley sky. Sunlight finds a small rent and slips through like an exploring cat.

It’s Tuesday, January 31, 2023, and 30 degrees F outside. Inside, the furnace keeps us at 68. Black coffee warms me more, a solid antidote for the morning’s cold impressions. That sun popped in at 7:25, duping the cats and me into thinking we were up for a sunny day. Now the clouds have dropped. But in the way of weather, the clouds signal a warm front and higher temperatures. We’re heading for a high in the mid-fifties as the Arctic blast shifts east. Sunset will be one minute short of ten hours after sunrise.

Local news reports our Mayor has resigned. Then a city council member designed. No clarifying comments were made by either for their reasons. The city will now go through the replacement process for each. It’s already fired up political bases. They’d just calmed down after the November results were swallowed and digested. We never believed the calm would last. The budget debate is ongoing, as are the homeless challenge, drought and its impact, along with our local economy, of course. Our economy depends on snow in the winter for skiing and full rivers, clear skies, and fresh air in the summer for outdoor activities like hiking and boating. Little snow and prolonged drought, tourism has suffered for several years before the COVID load was put on it.

The other big industry here is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Before COVID, wildfire and smoke spiked performances and revenues as the air was deemed unbreathable or dangerous and performances were shut down. Restaurant and hotel businesses fell like dominos. It’s been about five years since we’ve had a healthy economy and the budget has suffered.

Over in my head, The Neurons have planted “It’s My Life” by Talk Talk from 1984 into the morning mental music stream. I know it from hearing it on the car radio as I drove around the island of Okinawa, where my wife and I lived at that time. It has that 80s tech feel to it. Seeds for the song came about as I was trying to make decisions and ended up chatting to myself about my life. This was one of several songs that floated in and out of the conversation but its volume went up later, so here we are.

Stay positive. Get ready for February, because if you didn’t notice, it’s here tomorrow. Here’s Talk Talk. Cheers

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Moanday’s Theme Music

6:37 Papi Standard Time. 22 degrees F. “Let me out,” the ginger floof bellows while prancing around on his tippy toes, tail up.

I walk along, explaining to the walls that it’s 22 degrees outside, too cold for Papi to go outside, but I open the door for him. Papi steps up, looks out, takes a breath, steps back. “Let’s try the front door,” Papi suggests. We do, just to satisfy him. Open-step up-breath-back in. “That’s not what I want,” Papi says. “Feed me.”

I feed him, along with Tucker, who is a savvy fellow and saw where this was going. Then I’m back to bed. See, I went through this once four hours earlier with Papi. Except he went out that time. Stayed out for almost twenty minutes before hammering the door for re-entry. He blasted through the house when I opened the door, living up to his nom de floof, Thunderpaws.

I, of course, went to the bathroom. My bladder said, since you’re up. Sure. Somewhere in there, The Neurons began singing “Lucretia MacEvil”.

Hello, Monday.

It’s January 30, 2023. 9 AM now, the temperatures has climbed the heights to 27 F. Other than the cold, it’s a fine sunny day, complete with blue sky, and frost free, too. Sunrise came at 7:26 AM and the turning away will remove sunshine from our visible range at 5:23 PM.

“Lucretia MacEvil” is a funky, brass dominated song by Blood, Sweat, and Tears, released in 1970. I have no idea why it’s circulating the morning mental music stream. I’d dreamed, yes. Women were featured, yes. But the dreams and women were all pleasant. Who knows the ways of The Neurons? Not I.

The ‘MacEvil’ part of the song’s title always puts me in mind of McDonald’s, right? I say ‘MacEvil’ and I have that little Micky D theme song follow it. I figure it must be some kind of adult meal. It’s not on the menu and you must know the code word to order it. It’s only sold to adults, and you must provide ID. Totally worth it, though, I imagine.

I have my coffee. Countdown has commenced. We’ll soon have liftoff. Stay positive. Happy Moanday. Here’s the mood music. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Time to start the day and get underway. We’re at the port of Friday, January 20, 2023. Next destination: Friday evening. We’ll get there after the sun sets on Ashlandia, 5:10 PM.

“Ashlandia, where time is never the same.”

Sunrise at 7:36 AM found Ashlandia frost bound beneath full blue skies. Snow and ice still cap higher mountains and ridges, a winter photo delight against that blue. 25 degrees F says the local weather station while prognosticators tell us that a 48 degree F high is expected. That’s a little cold for Ashlandia’s winters. We usually see the thermo squeaking down to 30 before braking to a full stop, but we’ll live. We’ll complain, but we’ll live. Well, some, such as me, complain, but others just march along with it. The shelters are open for whoever needs them, and hot meals are being provided gratis in several locations. Crews have remained busy removing fallen trees from the month’s earlier windstorms. A drive around yesterday showed all were gone. No houses or buildings experienced major damage, so we’re thankful for that.

My wife remains in bed, affected by her RA and Raynaud’s. One of her fingers looks ghastly, white and waxen. She says it’s painful and stiff but doesn’t complain. She was planning to make me a cherry pie yesterday but I nixed that. We just had sugar pie instead. She skipped her exercise class this morning, which is never a good omen.

Mom’s list of issues continuous a daunting trend of increasing. Little seems to improve for her and pain shadows every decision and conversation. She soldiers on, a tough old broad, as she likes to self-reference, but she seems so tired from the constant fight to live.

With all the dreams I had last night, The Neurons packed the morning mental music stream with songs on dreaming. I ignored them. We lost David Crosby this week, another talented musician who brightened my life. The Byrds were on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965, which was my childhood, playing “Mr Tambourine Man”. I was nine then. Though a little too mellow for my budding rock and roll tendencies, I admired their style and harmony and their songs stayed comfortably lodged in my mind. Formation of CSN and then CSN&Y was a positive addition to the folk-rock scene, where their harmonies and smart lyrics adjusted my budding teenage attitudes.

Got my coffee. French roast, which is my usual. Unsweetened and untouched by milk or cream, it offers a sharply bitter living on my tastebuds, with a friendly chocolatey overlay.

Stay positive. Sail on to new horizons. Here’s the music, in living color. Cheers

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Thursday’s Wandering Thought

He admired his blue pullover. It was a cheap thing, a rag sweater bought for about $15 over twenty years ago. He still liked it although no elastic properties remained in it. Other than that failure, the sweater had no holes, no picks from an animal’s claws — which was truly amazing — and had not frayed anywhere. He’d bought it a store which no longer existed.

The store name, Mervyn’s, came to him after a moment. He remembered their television commercials. It seemed like they’d gone out of business so suddenly and was gone, like a brief rain shower on a hot summer day.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Wednesday glided on, light as a feather. January 18, 2023. 39 degrees F. Snow on the mountains but dry in the valley for now. Mild winds. Rain in the forecast and a high of 45 F as we navigate the weather and hours between 7:36 AM, when the sun kicked in the sunlight, to 5:08 PM, when the sun is kicked back out.

I have a Jimmy Buffett song from 1978 drumming through my morning mental music stream. I’ve been thinking about having a cheeseburger. We eat plant-based burgers at home. They’re delish. But we don’t keep cheese on hand because we like, use it, and eat it. I’ve been thinking about having one from somewhere, like a restaurant, I supposed for at least five days. Why haven’t I done it? I don’t know.

Yesterday, I read another person’s blog post “Caught In A Trap…Again”. They quoted lyrics from Jimmy Buffett’s song, “Fruitcakes”, in it. That triggered a memory storm for The Neurons. A husband and wife in the mid 1990s who were my neighbors were big Jimmy Buffett fans. They played his music, went to his restaurants and concerts, and wore his tee shirts. When the Fruitcakes album was released in 1994, Rick invited friends over to hear the album and have drinks and burgers. It was a bit of the tropics in that little California cul-de-sac that evening, but with cheeseburgers and cold draft beer. Margaritas were also offered, of course. It was a memorably good time.

Back to “Fruitcakes”, I’ve always enjoyed the line “Everyone has a little fruitcake in them” from it. Anyway, a Jimmy Buffett medley filled the stream for a bit but with the cheeseburger desire raging in me, “Cheeseburger in Paradise” is the last song playing.

Stay positive and do your best, I guess. Or not. It’s easy to say do your best and keep trying but, man, don’t we know that some many factors mitigate what you can do and the results? Sure.

It’s time for coffee and music. Here’s the tune. I’ll go get the coffee. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

The moon’s visit moved beyond normal to sublime. Sometimes a clear night hosts a moon that lights the night and finds something more primal and hopeful in the mind. Last night’s moon was one of these, romantic and inspirational, a moon with light that whispers, “the impossible is possible.” No wonder a moon like that is spoken of in sentences about magic, fairies, and spaceships.

It’s January 16, 2023. It’s Monday. It’s 30 degrees F and sunny. It’s calm. It’s a new week’s start. Happy New Week! Have you made any New Week resolutions? I have. Of course I have. I don’t do NY ones, but I do daily, weekly, and monthly resolutions. You only fail if you give up trying, am I right? Some people place the week’s start on Sunday. I consider Saturday and Sunday neutral ground. The week begins on Monday and ends on Friday.

The sun pressed its presence into our valley at 7:37 this morning, coming around like it’s nobody’s business. Daylight will light us up until about 5:05 this evening. Then the sun will set and bring on dusk, followed by night. The cold front will keep our high from getting much above 42 F. Some say that rain is due but the clouds for that job haven’t checked in. Snow is visible in far fields on high mountains, appearing like cake frosting on the ridges’ pines and firs. It’s a tranquil blue-sky sight.

News continues emerging about President Biden and the classified documents found at his home and office. This turn pisses me off more than Trump’s classified doc scandal. I thought Joe Biden was responsible and this oversight, this sloppiness, is infuriating. I was in the Air Force for twenty years. With high secret clearances and active in special access programs, dealing with classified material, including stuff that was Top Secret with special qualifiers, including nuclear war plans, launch codes, attack plans, and intelligence materials, I was frequently the Top-Secret Control Officer, the unit security manager, and also often the OPSEC/COMSEC and COMPUSEC manager. I took it seriously. My peers, commanders, and those we supervised all took it very damn seriously. I was appointed as an investigator several times when processes failed or people violated the governing regs and laws. Trump’s conniving to keep some classified documents ‘as his own’ insulted our efforts to keep the nation safe by properly protecting such material. Joe Biden’s sloppiness — or worse, as the investigations are only under way — undermines our systems as well. President Biden has at least acknowledged that what has happened is bad, unlike Trump, who dances and shouts, trying to deflect blame and responsibility, squeaking out ridiculous justifications for what he did.

Okay, off the soap box. Today’s music is “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”. I went with the Animals version of 1964. Besides being the version seared into my memory by radio play repetition, I’ve always liked Eric Burdon. I also enjoyed the band’s keyboard use and the gritty blues sound they brought to their performances. The Neurons decided on this song and put it in the morning mental music stream after conversations with the cats. They were asking for something and I didn’t understand what it was. The felines’ insistence was the final driver for Les Neurons. Listening to them, Eric Burdon’s voice just rose from the depths of memory to sing, “Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.” And there we were.

Try to stay positive. I know it can be tough. I feel less than positive on many days. Right now, I’m positive that I would murder a cup of coffee so I’m heading to the kitchen for that black brew. I’m excited just thinking about it! Here’s the music. Hope your week takes you to new heights. Cheers

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