Tag: mental health

Thirstdaz Theme Music

Another sunny summer day has been born in Ashlandia. We shall name this day Thirstda, July 24, 2025. Temps right now are moderate at 83 F but if you stand in that sunshine and let it beam down on you, the sweat comes fast. Today’s high will peak at about 92, 93 F, I think. Clouds, dust, or smoke hazes some of the sky’s blue, but I don’t smell smoke. The ol’ schnoz seems unafflicted by particulates today. Yea for me, I guess.

Hulk Hogan has passed away. I greet that with a shrug. Ozzy Osbourne passed a couple days ago. I mourn him more, but it’s remote mourning. I’ve been expecting him to pass. Thanks for the music and entertainment, Oz.

A net friend, Annette, posted a reflective post about family, wealth, and change. It melded well with my mood and thoughts after long exchanges with my sister about my mother, Mom’s health, and her living situation. Life, mortality, and death seem to be draping themselves all over me as I observe others’ situations and reflect upon my own. Make hay while the sun shines, right? Because storms can crash in and change everything in an eyeblink.

Over on the political spectrum of my existence, I grimace to more news about the enshittification of things. Yes, it makes me unhappy. Reading opposing opinions about things like cuts to NPR and public broadcasting, the celebration of their potential demise depresses me. Others are scornful and dismissive of any positive impact they may have on people, communities, and civilization. Some things seem to be strictly defined through a narrow scope of costs, profits, and losses, as if this is what life is about. The debt, the debt, some scream, we must do something about the debt! More tariffs! More tax cuts for the wealthy! More tax write-offs for the ultra wealthy. Less help for the states! Less help for the poor! And so it will go until they need help from other states, need help from the poor, say, in a war, for example, or to work. Yes, I’m disgusting by the right-wing tilt going on. I think it counterproductive to common goals and needs. The tilt benefits a few at the expense of the nation.

Today’s theme music is both homage to Ozzy’s memory, my own life, and how I view the current world situation. Yes, it’s “Crazy Train” from 1980. I told others while commenting on Ozzy last night that I’ve been on the crazy train. I’ve seen my family on the crazy train, and friends. A friend replied, “I think we’ve all spent some time on the crazy train.” Now I think the world is climbing on the crazy train.

Crazy, but that’s how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe it’s not too late
To learn how to love and forget how to hate

Mental wounds not healing
Life’s a bitter shame

I’m going off the rails on a crazy train
I’m going off the rails on a crazy train
(Let’s go)

I’ve listened to preachers, I’ve listened to fools
I’ve watched all the dropouts, who make their own rules
One person conditioned to rule and control
The media sells it and you live the role

Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane

I’m going off the rails on a crazy train
I’m going off the rails on a crazy train

I know that things are going wrong for me
You gotta listen to my words, yeah, yeah

Heirs of a cold war, that’s what we’ve become
Inheriting troubles, I’m mentally numb
Crazy, I just cannot bear
I’m living with something that just isn’t fair

H/t to AZLyrics.com

Coffee has infiltrated me again. Time to rock another day, even if it’s only a gentle rock, just a little more than a nudge. Hope your day fulfills you in ways you need. Cheers

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Frida’s Theme Music

The work week is at its end. That’s what we used to call the Monday to Friday gig. Don’t know if that’s still the handle.

Yes, today is Frida, July 18, 2025. Today in Ashlandia, we’re at 73 F and expect a high of 95 F under skies that go on forever blue and steady sunshine.

More sucky news fills the cyber pages. I’m one who prefers to skim the net and read the news rather than turning to streaming or OTA tv. A news piece touched me with serendipity. From the 1440 Daily Digest was a summary of a new procedure to reduce disorders in newborns.

Mitochondrial disorders, affecting about 1 in 5,000 births, are transmitted via the mother and can cause vision loss, diabetes, and heart issues. Six of the eight babies showed a 95% to 100% drop in mutated mitochondrial DNA, while two showed reductions between 77% and 88%. All eight remain healthy; one experienced and recovered from an irregular heartbeat.

I had read the news elsewhere before. On the same day that I read the news, Jill Dennison shared the song, “In The Year 2525” from 1969. One stanza struck me from the song in connection with this news:

In the year 6565
Ain’t gonna need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube, whoa

I guess my point is that I have always felt that’s the general direction we’ve been headed: manufactured people, whether it’s through cloning or genetic manipulation, or some other technology. I always think there will be dire unforeseen and unintended consequences. Time will tell, right?

My morning mental music stream music is much lighter than that other song. “Take the Money and Run” by the Steve Miller Band, is a 1976 offering about robbery and murder, but with a peppy pop beat. I’s about whims and things that go wrong, and how the consequences. A detective chased them and they remained on the run forever. But to me, the song was always about opportunistic criminals, like those populating the current GOP. Do what you can and need to get yours and screw all others. Yeah, you knew I’d turn this political. LOL. That’s me. At least, that’s why I think The Neurons put it in the morning mental music stream.

Have the best Frida you can. That’s my goal. Here we go again. Cheers

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Sunda’s Theme Music

Sorry that I’m late with posting. Hope all were still able to carry on.

Today is Sunda, July 6, 2025. Temp right now, at 6:30 PM, is 94 F. Sunshine floods the valley and clouds have are absent, giving us an endless blue vision.

Slept the day away after requesting wife drive me to ER at 2:20 AM. Spent three hours there. Paralyzing and mounting abdominal plague began haunting me at 10:30 PM. Despite a pain killer, some antacids, and a couple glasses of water, it kept ratcheting up, and nausea began a background chorus. So, with deep and persistent mutterings about intercourse and life, we went to our local ER. The pain began in my back against my spine but soon became a traveller, going all over my upper abdominal area. I joked that an alien was in there trying to break out. BP was way up, temperature was normal. A couple rounds of morphine were IV’d into me. Blood was drawn. EKG was completed: looked great. Everything came back normal. With kidneys working, a CT scan was done: all normal among my organs. They finally said: looks like gas.

WHAT? WHAAAT? WHAAATTT?

Oh, wait. There might be something going on with your gall bladder. A follow-up course was established to investigate it.

The doctor said, avoid fatty foods and fried foods, and hydrate. Still moaning and groaning with pain and ab tenderness, my wife transported me home. I went in and violently puked for a couple minutes. With the tv on for company and a hot compress on my abs, I played with sleep. Pain subsided enough for a few hours and sleep was brokered. At 9:30, I consumed painkillers and anti-nausea meds they’d sent home with me. I returned to the idea of sleeping and fitfully did a Z dance for the next few hours before finally getting pain free at noonish. A bowl of buckwheat mash with blueberries and a couple chucks of papaya were cautiously consumed. Deep sleep came in for a four hour shift. And, BTW, my wife did a great job of taking care of me, as she always does

After being morphine’d while I was at ER, The Neurons ordered a dose of “King of Pain” by The Police for the early morning mental music stream. I laughed at the little skunks and their humor but the 1983 hit song is today’s theme music.

It’s been a no-coffee day. Dinner was a sweet potatoe with steamed veggies. Triple digits are playing for the area tomorrow. Time will tell with what comes next. Cheers

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Satyrda’s Theme Music

Couple things happening now. This being Satyrda, July 5, 2025, we’re over halfway through 2025. You feelin’ better about your life, our world, and the direction of your nation? Secondly, we’re now ‘closer’ to 2050 than to 2000.

Summer continues here in Ashlandia. We topped out at 80 F at my place yesterday. After an overnight low of 52 F, we’re supposed to traverse the mid 80s today. Blue paints the sky here and sunshine is methodically rising over the trees and mountains, bringing light and heat.

After a bout of interesting and uplifting dreams, I rolled into the day feelin’ pretty good. Then I perused the news and life slapped my face. Heatwave in Europe is unabated, with wildfires in Spain, Greece, Turkey. Flash flooding struck Texas and we’re following that story to see what happened to who and how many. Not helping matters, more rain is expected in the flooded areas. MAGA is gleeful about building a new concentration camp, Alligator Alcatraz, in Florida, using FEMA funds. You know, FEMA: Federal Emergency Management Assistance. Trump has turned that into a tool to imprison others instead of helping Americans. Meanwhile, tropical depressions off the U.S. east coast could develop into a hurricane. And the giant Madre fire still burns in Southern California.

But personal moods sometimes plays by its own sheet music so my mind is up. I gotta take advantage of it because you don’t know when something will strike down the mood.

Today’s song is “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood. It’s a personal favorite from my middle adult years. Released in 1986, when I was 30, the song spoke to me. Today I’m 69, and Der Neurons thought it was a good fit for the morning mental music stream. I really enjoy this flashback video and Letterman’s humor. Hope you find it entertaining. As a bonus, “Gimme Some Lovin'” is also performed.

Here we go, into the day. Let it swallow me and become something. I’m going to try to make it a strong one. Hope yours goes well. Cheer

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Munda’s Wandering Thoughts

Some days, shit is happening, and all you can do is pretend to pursue the normal aspects of being. For one, war is hettin’ up in the Middle East or whatever you want to call it. It’s been a war zone for years. It’s usually a matter of who is going to strike back, how, and when. There will be violence, death, and destruction. The Middle East quagmire of religions, history, and tribes and factions are overstocked with tendencies to war.

Personally, dispiriting matters keep piling up in my world. I don’t write about all of them. Not going to start now. My basic bottom line which I return to again and again, is, this is life. Many of us — hell, I’ll go out on a limb and declare that most of us — go through this shit. I can only imagine how worse the shit is magnified if you’re suffering from serious diseases, homelessness, racism and other prejudice, discrimination, or hate. On paper, I have it pretty good but life is lived on a spectrum. We slide up and down it. I’m on the down side today.

We watched again a Neflix series on the gut and the biome’s influence on our brains and pains.* As part of this show, they talked about fecal transplants. Transplants were done by people who had problems and were seeking solutions. One woman used her boyfriend’s fecal material as her transplant source. She noted that he has ‘mental issues’ but didn’t specify more. Or maybe I spaced on it. I did catch her say that she began acting and feeling like him, emotionally unstable, anxious, and depressed. She quit using his shit and used her brother’s shit. After a week, she felt much better.

I imagine a future of routine fecal transplants. A partner on the computer says, “I’m ordering some groceries and things. Is there anything you need?”

“Yes, get me some new shit. I’m almost out of shit and I’m feeling it.”

“What shit do you want?”

“Same shit as last time. It should be in your order history.”

“Is it the Tom Cruise brand Improved Shit?”

“Yes, that’s the shit, but get a big jar. I’m really feeling it.”

“You got it.”

I think about whose shit I might order. Maybe Taylor Swift, Tom Brady, or Patrick Mahomes. I pity the fool who tries mine. But then again, I know people with some shit that’s a lot worse.

*The Neflix series is You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment

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Munda’s Theme Music

Greetings from Ashlandia to all you Mundaheads. Yes, we’ve reached another Munda milestone in our mostly mundane lives. I’m speaking for myself, of course. I’m sure none of the rest of you deal with a Mundane Munda.

The weather here is mundane, sunshine with clouds, blue skies, and the sometimes drizzle. Out looking for spring last night, Papi, our ginger housefloof, was wet every time he re-entered the house following a nocturnal patrol. I never heard any rain. I assumed Papi was dashing through sprinklers. When I got up, though, I saw that, yeah, it had rained through the night. We’re still looking at a taste of the low 70s F today and an overnight low in the upper 40s. This week promises more time bouncing through rainshine.

Cleaning the garage and taking away the trash yesterday brought an expanse of free time to silently think. I used to do these sort of tasks with a boom box playing. I don’t bring out the boom box any longer. Boom boxes were so ubiquitous last century but I haven’t seen anyone using one for years, it feels like. So my work was done in silence. I didn’t mind the silence, as I practiced fiction writing in my head, a feat which always intoxicates my muses and brings them back to give me more.

The other thing from yesterday was the lack of floofervision. I used to share floofmeciles with several cats. Most were active floofervisors, there to help me open boxes and study the contents. Papi was more of the laissez floof management style. He showed up to see what I was doing and ensure nothing to eat was there but usually left with only a short comment. There was a time when the likes of Jade, Tucker, and Quinn would be stamping things with their paw of approval. Sort of missed that but at the same time, less interruptions to move animals were needed.

Politic news again had me GRRRRRRRRRRRing over my morning coffee. I read that the Roberts Court is allowing the Trump Regime to remove protections for Venezuelan refugees while it’s still being contested in court. A lower court had stopped the deportations and kept protections in place. Trump disliked them because, you know, President Joe Biden had extended those protections. Trump’s regime argued that the protections were not in the nation’s best interests and undermined national security. Therefore, the protections should be removed so the Venezuelans could be shipped out of the United States. Reading that, I thought, “Trump’s actions aren’t in the nation’s best interests and undermine national security. Can’t we depart him?” Then I sipped some coffee and smiled.

Another of my friends took the pledge. She wrote on FB: “I’m done posting shit about the clown. I’m just so sick of his garbage. Im sick of the clowns in Washington too afraid to stick up for the American people, their constituents or just filling their coffers with bribes from the orange clown and his fellow billionaires with the goals of killing off the poor, I’m just sorry for the folks who voted for him and will now have all of their programs and help cut.

“So I’m done. No more. I know what I know and see and read. And hopefully someone will have the balls to throw the garbage out”

We know who she means: PINO Trump. I feel her. He’s only interested in enriching himself and his family, as long as they are also going along with him.

Today’s music came during my work yesterday. As is often the case, The Neurons started song based on something they observed or perhaps a fragment of thought or a fleeting memory. They act on it, and music arrives in the mental music stream. In this case, it was a 1980 song by REO Speedwagon, “Keep On Loving You”. Why in the world did The Neurons snag this song while I was cleaning the garage and cars, etc? I don’t know. It remains in the morning mental music stream, though. Freeing myself of it requires me to offer it to the general public. So here it is, from my head to my computer to the internet to your computer (or other electronic device) and then into your head. Isn’t technology amazing?

Well, that’s the morning stuff. Coffee has been loaded and stored in my energy cells. Now I’m ready to get ‘er done. Pitter patter, here we go — again. Cheers

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Twosda’s Theme Music

At 4:07 AM, the cat announced, “Let’s go!” Yes, he batted and chatted me awake enough to sleep walk to the door and release him back into the wild. He didn’t stay in the wild long. Cold, wind, and hunger drove him back in. “Not that wild, are you?” I asked him. He meowed back.

Thus began Twosda, April 22, 2025, much as many other days begin. Twosda and Thirstdas are the worse for me in this regard. My wife gets up early on Mun-Wen-Fri to attend exercise class. She deals with the cat between 6:30 and 8 AM on those days. But today has Papi testing the limits, in and out. I suspect he has two twins and they’re taking turns at this.

It was 39 F at 4:30 AM. If you trust Alexa. I asked it the temperature after Papi came back in. I was curious because it felt cold to my half-naked body. Like Sun & Mun, today features a clear blue-sky sauce and a glaze of sunshine with a tincture of wind and mild temperatures that lose their punch in the mid to upper sixties.

Trump continues to pile instability on instability, crazy on crazy, losses on losses. Like all great leaders, he sets ridiculous goals using ideologically-driven data, fails to take many details and factors into account, and then pretends it’s going great as everyone else prepares to get out the toilet plunger because this shit is overwhelming the crapper. He is consistently terrible and proud of it. Living in a Teflon-coated bubble, he’ll probably never recognize his insanity and the disastrous, negative impact he delivered to millions of people.

Unless, of course, his secret goal is to completely undermine and destroy the United States. That’s also possible. He could well be in collusion with Russian and oil oligarchs and are busy setting the table up to establish a powerful global cabal. Makes as much sense as any other shit he spreads.

They say that the Roberts Court is finally getting a backbone. “They’ll reign Trump in.” Ha. I think Trump is already smirking at the Roberts Court as he says, “Hold my Big Mac.” Harvard and other universities are suing the Trusk Regime. He doesn’t care. He’s already destabilized and disrupted our education systems and research programs. A third of the national NOAA weather offices have lost their leases. We’ll see what that does to the ability to warn about weather disasters. Then, Trump and Noem have been dismantling FEMA, so when these disaster squat on communities and drop a load, the state and community will struggle to recover and rebuild. Meanwhile, DOGE is raiding personal data and will probably weaponize that on behalf of Russia. He’s truncated international alliances and friendships that effectively worked for over half a century, isolating our nation. Besides all that, he’s been running due process over with a golf court.

And Trump and his supporters think this is just great. Anyway…onward.

When I first heard this Led Zeppelin song when I was thirteen, I thought, holy fucking shit. That was a startling development because I’d never sworn before that. That’s when I took up coffee, too. It all seemed to go together.

The song — “How Many More Times” — is in my morning mental music stream for reasons which The Neurons have sealed. They have better security than Kristi Noem and keep secrets more effectively than Pet (Pete) Hegseth. Not saying much, given how terrible and sloppy the Trump Regime has demonstrated itself to be, outside of the Musk-driven DOGE dogs.

Here is the music. When I listened to it today, my inner thirteen-year-old sat up and said, “Holy fucking shit.” This is a recording of a live show. Anyone familiar with Zep knows it’s gonna be a jam and will vary a bit from what was on the album.

Coffee has again insinuated itself into my body’s systems. I’m prepared to rock another day, at least until nap time later today. Hope your day is as purpose-filled as you need it. Carpe diem. Cheers

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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

Medical Update

Happily, I can share a major change for me. My right compression sock has arrived.

TL/DR: my custom sock arrived for my right leg, ankle, and foot, freeing me from the bandages I’ve been wearing. I can bath normally again.

Longer story. As background, I had a few medical setbacks starting about six years ago. It began with an enlarged prostate gland which led to a obstructed bladder and an emergency room visit. A catheter was inserted up my johnson and I wore a bag on my ankle to collect urine for a few days. Of course, I was also put on Flomax.

Around the same time, I noticed some swelling and redness around my ankles. I didn’t know it then, but edema was developing.

I then suffered two broken bones in my left arm during a DIY effort about two years later. That slowed me down. My edema worsened. I’ve always been active. I had been averaging walking eleven to thirteen miles a day. Now that dropped way down. Six became a challenge.

The edema worsened. It was affecting the skin on my lower legs, ankles, and feet.

I then somehow ruptured my right peronous longus tendon. It snapped as I was crossing a street in Oakmont, PA, in May of last years. MRIs revealed it completely severed at my ankle. It’s supposed to wrap around under my foot, but nothing remained of it on my foot’s underside. Besides pain, it created major instability for me. And it slowed me more. My edema worsened.

Surgery was done for the ruptured tendon. The surgeon removed what was left of it and sewed up the end. My surgery wouldn’t heal. Now restricted to this boot to stabilize and strengthen my ankle, I was limited to bed rest for several weeks and reduced activity. The surgery wasn’t healing becaus the edema was worsening, causing my right ankle and foot to balloon.

It was a frustrating spiral.

Along the way, the medical ‘they’ decided that I seemed to be affected with lymphedema. In abbreviated explanation, my lymph fluid was not going up the lymph vessels and was accumulating in my calves, ankles, and feet, causing the swelling. Lymphedema massage therapy to stimulate the lymph fluid flow was set up. Three times a week, I went in and had my limbs from my calves down massaged and then wrapped in cotton, foam, and elastic bandages.

I’d also done some research about my lymphedema. Following advice and guidance from the net, I sharply reduced my sodium intake and heavily increased how much water I drank each day. I also reduced coffee and alcohol consumption, and added specific exercises to combat lymphedema to my daily routines. Part of that are self-massages to stimulate lymph fluid flow. See, from what I can tell, my body doesn’t process sodium well. Sodium is often used as a binding agent in processed food. The same thing was happening to me. Sodium is probably thickening my blood and thickening my lymph (or lymphatic — they express it both ways) fluid, driving the swelling. I drink more water to thin my blood and lymph fluid. I’m still walking six miles a day.

It all seems to have worked. I began my lymphedema therapy in Feb. Within a week, the left side graduated to the custom made compression sock. It was doing very well. I still wear that sock every day, washing it each night by hand. I’ve not had any swelling on that side. They will be providing me several more custom socks for it, and the right side.

My right side, which was the side of the surgery, also quickly improved. I no longer have swelling there, either. In fact, on Feb 19, my massage therapist put in the order for the right side’s custom sock. We expected it to arrive by the end of Feb.

But it didn’t. Concerned that it was lost somewhere, I called the company who provides the sock. They confirmed that they didn’t order it for me until the end of February, nine days after the order was put in. It seems that government bureaucracy slowed its progress, as it had to be approved by the powers before the order was created.

Anyway, the right side sock arrived yesterday. I get to go to physical therapy and have it put on today. And that means, a shower. See, the bandages could not get wet. So I was not allowed showers. I could wrap the bandaged limbs in plastic garbage bags and bath in a tub with my lower legs and feet outside the tub, but man, that wasn’t very satisfying.

So tonight, I shall shower. I suspect it will be long and hot shower, and very, very sweet.

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