Tag: Mom

Saturday’s Theme Music – Round and Round

Ashland, Oregon — Saturday March 21, 2026.

56 F, spring is holding on against a late winter effort. Today’s sky favors heavy cloud blanketing and pots of sunshine. Blue has been shouldered out of the scene. Our high will tap the low sixties and tomorrow is supposedly going down into the 30s at night.

Round and round is going round my head. I began writing about the news. It became so Trumpcentric, I split it off.

I’m also going round and round with health matters. It’s bizarre to me because I feel pretty damn good. Could lose a few more pounds, and if you’re giving out miracles, put some hair back on my head.

They found a mass in my bladder yesterday. Not big, something like 2cm. We’ll check it out next week, see what it is, deal with it. The CT scan said liver, intestines, spleen, pancreas, appendix all look good. No loose fluid. Kidneys are intact and the right one has come calculi. The summary says all those things look just like they did in the 2021 scans, when kidney stones advanced out of my left kidney. Oh, what a night.

Everything with Mom is going round and round. The tale is familiar and old. Mom seems happy, enjoying others’ company, goes silent with all. All seems well. Then WHAMO. We’re bowled over by unexpected news and then wait for updates. Mom is being very cagey. We’re letting the assisted living home and county adult social services run the show.

So round we go, weather, health, Mom, Trump. The Neurons have blessed me with “You Spin Me Round” by Dead or Alive in the morning mental music stream. The song’s sentiment is about seeing and wanting someone. The disco beat just has me hooked on the idea that things keep me going round like a record.

Amusing: do the children know what it means to go round like a record?

Probably as much as I knew about ‘going spooning’ or a bicycle built for two.

Going round with a cup of coffee now. Hope your day goes well and peace and grace came around.

Cheers

4

Friday’s Theme Music — Nobody Knows

Ashland, Oregon — Friday, March 20, 2026.

Spring has officially sprung north of the equator. It’s 56 F in Ashland with high, thin white clouds coalescing in our blue sky. 72 will the high.

Just returned from a CT scan with iodine contrast. Had blood and clots in my urine last week. Urinalysis earlier this week showed cloudy urine with high levels of blood, along with particulates associated with kidney stones. Not a surprising. I passed a kidney stone on my left side in 2021. One was found in my right side, but at 15mm, it was too large to pass. That one seems to be getting cranky, agitating the kidney around it.

Texts are arrived talking about Mom moving and contacting an attorney. Details are sketchy. My app seems to have missed several texts. A new phone is being ordered. This one is now almost ten years old.

The Trump partial government continues to cause travel congestion due to long TSA lines.

Gas and oil prices continue to rise due to Trump’s war on Iran as Trump moves more troops into the middle east. Trump’s war is also producing an increase in mortgage rates, which have reached their highest level in 2026. 2025 home sales were already the weakest in three decades.

Trump’s tariffs continue to drive up food and housing prices. Have you seen the recent price of coffee?

The national debt is going up fast, thanks to Trump’s fraud and waste.

And more rural hospitals are closing, especially in Trump strongholds in the Midwest and South, accelerating a rural hospital crisis.

— Just in from Mom’s assisted living place, Mom has put in a notice to vacate by April 17th and contacted a lawyer about elder abuse.

With these topics and uncertainty inhabiting my thinking, The Neurons are assisting by playing “What Happens Now” by Duran Duran.

Hope your change of seasons bring the best to you. Whether you’re going into spring or fall, may peace and grace find you.

Cheers

2

Sunday’s Theme Music: Plans & Mistakes

Ashland, Oregon — Sunday, March 15, 2026.

It’s 38 F outside with bits of blue sky and an overwhelming gathering of gray clouds. We’ll again see a high in the low 50s as we march on toward Spring.

As I read the news last night and today, I was reminded of President George Dubya Bush’s declaration on an aircraft carrier, “Mission Accomplished”. Oh, what theater as the commander-in-chief landed a jet on an aircraft carrier and emerged in a flight suit. Republicans swooned.

Bush said that he was declaring that the military objectives had been achieved in his invasion of Iraq, and not necessarily that the war was over. His speech came on May 1, 2003, six weeks after the invasion began. The war grew and kept going, with the U.S. in there for eight more years.

I’m thinking about that now because the Trump administration is a diluted version of the Bush/Cheney administration. Bush/Cheney worked in secrecy and cherry-picked intel to support what was happening. One of Bush’s administration compared their plans for war to the marketing campaign for a new product to sell the war. Ignoring what UN weapons inspectors had been saying about Iraq’s weapons, Bush managed to put together a coalition of military forces from allies around the threat of WMDs

Trump did none of that. He just attacked, going in without a plan. Now Trumps thinks he can just declare it over whenever it suits him, just as Bush tried to do.

In the end, the Iraq invasion and war was a costly, disastrous mistake. Less than a quarter century later, and we wonder, how much of what Trump has begun will end with history repeating itself?

In comments on news articles about the war, some were saying, “I’m a Republican and I don’t support this war.” They go on, the timing is wrong, there is no plan, etc.

The thing is, their comments mean little to me at this point. Polls show that Republicans are mostly supporting Trump’s Iranian War. Few Republicans have stood up against anything Trump does, undoing a lot of the checks and balances in our government.

Trump and the MAGA movement co-opted the GOP. But the GOP allowed it to happen. The guiding principles and policies for the GOP are now, “Whatever Trump says.”

I think they made a mistake.

In the same sense, I was thinking of the problems with Mom. We saw what was coming years ago and tried to negotiate with her to improve her situation long before a crisis was reached. She refused, blaming her partner, Frank. But when Frank died, we saw that it was Mom as much as Frank that refused to see the truth and plan for what was happening.

It’s understandable. Many of us go into denial. But looking back, I still shake my head and think, what a mistake.

Not surprising that The Neurons have a song by Men At Work, “It’s A Mistake”, playing in the morning mental music stream. The anti-war song was written during the cold war and reflects worries that nuclear war might erupt.

Hearing it in my head makes me ruefully chuckle. How many times have I told others, “It’s a mistake?” Likewise, I think I was told multiple times, “It’s a mistake, but it’s your life.” I sort of smile because one of them was marrying almost 51 years ago. Dad said, “I think it’s a mistake.”

Sometimes the mistakes work out.

I hope your day goes well, with the mistakes kept to a minimum and of the minor variety, like, “Eating at that restaurant was a mistake. That food just wasn’t very good.”

Onward into another day.

Cheers

1

Friday’s Theme Music – Wasted

Ashland, Oregon — Friday, March 13, 2026. Ah, Friday the 13th.

I’m surprised that this is considered a day of bad luck. One, because our ancestors thought Friday was a scary day, the scariest of the week.

What? As someone who worked and partied, I always thought Friday was a good day. It was frequently regulated to a quasi half-day. How is that a bad thing?

The ’13’ part comes from the number being perceived as imperfect. “Ancient Romans and later European traditions also treated 13 as a break in the natural order, contrasting it with the “complete” number 12 (months, zodiac signs, apostles).”

Well, that’s kind of funny and arbitrary. The months are divided into different lengths — 28 (or maybe 29), 30, and 31 days. That seems imperfect. But there’s a ‘perfect’ set of twelve of them.

Yet, we only have two each of limbs, eyes, ears, legs. Just one mouth. Guess we’re not perfect or we’d have twelve of each.

It’s all so silly. That’s why I trust my lucky underwear, my lucky pen, and three beeps on the microwave. They’re proven to bring good fortune. I’d loan you my underwear but it’s just my bad luck that they need washed.

Today finds us cloudy but pleasantly warmish and coolish outside, with sun and blue sky playing peek-a-boo with the clouds. 46 F now, a high in the mid 60s is anticipated.

Quiet continues on the Mom front, and the news shows war, violence, chaos. Thanks, Mr. Trump. It feels like it was an unlucky day when you were elected — both times.

Today’s music is “Wasted on the Way”. The Neurons slipped the Crosby, Stills, Nash song into the morning mental music stream when I was thinking about how Trump wastes the world.

Lives are being wasted by Trump’s hate, biases, indifference. Opportunities wasted by his greed and ego. He’s creating a wasted world, ignoring warnings about climate change, starting wars that destabilize the diplomatic order, breaking agreements which fracture the business world, raising havoc and prices.

Then he tells us it’s all going great.

The biggest question on my mind for the peace president, unifier, and founder of the Board of Peace is, when will Trump stop the bombing and killing that he started, so that others can begin picking up the pieces and putting things back together?

I hope this day isn’t a waste for you. May peace and grace find and keep you.

Cheers

2

Thursday’s Theme Music – Waiting

Ashland, Oregon — Thursday, March 12, 2026.

Spring is on the way in the U.S.

It shows here. We started at 34 when I rolled out of bed but with blue skies and sunshine, we’ve jumped fast to 50 F, hurtling toward the mid 60s. Best way to put it, with the daffs and tulips blooming and plum tree blossoms enriching the landscape, it’s a beautiful springish day.

Mom and my sisters are quiet, as is my house. In fact, while many things are going on in politics and world news, I feel like I’m waiting for the multiple systems to react — and maybe crash.

So I feed the cat, read the news. My wife and I think and talk as I sip coffee. All the while, I keep an eye on the headlines and digital stream and check my text and messaging systems.

Time was also spent looking at what the state has been up to. The Oregon legislative session ended. Our rep, Pam Marsh, put out a summary of the work done, a welcome reassurance that some government remains grounded, pragmatic, and functional.

Today’s music reflects that sense of waiting. The Neurons are playing “The Promised Land” by Bruce Springsteen in my morning mental music stream. I hum along with the thought of what was promised and what’s been delivered. This is not just in my life as an adult, but what was held out to us as children. Growing up in the television age, we were often sold impressions about stable, white families with Dad going to work and the children going to school and getting into minor mischief. Mom stayed home and cooked in her skirt or dress, wearing high heels as she vacuumed, did the laundry, cooked. Some shows — like “Hazel” — featured more prosperity, and a maid.

More realistic shows came along, such as “The Jeffersons” and “All in the Family”, but our beliefs were hardened by then. Yet, it didn’t often work out as television claimed it would.

Anyway, here I am, waiting.

Hope you have a great day and all that means to you. Peace and grace on you.

Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Ashland, Oregon — Wednesday, March 11, 2026. 34 degrees F under blue skies latticed with thin, white clouds. Today’s high will climb into the fifties.

As part of a messy life stream, things continue on the Mom and news fronts.

The first new oil refinery in Texas in fifty years was announced. Trump is all over the money aspect, citing $300 billion dollars, which makes it really impressive in his mind. Two things struck me about the announcement.

Trump announced it as a “America First” thing but it’s funded by an Indian oil billionaire. Pretty good marketing hype.

Secondly, many headlines said that Trump announced the opening of a new oil refinery. Was it being opened or built? As I researched it, I couldn’t find basic answers to how long construction will take and when it will open.

I finally learned that it’s going to be built, with construction beginning later in 2026, and it’ll cost $4 billion to build. At this point, it’s a proposal. It won’t start operating until 2-3 years later. “America First” is the name of the company developing the refinery, a partnership with the Indian company, “Reliant Industries Limited”.

The hype around it reminds me of Cadillac’s Formula 1 effort. They put out a huge Super Bowl ad which including some of JFK’s speech about putting a man on the moon. They said, “The Mission Begins!” “We have liftoff!”

It annoyed me because I was struck that they acted like they on the cutting edge of something new and amazing, and not another new racing team in a series that’s been around for decades. What was more stunning was I later realized that Cadillac was using Ferrari engines for the first two years.

My sisters reminded me about a Mom fact which I never thought about. Mom always dressed nice. My older sister claims Mom had thirty pairs of high heels. But Mom often claimed poverty for us. We couldn’t afford to do things and often had to skimp. We did always have shelter and food, and Christmas presents were usually lavish. But my sisters all remember struggling to have clothes themselves.

Anyway, I responded to Mom last night as she reached out to me again. She was referencing texts which I didn’t have. I don’t know where the disconnect is. Her texts were about payments to the assisted living facility. I texted back, “What is your situation and what is your plan?”

She responded, “You finally answered. The situation is I’m in assisted living and I have a roommate so I think the pay is 4500 a month. I asked Lori yesterday what happens when I ran out of money and she said you have a house don’t you and yes but they’re not going to sell it until the spring and then I realize what she meant by they will put a lien against the house and when I die, the house is theirs if I would be here a long time which I don’t plan on being here a long time. So glad you answered me, Michael because just. because Sharon is through with me, Gina has been through with me for a long time. She had also told me that Lisa has always hated me so there’s nobody left Michael very upsetting to me that all my children hate me. But thank you for answering me tonight. See you later alligator.”

I sent that information on to my sisters so they’re aware of it.

I haven’t heard from Mom since, which isn’t surprising. In the last six months, she has a cycle of staying up late, texting into the night, and then sleeping through the day. She becomes angrier and meaner during those periods, more frantic. Then she grows lucid and nice, normal for a few days.

On to my normal day. The Neurons have placed “Schizophrenia” by Sonic Youth in the morning mental music stream. It’s an interesting song.

Sipping on some coffee, looking at the pale sky. I hope your day lives up to your best dreams for yourself.

Cheers

0

Tuesday’s Theme Music: Disruptions

Ashland, Oregon — Tuesday, March 10, 2026.

Cloudy and 39F outside, dry with a high of 52 F projected.

This post is mostly about me and Mom. Pings erupted in the middle of the night. Mom had launched a text blitz, and the sisters were sharing and discussing them. I read many and saw it basically as the same old, same old on every front. One sister had helped Mom by picking things up at her house; another had responded, telling Mom that she’d created this living situation mess.

Meanwhile, searching for info and thinking late last night, I hunted for more about Heritage Grove, the assisted living facility where Mom now lives. I found this photo on their Facebook page. That’s Mom, the 90 year-old in the front left in pink in the ‘drive’ wheelchair. She’d won a Snickers bar at bingo.

Returning to sleep after the text barrage was a challenge. I finally slept but awoke when I thought I heard a man saying, “There’s a fire.” There was no man there and the house was silent. I rose, though, and walked through the house, trying to see if I smelled smoke or saw sparks or flames. Then back to bed, back to sleep, but ended up getting up late. Just eating breakfast now, 10:30, two hours late. Bah, humbug.

While I was awake in the night, I thought about yesterday’s news.

Trump urges Australia to give Iran’s Asian Cup players asylum

The story quoted Trump saying on Truth social, “Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran National Woman’s Soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed.”

Damn it, the only people he’s fooling are his unthinking supporters and the uninformed. This is the same person who has Homeland Security and ICE rounding people up and sending them anywhere he could get away with sending them, without one damn thought about whether they’d be killed. In the process of rounding up people and shipping them out, people were actually and being killed. And Trump always, always blamed the victims, labeling them as domestic terrorists, criminals, or thugs.

U.S. Deports Planeload of Iranians After Deal With Tehran, Officials Say

The NYTimes headline was from last October. Since then, the Iranian government killed thousands of people. And, were any of those people Trump flew back to Iran in 2025 killed when Trump bombed them in 2026?

It all has me shaking my head.

Which carries me into theme song territory. The Neurons came up with “Helen Wheels.” To which I responded, what?

The Paul McCartney & Wings song is about Paul’s Land Rover and driving around. How did it fit into my mind?

Well, it hinged on two salient aspects: “Ain’t nobody else gonna know the way she feels.” And yep, that’s Mom and life with Mom at this point. It’s a mystery. And the other part is the long-sigh “bye buh” I feel toward what’s happening with Mom, especially with my sisters.

The upbeat song feels like it’s driving me forward, pulling me off the night’s inertia.

I hope your day is going well, wherever you are, whatever you doing. May peace and grace nestle up against your efforts and help you move forward.

Cheers

0

Mom

Mom is struggling in her assisted living situation. It’s been five to six weeks in her new place. She has professed to be happy at times. She also has related that she hates it.

She’s accused others of stealing things. She found those items in her room later.

Her habit of texting my sisters at night resumed. Two sisters ended up blocking her.

The texts were often complaints about what was going on or demands that things be taken to her.

As it was before, it seems clear that Mom is cognitively impaired. She’s been through a lot of health issues and is on many medications.

Now Mom must pay again for another month in advance shortly. She’s not sure what she’s paid or what she’s expected to pay and is asking us for help. There are some hints that she wants us to help her with the costs.

It is so painful to hear about these texts and read them.

My sisters are hugely angry with Mom and struggle to help her. They tell me that Mom becomes mean and hateful and will start yelling or just turn away from them. I can imagine how emotionally exhausting that is for them. We agreed, only one sibling can address Mom, following the advice given to us to handle the situation. Maintaining that silence is so painful.

I want to send Mom money to help her out. We’re warned not to do that because Mom will probably end up depending on Medicaid. If that transpires, Medicaid looks at her previous five years of income. Anything we’ve given her will be considered as part of that and reduce what help she’ll be given.

I do a lot of sighing when I think about Mom and her situation.

Just a short time ago, I overheard two elderly individuals talking at the coffee house, addressing the same problem that I’m dealing with. A man and woman, they both looked older than me by about ten years, putting them in their eighties. He later confirmed for her that he was 79.

The woman was talking about her sister and her sister’s problems. Her sister resides in Arizona and won’t move to Oregon, where we’re at. But each woman is alone and need help, so they’ve decided that the coffee-shop woman will be a snowbird and go live with her sister several times a year and see how it goes.

The man related that he was an only child. His parents created a trust after they retired. He could withdraw from it whenever he wanted. His father cautioned him, though, that someday they might need that money and urged him to be circumspect.

The man related that he was glad his father gave him that advice, and that he heeded it. He estimated that in the last five years of his parents’ life, he spent about $1,000,000 to provide them with housing and care.

There are lessons in all of this, I think.

I don’t know what they are.

7

Thursday’s Theme Music

Ashland, Oregon — Thursday, March 5, 2026.

We’re winding through winter’s last days toward spring in Ashland. History provides us reminders that Ashland often experiences late winter to mid-spring snowstorms. I’d like more snow in the area, especially in the Cascades where our snowbank resides.

Today, it’s overcast with uncertain, flexing sunshine. 48 F, it feels neither warm nor cold, and our high is arcing toward just 50.

My phone has developed problems with receiving text messages all of a sudden. I’ve added fixing that to my todo list. I did get some updates from my siblings about Mom before the system went tango unform on me.

Mom is reverting to the behavior displayed in January. I drift toward remembering who she was and the complex relationships my sisters and I have with her. I contrast what’s she’s enduring with who she was, what and who she was trying to be, and where she arrived as a person. Much of it now is beyond her control. Doesn’t stop my sisters from getting angry about it. But we saw this pattern emerging. There was little we could do, which we learned with time, because we tried to do things to change the course.

I smile at some things, like her potato salad. My wife insists nobody makes potato salad like Mom. My wife tried but when she asked for a recipe, Mom was more about the ingredients and less about the measurements. One thing I learned from helping her make it sometimes was that Mom depended on tasting it and how it looked — color, texture. That’s hard to translate through recipes.

I was just settling into checking on prices, the war that Republicans don’t want to call a war, and other matters when breaking news arrived.

Trump replaces Noem at DHS, taps Mullin for job

I think at first, “about time”. Her arrogance and attitude doesn’t fit with what I look for in public servants. I temper that, though, with the understanding that she was carrying out Trump and Miller’s policies, and generally working as a functionary for Project 2025. It’ll be interesting to see how much this change will actually manifest as change.

On the heels of that thinking, I scoff, but of course Trump has replaced Noem. She’s become a lightning rod for negative impressions about Trump. With his popularity falling, he made her his scapegoat.

Today’s music is “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones. When The Neurons first settled it into my morning mental music stream, I sang it as “Wild Kitties” for Papi’s entertainment. He did not seem entertained.

I’m not sure why the song is playing in me. I can see how its themes and melody is about yearning for another time, for a different outcome, even for hope. I suppose that’s where I reside now — wishing for other things than what now exists. It also came out in 1971, when I was fifteen, so I suppose remembering the song stirs some nostalgia for being back there — young, with Mom, facing a bright future.

I’ll close with best wishes for you and us to stay safe, be healthy and find new ways toward a peaceful, prosperous, and inclusive future.

Cheers

0

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