Sunday’s Theme Music – Going Down
Ashland, southern Oregon — Sunday, May 3, 2026.
It’s a springy 63 F in Ashland this morning. Clouds feather the sunshine effect. We’re expecting a high of 77 F and thunderstorms.
All is quiet on the Mom front. I’m privately mourning the changes and losses to her life. Don’t know what my sisters are thinking but their relationship with Mom was rockier than mine. Part of that is that I moved out early and was away for years at a time, inuring me to her chaos.
Unfortunately, we’re not inured to Trump’s chaos. Let’s call it Traos. No matter what I drink or how much, he’s still there, and the reality of what he’s doing to us gets worse with every viewing.
Now several months into Trump’s second year of his second term, certain trends have become cemented as part of his legacy.
- Trump is a corrupt person, enriching himself at the expense of the country
- Trump’s cabinet is inept and chaotic
- Dizzy Donnie’s health is worsening and he’s hiding something
- Whatever is in the Epstein files, Trump doesn’t want it found
- Trump has no plan forward except to cut everything except Homeland Security and Defense, impose more tariffs, and isolate the nation
- Between his lies, broken promises, failed policies, and delusions, Trump can’t be trusted
Some will say that I’m being harsh. I am. But I’m using standard benchmarks for my judgements.
- Trump keeps playing ‘hide the Epstein file’
- His personal wealth has grown while social services and education are being cut
- The national debt is growing at a record rate and has overtaken the GNP
- Prices are rising and he can only offer band aids like the $6000 tax credit for seniors that results in $720
- Awakening to his grift, his approval ratings are falling, and his disapproval ratings are rising
- He promised no new wars and started one
- Declaring himself the unity president, he’s done more to polarize voters than any other in modern history
And as final proof of how delusional he is, he keeps ordering things renamed for himself, and planning monuments for himself, because he thinks everything is going great. The rest of the world knows, if he was worthy of monuments, we’d be proposing and building them on our own. Instead, brown nosers who like to kiss his ass are trying to find new ways of doing it.
Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! still goes. No doubt trying to regain some of his mojo, Trump announced some major gun safety changes. Makes the NRA happy. That’s what’s important. *snark*
We have months to go before it’s all over.
BTW, have you seen Iran’s humorous take on Trump?
The confluence of news, dreams, and mood inspired The Neurons to pull the trigger on “Sugar, We’re Goin Down”.
The Fall Out Boy chorus fills the morning mental music stream:
“We’re going down, down in an earlier round, and sugar we’re going down swinging. I’ll be your number one with a bullet.”
My hope for you today is that you weather it all and come out stronger, healthier, and happier.
Got my coffee. Time to rock on. Cheers
Navigating Some Changes: A Dream
It started weird.
In my mid-twenties, I’d been somewhere, had a few drinks, went home. At home was an old girlfriend, visiting someone else, staying the night. Morning broke with sunshine through windows. I realized she was leaving and wanted to get up to say good-bye.
I could not move.
Paralyzed isn’t quite the word. I had no control. My limbs were flopping, weak, uncoordinated.
How did this happen? I kept asking myself. I didn’t much the night before, struggling to remember what I’d eaten, concluding, not much. I suspected someone had spiked my drink.
Thinking over the previous night, my memory pulled up a hypothetical scene where a man dropped something into my dream. I couldn’t guess his motivation and speculated he thought my drink belonged to someone else.
Then, damn – I’m late for work.
In the military again, I scrambled to find a clean uniform and shit, shower, shave.
Rushing out of the house, I headed for a train station and realized, I’m in Germany and I don’t know where I’m going. Nor did I speak the language.
There were long lines and a byzantine system of turns and steps. Putting together clues from what I saw others do, but screwing up, I sometimes got scolded – in German. I studied landmarks for more evidence about where I was, where I was going, then made it to work.
I was just a little late. Eventually I explained to the commander that I thought someone else had spiked my drink. He eagerly agreed, recapping my symptoms and then explaining the same thing happened to him the night before. That greatly relieved me, knowing someone else had gone this. I sensed that he felt the same.
I need to go somewhere else, they told me. Out in the system again, I tried putting pieces together to get to the right place and ended up going too far. Figuring that out, I backtracked until I found the right station. I realized we were sometimes going through people’s personal lands. They were very particular about what was permitted but sometimes changed it. For example, one old, white hair man opened up a door as a shortcut, apparently on a whim. An elderly gray-haired female chastised us when we considered using part of her walk as a shortcut.
Then it was time to go home. I had to figure out where to go, what to do, but fewer people were available. I had to figure it out on my own.
Dream end.
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
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.
Michael Seidel, writer 