Tag: routines

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: groovy

Today is Tuesday, Jan 2, 2024. Weather is once again tentative and indecisive, with winter insisting that it’s his turn to bat but spring like sentiments slashing in. Wind is a bubbling bruiser again, gusting to plus thirty, and clouds mar the sun’s shine across the land. Intermitten light rain is in the air as the air temperature shifts past the late forties, a solid climb from the night’s mid thirties, with more promised. ‘They’ say we’ll peak at 52 F today.

My mood is groovy because with the 2023 holidays receding into history, I’m pushing to return to my daily groove. Back in the coffee shop — for the first time this year! — I’m starting another round of editing and revising for the novel in progress.

The coffee shops are tres busy, surprising me. I’m forced out of my comfortable spaces into the secondary coffee shop and to the counter facing a window, my back to the room. I don’t mind the window; I enjoy ogling the weather changes, spying on birds, and eyeing people wandering the street. Having my back to the room and its inhabitants distracts me. Who knows what maniacs are back there on a computer or phone? Maybe one of the nursing mothers or the middle-old people with them will go crazy on us, or a barista will succomb to the pressure of brewing espresso. One never knows, and with my back to them, I’ll have little warning before I can defend myself.

Today’s song, brought out of hibernation and pressed into the morning mental music stream (Trademark limited) by The Neurons after some interesting dreams, is “Let It Bleed” by The Rolling Stones, circa 1969. I was originally unimpressed with this song because of a country and western twang to the vocals, pacing, and general mileau. But listening more to the lyrics convinced me that this was a sardonic twist on country western and the period it was then in of melancholy songs about life. While C&W was about life in a rough way, sometimes as coal miners or coal miner’s spouses, booze, or being down on your luck or someone cheating on someone, the Stones sang about emotional dependence, drugs and sex. I appreciated the song more as I age and now reflect on it with fondness. This particular rendition is a recording of a live version with Bonnie Raitt, just cause I like Bonnie.

I’m still digesting the dreams behind this choice, BTW. Don’t know what to make of being naked and having a female friend lay down on me at some training site. What’s it all mean?

Stay positive, pull forward, keep strong, and lean forward toward better days. Coffee has been tested and approved for consumption. Here’s the music. Cheers

2

Perspectives

My wife shared a friend’s anecdote.

She hadn’t seen the friend in a while. They have a regular gang that meet for coffee at Growlers after exercises classes each M-W-F morning.

Converted from an old gas station, Growlers, nominally a purveyor of beers, is in downtown Ashland. It actually shares its space with a small coffee shop. It’s normally not busy in the morning. That allows the coffee gang to pull together tables and make noise as they please. Outdoor seating with firepits is available, and that’s where they’ll typically be.

The gang is a flexible group with active lives, so the group meeting ranges from four to fifteen people. They’re mostly women. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers, retired teachers, programmers, nurses, musicians, accountants, architects, artists, firefighters, college professors, and so on. They’re characters, and have been coming to the same exercise class, with the same instructor, Mary, for over thirty years. My wife, in her mid-sixties, is the youngest. She started the coffee gant back when she began taking the class after we moved here in 2006. Always pursuing fitness, when she arrived here, she began looking for a new exercise routine, and heard about Mary’s Y class. That’s where she was told this tale this morning.

Weirdly, my wife doesn’t like the coffee at Growler’s, so she has tea.

“We’ve downsized,” L said. L is the friend. “I’m 76 and my husband is 82. We had a 3,000 foot home and five and half acres just outside of Ashland. We were talking and agreed, we don’t need all this property. So we sold our place and bought a smaller one here in town.

“Well, after we’d sold our property, the new owners called us. They wondered if we could meet at our old house and walk the property line with them so they can learn about their new land. Naturally, we agreed, so a time and place was set.

“We’d never met them. Well, we got out of the car to wait, and then they arrived. Well, they were older than us! Both had walkers.

“Then they told us, they were downsizing, too. We were speechless.”

I laughed when I was told the story and wondered, moving into a 3000 square foot home with some land while downsizing, just how big was their last place?

0

Tuesday’s Wandering Thought

Her car needed its gas tank filled. They devised a plan. Run errands — mail bills, drop off the utilities payment, pick up some needed items at the grocery store, drop off her top to return it — the color wasn’t at all like the blue depicted in the photo online — and get gas for her car.

Going by order of direction, the gas station was first. He pulled in and headed for the pump.

“No, go to the other pumps, the filler cap is on this side,” she said from the passenger seat.

“No,” he retorted, glancing at the gage. “Look at the arrow. It’s this side.”

“No, it’s on this side,” she answered. “They won’t do it on the other side. It has to be on the same side as the pump.”

“Which is this side.”

Silence fell as she looked at the gage. He clapped his hands and burst out laughing, then she said, “Oh my God, we brought the car,” and threw herself back with laughter.

Of course, it was so funny to them, she had to call friends and share.

0

Thursday’s Theme Music

Sketchy snow paints Ashlandia. Less than an inch in most places. A fine job has been done on the streets, walks, and drives. They are all white perfection, a canvas for car and animal prints.

Enough snow effect has settled that ambient noise is muffled. Footsteps, rolling tires, motor sounds, barks, snap out, intruders on the silence.

Winting in Ashlandia. Familar as summer wine.

Today is Thursday, 022323, the only time it’ll be 022323 for another hundred years. 27 F, a few wavering steps up from the overnight’s 23 F, ten steps away from the suspected high 37 F. The sun’s appearance was at 6:56 AM. Its light dazzles off the whites. Weather gnomes inform us the sun will shine on Ashlandia for forever or until 1753, whichever comes first.

The Neurons have slotted “Hanginaround” by The Counting Crows outof 1999 into the magic morning mental music stream. Came to me as I was in the coffee shop, editing, slashing, and pillaging a manuscript. Pausing to consider other regulars and their energies, I thought, man, this group hangs around here a lot, thirteen strangers united by a place. The Neurons fired the song up in memory within seconds and here we are the next morning.

Ah, it’s 32F now. Almost 10 AM. Sun has melted off the hard surfaces, but man is that reflected light bright from the rest. Stay pos. Pursue your Thursday activities and dreams. A cuppa coffee and I’ll learn to run. Here is the music.

Cheers

0

Wednesday’s Wandering Thought

It was Wednesday. As though scheduled by God, school children began filing into the coffee house at 2:05. Within five minutes, the number of people went from six quiet adults to six quiet adults and fifty noisy children aged ten through fifteen, at a guess. The volume rose. Their voices climbed louder. A fighter jet taking off would have been drowned out.

The cliques formed and routines were honored. Then one teenaged female raced back through the coffee house and out the front door. As she left, she screamed and then did a little dance. A girl outside ran up to her. The two surged into a long hug and began jumping up and down without releasing each other, joy overwhelming their expressions. Other girls in the coffee shop turned, saw the scene and ran out to join them. “Eva, Eva,” one running girl shouted as she raced out, answering one question.

Of course, other questions surfed his mind, like who was Eva and where had she been? She seemed very popular. It was like she was just getting back from prison, a hospital stay, or a very long trip.

0

Thursday’s Wandering Thought

Laying in bed and thinking about his dreams, he told himself, you have to get up. Feed cats. Drink coffee. Try to live.

It felt like it was going to a stretch day, a day when you stretch your energy just to be.

3

The Morning Mouse

He has his routines. After eating his wet food and his kibble, he heads for the desk. His guy is seated behind it, on the computer. There, on the right, is the man’s mouse, used for his computer, his hand resting on it. Eyeing it, he walks around the computer to the mouse hand, and puts his nose down and starts rubbing on his human’s hand. He usually only wants about two to three minutes of rubbing on the mouse hand before settling down for a nap, using the mouse hand as a pillow. That rarely works because the hand and mouse moves, eventually causing him to jump down to find another napping location. But all is well.

He’s had his morning mouse. It’ll suffice until after dinner. Then he’ll have his evening mouse.

0

The Writing Moment

He awoke writing in his head, picking up the story where he’d stopped the previous day. Cats were first fed because he wasn’t inexperienced. The cats would haunt home with song until they were fed, and, you know, responsibilities, right? An agreement existed which must be honored on his end.

He settled into his office chair, typing fast for fifteen minutes. Insulated in his fictional world, he heard his wife’s activities as she pursued her post-rising rituals. Mental countdown beginning, he typed faster, racing through the scene to grab it all. The cats joined him, one on the windowsill behind him, speaking to his back, the other jumping up onto his desk, heading for his right side, waiting for him to reach for the mouse, intercepting his hand with a nose mash as he tried selecting a line to copy, paste, move. Then his wife entered talking.

He didn’t know what she said. Muses still shouted words in his head, but he knew the writing moment was done, at least for the moment.

0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Sunshine prevails today. Tuesday’s sky can be described as mostly sunny or mostly cloudy. Both seem correct. While sunshine washes over everything in the valley, large clouds brood like waiting bears, shadowing large swaths of land.

Yes, it’s May 3, 2022. Our high is gonna be 64 F, they say, about ten degrees higher than it is at the mo’. The sunrise cometh at 6:01AM. The other end of the daylight session ends at 8:13 PM. Tomorrow, the weather ‘they’ say, we’ll see 79 F.

After a series of dark, messy, and splashy dreams, the neurons summoned a Nine Inch Nails song. Released in 2006, “Every Day Is Exactly the Same”, some of the lyrics go, “Every day is exactly the same.” Which sometimes is how my life feels, outside of writing. Feeding cats and taking care of them, house and yard work, the eternally aggravating question of “What’s for dinner,” dressing and eating, reading news, doing errands, reading books. Yet, in many ways, that’s how it was when working and in the military, too. The world is built on bureaucracies and routines. Sometimes, though, that tedium gets me. It’s funny, but I know this song because one of the QA guys who worked for me when I managed a tech support group introduced it to me. He no longer worked for me by that time, but sent me an email after the song came out, telling me about it, and mentioning, “It reminded me of what you used to say.” I still laugh about that.

Stay positive — yeah, who am I to talk? Test negative, etc. Here we go, music and coffee. Cheers

2

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑