It was ticks past one AM. I’d just come in from outside, from admiring star- and moonlight, when a skunk’s powerful smell chased me back inside, back in to close all the doors and windows. Then I sat in an office recliner, television on, re-writing a sentence from the novel in progress, shaping it in my head. I’ve been working on that line in my head for the last three days.
That’s how it’s been with this novel writing journey. I say to myself, for example, “Okay, today I will write the earthquake chapter.” Then I sit and tango with words through the scenes, stepping forward and then retracing my steps, adjusting sentences, tenses, pacing, padding dialogue, subtracting dialogue. Nothing is completely satisfying at this stage, the first draft. I’m still getting introduced to the characters, still peering in to their psyches, still engaging in “Aha!” moments. I move on from a chapter after the essence is captured, but as my writing mind recalls some passages, I go back, fix that piece, and then write on.
I began writing this novel on May 9, 2025. It’s now 209 pages and 55,000 words. Given to writing epics, I’m trying to keep this one below 250 pages. So I tell myself today, “Arc toward the ending. Write this chapter, and then land this novel.”
I see the upcoming scenes in pieces. Hear it in snatches. It all needs to be woven together.
Then there’s the ending. I see it in the distance, too, a final scene lit up like a monument, beckoning me, “Come on. Let’s do this thing.”
Ready or not, here it is. Sunda, August 10, 2025 has arrived in Ashlandia without much fanfare. It’s brining the heat, though. While it’s 83 F here now and feels like 91 — or wait. My system says it’s 71 F. Clark’s system stakes it as 76 F. So, while it’s somewhere between 71 F and 83 F now, it’ll reach between 100 and 103 F, depending on who you believe. A few miles up the road by SUV in Medford, they’re looking at 108 to 110 F.
Last night was starry, moonlit gorgeous. Papi and I were out there observing the night. Then along came a skunk. I never saw nor heard the skunk. It didn’t directly bomb us, but its carpet bombing wove over us and chased me back into the house. All the doors and windows were closed to save us from the smell but that meant we couldn’t receive cool air to store for the day. Wasn’t until after five AM until that smell was gone enough for cooling services to be resumed. Despite all that, I slept fantastic, enjoying many uplifting, optimistic dreams.
My wife and I were laughing at a Trump Regime press statement. The headline and first paragraph tells the story: FDA regulator reinstalled less than two weeks after White House ouster.
A top Food and Drug Administration official is getting his job back, a spokesman for health agencies said Saturday, less than two weeks after he was ousted at the direction of the White House.
Vinay Prasad will return as the top regulator overseeing vaccines and complex treatments for difficult diseases, a position he lost following a right-wing pressure campaign.
Then comes a summary of the HHS press statement.
“At the FDA’s request, Dr. Vinay Prasad is resuming leadership of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research,” said Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon in a statement. “Neither the White House nor HHS will allow the fake news media to distract from the critical work the FDA is carrying out under the Trump administration.”
Don’t they sound like a school child? Like they’re blaming the media for something wholly of their own creation. Like it’s the ‘fake news media’, a favorite fictional monster under the bed for them, that had this guy fired and reinstated.
Today’s music was Papi-inspired. As I went through the morning feeding rituals, thinking about what I do to make and keep the ginger floof happy, Der Neurons fired up The Smithereens with “A Girl Like You” from 1989. As it played, I changed ‘girl’ to ‘cat’. “I’ll say anything you want to hear, I’ll see everything through, I’ll do anything I have to do, just to win the love of a cat like you.” Papi was moved. I could tell.
BTW, The Smithereens are named after the expression, “I’ll blow you to smithereens,” a phrase familiar to anyone who watched Yosemite Sam on weekend cartoons in the U.S. You don’t hear many use that word but I can imagine Donald J warning another country, “You do what I want or I’ll blow you to smithereens.” He is that cartoonish.
In another BTW, the only other time that this song was my theme song, it was also Papi inspired. Here’s what I wrote back in 2020.
Yeah, do that a lot, sing to the cats. I was singing “A Cat Like You,” which is based on the Smithereens’ 1989 song, “A Girl Like You”.
I’d been talking to the ginger blade, which prompted the singing. I was telling him at the time, “You’re a unique cat.” Which he is, standoffish and sweet, wanting to be closer, unsure how to do it, galloping everywhere with a fanfare of trumpets (or some it seems from his posture).
Then, though, I thought, they’ve all been unique. Some were unique in ways that made you laugh, others had unique properties that made them lovable and sweet, and there were a few with exasperating uniqueness, tetchy and frustrating. A few packaged it all.
So, to the cats, and cats like them, always unique.
Coffee is in me. Ready to rock another day. I hope peace and grace finds it way to you today and everyday. Cheers
Last night was beautifully clear and cool.The temperature dropped into the 50s. We were rewarded with a coolly comfortable house in the morning, third day in a row. I credit the skunks for some of that. We usually open our windows at night, and our doors for a few evening hours, to naturally cool the house. Skunks, though, were getting busy at eleven at night, releasing their odor and forcing us to shut the windows. The skunks have taken an August recess. Hope they’re not ending it soon.
Today is Satyrda, August 9, 2025. It’s 75 F now, feels 85 F, and is going to reach 91. Tomorrow, we stalk the century zone again. I think about how pleased I am that I used the cool stretch to get outside work accomplished. The flip of that is, while I was doing that work, I discovered — or sometimes, re-discovered — other work to be done at there. I’m bristling about it a little now because today and tomorrow are swamped with calls for other activities, like a memorial service for a friend. There’s too many of those things going on.
We’re going on vacay, too. Detailed planning plagues the days leading up to our planned departure. Food is the subject. We’re sharing a house with two other couples. Those four are a decade plus older than us. We all live under food restrictions. No this and that. I now have my own list. They all want to cook in the rented home. That’s apparently part of their vacation ethos: “Let’s go away and cook.”
Each couple is to provide dinner one night. We’re on our own for breakfast and lunch. My wife and I have a surprise dessert planned, a vegan fondue smorgasbord.
As I sat reading news and sipping my coffee, my wife said from her part of the office, “We don’t need to worry about him. He’s golfing today.”
“Not true,” I answered. “Thanks to modern technology, he can text something or call someone and launch a new round of craziness.”
Although we never said his name, we’re talking about the human wrecking ball named Trump, who is also known as TACO. My wife and I share some laughs over FAFO stories, like the Trump Burger guy who ICE picked up and plans to deport, Roland Mehrez Beainy. Beainy responds to the claims against him, “Ninety percent of the shit they’re saying is not true.” Well, that’s probaby so. This is the TACO regime. They’re addicted to lying, just their leader, TACO himself.
Shifting tones, my wife and I are angry about reports of how big tech is helping the TACO Regime. Apple’s investments, and Tim Cook’s gold offering to Trump sicken us. Amazon Web Services gave Trump a billion dollar discount. Gag, groan. Google slashed cloud services for the TACO Regime. OpenAI is giving Trump’s agencies access for $1 per year. Ordinarily, I’d think, look how great this is, with these companies helping the United States. But they’re not helping the U.S. Nothing Trump does helps the U.S. It’s all about him. And these companies are bribing him to stay on his good side.
Today’s music is “Pride and Joy”. This is a 1983 rock blues offering by Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble. My wife and I are both fans of SRV & DT, and we enjoy this song. But I don’t understand any segue that leads from what I dreamed, thought, or observed that led The Neurons to pull this one out and slot it into the morning mental music stream. It’s just one of those brain things, I guess.
Coffee has been sucked up. Its off to the races. Hope grace and peace finds and keeps you. Cheers
As I embrace the new year and set out on 2024, I face the same question as my ancestors: is someone smoking skunk weed, or is that a skunk that I smell?
First was a dream about my feces. Yes, a little disgusting. Yet, intriguing. Probably only to me.
I’d completed a bowel movement in the dream. Then spoke to my wife — who was in the kitchen, cooking in this dream — saying, “Hey, look how my feces came out to the left.” She looked but didn’t comment. I continued, “And it’s sticking to the side of the toilet in the bowl.”
Which it was. She and I were able to see it like that because the toilet wasn’t in a bathroom. No; just sitting in the room which was part of the living room/dining room combo. No walls around it. No sinks or tubs. Then I was like, why is the commode like that? There was no cistern, no seat. Just the throat and bowl, leaving me to go, huh. Also, I wondered, why didn’t the feces flush away?
Then…went through the exact same sequence again. Like my brain was looping the dream on repeat.
But then…I began it again, then realized, wait, didn’t I already point this out to her? Yes, I had, I was sure. For it to happen once was bizarre, twice was disturbing, but three times was mystifying. I went over and inspected the toilet closer and noted that it was beside a hallway with steps leading down the front door. Dream end.
Next, though, it got a little weirder. I’d awakened at 4:15. Got up to pee. Was suddenly shocked by recollection of another dream.
I’d gone to sleep thinking about the nasty skunk smell, wishing the skunks would go away. In the dream, I’d gotten out of bed and walked through the house bellowing, “BE GONE.” As I did that, I was thrusting out my hands. Which pushed out energy waves that purged the house.
The dream had been so strong and real that what startled me was the thought, how did I get back to be?
Enough about dreams. There were at least two others recalled but I need to move on to other things.
As a side note, having WordPress issues today. Like, had to start over on this post because WP wouldn’t let me put in a title. Then, it added a line which will not go away.
Season’s greetings to you, my fellow autumnites. Today is Skunkday, October 24 2021.
Yes, Skunkday, where everything is coming up skunky this morning. Sometime about 2:43 AM, a massive skunk front swept through the house. It was Phase III of the Night of Nature. Phase I was furious winds beating up the house and trees. Wind died. The second assault began: heavy rain. Didn’t mind it. Then Phase III: the skunk assault.
Don’t know what transpired. Dawn at 7:34 AM brought no evidence for this amateur sleuth. No wind damage; just nose damage. Woof. The air purifier is on. Some windows open on the non-skunk side. We’ll see if the air is fresh by sunset at 6:15 PM.
More rain is expected today. Temperatures remain in the mellow zone — low, 42 F, high of 60. Winds have calmed again but we’re being warned that the bombogenesis that’s churning storms out off the coast will be sending more our way. BTW, I love that word, bombogenesis. I think whoever came up with it was probably stoned or tipsy. Sounds like a word my friends and I would come over cups of wine or mugs of beer.
No songs in the morning mental music stream this AM. Made coffee. No song. Fed the cats. No song. Figure that between my dreams — it was a heavy dream night — and the skunk and weather, my brain was too full to register music. But then, there, thinking my head is heavy with dreams brings up Collective Soul playing “Heavy” from 1999. Which is a relief. Thought my mental Alexa had gone on the fritz.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, like when the skunks battle, and get the vax and boosters when you can. Here’s the music. I’m going back to my coffee. Cheers
We call this stormy Tuesday but Monday’s just as bad. We also call it September 28, 2021. With dark, dramatic lighting, we call it, “The Final Tuesday”. It’s here for you, and it’s not about basketball.
Rained part of the night. Trailed off into a lazy gray sunrise at 7:04 AM. Sunset is due at 6:58 PM. Chilly. Had the heat come on this morning. Low was 42 F. Expect a high of 66 F. It is fall. Time for fall treats. Pumpkin pie.
A skunk fight interrupted our deep sleep. When I say a fight, t’weren’t any sounds associated with it. Just an intense smell. Like a dirty dozen pack of skunks entered the house and let loose on us. The air purifier was pressed into service. Fiful sleep returned after an hour plus, unusual for me, known as he-who-falls-asleep. An early telephone call interrupted it. I rolled out and into a lumbering run, wondering, “Who is it, what is it,” etc. Turned out to be the solar system installer. New inverter has arrived. Can he send his team over with it this afternoon?
I returned to bed to suck up more zzzs. But my thinking had conjured a Macklemore & Ryan song into my head. “Can’t Hold Us”. 2011. Spun up from these second-stanza lyrics:
Return of the Mack, get up! What it is, what it does, what it is, what it isn’t. Looking for a better way to get up out of bed Instead of getting on the Internet and checking a new hit me.
Admittedly, I know these lyrics mostly because I’ve looked them up after querying myself, “What are they saying?” Macklemore and Lewis rap so fast. Common among rappers, though. It’s all about quick speech. Quick minds. I’m just too slow. Ray Dalton’s singing is a welcome break on the song for me.
It’s fascinating how you become adjusted to circumstances like smells. I’d been up for a few hours. Thought, oh, good, the skunk odor has dissipated. Then I went outside to experience the world. When I returned inside, the skunk’s smell lanced through me, fresh and sharp. Windows were opened. Furnace turned off. Purifier turned on.
Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax. Enjoy the music. Have more coffee. You know I am. Here’s the tune. Cheers
Besides COVID-19, the drought and the threat of wildfires, we’re wondering about how the crazy worms will affect us.
I’m also concerned that I’m not cheugy.
Well, not that concerned.
I’ve been accepted by Medicare. As a military retiree of a certain era, I’m covered by Tricare. Tricare requires me to get Medicare A and B when I turn 65. That happens in July. I applied when I became eligible. A few days later, I was accepted. Meanwhile, I receive phone calls, emails, and snail mail from individuals and companies offering to help me navigate making my Medicare choices. It’s another industry. Everything becomes an industry, and as you reach certain milestones, they make you aware of it. It used to be that my junk mail was all about buying a new car, shopping for clothes, or taking vacations. Now it’s about hearing aids, funeral services, Medicare, reverse mortgages, and Viagra.
Of course, there’s a few new industries afflicting all of us who own a home or car. We receive regular phone calls about our car and home warranties. In our house, we don’t answer the phone unless we recognize the number. The other industry that’s aggressively chasing us is insurance against our water pipes bursting in our yard. A WaPo article says, in essence, yeah, it’s another scam.
I think one of my cats has short-term memory issues. Whenever Boo encounters our other cats, Papi and Tucker, he reacts like, “OMG, who the hell are you?”
To mitigate the fire threat in our town,a ‘firewise’ program has been established. Basically, don’t use any bark mulch on the ground. Don’t grow any flammable plants within five feet of the house. Store wood products that you might have at east thirty feet from the house. Trim back all branches so they’re not touching the house or close enough for flames to leap from the tree to the roof. Get rid of wooden decks, wooden fences, conifers and blackberries. Walking around Ashland, I can see that the program has made little progress. We were affected by a fire last year. There were actually three fires on the same very windy day. All three were started by individuals. The firewise program can’t address the wind or deliberate fires.
They also tell us to keep your plants watered so they don’t dry out and become fuel, but we’re in an extreme drought, so hey, there’s little water to water plants. The only option appears to be to pull out all your plants except those of a desert variety and put small stones or pebbles in your yard to help reduce moisture. Of course, I’m also exploring polymers that are supposed to help the soil retain moisture.
Delivering decorative bark (or mulch) had become a growing industry. Go to any hardware store’s garden area and there’s bags and bags of variations. Blower trucks will load up and come to your house and spread it for you with a giant reverse vacuum cleaner. Now, I suspect a new industry, to vacuum it all back up, will begin taking root.
I thought that killer bees and murder hornets were bad. Now we can add crazy worms to the list of things nature has devised to make the world more interesting. The MSN story says, “Pick one up, and you’ll see why, as the creepy-crawly jerks, writhes and springs out of your hand. (It may even leave its tail behind, as a grim souvenir.) And now, scientists are finding the wrigglers have spread to at least 15 states across the U.S.” They resemble regular worms and are bad for the soil.
I have a crazy cat. I really don’t want crazy worms.
My wife is on her weekly coffee clatch call. Pre-COVID-19, they’d meet after exercise class every M-W-F. Their pandemic compromise is to meet every Friday after exercise class. They have a good time. Lots of laughing. I hear her now talking about her sagging breasts and my drooping scrotum. I’d told her that my sack hung in the water in the hotel toilet during our visit last week. Disgusting, right? Once you feel and know it, you can take action by not sitting all the way down. This is another reason why I prefer to stand and pee, even though I’m cursed with a forked stream. Aging. There’s always something.
Haven’t smelled any skunk for over thirty days, yeah, knock on wood. I’m superstitious that way. Haven’t smelled the skunk, or sighted one, but my wife reports that she heard a thump last night for the first time in weeks. Time to block the entry (again) and see what happens. I would mount my camera but it has quit working. I’ve not been able to reset it and connect it nor receive any images from it. I don’t want to buy a new one because, waste. We’re such a throw-away consuming society. It’s frustrating.
Being cheugy doesn’t offend me. And, from what I understand, I am cheugy. Apparently emerging from TikTok, cheugy is the new ‘square’, a way of saying something is passé, or out of it. Tres important, right? I’m bothered by too many other things, like crazy worms and skunks under the house, to think about being trendy.
Got my coffee. Time to go write like crazy at least one more time. Before the crazy worms get here. We’re already full up on crazy. Even bought a warranty. It was offered on the phone.
Thinking of the post’s title brings back memories and a smile. Pre-pandemic, I used to regularly visit a coffee shop. I usually ordered mochas there. So, it was Michael’s mocha. Going with the alliteration scheme, Michal’s Mocha sometimes became Michael’s March Madness Monday Mocha. It also took place in May. Just harmless fun, banter between me and the ‘ristas.
The skunk under the house was active last night. Lots of squeaking under the master bath and then arose that smell. We admire this skunk for her persistence and tenacity. She’s like a writer, never giving up, you know?
I shut down the skunk’s activity last night — well, it was this morning, really, one twenty-five AM by all the standard references — with the iPad. Turning it on, I called up a video of David Frost interviews. Setting the iPad on the bathroom floor with the volume turned up, I plugged it in so it wouldn’t run out of juice, and closed the door. As soon as David Frost began speaking, the squeaking ceased.
Just to make home life more interesting, we now have what seems to be a gopher hole in the back yard. Investigations are ongoing. More reports forthcoming. We’re a no-kill household, so I’ll probably be turning to sonic stakes to drive them away.
I’m always fearful of calling down the muses’ wrath when I mention that writing is going well, that I’m enjoying the process and entertaining myself with what I write, so I won’t mention it.
I really enjoyed the 60Minutes interview with Colson Whitehead that aired Sunday. First novel rejected twenty-five times and never published. He writes for himself but hopes that one person will identify with and like what he writes, and maybe one will become ten, etc. That’s me paraphrasing, based on what I heard, and perhaps what I wanted to take away from his outlook. He’s won two Pulitzer Prizes, which, great, congratulations to him. More importantly, those two books are in the house in my reading pile. My wife read both and recommend them to me. I seriously trust and respect her judgment in these matters. So, I’ll put those books higher on the pile.
The reading pile is always growing, it seems. Books get recommended or passed on. Reviews are read and chords are struck. Friends publish new books and must be read. A new favorite author is discovered and other works are hunted down for reading. Then, there’s the non-fiction side. Reading is a constant requirement. I’m fortunate to have the time to indulge myself.
I was reading in the living room yesterday afternoon. The book at hand was Countdown City by Ben Winters. It’s a quick, engaging noir adventure. Sunshine bubbled in over my shoulders through the blinds. Sitting, listening, in a pause from reading, I heard no electronics running. No lights were on. The furnace and refrigerator were silent. Radios and television were off, though clocks are running. The home weather station was running, and so was the net and laptops and the associated equipment. But none of these things made sounds. I enjoyed the sunny stillness.
Thinking of clocks…four ‘clocks’ are in the house. Two are in the kitchen, in the microwave and range. Another is in the bedroom. The fourth is a battery operated clock in the snug. But then, we wear Fitbits, which offer us the time. So do the phones, the thermostat, and laptops, printer, and tablets. We track time everywhere.
I’m fussy about synchronizing the clocks, too. I think, or at least, pretend, that it harkens back to my military career. Being synchronized to the second was important to us in that life.
Also to keep life interesting — because these are such boring, tedious times — credit card fraud struck us. I was reviewing my credit card billing last week. It’s a weekly habit for me to go online and review all the finances, a time-killing activity to fill space when I’m putting off doing something else. It just takes a few minutes. Well, lo’, there was a small charge that I didn’t recognize. After verifying it didn’t belong to my wife, I challenged it with the company. They responded by cancelling that card and sending me a new one. However, they didn’t tell me that they were doing that. First I know of it was when the credit card was rejected. That spun me up fast. Suspecting it was related to the fraud that I reported, I checked into the account to look for notice that such is what happened. No notice. A chat with an agent was required to verify cause and effect. It would have been nice to be warned or notified that they’d done this, right? Irritating customer service policy, to say the least.
We have only two credit card accounts. Each is used for certain activities, to help limit exposure. That meant, though, that we are down one credit card. Momentarily, yes, but it’s a domino effect. Emails arrive, hey, your card was rejected, what up? No idea when the new card will arrive so some activities are on stuck in a queue. Whereas I had reduced checking the mail to once a week in general, sometimes twice in one week, I’ll now be going to the mailbox daily.
Also, I knew that credit card information. I could rattle off the number, expiration date, and security code without hesitation. Now I’m forced to learn a new number and particulars. Yeah, I like whining, don’t I?
Got my coffee. Ready to write like crazy at least one more time.
It was Valentine’s Day, ten PM. The blinds were down. Thumping came from beside the house. Squeaking ensued. Definitely an animal noise. I turned. Outside lights detected motion and lit the area.
I pulled the blinds up. The squeaking came from a skunk, our skunk, as we call her. Haven’t formally named her yet but we know her by her tail, which looks like a well-used white toilet brush.
Furious squeaking kept going. She was jumping and darting briskly around. I zipped into the other room to bring my wife to the spectacle. Not much was on television and I’d just finished reading my book.
“What’s she doing?” my wife asked.
“I think she’s fighting with something.”
“I think she has a mouse.”
The skunk jumped back, leaped to one side, and twirled. “I don’t see a mouse. I think she’s fighting with something else.”
Our skunk turned and rushed away. There was no mouse. As we stood to consider what we’ve seen, another skunk darted out from under the house. Bigger than our skunk, I’d seen ‘him’ before. “Look.” I pointed him out. “I think she was fighting him. They sometimes fight.”
My wife was nodding. “Yes. I read that females will reject males and sometimes spray them in a defensive action.”
“So he came a-callin’…”
“And she said, no thank you.” The skunk disappeared. The lights went off. My wife turned away. “I think she doesn’t want him because she’s in love with Boo.” Boo is our big black cat with a single white star on his chest.
I remained doubtful. I began lowering the blind. The light appeared. ‘He’ appeared. He looked up at me.
I nodded down at him. “Tough luck, brother. Can you go somewhere else?”
He scurried off into the night. The light went off. I finished lowering the blind on the theater and began wondering what I was going to watch on the telly.
Michael Seidel, writer 