Tag: winter

Saturda’s Theme Music

Sunshine was trying to coax me out of bed. The cat’s complaints were urging me to move faster. “Let me do some things and then I’ll feed you,” I told the cat. He went with me into the bathroom to supervise proceedings. It’s Saturda, April 5, 2025, a day of progressive action in the United States. My wife is jaded about it. “It won’t do much in this area. They’ll give it twenty seconds on the news and then talk for a couple minutes about a new restaurant opening.”

Warm weather for it. 49 F now, thin wedding-veil clouds coyly secret most of the sun’s issue away. But promises have been put forward. Today will be mostly sunny, high in the upper 60s. May even kiss seventy.

“We need to take advantage of this weather,” I say. For those who need a translator, that means I will wash the cars, cut grass, weed, etc. After the warming weather and copious rain, it’s needed. “Supposed to be warm but start raining again tomorrow. Temperatures are going to drop on Monday.” I sound like an expert but I’m just repeating what I read.

My wife replies, “I ordered a new rug for the foyer yesterday.”

I nod. “I know.” We’d measured the space together. The old foyer rug has populated our existence since 1985. It’s served us well. Like us, it’s aged. Its vibrant green and pristine design has faded. Its edges have frayed. Once it was in perfect condition. Chic. Then it was shabby chic. Now it’s just getting shabby.

I relate. I’m grateful that it’s a weekend. Less news comes out on the weekend. But the bridal-veil clouds have thickened. Sunshine has waned.

The cat wants out. I tell him to be safe as I let him into the backyard. Like a child, the orange boy snaps back, “Meow.”

“I know,” I reply, “but I’ve seen you out there. Be careful. Don’t let anything get you.”

He, of course, is very happy with the warm, windless weather. Struting out flying his orange striped cream tail high, he inspires The Neurons with music.

“Stray Cat Strug” by the Stray Cats begins playing in the morning mental music stream. The song stays alive as coffee and breakfast are procured and consumed, etc. I’ve no choice but to post it and chase it from my head.

The cat’s sunshine has faded. He looks forlorn. I know that feeling.

Hope your day works out for you. I’ll do my best and might half succeed. Depends upon how much coffee I drink, I think. And the weather. Cheers

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Twosda’s Theme Music

Not a good night of sleep to end March of 2025 for me. Twosda, April 1, 2025, has begun with overnight lows in the bottom of the 30s F. 38 F now. Highs will hit the 40s. Squirmy grey clouds shoulder down onto the mountains and separate into misty tendrils. Rain falls. Blue sky is off limits. A skittish sun reassures us it’s daytime.

Papi disliked the rain. He was in and out a billion and seven times between 6 and 8 AM. Fed up by the stale routine, I lectured him. “You’re the cat who cried in and out too many times. If you go out this time, you’re staying out there.” He was mute in response but went out. Thereafte, he beat to come in every ten minutes. I finally let him in after an hour. He reproached me with a look. Nothing has been learned here.

Dreams then contributed to my sluggish state. I had a dream in three parts. The cat kept disrupting it but I kept returning to it. Now I’m on my cup of coffee, looking to it to prompt more blood flow through me.

“We could get a tushy,” my wife says. “It’s very popular.”

She’s referring to a bidet seat. She’s been off and on about this for six months. First on. She wanted one with warm water. Than off because we don’t have an electric outlet by the toilet. I suggested having one installed. She thought about that for a few weeks and then turned that down.

“Do you want a cold water one then?” I asked. That was the natural follow up.

“Let me think about it.”

So she’s back on it today. “We need to measure the toilet,” I tell her. “To ensure it fits.”

“It fits ninety percent of all toilets,” she says.

I’ve heard that before. “We need to measure and confirm it fits our toilet seat’s shape and size. What’s a skirted toilet?” I will do these things later, I tell myself. I don’t want to disturb my morning routine. It already feels wrecked.

Part of my wrecked sensation came from a foot episode. The one which has recovered from surgery. When I arose to partake of Papi’s ingress/egress routine, the foot was painful and stiff. I’d not had any issues with it. So I responded to self, “WTF?” Thoughts of what I did with the foot the previous day were pursued. Nothing meaningful was found. It feels fine now. I register it in my permanent record as another life mystery.

Tame Impala is performing “Let It Happen” in the morning mental music stream. Maybe it’s associated with the dreams. Could also be from thinking about ordering and installing the bidet seat or from pondering the crumbling United States and the GOTP and MAGA response is to it. Although The Neurons have been with me for a few years, I’m still trying to understand how they work.

“Let It Happen” came out in 2015. I didn’t remember that. Looked it up on the net. Wiki thingy’s summary says, “Let It Happen” is about “finding yourself always in this world of chaos and all this stuff going on around you and always shutting it out because you don’t want to be part of it. But at some point, you realize it takes more energy to shut it out than it does to let it happen and be a part of ‘it’.” That’s according to Kevin Parker. Parker is the Australian who wrote the song and performs it.

I think I’m seeing some glimmering of why The Neurons have it racing around my morning mental music stream.

Coffee is not helping much this morning. My bed is singing me a lullaby. But it’s April 1. No foolin’. We’re washing the bed linens. And I want to get on to things. Writing, um, showering and dressing. I also have a bidet to order.

Hope your day is going better. Cheers

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Munda’s Wandering Thoughts

It feels wintry cold in the coffee shop. They don’t heat the place much. I’m wearing a fleece piece. I usually wear something like that or a sweatshirt here. While they don’t heat the place in the winter, they ice it in the summer. I’m told all of this is for the workers behind the counter. I accept that. Today it feels like gloves are appropriate.

Winter’s influence is edging up. Snow covers the northern ridges down to about thirty-five hundred feet. Reports of snow falling in other places percolate around the net. It’s 42 here and light rain is falling.

I feel like I’m ready to stop writing. Go home, get warm, read a book and eat lunch. I typed and edited for several hours. Made substantial progress.

At least, that’s what I’m pitching to myself. Writer, beware.

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Munda’s Theme Music

Winter is still taking a knife to spring. You feel it in the air.

“It’s cold,” my wife says.

“I know. Thirty-nine degrees.”

“Isn’t April tomorrow?”

I confirm that my Fitbit tells me that it’s March 31, 2025. “This is Ashlandia. What’s that have to do with it?”

My wife stares at the window. “I don’t see any blue sky.”

I look out with her. “It’s raining. Happy Monday.”

She’s off to her exercise class. I am alone in the house. I’ve not been alone in the house for almost three weeks. Not like that will cause me to run around naked. I do that even if she’s here. “You’re a frustrated nudist,” she tells me.

“Maybe.”

It’s supposed to be 50 degrees as a high today. Probably will make that but will feel like 48. Even with the house to my self, I putter through the standard processes. Coffee, exercise, and food is still needed. The cat’s routine is focused on me so that didn’t change.

Papi isn’t pleased with the weather, either. The wind has died. That’s a plus in the cat’s mind. When the wind is blowin’ hard, he vacillates about where to go and what to do. Without the wind, he’s willing to risk the rain for a chance of sunshine. When that doesn’t appear, he sounds the alarm to get back into the house. Then we start again.

I found him sitting on the entry way bench yesterday. That was once Tucker’s domain. The bench is located at the intersection between the main hall, foyer, and kitchen. The big black and white cat loved being up front where he could observe everything going on and greet visitors.

“I guess you are the number one cat,” I told Papi. Apparently my tone annoyed him. He jumped down and marched into the living room to groom.

I have the Young Rascals’ jumping cover of “Good Lovin'” in my morning mental music stream. The Neurons who put it there are mum why. Coming out in 1966, it played on the ten-year-old me’s radios all the time, it felt. I love the organ work. The group later shortened their name to the Rascals. The ‘young’ addition to the band’s name was to avoid conflict with the Harmonica Rascals. There was probably a group called the Guitar Rascals that didn’t make it. Funny, but ‘rascals’ is another of those words with an old-fashioned feel and has faded from use.

Interesting outfits on the band in the video. They appear to be wearing compression stockings like the ones I wear. Disappointing sound quality, though.

I have supped with coffee again and now I’m on my way. Hope your day is worthy of your attention. Cheers

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Sunda’s Theme Music

The pinks and white blossoms in my view offset the clouds’ wind and wuthering suggestions. Nothing can unburdened the wind’s effect. Lowing through the sky, it randomly shakes bushes and trees, giving an impression that one big creature is chasing a herd of other creatures through the foliage. I’m thinking, a T-Rex is after a swarm of smaller things and the smaller things are frantically ripping away.

This is Sunda, March 30, 2025. Just one more day of March after this, then April arrives to try to lift our spirits in ‘Merica.

I’ve again done the tango with my cat to give him his medicine. Knowing when it’s time to be administered, he alertly avoids me and asks for permission to leave the house. Usually takes five minutes of steps and talking back and forth before the med is delivered. I try to sound cajoling and calming; he responds with disappointment and distrust. Finally done, it’s feeding time, followed by his second med. I have the system down for the second one, amlodipine. It’s a powder. I mix it in with chumley and hot water. Then out the door he goes.

And back in, because wind. Papi the ginger blade has no patience for wind. I’ve been out there, though, and agree with his assessment, as that wind carries some winter on it. Now Papi is visiting me, paws on my leg as I sit here, requesting that I pet him. I take time out of typing and reading to do that, sipping coffee as he closes his eyes and purrs. Then, enough! He trots away.

Had a chuckle this morning. I was alone, which gave it a little crazy spin: The Observer view on JD Vance: spurned in Greenland and humiliated at home, the vice-president should resign. Right. Not holding my breath on that.

Rain tats awoke me from a swell dream today. A woman visited me to return my manuscript to me. After foisting a warm hug on me, she told me that she’d read it, and it thrilled her. Thrilled me to hear her say that. As we talk, the woman is gently stroking my arm or patting my shoulder. Her two teenage daughters were with her. She turned to leave and told her daughters to go ahead, she’d catch up. The girls went out the front door. Then the woman hugged me again and kissed me. She suggested she was interested in getting more intimate right then and there. I rejected her; she insisted and kissed me again. I was kind of, why not? But her daughters, I added. She smiled; “They won’t care.” Well…okay…

The little monkeys I call The Neurons kicked consciousness off with Laura Brannigan singing her cover of “Self Control” in my morning mental music stream.

You take my self, you take my self control
You got me livin’ only for the night
Before the morning comes, the story’s told
You take my self, you take my self control

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Oh, they’re funny. The song came out in 1984 and was a hit for Brannigan. She passed away just twenty years later, only 52. I realize in retrospect that the woman in my dream looked much like Brannigan.

Papi is asleep in his malabar chair. Coffee is selling its magic in my system. The wind is singing like a lonely cat. Hope you have a good one, wherever you are. Here we go. Cheers

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Wenzda’s Theme Music

I’m sneezing this morning. Blowing my nose. Allergies, I think. Don’t try to tell me otherwise. Not yet. I’m awaiting other symptoms.

Our stretch of early spring sunshine is petering away. Clouds have already gathered to enjoy it, blocking blue sky views. Having eaten last night, my wife is up early, interrupting my ebb and flow. She’s watching video after video. Most are humorous. I treat it like I’m in the coffee shop and some idiot is watching their phone or playing a game or talking VERY LOUDLY ON THE TELEPHONE. I’m thinking about how to give the cat his blood pressure meds. He’s onto hiding it in a tube of Churri. I’ve had to double the Churri to get him to eat it. My wife mistakenly calls Churri chumley, so chumley is now its official household name.

This is Wenzda, March 26, 2025. It’s already 59 F and will reach 73 F. But winds are due starting at 11 AM. Some kind of storm is coming. Lightning, winds, rain, but most of that is further up north. We’re expecting some stuff, mostly wind and lower temperatures.

The Trusk Regime and GOTP inspired The Neurons’ song choice today. Donald Trump is doing a new dance called the Tariff Shuffle. ‘We’re gonna tariff the shit out of everybody. Starting today! No, tomorrow! Next week! No, today!’ I think he’s addicted to getting attention out of being like a guy on the corner shouting about the end of the world and his lost shoe.

Besides the Tariff Shuffle, we have a security leak and a bunch of disclaiming and denying that anything went wrong, along with classic blamethemessengeritis. That tactic was a major beltway flop.

Next up, we have judges and courts ruling against the Trusk Regime. They wail like a teething infant dropping its pacifier. The ol’ self-delared “Law & Order” party as personified by ‘good guy’ Mike Johnson thinks they should do away with judges and courts who rule against them. You know, as it’s put forth in the U.S. Constitution. As I understand it, the judicial branch was set up specifically as a check on the other two branches. So Johnson is proposing to undermine the Constitution by eliminating a check.

With that host of ideas bubbling in my grey matter, The Neurons brought out a song titled “Unbelieveable”. EMF wrote and performed the song, releasing it for public consumption in 1990. The main thing about it is the repeating refrain (yeah, I’m being redundant there, blame it on a lack of coffee), “The things you say. You’re unbelievable.” Which is how I often react to Trusk Regime news. As in, Trump executive order targets Chicago-based law firm Jenner & Block. Unbelievable.

Papi has been given his meds. I managed to use just one chumley, mixing it well and adding warm water. He lapped it up. I won today. On to coffee. It’s my reward.

Cheers

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Twosda’s Theme Music

The cat wanted out. 3:20 AM, according to my sleep-blurred vision. Following his victory prance to the door, I gave him the usual admonitions about being safe, smart, staying close, and not letting anything get him. He meowed back with a little defiance, as if to say, “Gosh, I know! You tell me this a million times a day.”

A while later, sun was breaking in through the window. I cowered from it like a vampire. But it wasn’t the sun calling me: the cat wanted back in. 6:32. He came in, rushing to his kibble bowl like a starving maniac. I stumble-walk back to bed.

“Meow,” he said shortly, batting blinds. I want out.

“No,” I answered. “Not gonna happen.”

Of course it happened.

This is Twosda, March 25, 2025. The sun is glowing hard, heating an endless blue sky. Sensing a change in the air, the cat is eager to take advantage of it. “Sure,” I sleep-spoke to him. “You slept all day yesterday. I saw you, curled up in the malabar chair.”

“Meow,” the cat answered. “Out.”

It’s already 54 F. I don’t know what it feels like. I feel like I’d like more sleep. Supposed to get to 78 F today. Huzzah. Yawn. Seriously, I mean, huzzah, but I gotta get some coffee in me before I can give it the enthusiasm it deserves.

I’m suspicious of the weather. This is Oregon. Snow still covers some mountain tops, eyeing us in the valley. I suspect winter is gonna try to slip another storm over us. It’s just like weather to lure us with warm temperatures and friendly skins and then spring out at us like a demented drunk uncle and shout, “Got you.” And then laugh like they’re crazy.

Today’s morning mental music stream Neurons are offering The Friends of Distinction with “Going In Circles”. The gentle soulful 1969 song is in there because The Neurons think it’s funny about how the cat has me getting up to let him in and out over and over again. When it’s warmer, the pet door will be put back into place so he can leave and enter as he wants. But that temperature threshold hasn’t been achieved yet.

In recent news items, Donald Trump was caught lying. Trump said he didn’t sign controversial proclamation. The Federal Register shows one with his signature. Isn’t this rich from the administration which tried to say that President Biden’s pardons weren’t real because, signature. Autosigning thingy. “Did he know what he was signing?” they asked. Think they confused which person doesn’t know what they’re saying. Really, we know that Trump knew what he was signing; he just lied about it because it was giving him negative heat. Trump melts and lies under that kind of heat, sure as the sun’s motion.

Also, measles outbreaks are spreading. It’s mostly among the unvaccinated. You know, intelligent people, learning from what’s happening, would develop and administer vaccines to stop that. But we’re dealing with a new level of denial and irrational thinking with the Trusk Regime and the MAGAts who installed them.

Also, DOGE’s actions don’t seem to be going well with the public. So Republicans are being encouraged to lie about it. Here’s the deets. GOP begs senators to sing DOGE’s praises as support flounders

Gotta go. Cat wants in. Coffee, give me strength. Cheers

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Sunda’s Theme Music

It’s a bleak and featureless Sunda morning. Like winter and spring both decided not to show up. The sun complained, “If you guys aren’t in, I’m not either.”

The gray feels like a weight pressing down. I wonder what the weather was like when Robbie Robertson wrote “The Weight” for The Band.

It’s three quarters through March, 22 of 2025. 46 F now, the weather ‘they’ are trying to sell me on mostly sunny skies and a high of 66 F. I’ve gone past skeptical about that. Then I read that we’re hitting the seventies for Monday through Wednesday here. My heart harbors doubt. Do they mean the 1970s? With Trump still in office, there’s a reasonable question about the reference.

Papi the ginger blade is energetic today. I make a critical mistake. After feeding him breakfast, I give him his blood pressure medicine in some Churro. He loves that stuff and this is our regular process. But stupid me, I think, I’ll do two things at once. Give him his BP med in the Churro and while he’s eating that, I’ll rub his thyroid medication in his ear. That last is something that must be done twice a day.

Except my nose is a little snoggy. I hear myself breathing through it. In and out like a wheezy, broken machine. Were it a machine, I’d think, I need to replace that thing. It’s beyond fixing.

Doing Papi’s morning meds is not a favorite activity for me. Tucker was on the same regimen. He lasted a year. Papi began it the same month when Tucker passed. Lot of burdensome memories organized in this task.

I bend down to administer the thyroid med. Papi hears that breathing. Thinking a bear or something must be after him, he hits reverse like he’s a Corvette in a police chase and speeds through my legs. I bend over double, trying to grab him while saying, “No, stay there, let me do this, please, Papi. Papi..”

He darts away. I get the gooey white medicine on me. That’s toxic to humans. Cursing, I take off the used finger cap, dump it, and wash off my hand.

Papi has settled by the back door. He did not eat his Churri with his heart medicine. He’s eyeing me the way a quarterback is looking at a defensive end just before the ball is snapped. He is thinking, “Is he coming after me? How do I get away?”

I carry out the Churri bowl like a peace offering. Papi gallops up, all purrs, and bends his head to the task. I back away to give him space.

Papi takes two licks of his Churri and speeds off again. WTF? The Neurons ask. There is no answer.

Okay, I’ll go to the other med. We’re on the clock. This stuff is s’posed to be given every twelve hours. I don a new little finger cap. Put new med on it. Head for Papi.

“Mrr,” Papi says. Watching me, we begin a ballet. I move forward. He moves right. I go right. He backs up and heads left, then turns and prances around the coffee table, saying, “Mrr,” as he does. He looks yearningly at the back door. He wants out. I’ll try to trick him. Heading to the door, I unlock it. Opens it. Papi darts up and skids to a halt. “Mrr.” He knows this trick. Smarter than me, he doesn’t budge when I open the door and brightly declare, “Do you want to go out?”

Papi shies back into the room. I close the door. Verbally cajoling him has worked in the past. That’s the past. Papi’s not having it this morning. He keeps circling me, telling me, “Mrr.” I keep explaining that he knows that I need to give him this med. It’s not that bad. We do it everyday.

He finally decides, okay, here I came. Purring, he edges up to my leg. I slowly bend. Holding gently onto his back, I thank him for indulging me and gently rub the medicine into his inner ear.

Released, he bolts to the back door and releases a plaintive cry. I get what he’s saying. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Time to go out.” I open the door. He’s like a fast wind blowing out. Halfway across the patio, tail up, he turns around, sits, and stares at me. I can’t read that expression. Telling him the usual precautions whenever he’s out, I close the door. Whole thing has taken thirty minutes. I feel like it’s been ninety, ninety five minutes. Back in the office, I take a long gulp of cooling coffee.

Here’s The Weight by The Band. If you read this far, you know why it’s in my morning mental music stream.

I type up this post. Papi comes back in. I set the Churri with his meds down in a different room. He eats it up.

I come back into the office and set. Papi joins me and purrs as I scratch his head and chin.

I need more coffee. Cheers

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Saturda’s Theme Music

It’s rainy spring weather and things are blooming in Ashlandia. Temperatures are below average for March 22 in 2025. Right now, we’re anchored to 45 F under a cloudy duvet. Saturda’s high is projected to be ten degrees higher. Don’t even think winter has ended. This is definitely sprinter. I can recall several years here when blooming flowers are surrounded by snow on Easter morning.

Butter Butt, aka Papi the ginger blade, the floof formerly known as Meep has had a busy several days. Getting ready for warming weather, he’s been exercising his exits and entrances, honing his skills to command us to let him in and out of the house, and testing the doors to ensure they open without any problems. He’s been very thorough and diligent. His routine begins around 4:30 AM and goes with few pauses until 10 AM. You gotta admire his tenacity.

Today’s theme music seems like it was destined. My wife and I ran errands and had breakfas out yesterday. When we returned to the car after eating, this song began playing. My wife commented, “This song was playing when we parked.” She was right.

That wasn’t enough, though. We went grocery shopping. Came out and got into the car. Turned it on. It was this song again.

We went home and put away the groceries. I drove off to write. When I got in the car to come on, the same song began playing. It’s little surprise that The Neurons sprang it on me in my morning mental music stream as I circulated through the morning routines. So here is Rosé and Bruno Mars with their 2024 hit, “Apt.”

It’s fun and silly, with multiple pop-cultures nods from famous songs and scenes embedded in it. Hope you enjoy it. As Rosé is a K-pop artist who is a member of Blackpink, her global success with this song is culturally and historically significant.

I’ve tumbled for coffee again, and things are already lookin’ up. Hope your day is lookin’ up as well. Here we go. Cheers

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Wenzda’s Theme Music

Sunshine tangoed in. Then clouds waltzed in, batting the sunshine out. No rain is falling but it’s still early. With a temperature of 39 F, we should be safe from snow for a few hours, though ‘they’ say it feels lie 27. S’posed to top off in the low 50s this afternoon. No word on what it’ll feel like. All this is as expected on the horn of spring as winter fades out in Ashlandia on Wenzda, March 19, 2025.

Boy, this week has been a crazy month, right? You never know what new insult Trump and his minions will levy on We The People. This time, the Trusk Regime has decided that the Code Talkers so invaluably employed during World War II were DEI hires.

“Were it not for the Navajos,” Major Howard Connor said, “the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”

Today, Erin Alberty of Axios reported that at least ten articles about the Code Talkers have disappeared from U.S. military websites. Broken URLs are now labeled “DEI,” an abbreviation for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”

That’s right. Under Trump’s ‘leadership’, the Trusk Regime and the GOTP continue to spit on the honor and bravery of the people who fought for this nation. Someone should remind Trump and his regime that if it weren’t for the Code Talkers’ help, we might all be speaking Japanese.

Trump always claims he loves the military but look what he’s doing to it. Also claims to love the Constitution, and look what he’s doing to it. Ditto the nation. Who will rid us of the pestilence called Donald Trump before our world is destroyed?

The Neurons are playing the 1982 Culture Club song, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, in the morning mental music stream. This came about because I read that in many polls, Trump voters support the Trusk Regime’s actions…until they’re personally affected. Then they’re often swearing and crying about what Trump is doing. Like the Miami Venezuelans who supported Trump during the elections.

Venezuelan migrants in South Florida say they feel betrayed by a Trump administration decision to end legal protections for hundreds of thousands of people who fled dictatorships and sought refuge in the U.S.

The move by the Trump administration is a turnabout of a long-standing U.S. policy that has extended TPS to more than a half-million Venezuelans.

Come on, man, betrayal is Trump’s middle name. So, yep, now those Venezuelan Trump supporters are hurting as fellow Venezuelans are returned to the conditions they tried to escape in their country so that they could pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit fof happiness. They stand alongside thousands of farmers, ranchers, bankers, VA employees, veterans, FBI agents, and firefighters shocked to learn that Trump doesn’t care about them. Once they voted for him, it was one and done.

So this song, “Do You Really Want to Hear Me” and its plaintive refrain, is perfect for them. I mean, it’s not like they couldn’t see what Trump did before as POTUS, as a businessman, as a husband, or as a person. He’s always been all about himself. His voters were fools to think otherwise.

Coffee is again soothing my troubled breast. I’m ready to launch one more time. Hope you have a solid, satisfying day. And awaaayyy we goooo. Cheers

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