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
Sunda’s Wandering Thoughts
I’m feeling très upbeat today. I’m not sure to what I attribute this mood. Maybe it’s just something in the stars and the moon. It could be coffee lifting my spirits, I suppose. I’ve also had very productive writing and editing sessions this week and immensely enjoy the novel in progress.
It might be sunshine. Loads of it washing through the wind waving trees. Maybe it’s just my hormones, some cycle, or due to the series of terrific dreams dropped on me while I slept.
Query: do the dreams cause the mood, or does the mood cause the dream. Feels like a chicken and egg thing.
Whatever it is, hope it stays a while. Such a terrific feeling, ya know?
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
Thirstda’s Theme Music
Disappointment is heavy in Ashlandia. A big storm was forecasted for us. It perversely excited us but then did not arrive. Perversely, people are disappointed. At least three posts on NextDoor and Facebook have people expressing their disapppointment that the storm did not come.
Well, it did a little. “I heard a thunk,” my wife says.
“Was that the rock on the front porch?” I noticed it when I came home.
She nodded. “Yes, I think the wind blew the top two rocks off the cairn. At least, I heard the thunk and locked out and saw the rocks and nothing else.”
Very circumstantial evidence. “I’ll put them back.” I must because she can’t balance them on the cairn. We don’t know why.
I’m disappointed, but not over the storm. I’d planned to weed around our hydrangea. Put it on my to-do list and everything. But she weeded. I’m happy the job is done but displeased that I wasn’t the one to do it. There are many more weeding opportunities. That’s little consolation.
Today is Thirstda, March 27 2025. Spring continues dancing with our expectations. We started out with a dispiriting cloud display. The sky was tiled dark and white. Showers fell. Now, it’s sunny and in the upper 50s F. More rain is expected. So is more sun. And warmer temperatures, along with colder temperatures.
Papi the ginger blade, commonly referenced as Butter Butt, is exhausted. Days of sunshine emboldened him to dash around like a one-year old. Now he’s sleeping like a kitten. Took up his favorite malabar chair seat in mid-morning, washed, and tucked the eyes shut.
He used the litter box for a bowel movement today. That’s unusual for him. He’s enormously fastidious about it. His scratching around was the clue. When he pees in the box, he steps in and then out. No scratching.
I told my wife about it. “This is literally the third time he’s used the litter box like that since Tucker passed,” I noted. “I think it’s because it was raining. He didn’t want to go in the rain and get his fur wet.”
The Neurons have lined up “Liar” by Three Dog Night in the morning mental music stream. Yes, this is a Trusk Regime production. Jonah Goldberg caught them in a security breach. He told them so. They spun it like he was a Democrat and a liar. Also pretended that it was nothing. No classified to see here, no sir. Then The Atlantic posted the transcripts. Hah. The leak was one thing; the attempted cover up is a mess. So, “Liar” it is.
Originally an Argent song — and you can hear their musical fingerprints all over it — Three Dog Night released their cover of “Liar” in 1971 and became another top twenty offering for the group in several nations.
Coffee has perked me up again. (Get it? Sure. You’re not slow.) Time to rock and roll. Cheers
The Writing Moment
Eighteen pages. 5070 words. This is the gist of the chapter in my book which gave me so much trouble.
The chapter is called “Reconciliation”. Consisting of eight sub sections, this part of the story swung back and forth between two points of view.
Man, was editing and revising it a challenge.
I began with reading it after finishing the previous chapters. Right away, my brain was screeching to a halt. A grimace of displeasure spread. This wasn’t working.
Okay, recognizing there’s problem is a good first step. Identifying the problem is the second step. Fixing it is the third step. Then reviewing it to confirm it works is the fourth step.
“Reconciliation” begins on page 532 of 646 manuscript pages. So a lot of the story is well underway by then. Until encountering “Reconciliation”, the editing and revising was going well. I think I owe that to my process. I write and rewrite and polish as I progress. If I’m uncertain about what happens next, I’ll drop back and read and edit until I’m ready to write the next stage. Also, this is the novel’s third official draft. So there’s already been a lot of effort in it.
“Reconciliation” was a whole different animal. The story and the flow balked and balked again. It was like a squeak that must be fixed but first I needed to locate the squeak. I went through that chapter seven times before I was satisfied that I could go on.
The chapter after that, “Camden”, 23 pages, 6400 words, was done in a day.
Yet, with all that whining, editing and revising “Reconciliation” was very satisfying. There was a problem to be fixed. Fingers crossed, that’s what I did.
Michael Seidel, writer 