Monday, March 11, 2019

And here I sit, the first Monday of Daylight Savings Time, adjusting to the great leap ahead.

It’s one hour, AmeliaJake, why are you having such a problem with one hour? Well, I don’t know; I guess it has become a ritual – gripe about being on DST between March all the way to early November. It is almost a catechism for me, older than, but probably not as heartfelt as my anti-Joe Biden roll of the eyes. Ironic, one complaint is about Fast Time and the other about Slow Joe.

It is an overcast Monday, the sky such a light, light grey that it appears white. After staring out my window at it with a focused eye, I really have to say it is white, maybe a dingy off-white, but still white. If it were a Christmas light strand, the bulbs would not be “warm” white, they would be that ice white that can tempt you in the store as sparkling icicles, but in the house is not at all comforting or cheery. It is more like having a huge spotlight in the room, and sometimes you feel like the deer in its beam.

There was no need for that paragraph, only to serve as witness that the situation was observed. In other words, were it a forest out my window and a tree had fallen, I would have heard it.

People talk about the moments in life; I think they are probably referring to several consecutive moments. One actual moment would be like an individual “pop” of a popcorn bag in the microwave. Then again, encapsulating a moment of time into a memory gives it more time, so to speak. Lengthens it. If you often revisit that memory, does that moment become close to a forever? Perhaps.

This is rambling; it is what my mind does all day long. Considering I dreamed last night of a chaotic attempt to gather things together for a train ride to Paris – figure that one out, considering the ocean, – rambling might be what my mind does ALL THE TIME.

Yes, I used capital letters –  not shouting, just struck by the idea. All the time. Now would that be Fast Time? See? I’m already rambling on.

Now, I’m going to bend my fingers into fists . . . so hop off the site quickly before I type again.

Woodchuck chucking

I have some wood that needs burning up before the onset of warm weather. I assume it has a need to fulfill its destiny – flame and ashes and smoke. I will enjoy sitting near the hearth reading or watching a video on the VCR. You know, one of the goodies from when they first started turning old movies into video tapes.

To get that wood from pile to fireplace entails me building up my strength by going out for 15 to 20 minutes, climbing on the woodpile and chucking it over to where it can be picked up and transported in. I am a woodchucker and maybe I will be able to answer how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck were a woodchucker. Or, something like that.

Himalayan adventure

I really like soap, well the aftereffects of using it. Being clean and smelling fresh is invigorating.  This needs a caveat, however, where I am concerned: I do not care for sweetly perfumed soaps; I like the outdoorsy sharpness of a woodsy evergreen.

Walking down the body wash aisle, I spied some opaque light green stuff and read that it was Himalayan Salt. Okay, I had earlier walked by a Himalayan lamp and actually used Himalayan salt for seasoning, so I really was not inclined to resist. I bought two bottles. When I used it, I liked it.

I felt invigorated as if I had made the summit at Everest or taken on an energetic Sherpa persona. I suspect that feeling imbued by Sherpa spirit is not the first thing that pops into other users’ heads. I am aware this leans toward my being eccentric; well, that’s nothing new to me.

Is it news to you?

Word Press is driving me crazy

So, somehow I got back to the adding post screen that I like. I suppose it is not modern or state of the art, but, darn it, just because you can change something doesn’t mean you should. This is not decades ago with women waiting to find out where their hemline is supposed to be to be “in style.”

Frankly, all these changes seem equivalent to someone deciding in the past to change the lines on notebook paper to run vertically or be wavy.

Now, before anyone thinks that I am against change, please keep your thoughts sensible. I certainly appreciate the word processor over the typewriter and I truly love the internet and not having to know what library has what and then what the hours are. It is this little stuff that programmers feel they have to fool around with that irritates me. I would be happy if they would just put their new format ideas in a box and I could browse through them.

I did not like opening my add a post page to see that I was “BLOCKING.” All the options that have always been at the top of the writing area were GONE. I only found my way back to this format by clicking on an option in a leap of faith. For all I know, I could have wound up with the Chinese alphabet before me.

What is really scary is that I am supposed to be “not stupid” and even a wee bit above average. I almost suspect that somewhere really savvy computer people are looking right through the screen at me and laughing. If that is so, I need an emoticon for STICKING OUT TONGUE.

 

I thought I was back

In mid-February I decided to come back to the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse after a hiatus of a combination of a number of things, perhaps one being the fact that I had and continue to have trouble with turning 70, not to mention that 71 is next.

However, I was startled in my state of self-pity by the splash of a pail of Joe Biden cold water on my face. I thought it was time to do the (rough paraphrasing) I have been bloodied, but I am not slain poetic reference cited by then Governor Reagan in 1976.

So I was limbering up my fingers when I began to think, Hmmm, I believe my tummy is a bit unsettled. It was a slow process taking about a day to realize that whatever was queasying up my stomach had remained in place until – in a minute’s time, it was filling half of a large Dutch Oven I had quickly grabbed. And, of course, there was diarrhea . . . and joint pain and aches.

I caved, CAVED. After pneumonia, I sank into a mixture of stomach flu and Woe is Me and Nothing will ever be all right again. The stomach cramping is going away after about a week now and I wondered if I should try again or sink into a world of Netflix, Hulu and dvd rental movies.

I am not noble and was seriously wavering and I looked at a movie from Family Video my grandson had rented. It was titled Insidious. I thought it might be a spy movie and looked up the plot. I found this: A family looks to prevent evil spirits from trapping their comatose child in a realm called The Further.

Well, okay, I decided to once more unlock the cafe doors. Here I can ramble around with thoughts, theories, opinions and pure nonsense. I am protected by the fact that almost no one sees or reads this site. If in 30 to 40 years, someone finds something that has become politically incorrect, well, I’ll be dead. And since I will never have a statue of me in an airport named for me, I guess that won’t even rattle my ghost’s shackles.