Happy Birthday, America!
01/07/20 07:23
It's been bloody rainy these past few days here on the seacoast. Not so much so that I haven't been able to squeeze in a bike ride between showers so that's good. I have a slow leak in one of my tires so that needs to be fixed. I don't mind refilling the tire every day but I'm starting to mind. It's one of those things that is just unnecessary. I don't like doing unnecessary things. Did I mention that I rode 27 out of 30 days in the month of June?
Whose idea was it to put on a little music at 7 in the morning by Eric Clapton and B.B. King? Talk to me about pride and joy, B.B. It's got a nice beat to it and it might take me places I never intended to go. Man, those riffs. I think I may have a blues gene that pops up every now and then. But at 7 in the morning? I'm in a smoke and music filled room throwing back whiskey's, loving the ladies with my eyes closed, and getting lost in my thoughts as the band plays their last set while the hour hand on the neon clock on the wall turns to three. Or, is it four?
Maybe the only good thing about three straight days of rain is that I don't need to water my tomato plants. I hung a blanket out on the line some three days ago and it's still there. It reminds me of when I was a little kid and my grandmother used to collect rainwater which she would use to wash her hair. I'm hoping that the gentle and sometimes not so gentle rains we've had will do for my blanket what they did for my nana's hair back in the day.
Back in the day before acid rain came in from the Midwest during the sixties and seventies and corroded everything in sight when it fell to the ground during rainstorms. We knew a lot less about science then than we do now and that's a good thing. I'm hopeful that the blanket, while it may not smell as sweet as I remember my nana's hair once I take it down off the line, it will no doubt be softer than the day I hung it out to dry.
The only hesitation I have now has more to do now with microorganisms that may have taken up residence in the wooly matting of the blanket while it hung there as it did for those three long and rainy days. I'm channelling the neuroticisms of my darling wife now and that is precisely what she'll be focusing on when I retrieve the blanket from the clothesline and carry it back into the house. She is no doubt already giving some thought as to how she might approach that very subject with me.
What would my grandmother say about such matters? "Johnny Boy, put that mother fucking blanket in the washing machine and do it now." That might have been B.B. King's grandmother but it wasn't mine. I might have benefited from learning a few more cuss words back in the day since they were in short supply on the playground of my parochial elementary school. "It's my fucking turn to play marbles now get the fuck out of my way." I can feel the ruler and the heavy hand of the mother superior coming down on the back of my knuckles now.
Will my morning be better or worse for sitting down at this desk and writing in this here journal? I think, for the most part, I always walk away after getting down a few paragraphs feeling better and maybe even accomplished whatever that means. It helps when I have something to focus on and that is not always the case. Not being able to get thoughts out is a problem too. If you let things bottle up too long without putting them down on paper that can be a recipe for disaster. Why am I so all over the place this morning?
My iPad died last night. I was watching something and it just went dark. Just like that. Poof! Not with a whimper, not with a bang, not with this, that, or the other thing. I've been able to revive bricked iPads before so I'll be trying to do that with this one. Thankfully, I have a back-up iPad. I did not have my bricked iPad backed up so that's not a good thing. Apps are easy to restore but some other things not so much. I'm definitely one of those "hope springs eternal" when it comes to Apple products so me thinks all is not lost. And what do they say about it being the darkest just before dawn. That's where we are. That's where I am.
Can you believe it's the fourth of July already? Nancy and I were out and about yesterday and man was it busy about town. The traffic was crazy and if I had to guess by the looks of things I would say the pandemic is over and we're on to bigger and better things. Sure, people are wearing their masks and doing the best they can with the social distancing thing but they are getting on with their lives. That's a good thing. You still can't hug your grandmother but that too shall pass if he or she doesn't pass first. Not to be too cynical but the elderly still have a steep climb here before they're out of the woods.
I think I need to work a little harder at getting Nancy out of the house and back into circulation. Just because she's working from home doesn't mean that she's back in the saddle after this coronavirus thing came around. I'm doing my best to point to stats that will reassure her but her newspaper of record is the Boston Globe and, less frequently, the New York Times. That being the case, she is likely to continue in her belief that we are all going to die unless Trump and his spawn is evicted from the White House and the presidency. Yes, little darlings, the number of active cases is up BUT THE NUMBER OF DEATHS ARE DOWN! Stop reading that claptrap from those rags you surround yourself with and start living for a change!
I've noticed too that Nancy is less willing to go out on a limb these days when it comes to experiencing the seamier side of life. She started a book yesterday but put it down after reading some things that she found, well, disturbing. Maybe it was something a little too graphic or something perhaps that offended her sensibilities. It's more than just having an aversion to something which most of us simply discard with the usual flip of the fingers off the shoulder. It's almost like she can't un-see something that she's laid her eyes on and be it cringeworthy or other she is unable to process it like you and I.
I'm a big fan of anything cold case and believe you me, I'm watching those shows alone these days. I also don't particularly like to watch television one way or another but if I do I don't prefer to watch it alone so those shows will go unwatched. Maybe Nancy thinks life is too short for such things. Maybe this is the Nancy that hides under the shed (yes, I mean the shed) when Evan shows up on the scene with blood spurting from an injury to his self. That's simply her modus operandi. When Evan got his finger caught up in our garage door as a little kid Nancy was nowhere to be found when the screaming started. Momma, where you be???
When the policeman showed up at our house accompanied by the ambulance staff, I had to explain that his mother was around the back of the house and he might want to give a shout out in that direction if he was looking for her input. So, I don't know if this pandemic thing has forced her further into her shell like a little turtle or what but I'm doing my best to bring her around. Where we end up is anyone's guess but if she doesn't budge much it won't be because I didn't try.
She made some progress yesterday when she walked around the perimeter of the store we visited in Dover and looked over the displays in their garden area. I did my business inside the store wearing my mask as I am prone to do and didn't feel compelled one way or another to rush that experience as it were. I was socially distanced from like minded people inside the establishment so it was all good. I bought some chili, some American Chop Suey, some of this and some of that. I even bought something for the grill. What is the Fourth of July if not an occasion to throw a few things on the barbie?
The suey thing was for Evan although we didn't discuss that with him nor would we since he had no plans to come over and we had no reason to expect him. But, if he does show up I want to have something in the fridge for him to eat. Do parents ever stop being parents? Sure enough, Nancy and I are lying in bed and shortly after 9pm we get a text from Ev: "Coming home tonight."
I was hoping to stay up long enough to hear Trump's speech from Mount Rushmore and Nancy was just wiling away the hours before going to sleep. I responded, "ok." That way he knows we're home and we're good with his coming to visit and to spend the night. I fell asleep after I heard Evan come through the door and long before Trump started his 4th of July speech at the base of Mount Rushmore.
I caught up with it in the morning and in true Trumpian style he took the leftist radicals raising hell coast to coast to task for trying to tear our country apart. If you were a patriot, his speech made you proud to be an American. Everyone else ended up clutching their pearls and hurling nasty missives at Orange Man Bad. If there is a god, this is not going to end well for the pearl clutchers come November of this year.
Nancy and I started off our fourth of July with a bike ride up and down the coast. It's still an easy ride with the "no parking" rules still in place along Ocean Boulevard from Kittery, Maine to the border town of Salisbury, Massachusetts. High tide had beachgoers and sunbathers scrunched up into the sliver of beach remaining along the coastline until they looked like one puzzle piece after another snugging up uncomfortably and then finally falling into place.
I suggested to Nancy that we take a slight detour on our return trip in order to avoid a deer carcass that was killed in a collision with a car two days prior and now lay bloated with bloodshot eyes in the tall grass along the roadside. If you weren't expecting it I can see how the very slight of the animal staring up at you with those glassy eyes as you passed it by might be a bit of a shock. If someone had only had the decency to close the animal's eyelids when they left it as they did that might have been the right thing to do.
It's almost as though whoever moved it the side of the road did so with the most macabre of intentions. I couldn't say for sure but the animal looked "posed" for lack of a better word. It was enough to scare the bejesus out of the kids and have the adults wretch with revulsion.
Not breathing in the putrid air at that very second was not an option. It was easy enough to avoid so avoid it we did. That took us down a slightly different path but that was fine. It neither shortened or extended anything so nothing was lost or gained. Nancy will lose not a moment of sleep for not having seen the poor creature and that suits me just fine.
Whose idea was it to put on a little music at 7 in the morning by Eric Clapton and B.B. King? Talk to me about pride and joy, B.B. It's got a nice beat to it and it might take me places I never intended to go. Man, those riffs. I think I may have a blues gene that pops up every now and then. But at 7 in the morning? I'm in a smoke and music filled room throwing back whiskey's, loving the ladies with my eyes closed, and getting lost in my thoughts as the band plays their last set while the hour hand on the neon clock on the wall turns to three. Or, is it four?
Maybe the only good thing about three straight days of rain is that I don't need to water my tomato plants. I hung a blanket out on the line some three days ago and it's still there. It reminds me of when I was a little kid and my grandmother used to collect rainwater which she would use to wash her hair. I'm hoping that the gentle and sometimes not so gentle rains we've had will do for my blanket what they did for my nana's hair back in the day.
Back in the day before acid rain came in from the Midwest during the sixties and seventies and corroded everything in sight when it fell to the ground during rainstorms. We knew a lot less about science then than we do now and that's a good thing. I'm hopeful that the blanket, while it may not smell as sweet as I remember my nana's hair once I take it down off the line, it will no doubt be softer than the day I hung it out to dry.
The only hesitation I have now has more to do now with microorganisms that may have taken up residence in the wooly matting of the blanket while it hung there as it did for those three long and rainy days. I'm channelling the neuroticisms of my darling wife now and that is precisely what she'll be focusing on when I retrieve the blanket from the clothesline and carry it back into the house. She is no doubt already giving some thought as to how she might approach that very subject with me.
What would my grandmother say about such matters? "Johnny Boy, put that mother fucking blanket in the washing machine and do it now." That might have been B.B. King's grandmother but it wasn't mine. I might have benefited from learning a few more cuss words back in the day since they were in short supply on the playground of my parochial elementary school. "It's my fucking turn to play marbles now get the fuck out of my way." I can feel the ruler and the heavy hand of the mother superior coming down on the back of my knuckles now.
Will my morning be better or worse for sitting down at this desk and writing in this here journal? I think, for the most part, I always walk away after getting down a few paragraphs feeling better and maybe even accomplished whatever that means. It helps when I have something to focus on and that is not always the case. Not being able to get thoughts out is a problem too. If you let things bottle up too long without putting them down on paper that can be a recipe for disaster. Why am I so all over the place this morning?
My iPad died last night. I was watching something and it just went dark. Just like that. Poof! Not with a whimper, not with a bang, not with this, that, or the other thing. I've been able to revive bricked iPads before so I'll be trying to do that with this one. Thankfully, I have a back-up iPad. I did not have my bricked iPad backed up so that's not a good thing. Apps are easy to restore but some other things not so much. I'm definitely one of those "hope springs eternal" when it comes to Apple products so me thinks all is not lost. And what do they say about it being the darkest just before dawn. That's where we are. That's where I am.
Can you believe it's the fourth of July already? Nancy and I were out and about yesterday and man was it busy about town. The traffic was crazy and if I had to guess by the looks of things I would say the pandemic is over and we're on to bigger and better things. Sure, people are wearing their masks and doing the best they can with the social distancing thing but they are getting on with their lives. That's a good thing. You still can't hug your grandmother but that too shall pass if he or she doesn't pass first. Not to be too cynical but the elderly still have a steep climb here before they're out of the woods.
I think I need to work a little harder at getting Nancy out of the house and back into circulation. Just because she's working from home doesn't mean that she's back in the saddle after this coronavirus thing came around. I'm doing my best to point to stats that will reassure her but her newspaper of record is the Boston Globe and, less frequently, the New York Times. That being the case, she is likely to continue in her belief that we are all going to die unless Trump and his spawn is evicted from the White House and the presidency. Yes, little darlings, the number of active cases is up BUT THE NUMBER OF DEATHS ARE DOWN! Stop reading that claptrap from those rags you surround yourself with and start living for a change!
I've noticed too that Nancy is less willing to go out on a limb these days when it comes to experiencing the seamier side of life. She started a book yesterday but put it down after reading some things that she found, well, disturbing. Maybe it was something a little too graphic or something perhaps that offended her sensibilities. It's more than just having an aversion to something which most of us simply discard with the usual flip of the fingers off the shoulder. It's almost like she can't un-see something that she's laid her eyes on and be it cringeworthy or other she is unable to process it like you and I.
I'm a big fan of anything cold case and believe you me, I'm watching those shows alone these days. I also don't particularly like to watch television one way or another but if I do I don't prefer to watch it alone so those shows will go unwatched. Maybe Nancy thinks life is too short for such things. Maybe this is the Nancy that hides under the shed (yes, I mean the shed) when Evan shows up on the scene with blood spurting from an injury to his self. That's simply her modus operandi. When Evan got his finger caught up in our garage door as a little kid Nancy was nowhere to be found when the screaming started. Momma, where you be???
When the policeman showed up at our house accompanied by the ambulance staff, I had to explain that his mother was around the back of the house and he might want to give a shout out in that direction if he was looking for her input. So, I don't know if this pandemic thing has forced her further into her shell like a little turtle or what but I'm doing my best to bring her around. Where we end up is anyone's guess but if she doesn't budge much it won't be because I didn't try.
She made some progress yesterday when she walked around the perimeter of the store we visited in Dover and looked over the displays in their garden area. I did my business inside the store wearing my mask as I am prone to do and didn't feel compelled one way or another to rush that experience as it were. I was socially distanced from like minded people inside the establishment so it was all good. I bought some chili, some American Chop Suey, some of this and some of that. I even bought something for the grill. What is the Fourth of July if not an occasion to throw a few things on the barbie?
The suey thing was for Evan although we didn't discuss that with him nor would we since he had no plans to come over and we had no reason to expect him. But, if he does show up I want to have something in the fridge for him to eat. Do parents ever stop being parents? Sure enough, Nancy and I are lying in bed and shortly after 9pm we get a text from Ev: "Coming home tonight."
I was hoping to stay up long enough to hear Trump's speech from Mount Rushmore and Nancy was just wiling away the hours before going to sleep. I responded, "ok." That way he knows we're home and we're good with his coming to visit and to spend the night. I fell asleep after I heard Evan come through the door and long before Trump started his 4th of July speech at the base of Mount Rushmore.
I caught up with it in the morning and in true Trumpian style he took the leftist radicals raising hell coast to coast to task for trying to tear our country apart. If you were a patriot, his speech made you proud to be an American. Everyone else ended up clutching their pearls and hurling nasty missives at Orange Man Bad. If there is a god, this is not going to end well for the pearl clutchers come November of this year.
Nancy and I started off our fourth of July with a bike ride up and down the coast. It's still an easy ride with the "no parking" rules still in place along Ocean Boulevard from Kittery, Maine to the border town of Salisbury, Massachusetts. High tide had beachgoers and sunbathers scrunched up into the sliver of beach remaining along the coastline until they looked like one puzzle piece after another snugging up uncomfortably and then finally falling into place.
I suggested to Nancy that we take a slight detour on our return trip in order to avoid a deer carcass that was killed in a collision with a car two days prior and now lay bloated with bloodshot eyes in the tall grass along the roadside. If you weren't expecting it I can see how the very slight of the animal staring up at you with those glassy eyes as you passed it by might be a bit of a shock. If someone had only had the decency to close the animal's eyelids when they left it as they did that might have been the right thing to do.
It's almost as though whoever moved it the side of the road did so with the most macabre of intentions. I couldn't say for sure but the animal looked "posed" for lack of a better word. It was enough to scare the bejesus out of the kids and have the adults wretch with revulsion.
Not breathing in the putrid air at that very second was not an option. It was easy enough to avoid so avoid it we did. That took us down a slightly different path but that was fine. It neither shortened or extended anything so nothing was lost or gained. Nancy will lose not a moment of sleep for not having seen the poor creature and that suits me just fine.