Let's get at it, 2024

[cineater]

I have no idea why the news was making Star Wars jokes about the 4th.  Isn't it May the 4th be with you?  I did get having babies and getting married on 12-31-23 was the desirable date for dummies, cute, 123, 123, you're dancing.  

I'm all cleaned up from Christmas and stuff back in the attic.  Pretty fun pulling the roof line lights down.  I just stand on the driveway and give them a jank.  This year I brought everything inside to warm up before I put them back n the box.  They fit so much better that way.  The moose is outside off the patio.  My daughter was not at all surprised by that.  I had a light up peacock there for a few years.  I was kind of hoping he would scare away the squires from my pots but they pay him no attention along with the cattail chimes.

January is the month I do all my finances.  Fill out forms and sign my name.  I got rid of the last thing with my ex husband's name on it.  Geez, it's been 30 years.  Seems like a lifetime ago.  I never did get remarried.  It's expected you will if that ever happens to you.  It's hard when you're a single parent with a demanding job.  You have no time or the energy.  My goal during those years was to get a nap.    I had a good time though, my kid rocked.

Normally I've lined up my taxes by now.  Haven't felt like doing the math.  No rush, plenty of the month left and I could just wait for the forms to come in.  I do not have to file on the first day although you get your refund back faster.  I also haven't sat down and gone over the household budget.  So unlike me.  

My SIL is feeling well enough to work a little.  He's taking a job at the place that sells pot growing supplies one day a week.  I'll be babysitting.  I suggested that to him last year and he got all bent out of shape.  He planned to make a fortune with the pot plantation.  That's not happening.  This is a good move.  Gets him into the business and networking.  It's a Monday, the day I reserve for my personal business.  I don't have that much and the kid can go with me.  He's a good stay at home dad and I hope this doesn't turn into a full time manger position.  He says they are having a couple of more kids.  My daughter has no idea how great it is to have a housewife.  

Missed the big announcement of who's coming in concert.  I assume it's not GNR, probably the Stones.  I am not having another shitty seat to see GNR.  This year I'll actually be able to see them but the surgery will take all my fun money.  I'll be streaming them if they go on tour.

Update:  Billy Joel and Sting.  Odd combo for a concert.  Wouldn't think they would be a stadium act, guess they are.  Def Leppard and Journey are another stadium act.  Wouldn't think they were either.

[cineater]

Wait, wait, wait, my new adventure is raising kids?  I've done that.     I was hoping for a little great in there.  Probably just a change in pace and it's still being rolled out.  Things are happening at a steady rate.  People re entering my life.  Opportunities presenting themselves and I'm taking them.  Not sure where I'm going but I'm moving. 

This class looks interesting:  How the Spirit of Gratitude Can Help You Live Your Best Life.  I assume they are not talking about the feeling you get after you survived yet another migraine.  It's not a religious lecture.  Tips and tricks to get your gratitude mojo back, including where to find inspiration, mentoring, energy, and maybe a daily dose of laughter.  Have that but never thought about the gratitude part.  It's at the park where I attend the raptor bird lectures.  Think I'll invite a few people to go with me.

Snow is coming in.  Ran to the store and stocked up, 2 large cans of coffee.   

[cineater]

That's weird.  Bret Michaels reached out to my city to perform at the annual 4th of July celebration.  How would he even know this place exists?  Normally the celebs live down the road in Lake St Louis.  We're a drive by city.   Said he liked our values and something about vets.  Have you been here?  Does he know it's damn hot and humid here on the 4th?  You'd think he'd play the Memphis area.  Anyway, short walk from my house.  I like Poison.  Going to catch his show.

Watched the state of the city address.  They are putting in a national police training place between me and the garden.  I already sit in the middle of the county and city police departments.  When you have nothing to fear from the police it's nice having them so close.  We need to put up big signs that say police activity this way, criminals turn around.    Beneficial highway signs for everybody.

We have a nice community here but we are showing up on all the lists of great places to live.  Since I moved in, they developed all the farmland south of the highway.  My daughter now lives in a subdivision her husband's family owned as farmland.  The north side of the highway is the old section and they pretty much left us alone.  We don't even have a grocery store.  It's nice and quiet, easy to get around but they are running out of room in the south and now looking to develop my way.  Lots of land out here.  A little protection from the flood plain but they've been building in that too.

[cineater]

Music Sunday  

AARP has a good article on music therapy in work with dementia and alzheimer's patients.  Basically you play them music from their teen years when they were into music and they come back.  Think of it this way.  The mind is a bunch of doors.  The disease is working to seal them shut.  Once it's sealed shut, never opens again.  When you play them their music all the doors blow open.  You're opening doors that haven't been opened in years but not yet sealed.  They were lost in the darkness of the sealed doors, sitting still, and now they are bathed in the light of the open doors.  They start to move about and interact with the world.  Only lasts for 15 to 30 minutes after the music stops but it doesn't stop the door sealing, slows it down.

They can see the brain activity light up all over the place when the patient's music is played.  Read the story here if you're interested.  https://www.aarp.org/health/brain-health/info-2023/how-music-affects-the-brain.html

The takeaway is your playlist is your fountain of youth.  Not that it makes you act like your teenage self but your brain is firing on all available cylinders.  Ever notice when you listen to music you're more energized and you get to thinking all kinds of stuff?  At first, it feels so good you keep turning up the sound.  But later you're so energized, you start to turn it down so you can focus in.  Too many doors open.  You have to start closing some of them.  Eventually the music goes off and you're off doing stuff.  How long that brain activity is triggered depends on you.

I write a little bit for lots of reasons.  Music always gets me started.  When I don't know where the story is I go to a room in my mind.  It's always a comforting light in there.  All I have to do is stick my head out a window to see where the story is.  Look out there and I'm transported to the story.  I have some issues with the room probably what people call writer's block.  Sometimes I can't get there.  When it appears, such a relief, I'm on the outside, in the light looking at it from a distance.  I like the view from there too.  I just need to walk to it and open the door and go in.  The just part is the problem.  And once inside, it's nice in there, which window and am I ready to look out it?  Sometimes I stall out and leave but it's always a comfort, I'll be back, my room is still there for me.  "Get confused, listen to the music play."

[cineater]

Ladies High Tea!     I got an invite.

Don't google that, it's all porn.   

I need a hat and gloves for this event.  Yeah who would suspect I'm a lady from looking at me?     Sharon knows it.  Don't let the name or the dress fool you.  Don't think you've ran into something you can walk all over and control.  Hard to define a lady but you'll know one when she steps up and takes charge.  You'll always see me address Beta as "Hey Lady".  I recognized her long before she gave Axl the ultimatum.

Anyway, I accepted an afternoon of sipping tea and eating finger foods with "the ladies".  Yeah, you might want to run. 

[cineater]

Did a little observation with the grandbaby.  I let him watch Miss Rachael for 45 minutes.  Kids show with lots of music.  When she is on, he gives his full attention to it.  After I turned it off, I put him down with his toys and just watched.  He was more active and talking with his toys, like a lot more active.  He was still going at it after 20 minutes when I had to put him down for his nap.  We read books for a while and he gave his full attention to it even asking for more books.  He's one.  He wasn't that alert all morning.

I told my daughter to save me some laundry to do and I asked my SIL if it was okay if I brought in the Christmas inflatables.  Got the thumbs up.  Never have me to your home all day with nothing to do.     They come home, the table is full of folded laundry, the dishes are done, the stove is scrubbed and every outside Christmas decoration is packed up in the garage and ready for storage.  The grandbaby says hi to them but wants to continue to hang with grandma.  Yeah what just happened.   

[cineater]

That does kind of work.  Feel like I'm fighting off a cold and just kind of vegging around the house waiting for the snow to come in.  Went out on the streets with Bruce for a couple of songs before I got thunderstruck.  Music got louder at that point.  Call it an ear infection.     At least feel like screwing around on the net.  No pinball to tonight but who made who.     Heading off to get on the cover of the rolling stone.

[cineater]

Okay, about an hour of listening and I feel energized.  Not motivated though to do the things on my to do list.   

[cineater]

Oh hey, if you ever wonder who I am, that's me in the front on the left with glasses and what I do.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=624409026389607&set=pb.100064615452884.-2207520000&type=3

No idea why that wouldn't show up as a pic.  I don't do computers. 

[Muerto]

Oh hey, if you ever wonder who I am, that's me in the front on the left with glasses and what I do.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=624409026389607&set=pb.100064615452884.-2207520000&type=3

No idea why that wouldn't show up as a pic.  I don't do computers. 

My native language is not English and I like to read your posts as a way to practice reading, I think I will continue imagining the writer because the URL did not work for me. 

[cineater]

Oh hey, if you ever wonder who I am, that's me in the front on the left with glasses and what I do.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=624409026389607&set=pb.100064615452884.-2207520000&type=3

No idea why that wouldn't show up as a pic.  I don't do computers. 

My native language is not English and I like to read your posts as a way to practice reading, I think I will continue imagining the writer because the URL did not work for me. 

Thank god for spell check.     Fair warning, I overuse the words "that" and "just" as expressions.  "That" means not really important and "just" is something you have to deal with.  I don't inject those words in speech because you can hear it in my voice.  The phrases, "you know" and "of course" are also expressions I use you want to avoid in real conversation or formal writing.  I'm being lazy and screwing around here.  I'm pretty good at grammar and using the various forms of there and your.

Good luck with English.  I admire people who can speak more than one language.

And my pet peeve in grammar, it is, Guns and Roses "is" a rock band.  Not "are" a rock band.  The s at the end of the name makes you think it's plural but it's not, a band name is a singular thing.  Same thing with The Rolling Stones.

[cineater]

Flash Freeze, that's a weather term that will get your attention.  We have storms coming in with an arctic cold front.  I kept wondering why they weren't giving snow predictions.  It's ice.  We occasionally get these wicked ice storms.  Takes down tree limbs, power outages and shuts everything down.  Fortunately I had all my trees trimmed up this year.  And a very large brush pile I can burn if I get cold.

The coleus cuttings were starting to rot in the water.  Took cuttings off of those and threw away the roots.  The begonias were getting long and lanky.  Hair cut for them and started rooting them in water.  My kitchen window is flowering with the begonias and geraniums.  The demo garden seedlings are starting to pop up.  I'm reluctant to pull some of the soil off the top of the rosemary in case seedlings are coming up but I'm going to do it.  It's a Marsha suggestion, maybe we will get more germination out of them.  They had the same problem with the pansies.  They were planted too deep.

Demo garden bugs and plants will be fine if we get ice.  We have a good layer of leaf mulch over the ground.  We do community planting and left the plants up.  They will clump together.  Trees and bushes have been pruned.  The ice will slide right off the plastic on the greenhouse and hoop house.  Passive solar heating keeps those houses above freezing even in the coldest weather.  Not much to worry about out there.

[cineater]

Oh good, they took the ice out of the forcast.  Left the bitter cold.  I have three meetings I'll have to go out to get to.  One offers carrot cake and the other fettuccine alfredo.  The third has no incentive for attending and if they don't switch it to zoom, I'm staying in bed.   

We got up to 50 today.  The neighbor has a dumpster sitting in his driveway, thus his Challenger sitting in my driveway.  And a bunch of stuff from my kids sitting in his dumpster.  Liked how that worked out.     Plus when I go over to babysit on Monday, I can park in their garage. 

[cineater]

Now it's damn cold.  We're stuck in this pattern until Wednesday.  A lot warmer in the house when I busy myself with spring cleaning.  Not going through all my shit or taking stuff out of the cabinets.  Might if this cold keeps up.  I'm on eat down so I can clean the refrigerator.  Looking pretty sparse in there.  Better get on that soon.   

Diverted our meeting today to zoom so nobody had to run out in the cold.  I got a mason bee house out of it.  We were going over the plants we have to grow from seed for three garden bed renovations.  Three hour meeting and I got homework out of it.

The house has mostly shifted back into place with the moisture in the ground.  All the doors are working properly again.  All my doors need painting.  They were on my to do list when the guys replace my baseboards this spring but we may have to put that on hold with the cataract surgery.  That's a lot of furniture moving.  I'm not suppose to life or bend at the waist.  Sondra wants all my reading glasses when I'm done with them.    Your day will come.

Speaking of Sondra, they have cleared her for plastic surgery where the cancer was removed from her face.  I took her over lunch for her birthday.  She doesn't like to be seen in public with her face like that.  Doesn't look that bad to me but then I'm use to it.  Anyway, during this time she has cleaned out her house and painted the whole thing.  Looks great!  Women, and were still playing in our doll house.   

[cineater]

It just fucks with my head and I can't do it!  I'm trying to imagine a clock on the ceiling.  In the winter you're supposed to have your ceiling fan blades moving clockwise.  Had to look it up, look at a picture and if I had to say, I would say it's counter clockwise!    Maybe I'm just standing on the wrong side of the fan.  Is that possible?  Maybe I should get stoned and lay on the floor and study it.   

We broke the high temperature with a low number.  I don't think we broke our low temperature.  It is so cold if I leave my lighter in the garage it won't work.  My daughter had ice on the inside of her windows.  She has new windows coming on the 29th.  The day I babysit.  I hope it warms up and they are quick!

I'm entertaining the cats with a dozen of balls.  They are really good at playing ball, occasionally fall off the couch.  They wear out quickly.

I'm moving right along with spring cleaning.  Clean refrigerator and all the lights where you can remove the light bulb and not the cover have had their covers cleans.  I have a little more dusting and scrubbing to do before I get to cleaning carpets.  Won't take that much longer if I get on it.

It is quiet.  Nothing moving outside and people aren't blowing my cell phone up.  My feral cat did show up to eat and actually came inside for a minute.  Something spoked him and he wanted back out.  When he does come in, he never leaves the door area.  He would have made somebody a nice cat.

[cineater]

I pulled the trigger on the quit smoking meds.  I ordered it last year but didn't pick it up.  Quitting is kind of like taking away my will to live.  I like to smoke.  The best way to quit any addiction is to get a new life.  Leave all those old behaviors behind and get a new routine.  Away from all those triggers.  That's not possible for most folks.  So we'll see how this goes.  The pharmacy called me about the eye drops for the cataract surgery.  I'm assuming somebody from there will call me and tell me when to start using these.  So unlike me not to have that information.  They didn't tell me but I figure no reason to bug them this far in advance.  Give them a chance to do their job.  They seem to be on it and have called in the Rx.  A little early if you ask me but, you know, let the people do their job.

We get a break in the bitter cold tomorrow.  I was out yesterday, just long enough to drive over and babysit and come back home.  We had a light dusting of snow that made the roads slick.  I was poorly dressed.     Froze my ass off driving over there and back.  Seems a waste to get dressed for outdoors when you're going to be in the house most of the time.  "There is no bad weather, just poor gear."  Ain't that the truth?  I'm sure there is clothing for these conditions but we don't have weather like this that often to know what that clothing is or to spend money on it.  I dress in layers when I'm out in this.  I only do that when I'm shoveling the driveway and then I'm usually removing layers while I'm out there because the exercise heats me up.

I'm waiting for the sun to hit the kitchen.  My targeted room for spring cleaning today.  And the onions need trimmed back.  The cats are all hanging with me.  They are bored.  Simone has been out twice only to want back in a few minutes later.  I'm anticipating a few paws of interference when I do get off my ass and get started.

[cineater]

I am wrong about how you talk about migraines.  "There's been a sea change as to how we speak about migraine--someone doesn't "have migraines," they experience "migraine," an important distinction that speaks to the disruptive and disabling nature of this disease."  Okay I don't get the distinction in the change of terms.  And I've never heard the term "sea change".   

Anyway, the article says when your older migraine changes.  "As people, particularly females, get older and hormones change after menopause, they may drop the headache altogether and their migraines may be aura-only."  That's interesting!  I outgrew my migraines, probably about the time menopause finished.  But I have times when my vision is more blurred and eventually clears up.  I'm still really light sensitive.

Whatever they call it, it's nice they recognize it's real.  When I first sought treatment for my headaches, they called it depression.  Then they called it drug seeking when the pills they prescribed didn't touch the pain.  Then I didn't seek help for 20 years and that was only because I got caught out on the road and couldn't drive.  I didn't follow up though.  Something you suffer through and thankful you lived.

[cineater]

We had a few days respite from the bitter cold.  We're getting a couple of more bitter cold days and then slightly above average.  Got all my errands ran and am prepared to be in the house for a few days.  Picked up the carpet cleaner from my daughter so I have options on what to do.  Nobody is responding on these two stray cats that have been hanging around and they run when they see me.

AARP is pursuing music therapy with another story.  "An 1850's observation that musical ability was often preserved in people who'd had a stroke and could not speak.  Yet they could sing."

Looked up "sea change" means a profound change and came from a Shakespeare play.  But when used in the case of the migraine comment, where there was nothing profound about that change in term, it's a buzzword in current culture.  Yes, I'm a little touchy when scientists think they know shit about migraines.     What does she mean disease?  I would think ailment or disorder but not in the disease class.  Then again she's the doctor, should know her medical terms.

So I texted my sister to see what she thought of the migraine article.  She's not a member of AARP.  What?!  The biggest and probably only advocate for seniors and she doesn't belong.  And she's from a union family.  I know people like to ignore old folks but AARP is a pretty powerful group.  Old people have all the money and all the time to bitch a fit and they vote.  And there's a lot of them!  AARP has made themselves the recognized authority on what seniors need and they get shit done.

I have not added one thing to my list on what brought me joy in 2024.  I had several things on there this time last year.  Not that I'm unhappy.  On that level plane or muddling through.

[cineater]

That is so like me.  Excited by getting one of my tax forms in the mail.  Every year, my country goes through the paperwork of evening up who owes who taxes.  I have the pleasure of easy paperwork and getting some money back.  Other folks have a nightmare and have to hire professional help to do it.  I usually have all my paperwork done and waiting in the que for the government to open electronic submissions.  Everybody who has to send you a form for your paperwork is suppose to have it to you by Jan 31 and you're suppose to have all your paperwork in by April 15.  I'll play around with mine tonight.  See what I'm getting back but not turn it in until I get all the forms.  With online information I can pretty much tell what the forms coming to me will say.  No big rush but this is a fun Friday evening for me. 

[cineater]

Do other women do that?  I've never asked.  Catch your diamond in the light and throw little prisms on the wall.  I wonder if my grandmother did that.  This is her diamond.  It's fun having a big sparkly on your hand.

They aren't kidding when they say take the quit smoking med with food and a full glass of water.  I don't usually eat first thing in the morning but I'll never do that again.