More November Notes

Weekend notes and stuff .....

• I could be wrong historically speaking, but it just seems way too early for 27 degrees around here.
• I have no desire to participate in designated Record Store Day's any longer. It feels like an event with no substance. Especially considering the asking price of things.
• I have a continuing fascination with the seagulls I see making inland appearances. They are present in numbers and continuously taking off and landing on water. Their landings sometimes appear to be a well-practiced ritual and other times an erratic splashdown. 
• I love the feeling received from having a loaded crock pot on the counter cooking away. Especially now that I've downsized to a smaller appliance made for less than a clan.  
• Everyone of the notes above begins with "I" ..... that feels like a sin.
• I enjoy leaving vague, little notes in inconspicuous places hoping that someone will find it five or ten years from now and wonder ..... 

Picture a Face ....

You know how you hear a voice on the radio and then later on, see their picture ..... and it's never what you visioned? Well, I heard an interview of a poet and later in the day saw her photo and it was exactly what I had imagined when I visualized her sitting in a room, answering these questions and speaking of her art. 

I just awoke from one of those epic, long lasting dreams where I was part of a small military unit, preparing for an attack. We had just received a bus load of help to increase our numbers when I was jolted back to awake. I was never in the military but have watched several old world war two movies, many of them, multiple times so I assume this dream came from those viewings. At the least, it was a situation where I could comprehend what was going on and not full of contradicting or unrelated happenings like my normal dream world.

The Holiday

And just like that, the holiday is just about over.

For maybe ten years, since my mom's passing, I would struggle with these days. They don't bother me much anymore. I go about my normal routines and rituals of weirdness, avoid as much as possible all the well wishes from people with seemingly perfect lives, and before I realize it, it's evening and the day has passed. Most of the struggle with feelings is now in the day before.

In a Moment

Arrived at the grocery store and in the parking lot, a dozen emergency responders and a guy they were tending to, preparing to be placed in an ambulance.

I'm at the age where each time I see a scene like this, or just hear an ambulance in the distance, I wonder if someday relatively soon, they'll be coming to care for me. 

And then I think: Is it selfish to be thinking of myself when there's someone in this very moment, going through this experience right now? But maybe it's not so selfish because there's nothing I can do in this situation in front of me and there's numerous highly qualified and trained people there right now providing care.

And I always wonder about this person with the emergency ..... what were their thoughts in the minutes and seconds before their crisis and with no idea what was about to happen? Were they enjoying their morning and looking forward to tomorrow? Were they laughing with a friend or loved one? Were they dreaming about what excites them and the possibilities for today? Has that all just changed forever?

November Notes and Stuff

I look at the five-day weather forecast and think: "No freaking way! That's too cold for this autumn season." Then I realize that it's late November and flash back to my youth, the teenage years, picking up walnuts and the jettisoned and greasy pods in the backyard and raking up fallen leaves in a cold rain. It's one of those images of a specific moment in my life that's always stayed with me.

Apparently cold is the norm around here for late November. 

It sure feels though, like it was yesterday when summer ended.

What else feels like yesterday? It was 2009 (if memory serves) and a day-before-Thanksgiving train ride to Spokane to have a traditional turkey dinner in Idaho with a high school classmate/friend. It was even colder plus snowing then. I have a photo somewhere, that she snapped, of what appears to be me, exiting the back door of a bordello in Wallace, Idaho.

Damn! The day is almost over and I just realized that it's my dad's birthday. He would have been 108, Moms would be 97th birthday is next week. I've struggled in recent years with remembering who's is which week. I've admitted my memory failure publicly on facebook tonight .... which may get me a scolding by siblings and a couple aunts.

I bought a new car around this time in 2017 and remember thinking: "With a little luck, this will be the last car I ever have to purchase." Not that I had a death wish back then for some time in the next five years. But fast forward to the present and here I am again, wanting to buy a new car ..... and having those same thoughts. 

Degrees of Annoyance

I don't think there's a word to describe the level of frustration I'm feeling tonight. 

On my doorstep today, a cassette player that I purchased online. It's been a couple years since I've had a working option to play all my 40-some year-old mix tapes, and various programs recorded from the radio in the 70's, 80's, 90's. Let's just say, from the previous century ..... all stored in shoe boxes in the closet.

There's one specific program that I've been wanting to hear. So much so that I've been on my hands and knees tonight, sorting and searching, searching and sorting, through all these various sized boxes ..... and I can't find the damn tape!!

I found a couple 'Dawn of the Dead' programs. Grateful Dead live shows that is, and a couple ocean and rain sets recorded from late night radio in the mid to late 1970's ..... soft acoustic music set to a background of ocean waves or falling rain. And I found an old recording of my college roommate singing sad and tearful love songs that he wrote to his girlfriend at the time, who I'm not sure, yes or no, is the same woman that he is married to today so I don't think it best to remind him in a public facebook posting. And I found various tapes of music recorded from radio programming with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and then selected songs (the keepers) from that tape, transferred to cassettes ..... with rock, folk, jazz, Celtic (keltic?), etc., themes. And upon completion of my task, to record over the reel-to-reel tape and do it all again. And I found a recording of "Murmur' by REM that a college aged girl gave to me in the late 1980's. I think it was the same girl that I gave a mix tape of Bruce Springsteen songs to, and her reaction was: "Oh, old man music."

And I also found a hand-written labeled case, minus the cassette, of takes that "don't suck" from Jim Rome's sports talk radio program. I've been hoping to find that as well, so I'll have to search through all the loose tapes. Hilarious stuff from the year that I discovered his program. Maybe 15-20 years ago?

Anyway, I never claimed that I wasn't a total geek back then, or even now ..... 

But I can't find the tape that I'm looking for!!! A recording of a program from what I assume was a weekly series ..... titled: 'St. Paul Sunday Morning.' Liturgical choral music.

So, I'm currently frustrated beyond most levels of annoyance because there's no more shoe boxes to sift through.  

But I am listening to a 'Dawn of the Dead' set that is putting forth a calming effect while I consider returning to my hands and knees and searching through those boxes again. 

Regrets

People always say that they have no regrets. That they wouldn't change a thing.

I on the other hand, not entirely satisfied with how things (life circumstances) have played out, have a list of things that I would like a second chance to improve on. Times when I was afraid to go against my hesitant nature and take a chance. 

Your Generation Gap Is Showing

I catch myself more and more often feeling incredibly unhip and un-cool when someone replies with a GIF to another's post on twitter and the reference in the reply makes no sense to me or there seems to be no connection between tweet and reply. It's moments like this when I'm thinking: what the hell are they saying? ..... it's these moments when I suspect that my generation gap would be showing if I dared ask for clarification.  

It's funny how this aging thing works. One goes along their entire life thinking they are still young, in mind anyway, in touch with contemporary culture and still relevant until they suddenly reach this point where they realize they are out-of-touch ..... and you don't really care about changing that. And it's like you hit a wall or crossed some invisible line .... or you just wake up one day and realize, or perhaps the better word is recognize, the point of separation has occurred and that you are too far beyond it to go back.

And I just prefer it that way.

Like, I don't get or understand much of what I see and hear these days .... and I don't care about making any effort towards catching up.

I do think it took longer for myself to reach this point than it did for many of the people I know and aged with. I saw it years ago in some. 

You see .... I think I'm embracing this senior citizen stuff. Pretty sure of that. 

That's not to say I don't suffer from moments of extreme nostalgia now and then. I have these moments where I walk into a place like maybe a bookstore (or sometimes at work) and suddenly become overwhelmed with the sense that I am the oldest person in the building, and I don't care much for that feeling. When someone occasionally smiles and says hello, I want to be able to return that gesture without feeling like I could be their father ..... or grandfather.

More Notes on the R-Word

This isn't going quite as I expected.

I thought that once I officially retired (but kept working), that I would feel free to come, go and most importantly, take days off as I please. But it's been three or four months and I still feel the need to be there every day. No one is pressuring me. It's just some inner drive and guilt complex that I've developed in the last twenty-five years. 

I wasn't always this way. When I was younger, I'd call in on a whim. I thought that the pension and social security payments would allow a return to my younger, semi-carefree ways. 

What is wrong with me? 👀 I think I've earned it, but still can't take advantage of a few allowable perks. 

My Old School

A few days ago, I read that the season for the freshman football team at my old high school (49 years removed), had been cancelled due to allegations of locker room harassment on the part of some of the players. Now I read that five kids have been arrested on criminal charges.

You can't convince me that the coaches knew nothing about what was going on in their locker room. Why was this allowed to happen and continue? 

And what about the junior varsity and varsity players? They must have had some level of awareness. No eighteen-year-old could step up and demand at least a minimal level of maturity from a fourteen-year-old?

Not that it's been mentioned but in case it is, I do not buy that they knew nothing.

Something to be proud of. I don't think I'll be mentioning to anyone anytime soon, where I attended high school.