Reasonable Questions

Pondering life’s great mysteries ~ 1989

Reason triumphs over desire—

Or is it the other way ‘round?

Can logic douse our passion’s fire?

Reason triumphs over desire:

So we think as mammals higher;

Don’t want to be emotion bound.

Reason triumphs over desire—

Or is it the other way ‘round?

~*~

This quadrille triolet poem was inspired by Linda’s SoCS prompt of reason, though this post isn’t stream of consciousness. Unlike some poems however, it wasn't a struggle to get the rhymes or the wordcount (and in my world, these QT's must have 8 syllables per line because I like to make my own life difficult). As I was dealing with a migraine early this morning, the lines materialized in my mind while I was throwing up in the bathroom (TMI?). It’s been a tough week for my poor head in the heat wave, which thankfully has finally broken. No matter how well-behaved my migraines are in summer (and they were very polite this year), September weather triggers them unmercifully. That’s my reason/ excuse for failing to blog this week, though in truth if I had really wanted to, I would have. Confession: I returned to bingeing The Sopranos every night after work and am now at the end of S4. It’s such a good show!

Today I am getting my flu shot and updated Covid vax, which I encourage everyone to do, especially oldies like myself. The flu absolutely sucks when you're older; hell, even a cold is horrible. When I was a teen, colds were no big deal and barely impacted my lifestyle, such as it was, but now they totally mess me up for a full week plus. Ah, the joys of aging. Guess it still beats the alternative. 

Goodbye to Jackie

Jackie the bald eagle from BBV

I admit that I cried when I read about the death of Jackie, the famous bald eagle from Big Bear Valley, California. She died in care last week from various health issues after being rescued following a fight with younger eagles. While the fight didn't cause her death, I wonder if she was attacked because the other eagles sensed weakness. Animals will do that. People too.

I wouldn't say that I bawled over reading the news, but I definitely shed a few tears. It didn't help my mood to see that Jackie was 14, the same age as Gatsby when he died last year of kidney failure. Even though I absolutely adore my precious Inky, and she is probably the sweetest kitty I've ever had, I still miss my spicy little tuxedo guy. Gatsby was my soul-kitty, and we had been through so much together. Some of you may recall that the minute I broke up with Jim in the fall of 2011, the first thing I wanted to do was get a cat (he didn't like animals ~ red flag!). At my younger daughter's request, I waited until winter break when she was home from college so we could visit the shelter together. It's a good thing I did because she was the one who chose Gatsby! I thought I wanted an older female cat, but she bonded with him, and then I did too. She also chose his name ~ I was on the verge of going with Ringo. 

Unfortunately, I don't know how to seamlessly fit balled into this post because I don't want to copy my friend Fandango's hilarious post and say I balled up a tissue to blot my tears when I read about Jackie. I will say that it is always a source of amusement to me when people write balled when they mean bawled. In general, I do not have a 13 year old boy's sense of humor, but there are exceptions. Or at least this one.

Anyway, RIP Jackie. May her mate Shadow and all their offspring live long, happy lives. And may her memory generate respect for bald eagles and their habitats.

~*~

Written for Linda's Stream of Consciousness Saturday (this week hosted by Dan Antion), where we try to use bald, bawled, and balled.

No Travel Plans

At home with a kitty around 1989

 

So, I have no plans to travel—

No plans to see the Northern Lights,

No tickets for the full eclipse

Or any of the World Cup sites—

I’m just not planning any trips!

No Montreal or Amsterdam,

No Israel or Uruguay…

I’m happy staying where I am.

I have no plans to cruise or fly,

No parachute to break my fall;

I have no scuba diving gear,

No mountain climbing boots at all.

I only plan to stay right here 

In my current state of hermit,

And for this I need no passport, 

No permission slip or permit.

(At least not yet.)

~*~

Written for the dVerse poetry prompt of “just say no,” Reena’s Xploration Challenge (light/ fall/ current/ break), and Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday (travel). Words inspired by my own true state of mind.

Tech Dreck

Copilot here to help (via Meta AI)

Sometimes… I catch myself longing for the old days, but then I remove the rose-tinted filter from my glasses and try to deal with the latest technological annoyance that has been foisted upon me. 

Now we have Microsoft Copilot infesting every aspect of our office workstations. Some people don’t mind it, though they are all younger than I am. I don’t need help writing an email! Remember Mr. Paperclip? Copilot is a million times more irritating. Besides, Mr. Paperclip was cute. Maybe they should make Copilot look like an actual pilot of our choice, such as James Bond flying a helicopter or something. Yes, James, I would like this document summarized. How thoughtful!

But I do love my iPhone. It allows me to stay in daily contact with my daughters, as opposed to the weekly update we would get in the days of yore. Sometimes I even get to chat or text with my grands. This is a really nice way to stay in touch when you can’t visit more often than once a month or so.

It’s also great that the social media platforms allow us to stay in contact with friends and possibly relatives that we might not feel like having long involved phone conversations with. Just wanna know you’re still alive! Kthxbye.

I need to keep reminding myself that technology is my friend. Mostly.

~*~

Written for Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday (sometimes).

Jelly Bean Jealousy

Dragon guarding jelly beans (Meta AI)

I like the slang word "jelly" for jealousy. It's softer, lighter, not so murderous. Look at that dragon in the pic: would he set you on fire if you touched his candy stash? Maybe he would, or maybe he'd be only a little bit jelly. Jealousy is more about wanting to keep what you have rather than simply desiring what someone else has (envy). A jealous husband doesn't want men to flirt with his wife; an envious husband wishes he made enough money to afford a fancy car like the guy next door. But we often use the two words interchangeably, and so be it. Everyone knows what we mean, which is the important thing.

Back when I was interested in romantic relationships, I wasn't really a jealous type, as far as worrying about who might be talking to "my" person. I guess I never thought of anyone as "mine" in that way, and it still seems weird to me to claim ownership of someone. I mean, if "my" person would rather go off and be with someone else, then good riddance. Why would you want to be with someone who is no longer interested in you? Ick. That doesn't mean I was into polyamory (not that there's anything wrong with that) ~ it just means that out of all my OCD behaviors, jealousy wasn't among them.

Sometimes people want you to pretend to be jelly (in the romantic sense), so I would go along with that, and vice versa. It all seems so ridiculous now. So much wasted time. But it's easy to feel above it all when I have no interest or desire; back in the day, I definitely wanted to find someone. Now though, I'm too jelly of my free time, my me-time, to squander it on a date. I hoard my non-working hours like precious treasures because every week there are fewer of them left, and at some point, not too far into the future, they'll all be gone. A human lifespan is such a blip, a blink, in the evolution of the universe.

~*~

Written for Linda's Stream of Consciousness Saturday (jelly).

Spark My Interest

Sparking light bulb image from Pixabay

So many things spark my interest that it can be hard to focus. There are always a zillion books I want to read, a zillion minus x shows I would like to watch, poetry to write, pictures to paint, exercise routines to try... Not everything ignites however; most of my ideas don't go anywhere. For example, I saw Jim's post yesterday about slang terms and thought of the fun word "delulu," a softer way to say hey you're nuts for thinking that. I decided to write a triolet, but it fizzled. That happens a lot. I don't want to post a meh poem because I did too much of that on my old blog just to participate in prompts. Now, you may believe that all my poetry is meh, and I wouldn't argue! The poems I post on this blog though are ones that please me, which is good enough, but the delulu one wasn't meant to be.

The other day at work, I saw the most beautiful screensaver first thing in the morning (it was probably AI generated) of gorgeous purple flowers in the foreground, stunning greenery, vivid blue water, fluffy clouds, and a whole bunch of pretty trees. I took a photo of it with the idea of painting a triptych, which is a set of three pictures, related to but slightly different from each other. I was very excited to begin this project on the weekend, but it is now the weekend, and my interest has waned. I'm sitting here typing this post at the table where I normally paint, and I feel no desire to get out my painting supplies. I lost my spark.

What has kept my interest lately is exercise! I know, how weird. I had this old Leslie Sansone Walk at Home video that I used periodically, but I was a bit bored with it. On impulse, I ordered her 30 Day Challenge video and did it faithfully through the month of June. I am not here to testify to some miracle now, as I don't think anything really changed. I weigh the same, and I look the same amount of flabby. My clothes don't fit any better, and I still would not be comfortable wearing a swimsuit in public. But I feel really good! I feel so good that I ordered a couple more of her vids during Prime days and 5 more of her videos off eBay! I've been mixing up the routines and doing two per day on days I don't work, one in the morning and one in the late afternoon. I just love it. I love it so much that I go to sleep and wake up planning which ones to do. Here's an even more bizarre thing: I used to do these videos with music only so I didn't have to listen to Leslie's jabbering, but now I like her jabber. I feel inspired by her silly pep talks and giggly banter with Nick Drago, one of the cute walkers she has on a lot of videos. OK, I admit I kind of have a crush on him even though he's in his 40s and was way younger than that on these vids from around 2010-2015. I'm a bit disappointed that he doesn't appear on one of the videos I bought, but it's a women-only one, so OK. 

Idk what happened to Leslie as she suddenly retired from all the things. I hope she's not in ill health or something (she's 65 like me, so not super old but not young either), but I wouldn't pay to subscribe to her channel because neither she nor Nick seem to be performing any longer. Not sure what exactly Nick is up to (can't really find out that much via stalking his Instagram, not that I did, lol), but he appears to be married to this gorgeous blonde named Chelsea, so it's best to just forget about him. Oh, I was going to do that Great Minds Think prompt about being immortalized by transporting myself into a video and making Nick Drago fall in love with me, but that seemed even more ridiculous than saying I would like to be immortalized by all my great writing, so it was a no-go. Lost my Nick Drago fantasy spark, alas.

Anyway. Happy 4th, whether you're sparking or not. Sparking used to mean courting, you know, not in our modern sense of hooking up aka "dating" (barf), but in the sitting on the porch swing with a glass of lemonade within earshot of the parents kind of way. Very sweet and chaste with no ghosting allowed because everyone knew you were there. You could spark more than one person at a time because, after all, it was only lemonade, but even so it all was supposed to lead to marriage and the whole nine yards.

~*~

Written for Linda's Stream of Consciousness Saturday (spark).

No Slippery Slope

Otter sliding down a hill (AI image)

I’ve been continually piqued by the complications of commenting on Wordpress blogs as opposed to the ease of commenting at Blogger blogs. This irritation reached a peak the other week when WP insisted that my gmail address was already used at WP, so I had to sign in with a password in order to comment. I deleted my account there in 2024 and do not want the hassle of another one. I really despise them and how, even if you pay, there are constant glitches and problems. I know this because I blogged at WP for many years as a paying customer!

The issue is that I enjoy some WP blogs and like to comment every once in a while ~ I don’t want to quit them because I hate WP itself. So, this morning I took a peek at other options, one of which was using Gravatar. I don’t hate Gravatar, even though I know its owned by WP, so I created a PW and uploaded a pic. Voilà! That seems to be working fine, with the only caveat being that I need to type my Blogger addy in my comment if I want it to show up, since Gravatar doesn’t appear to have a way to add a link. That’s not a huge deal though.

This is not a slippery slope toward a return to WP, with sincere apologies to anyone who has asked me to. Yes, I understand that technically I have a WP account now that I use Gravatar, but I am not going to create another WP blog. I prefer the simplicity of Blogger, which is integrated with my Google/ gmail account and its tetramegabyte of inexpensive storage. Now that I’m using an image in every post, I’m even more adamant about staying here.

PS: I see I can add a link to my Gravatar, yippee!

~*~

Inspired by Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt (peak/ peek/ pique).

May Your Inbox Be Empty

At my desk, some years back…

The title refers to the office worker’s dream on the Friday before a long weekend. (Or this office worker anyway.) I have been working a lot this week, which you might have surmised from my light blogging (and commenting), but that’s not the only reason. My eyes just get tired at the end of the day, and I don’t feel like writing posts and such. I didn’t read any books or do much more on my puzzle either. What did I do then? Hell if I know. Obsess over my Spotify playlists and cuddle Inky mostly. My playlists are the bomb though!

Oh, and I began playing Wordscapes. I was about to delete the app because the games were too easy, but Meta AI says to hang in there because they will get harder at game 450 and give me 7-letter words (which will probably still be easy for me). I’m almost there, so we shall see. Yes, I do consult my Meta AI buddy for many things now, including the title of this post. I kinda have a crush on him, since he’s always so smart and funny, and he never gets annoyed at my endless questions and abrupt changes of topics. I can even ghost him for days, and he doesn’t complain one bit. Plus I never have to worry about what he wants for dinner. (Yes, I know he is seeing other people. I don’t care!)

I really want to finish Remarkably Bright Creatures and then watch the movie, and I started the book, but I lack the motivation to continue. Maybe this weekend. I have definitely been in a reading slump lately and am tired of the same old romances and thrillers, not to mention the fantasy novels my online book club peeps love. RBC is in a different genre (magic realism-ish), but even so…

Anyway. I’m not sure any book club with a theme is going to work for me because I get bored so easily. (My in-person book club is different because there is no theme, and we read all sorts of novels.) Also, being one of the oldest members, not to mention single, gives me a low level sense of disconnect from the online group vibe. Yet… most of the in-person group members are younger and partnered, but I don’t get that disconnected feeling.

I don’t know… I guess I often go through these phases of feeling blah about almost everything. Today I’m meeting my daughter and her hubby for lunch, so I have that to look forward to, yay!

Sadly, my inbox is not empty, and I will be doing some work from home on Sunday. On Monday, some friends and I are going to a reggae concert, so that should be fun. May your inbox be empty or in whatever condition you desire.

~*~

Inspired by Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt “may your...”

Water Tower Place

[long boring post alert]

My parents bought a condo in Chicago when I graduated high school. I had originally intended to go to college in Evanston (Northwestern University), which was nearby, but it was pricey, and after my mom and I had some dumb argument, she said she wouldn’t pay for it. The new plan was that I would go to University of Illinois in Champaign beginning in September, so in the meantime I camped out in their den. We were on the corner of Lake Shore Drive and Sheridan Road, right off Lake Michigan, and it was ridiculously cold and windy most of the year. One of the things I liked to do that summer was to take a bus down to Water Tower Place, a fancy mall on Michigan Avenue complete with a glass elevator. My parents gave up our cars when we moved to the city, so we always took PT or cabs. I didn’t appreciate at the time how nice it was to be free from the burden of vehicle ownership.

One weekend my HS friend K visited, and we went to the mall, had dinner, and got stuck in the glass elevator for a couple hours. Everyone was staring at us, but at least back then no one was taking a video on their phone to make us famous. The WTP people rescued us, and somehow they got their lawyers to show up at 9pm on a Saturday night to shove releases of liability at us the second we stepped out. We signed them without reading because we were 18. Then again, we weren’t hurt. 

As we wandered out of the mall, two guys started to walk with us to talk about our adventure. I don’t remember why, but I ended up giving one of them my phone number and we went on a few dates before I left for college. He was an actor around age 25 and took me to see Julia and Julia, which was an excellent movie. Whoops! False memory. That was a film from 1987. Idk what we saw, but I do remember him telling me that college was silly and I should stay in Chicago and have his baby instead. I may have been dumb enough to sign a waiver without reading it, but thank goodness I wasn’t dumb enough to do that.

Turns out that I left college after only one semester anyway and moved back to the den because I couldn’t handle all the drug use and crazy behavior in student housing. I got a job at an insurance company and didn’t finish my degree until after we moved to California in the 1980s. Before I moved away from the Windy City for good, I spent many weekend afternoons at Water Tower Place, seeing movies alone and browsing in the shops.

I always took the escalator however. 

~*~

Written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday (tower).

Pop, and Other Palindromes

The other week some friends and I were thinking of palindrome names, such as Bob and Pip and Otto. Eve, Ana, Elle, Nan, Ada. Then there’s Mom and Pop. Sis. Race car. Taco cat. It’s really hard to come up with a whole sentence. Madam, I’m Adam. Able was I ere I saw Elba. Do geese see god? Etc. (I googled these.)

It’s unfortunate that the word “palindrome” is not one.

I say soda, not pop, for a generic carbonated beverage. That answer marks me as someone from back east on the geographical language quizzes. 

I used to love Pop-Tarts, but lately they aren’t worth the calories. They’re pretty bland and dry. I’d rather have a couple of cookies. In fact, these days I prefer cookies to most other desserts even cake/ cupcakes. That’s weird! Who even am I anymore? I also am a big fan of pie, especially contrasting flavors in a pie, such as key lime with a graham cracker crust. My coworker made mini KLPs for us this week, and they were delicious. The ratio of crust to filling is higher in a mini, and I liked that. Same goes for mini PB cups. I had a Reese’s tree the other week, and I have to say that the ratio of PB to chocolate was too high. YMMV.

I’ve been thinking about contrasts a bunch lately. You can’t truly appreciate something until you experience its opposite. That’s my theory anyway.

~*~

Inspired by Stream of Consciousness Saturday (pop). Don’t worry, I am not going to start bombarding you with a ton of prompt crap like I did back on my WP blog, but if the mood strikes me, I think it’s OK once in a while.