Tag: Family

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Here we are in November. I wasn’t going to blog today…

I’ve got to run a couple of errands. Then it’s back to the house to try to get something done.

Last week I was pretty productive. Then the weekend hit and I haven’t felt like doing a damn thing. It’s getting cold, and for some reason the house feels colder than usual. 

On the plus side, Jesse has taken to sleeping cuddled up next to me. I think he’s worried about his dignity, so when we first go to bed, he’s at the foot of the bed looking out the sliding glass door. Then sometime during the night after I’m asleep he stretches out with his head tucked against my chest. I’ve promised him that I won’t tell other dogs that he sleeps cuddled up next to me.

God forbid that he’d tip his paw about actually liking me!

I’ll admit I like waking up with him next to me.

Both of us slept late today, and we’ve both been sleeping later in general. I’m pretty sure it has to do with the sun. This time of year, the sun doesn’t make it above the mountains to the east until late in the morning. In summer, the sun rises and starts blasting into the bedroom about 5:45 am. This time of year, all you get is an orange band resting on the eastern mountains. It’s very easy to turn off the alarm and just go back to sleep.

IMG 2877The master bedroom never gets direct sunlight from fall through spring.

You can tell time watching the sunlight move up the line made by the wash. The wash itself points almost due north. The shadows cast by the mountains onto the banks of the wash mark the passing of the day. It’s not actually an earthen works sundial but after having been here for so long, I can ballpark the time of day from how much of the wash is in shadow, and which bank, the light is falling on.

I was thinking about the issue of moving. When I had the apartment in San Diego, the bedroom didn’t get light until afternoon. This was a problem because I had to be in bed by 8pm to get up for work at 3am. The room, indeed the whole apartment got, and stayed hot in springtime and summer. The winter sunlight barely hit my apartment so the place was cold as heck. The upshot is that I had to run the heat or air almost all the dang time.

I was thinking about specifications for a new place I’d like to live. I thought perhaps having a master bedroom window facing east would be good. I could wake with the sun, and the room wouldn’t be baking all day so perhaps I wouldn’t have to run the air all the time just to be able to sleep.

I just realized something else. I prefer to have the windows open. I like breezes and the smell of grass, flowers, and rain. This house for example almost always has the windows open in spring and summer. (Unless crazy pants is screaming, or the flood control folks are driving dump trucks, bulldozers, or graders, up and down the street, or the jackass up the road is cutting and grinding metal or running a chain saw at 10PM.)

Still, even with all of those annoyances, we kept the windows open most of the time. The neighbors would open their windows when the other half was practicing harp or piano. Sound carries quite well here. The mountains form a natural amphitheater. It seems too big to be an amphitheater but you’d be impressed at how small sounds echo up and down the canyon.

That suggests that where I go to live should be in a more temperate zone. Northern Florida almost but not quite fits the bill. I think further north might be a better fit for me personally. I have been very surprised at certain friends reactions when I mention that I’m considering or have considered FL.

Almost universally they’re against FL. It’s very strange. When I remind people that I was born and raised in FL until I was 14, the response is, “well you’re different,”

Different from what, I wonder.

Then I remember the continuous hit jobs the media has done on Florida, from the COVID panic to DeSantis running for President. Absolutely nothing Florida does wins the approval of the media. Although, a whole lot of the people of Florida seem pretty damn happy. 

If the media would stop for a minute, get past their bias, and really look at Florida objectively… Well they’d be ashamed of themselves if they had any shame left.

In the media, Floridians are almost universally lambasted as ignorant redneck doofuses. Everyone in Florida drives monster trucks with confederate flags. Everyone is white and racist. (Most of the white people in Miami came from New York… so New Yorkers are racist by that measure…)

It’s gotten to the point that rather than fight it, Florida is having some kind of “Florida Man” festival where it looks like they’re going to lay claim to the caricature the media have created. Knowing Floridians, they’re going to blow the caricature way out of proportion as a huge middle finger to the rest of the country that loves to badmouth the state. I’d also say that many of the Floridians want everyone in the big cities thinking Florida is dangerous, because it keeps the real shitheads from visiting or God forbid moving to Florida.

Florida and Floridians are not what the media says they are. I personally think that Florida is badmouthed all the time simply because Trump lives there. And wherever Trump is ALLOWED to live, must by definition, be simply awful. There’s a whole lot of really weird shit regarding Trump. I’m still blown away by how much venom is spewed his way and how so many people are willing to look the other way when his rights as a person are taken away. There is a lot that is simply wrong on its face.

None of this is why I’m hesitant to move to Florida.

I want four seasons, and occasional snowfall. I want a little more property than most of the Florida homes for sale have around them. Well, at least in my price range… How is it, if Florida is such a shit hole that the home prices have shot through the roof and indeed the availability of homes in the state is constrained? 

Even northern Florida, might be a little too hot for me to be really comfortable with the windows open. As I said, I like having the windows open. That being said, I might still spend a month in Northern Florida before I make a final decision about where I want to live.

It’s got to pass the Jesse test too. He’s probably going to last about as long as I do. I know I don’t have another move in me. Once I get where I’m going, I’m probably going to be there until I die. Not to be all Egyptian about it, but he & I will likely kick off about the same time.

I was thinking about moving someplace based on the governor, or the state legislature but realized that was only temporary. Governors come and go, legislatures change too. I’ve decided that I’ll choose my next home based on the general population. 

It’s people that vote and make a state a good place or a bad place. The majority of California’s people are bordering on socialist / communists and the state reflects that. The majority of Florida’s people are conservative, constitutionalists, obey the law, ain’t nothing free, capitalists, and the state reflects that. I’m way more comfortable with the latter. Having decided that, it’s a matter of degree. 

Where on the scale between Blue (Communist Leaning) California, and say a super RED state like Florida, Wyoming, Montana, or South Dakota do I want to live?

Were It not for the winters in Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota, (and their house prices,) I’d consider them. Problem is, I just don’t want to do harsh winters. I’m too old to really enjoy them. The snowy winters where I live now are too much. Visiting Wyoming or Montana might be something I’ll plan to do in Spring or Fall.

I don’t know… I’d like to have a destination in mind before I put the house on the market. I think I’ll be spending this Winter, sorting and tossing stuff in preparation for getting out of California.

I’ve gotten to the point where getting rid of stuff doesn’t seem like I’m violating the memories of the other half and our life together. I guess that’s what grieving is about. You have to come to peace with the loss and let the wound heal in its own time. The healing can’t be rushed or forced. You’ll know you’re there when tossing junk your other half just had to have, no longer has an impact on you. When it’s just stuff, you’re nearly there…

I’ve wandered all over the map for a post I never intended to write.

I Promise, I’ll try to do better. But when we move to DST, expect some really wonky posts. 

Time Changes and I do not get along!

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Wow! The other half had a lot of musical scores in digital format.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a filing system for either Paper or Digital scores.

Screenshot 2023 09 30 at 7 29 50 AM

I’ve been trying to collect up all the music (Digital and Paper), and sort it with the intention of making sure that it got to the people that could use it and who would appreciate the effort.

I’m using a 32GB thumb drive now and unlike previous attempts will hopefully not run out of space.

I’ve also been finding a lot of duplications. I suspect that is in part due to the lack of a filing system and in part it might be further evidence that he’d been “off” for a while and was doing a damn fine job of hiding that fact from me.

No, I’m not angry about it. I’m just a little sad. He did his life, his way, as do I. We called “Shotgun” on each other’s journey through life and rode together for a long time. It’s cool, even if I am a little sad about the way things went from time to time.

As an aside, I have no clue how music is supposed to be catalogued, or indexed, or anything else.

I’m just doing what seems “Right” with the music much the same way I’ve done with every other curveball that’s come my way over the past 10 months.

In addition to the actual musical scores, some of which are only identifiable by opening them. (I’m fixing that slowly but surely.) I’ve also run into actual recordings where he was playing and recording into GarageBand either via a MIDI connection or he was using a microphone. Hearing him play has been somewhat jarring because I recognize his style and technique. It’s okay, but I’m still prone to crying over stuff like that, because the memories of him practicing a particular piece come flooding back. 

I’ll be a little sad over not being annoyed and hiding out in the office as he played the same measure over and over again trying to get it just right. In a way it was like RAP with Classical music!

I hate RAP!

As I typed that, I was smiling through misty eyes.

I’m sorting the music as best I can. If something has Hebrew characters in it, then it’s obviously going into the Jewish music folder. If it’s written in Russian It’s probably a fair bet that too is going to be Jewish Music. That is also true of German and Spanish.

I’m so out of my depth!

I’ve been looking for keywords in the scores. If I find anything that is recognizably Hebrew or Yiddish I know where to file it.

Christian music is a little easier because there I only have to scan for “Jesus” or Holy Ghost or Father, Son and Holy Spirt. You don’t find those kinds of references in Jewish Music.

Things start to get dicy when there are no lyrics, only the musical notation. If the title isn’t obvious, then I’m in a bit of trouble. 

If I can sound it out and recognize the roots or the rhythm of the piece  then I’ve got a shot at getting it in the right place. Some music is instantly recognizable as Jewish when you hear it.

I recognize the names of many classical pieces, or at least the composer so those scores go into the Classical Folder.

But wait! There’s more…

The harp music, the organ music, the piano, harpsichord, and even accordion music is all in one big assed digital pile.

For him, this presented no problem. He’d open an arrangement and know exactly what instrument it was for just by looking. Hell, I think sometimes he didn’t care what the score said the instrument was supposed to be. I think he’d just figure it out on the fly. That’s what a classically trained musician can do. It’s a skill built up over a lifetime and it’s amazing to watch in action.

I’ve been trying to sort the Harp and keyboard music into separate folders. Some of the folks that will be looking at this are classically trained musicians, but others aren’t.  Some of the amateur choir members can carry a tune and read music, but I know the other half curated very carefully what he gave to the choir.

It wasn’t about him disrespecting them, it was about not wanting to frustrate them with super busy scores. Sometimes he’d sit down and manually do choir only notation as a new file that he’d print here. Then we’d assemble the choir books if he wanted or needed my help.

I was probably next to useless because I didn’t read music. But I could follow instructions, run the printer, punch holes in pages, and we’d be spending the time together.

I know I could just hand all of the over to “Real” musicians instead of a hack like me. One reason that I don’t is because also mixed in this big pile of musical scores are receipts, and medical evaluations, and all the usual documents that one accumulates. So I have to be the one that filters all of this stuff out. 

Some of the pieces of music where he’s actually playing are in Apple only formats. Not a problem for me… But the Synagogue and Church are Windows based. So I’m letting my super fast computer handle processing the music into something universally playable. That takes time. Not much in the way of computer time, but time listening to the various edits and editions to determine which one is most likely to be the “Final” version that he’d want distributed.

Perhaps I’m doing all of this as much for me, and the other half, as I am for the Synagogue and Church.

It’s tedious, and time consuming. But I’m hoping to construct something that he’d be proud of. 

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So this thought hit me while I was making the bed

I caught a blip from the news that a children’s show has recently added a non-binary character.

For some reason I flashed to my childhood, watching Looney Tunes, and Hannah Barbera cartoons. Nowadays, Looney Tunes is too violent so children must be protected. GI-Joe and Transformers were sponsored by Hasbro.

Sometime in the late 70s or 80s there was parental uproar over children’s cartoons because they were sponsored by folks like General Mills and Post. The cartoons were marketing sugary cereals to children’s every Saturday Morning.

Hasbro nakedly used cartoons to market transformers and GI-Joe toys to boys. Mattel peppered The Bugs Bunny / Roadrunner Hour with Barbie, Malibu Barbie, and a ton of other toy ads.

Generally speaking the Parents, and FCC came to the conclusion that using cartoons to focus marketing to children was probably not a good thing and enacted some controls. Around the same time, Parents became aware of a growing phenomenon called Anime. Typically Anime characters have exaggerated features, particularly the female characters.

Female Anime characters tend to have exaggerated breasts, hips, and often have very caucasian features. They are also scantily clad, or depicted in skin tight outfits where their breasts are barely contained. Anime shows and movies are not for children, they’re for adults or young adults. Teen boys in particular were getting very interested in Anime. If you’re old enough you might remember Heavy Metal… Anime art is much more detailed.

A great example is Ghost in the Shell. There are some really racy images and it makes sense that Teenage boys would have been very interested. Especially prior to the internet.

At the time boys had National Geographic, the Sears Catalog, perhaps they’d sometimes find their dad’s Playboy, or Penthouse magazines and “just read the articles”. Where else was a read blooded American Boy supposed to go to see partially clothed members of the opposite sex?

Concerned parents… Actually known as prudish American women took action with Anime too. OH NOPE! My Son is not going to be a horn dog like his father!!!!

Secretly, some Fathers would rent VHS tapes and share them with their sons. Hyper-Realistic Animation is an amazing art form. I said it… I’m standing by it!

All of this flashed through my head when I heard that a kids show was including a non-binary character.

What I thought was, “I’ll bet a lot of Americans are wishing for the simplicity of just marketing Lucky Charms, Trix, GI-Joes, & Barbies right about now…”

If I were a parent now, I’d have ripped the TV out of the house. I’d have a nice monitor where we’d stream movies or plug in DVD’s and watch things as a family. Our internet would be locked down. (Except for a few dirty sites that I’d vetted for my son(s) to “discover” when they were old enough.) I’d be spending at least 2 or 3 hours a week making sure that inappropriate sites were always locked out even if they changed weekly.

I’d be looking at what sites my kids went to for their school work. I’d be paying attention and if my kids school started teaching all this woke bullshit, I’d be trying to figure out how to do homeschooling.

My children would be able to decide for themselves how their sexuality would play out. They wouldn’t be told by teachers what they were supposed to think or feel about how or with whom they wanted to express their sexuality.

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It’s a clean new morning!

A certain someone woke me as soon as he figured out the rain had stopped.

I have to admire the way the dog resets every day. He makes me smile more than most other things, so I’ll keep him around for now.

For those of you still below the grey cloud cover, here’s a sample of what you have to look forward to, later today.

The morning smells clean and fresh. The dog is beside himself exploring the yard. He’s already pushing for a walk, which he’ll get after I’ve had at least one cup of coffee…

I’m not sure if the trash folks are coming up today or not. I don’t know how crazy things are beyond what I can see.

I never lost power, or was inconvenienced in the least by the storm. I got to stay inside most of the day enjoying a movie or two, the dog cuddled up beside me with the sound of rain on the roof and the wash behind the house roaring away.

It looks like there’s some kind of inspection crew down at the bridge, I can see the lights but not what they’re doing. I guess I need a decent pair of binoculars at the very least.

I’ve been waiting for a pair that were all “techie” range finder, night vision, predator weapon interface. You know, loaded with SciFi shit like you see in the movies. You’d think by now someone would have put something like that together! 😁

I wanted to see if the smiley face would work. Don’t expect me to start communicating in modern hieroglyphics but I wanted to test it as an option.

It doesn’t look like there’s a lot to clean up immediately around the house. I’ll wander out in a bit to do an inspection just to make sure. I don’t believe there’s any damage either so I don’t have to deal with insurance claims or FEMA.

As you may have noticed I’ve posted some video in the past day or two. Yesterday it was because I was bored, and a video shot on my phone was not to my liking. I set about cleaning it up and learned more about editing video. I’ll never be a pro at it but it’s interesting to dabble with.

The reason I shot the video in the first place was to send to my neighbor who is helping out a sick loved one in Palm Springs and was curious about his house and the neighborhood. I suspect that he’s dealing with a number of messes out there which are more severe than what happened here.

Once I’d exhausted my patience with video stuff, I spent the rest of the day answering inquiries from family on the East Coast who had watched too much CNN. From the way they were talking I imagined CNN was saying that the end of days was here and it was starting in California?

Anyway after quieting their concerns and reminding them all that an 8000 Ft mountain stood between me and the storm, they lapsed back to normal anxiety levels. I’m so confident about my mountain I dare a CAT 5 hurricane to hit it directly!

Bring it! Mother Nature.

Seriously, most storms that come in from the South are gutted on the peaks of the mountains. I live in their shadow, the upside is those storms I don’t usually worry about too much, the down side is that in winter it’s dark at my house by 3pm.

The only storms I really worry about are those swirling storms that come in from the North. Those are usually bitterly cold and batter the town for days on end.

Those of you who were impacted by the storm, I hope you fared at least as well as I did. Remember things are still gooey in some places. So pay attention and don’t take any chances with mud or innocent puddles across the roads.

Have a good day

I just found out that part of my little town is cut off due to some roads and bridges being washed out. This doesn’t affect me per se because I don’t need to go anywhere today or probably tomorrow. When I secured the place due to the unknowns of the storm, I secured to stay in place for days… Even a week or two if necessary.

I find that having laid in supplies, having a plan, and not having to go anywhere tends to make me a whole lot calmer about this sort of thing.

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Just because I’m a nice guy…

Doesn’t mean that I want to be drawn into your bullshit.

Especially if you don’t have the balls to directly ask me what you want.

I think I’m going to have a T-Shirt made!

I’m basically a nice guy. I can be an asshole, but to be honest that’s a defensive screen because so many people want to take advantage of any nice people they meet.

Being nice is perceived by some, sadly too many, as inherently weak and easily manipulated. So a lot of nice people cloak themselves in the mantle of being an asshole. If we didn’t, we’d be manipulated into doing shit that we don’t want to do, or indeed didn’t have the time to do for other people all our lives.

I can tell you this from bitter experience, once someone gets their hooks into you and figures out that they can manipulate you they will never stop. They’ll be a fucking parasite until you’ve got nothing left to give them or you actively burn them out of your life.

I have a lot of respect for people who can say “No” without guilt, fear, or remorse.

I have a hard time saying “No” because growing up I was conditioned to please EVERYONE! Instead of breaking that conditioning which was built from the damn cradle onward, I created the asshole cloak. My problem is that sometimes I leave the house without it.

An interesting case in point was Saturday.

I had a very disturbing call with my Mother. The call was beyond disturbing it was very upsetting. (No one can push your buttons like your Mother!) Normally, when I get this kind of upset, I do something physical to dissipate the hurt and anger before it turns in on me and causes further damage.

This is how we came to have a drip irrigation system at our house prior to the place burning. It’s a serious challenge to dig any kind of hole where I live. One day, The Other Half and I had a throw down of an argument. I grabbed my handy trenching tool and proceeded to dig all the trenches necessary to bury the drip lines. When he stepped out onto the deck with a tall glass of ice tea and told me to come and drink something I took it as him apologizing. He wasn’t… He was just worried that I’d work myself to heat stroke. Later he told me he kept thinking, “That dumbass will come in soon, he’s been out there working in that heat for six solid hours with no food and no water.” He only fixed me a glass of iced tea when he realized I was fixated on what I was doing.

From then on, he’d keep an eye on me. He realized that day that I was very stubborn and if I was completely engaged in doing something, I would literally forget basic stuff. This was especially true if I was working off anger, frustration, or sadness. He wasn’t so worried about me in the Winter time but Summer always made him nervous.

Anyhow, I’d had this phone call with my Mother. I pulled on my boots, grabbed my yard tool, and got to cutting and trimming. Trouble was, I ran out of plants to mangle before I ran out of anger. I switched from the chainsaw to the weed whacker and discovered there wasn’t anything tall enough in my yard to trim down.

Then I remembered that my next door neighbor had been out in Palm Springs looking after a sick friend. I marched over to his yard. Surely, there must be something that needs cutting! No Joy! Nothing had grown since the last time I trimmed his place. (I took care of his yard before the weed abatement people could ticket him.)

Now I’m getting frustrated about not being able to vent my frustration!

Hmmm. The new guy… he’s going through a divorce. He’s been spending time with his kids and doesn’t have any of his stuff with him. He’s only living there for 6 months… And he’s gone for the afternoon with his Son.

His rental yard is ripe for the trimming…

So I get to work. My anger and frustration flowing out of me as I focus on trimming the weeds. I’m happy in my own world mowing down thicket after thicket. I’ve moved to the area where he parks and have just about completed it when I hear my name.

FUCK!

It’s the neighbor that lives next to Crazy Pants. The guy who NEVER says what he means. Who never just asks for what he wants, instead it’s always a long drawn out convoluted miasma of words and randomized ideas. I sometimes find dealing with him excruciating. And in my current state… I’m in no fucking mood!

But then, he hits me with a question that makes me concerned that he’s losing his mind just like my Mother. He asks if I’m the property owner of the rental air B&B. He knows that I’m not. When I tell him, “No,” he asks me if I have a key to the place. Uh, “No!”

Suddenly I flash forward to where this conversation is going because this conversation is like 10 other “conversations” before.

He’s going to bitch about the exterior lights being left on and since he sleeps in his living room how these lights bother him and disrupt his sleep. YAWN! NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM!

But he wants to make it my problem. He wants me to talk to whoever and make them turn out the lights. He seems to expect me to be interested or concerned or frankly give a damn.

In the back of my mind I’m thinking, “Get off your ass, put down the fucking bong, and deal with your own shit.” He’s still droning on and on about how tough it is for him sleep and how put upon these lights are making him feel, no-one understands how difficult… blah, blah, blah.

I’m at the end of the conversation while he’s still droning on. And I’m getting really angry about it. I put my brain in neutral. Why does this guy think I, or anyone else for that matter care? Can he not see that I’m hot and sweaty and his puerile issue with the lights is of zero concern to me, I just want to get back to burning off angry energy which he’s actively refueling.

I cut off the remaining 45 minutes of his bitching and complaining, “You know man, both of the lights shine into my house too. We’ve discussed this before. The folks are renters and probably haven’t figured out what switches do what yet. When it was an Air B&B those renters always left the lights on. Having a permanent renter is better than an Air B&B here.”

He blinked, “Both Lights????”

I pretty much growled, “Uh yeah, the porch light and the deck light both shine into my house. I use this new thing they call a shade.”

The whine of the weed whacker motor drowned out whatever reply he might have made. Then I realized part of what had made me so angry. For all his whingeing and blathering on about his interrupted sleep, not once did he ask me directly to speak to someone on his behalf, he just assumed that because I’m a nice guy he can delegate his shit to me.

Now I’m really pissed off. How about this motherfucker asking himself, or me what’s up? Not once in 30+ years of living here have I gone unbidden into someone else yard to clear weeds. Clearly I’m exhibiting odd behavior.

I popped open the gate to the rest of the rental’s yard.

The weeds in that yard now know the meaning of Vengeful! The weeds on an odd small patch of land at the end of my street also learned the term.

The battery died just as I finished the little patch.

My anger and rage had abated significantly, but embers still remain.

I’m going to be really screwed the next time my Mother calls.

OH LOOK! There she is now.

Maybe I really need that belt sander I’ve been looking at. There’s some painting to be done around here. Perhaps that nice compound mitre saw too.

Sigh, “Hello Mom. No, we spoke yesterday. Yes we did, I’m sorry you don’t remember. No, I’m not lying to you…”