Ms. Ellis, there is no lack of ‘barking mad’ on this side of the pond.  The comments to my last entry suggest barking mad drivers are ubiquitous throughout the States.

Here in Arizona we have a new medicinal MJ law; every patient I have seen so far who has this license got it to support a habit; not one of them is doing it for medicinal purposes, but to get stoned.  Speaking of  ‘barking mad’ at work, I see patients all day long with erroneous beliefs  no amount of reason can budge.  Patients blame their medicines for their cognition and weight problems, but continue to drink a fifth every night and eat nothing but fast food.  They are either wary of pharmaceuticals – but make exception for xanax, valium and adderall- or they rely on pharmaceuticals to fix their social problems.

Patient Ignorance I understand, but Ignorance in politics makes me want to pack up the house and move to New Zealand. The barking madness of Mr. Gingrich et. al. is only surpassed by the masses who agree with him.

Arizona is chock full of barkers. The county in which I reside has one of the most awful sheriffs, yet people from out of state send him money to support his nasty ways. Our Governor made headlines for being nasty with the President. Curtesy and tolerance of other’s differences does not exist here in the Valley of the Sun – and people are proud of it!

I wish there was a Milo among us to once again battle the Demons of Ignorance and rescue Rhyme and Reason.  For the former are legion, and barking mad – and there are precious few signs of the later.

PS – I wrote this entry earlier today. Later this evening  Someone and I had a process of current events, in a way. No doubt Ms. Ellis  include us among the barkers, but at least I feel better.

Mostly the commute is a time for thinking. I often witness the rising or setting of the sun on these travels. Either evokes deep thoughts -  who am I and where I am going (in Life, not in traffic).  Sometimes my thoughts are merely woolgathering the type that rivals a chapter from Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Maybe I will compose a blog entry (such as this one). Once in a while I get a profound thought about Life, The Universe, and Everything.

All this listening and thinking must be done carefully, for I am Phoenix traffic. I tend to hug the right lane, as I am a careful driver and in no hurry to go fast. After all, I am going to work. This is a good point to pause to expose Phoenix drivers for the nasties they are. There is no regard for the speed limits. Sudden exits made from the far left lanes are the norm. It makes me wonder if there is a correlation between reckless driving and living in a RED State?  As I read the conservative bumper stickers whizzing by going at 80mph I can’t help but wonder if the drivers disregard the law – and safety – in other areas of life besides traffic.

Happily I am going against traffic either way, so my commutes are not too bad. The traffic going in the opposite direction is bumper to bumper at all hours. What a horrible experience it must be to be in that 5x a week. Another mystery: during ‘Snowbird season’ the traffic swells. Why on earth are all these retirees up so early and where are they going? If I was retired (worse luck!)  the last place I would be is early morning rush hour traffic in Phoenix.

Tonight’s drive home is Kate Bush’s latest album “50 Words for Snow”, and a lecture on “Martin Luther and the Indulgence Controversy”.

Jolly good fun, I am certain.

When we were boys, our father conveyed there were some drinks preferred by men and some more for the women.  Whiskey was a man’s drink. If you were with business associates or clients, whiskey was always a safe drink to have, for it conveyed you were a gentleman.  I have managed to learn all of father’s suggestions of what a gentleman should know but this one. Whisky is the last frontier. Paging Mr. Walker……

I am familiar with tea and wine, for I drink them often. I have an experienced palate for them. But I don’t no nothing about no whiskey.  Even the nomenclature confuses me. There is whisky vs. whiskey vs. bourbon vs. whatever.  What is moonshine by the way?

Brother #3, who is a gentleman, enjoys a good whiskey. My first boyfriend, who was a lush, also drank whiskey.  Someone would sooner eat rats in Tewksbury than drink whisky. He never drinks ‘anything brown’.  So my little “Whiskey 101” adventure is a solo job.

It turns out whisky is like wine viz. there’s a lot of it, in various styles and qualities. What I have tasted so ain’t too bad. I just have to learn to not giggle when I look the bartender in the eye and say “Give it to me straight”.

Last weekend a bartender gave me a few thimbles full of various whiskies for a blind tasting. I seem to like whiskies that are spicy and complex, and a bit bitter – like my men. I was surprised to discover my taste buds voted for Old Grand Dad. Someone informs me if I start drinking OGD we may as well move to a trailer.  Perhaps I need to ‘put out’ as it were, and pay for some more expensive blends. I don’t know what worries me more: to discover I prefer the cheap stuff or the really expensive types.

What I want to do is find a certain whisky that used to advertise itself using a cartoon of a man. The gentleman dons a sports jacket, wearts glasses, and has no mouth nor pupils (ala Little Orphan Annie). Best yet, he is sporting a bow tie. How frustrating for me: after months of seeing this ad, I can no longer remember the whiskey, nor can I find a copy of the ad.

This week I sample Buffalo Trace Whisky, which sounds more “cowboy” than “gentleman”.

I live in Arizona, after all.

I am dropping a blog from my reading list.  The emotional issue: this blogger never stops by mine.

I read dozens of blogs; I visit them on a regular basis.  Some bloggers write regularly, others infrequently. Naturally, some blogs are more interesting to me than others. But they all have in common I enjoy them. They are entertaining, and the writers dear to me.

Once in a while I loose one when the writer says “adieu” to blogging or simply disappears. This always makes me sad. I remind myself this is a hobby.  It is one thing to sustain a boring job, but a boring hobby makes no sense!  My point is: they depart from me.

So it is rare for me to pull the plug on an active blog I like.

There is no “Miss Manners Guide to Proper Blogging Etiquette”. No one is obliged to “stop by anything”, nor is there obligation to ‘leave a calling card’ of  the visit with a comment.  By the way, I always try to leave a word when I read someone’s entry, as a sort of ‘thank you for your writing today’.  I believe my  comment lets them know I was there – and I appreciate their industry.

This dropped blogger – let’s call him or her “Q” – has never left comment or dropped by my blog (so far as I recall). When I leave a comment with “Q”, which I do frequently, there is no acknowledgement nor any reciprocation.  I suspect Q doesn’t want  warm strokes. (Apparently I do). But I have lots of blogs to read: so to trim my blog time I figured Q was the one to go.

It feels childish of me to do this. It feels a lot like “I show mine and Q doesn’t reciprocate” .   It reminds me of the time  when I tried dating a woman in college, until I realized her pleasant indifference was her subtle statement  ‘I am not interested; please do away”.

I guess I wanted from Q a one time thank you for being a reader, or a reciprocal visit –  just enough to know I was more than just somebody passing through.

Oh well, I will focus on the dozens of blogs left, and not worry about it.

I suspect in a few months I won’t remember Q’s blog; I will have forgotten where to find it.

For The Good Sleep to occur, several elements must come together: the subsequent day has to have no work nor plans. I don’t have to get up and go anywhere. It often happens eve of a holiday or a weekend, for a touch of excitement is needed.  The setting for a Good Sleep needs a sense of safety, viz. being in a cozy place located somewhere secure or familiar like the parent’s house or a favorite B&B.  Not as important is a contrast of the bedroom to the outside world. For example, last night it was below 20 degrees outside, while inside the room was warm as toast. I could hear the old furnace two floors below purring like an old cat.

Normally I get up at 530AM, full of ‘there’s work to be done’ thoughts and actions. Last night’s Good Sleep lasted from 1030PM to 730AM, which was a treat.  I woke feeling well and rested. I feel refreshed; I feel peaceful.  These are the parting gifts of A Good Sleep.

I normally sleep OK, which is like saying I normally eat the same ho-hum meals with mindful watching of portion size and oh so practical contents.  Food as fuel: it keeps me going.  The Good Sleep is a gourmet meal. I may not get one frequently but it is oh so delicious when it occurs.

And with that said, I smell the B&B breakfast cooking. We are having some sort of fancy breakfast souffle; an apt companion to The Good Sleep.

We go this weekend for an early anniversary celebration. We met on 1/31/97. I am confused if this means we have been together for 15 years or this is our 15th anniversary. I guess by now the number doesn’t really much matter. And after so many years it hardly seems a whoop-de-doo matter.  We will enjoy the company of the innkeepers. We may go into town and patronize the tourist shops (if the weather is not too cold). We will have a nice dinner somewhere. I want to bring along some sparkling wine, for we will stay in the room with a fireplace. Hopefully we can stir up some excitement after years of complacency and months of being worn down from attrition.

Every year I am surprised he hasn’t thrown me out for some one new, some one who sits still or focuses when he talks. He could easily find someone who is more tidy with misplaced beverages and doesn’t come with a large family as squirrely as he is.

But he sticks with me, for which I am honored and grateful. I hope for another 15 years, Lord willing. I would like to give it a try.

I write down what I can remember, which are bits and fragments of previous dream times back in the mid-90s, when so much of my life was in transition.

Briefly: there is an image of a Great Painter creating an image on a large white canvas, only to be dismayed at finding something in The Painting he did not plan being there. There is a struggle to remove the matter. This results in Painter having despair and burning The Painting in order to destroy both the Painter and the marred creation. There is some sort of unexpected transition,  and something else emerges from the ashes.

I have an accordion file of important papers. Tonight I was driven to search it. There! On a scrap of 81/2 x 11 paper are the sketches of a story or fable I made from dream work in 1992. The theme and images are identical – the Painter, the faulty creation, the destruction and the unexpected metamorphosis.  20 years later, repeating itself.

I will apply Active Imagination to these notes and dream sketches. I will expand it into a story.

I hope the final creation is just as exciting as these primordial ur-texts.

When the story is formed, I will post it.

It is a nice thought, for I am accomplishing something I never thought possible.

Spo-fans must keep in mind I have always been a skinny wimp, the low main in the gym hierarchy. If I were to go to a beach I would be the one onto whom others kick sand.

I also have some mild revenge smugness, knowing most of the bullies and in-shape jocks from my youth have nowadays gone to pot.

My Midwest upbringing says I shouldn’t boast, but this is not so much about how I good I look but what I have achieved.

I may not be able to make a race horse out of a pig, but I am a now very fast pig.

It is nice to know with  insight, courage, and a bit of self-restraint we can do almost anything.

Question to Spo-fans: tell me something you have achieved which you never believed possible.

I am definitely in the Puccini camp when it comes to writing blog entries. I write down a basic idea like chicken wire on which to hang the details.  Each paragraph fattens up with expanded notions and details.

Then, comes the editing.

This is the part which drives me bats, for no matter how many times I reread my composition, I find further needs for editing or refinement.  I am like a fussy florist who is not content with a finished project but must keep rearranging things hoping to make it even better. Worse, I keep finding errors that arise from the continual tampering.  I swear some literary gremlin rearranges my words, Even after a piece is published I find – yet again – misspelled words or grammar errors. Perhaps WordPress mixes things up after I click ‘Publish’.

Spo-fans occasionally spot these errors, and tell me, for they tend to be comical.  I’ve a fancy to get my 5 years of blogging published into a book, but this means going through every entry looking for blatant errors. I would have to avoid temptation to rewrite things I think ‘need improving’.  I hate the notion of reading five years of blogging and see only the typos and syntax errors.

Year #6 is coming up next month. Perhaps I should try more “write and publish and be damned”.   It would certainly be less time consuming not to pick at the blemishes.

Someone bought a new computer.

We’ve been meaning to purchase a new one for some time. Our old one, probably purchased in 2000, is so frustrating that neither one of us wants to us it. For convenience and speed, my MacBook Pro beats it by a country mile. Even my old Dell laptop (which Someone used, until the screen went dark) is faster than the dinosaur in the office. Our ‘home computer’ runs as slow as molasses in January, so neither one of us wants to use it. Apparently it is overflowing its banks, and there is no room in it despite purging it of ‘crud’.  As a consequence, you could bake a cake during the time is takes to pull anything up. It also freezes a great deal, apparently from having ‘no working memory’ or something. I figured it has atherosclerosis or a virus or was simply possessed by demons.

Someone purchased a HP.  I wanted an Apple product, but he wouldn’t have it. He explains someday he hopes to reenter the workplace; he feels the business world runs on Windows – the home computer needs compatibility. I think the real reason is he doesn’t want a Mac is he doesn’t want to be one of the Pod People.  Well, he will be using the new computer more than I, so fair is fair. Besides, he did all the research. Someone does a very good job investigating something before we buy something, so our purchase was well thought out.  I don’t understand computer lingo, but he explains the new HP holds a lot more*, and it will fun faster, and be more user-friendly.

As I type (on my Mac) he is in the other room, on the floor, under the desk, connecting wires and such.  I look forward to an iTunes library that doesn’t take 20 minutes to pull up. Perhaps Mr. Pewitt’s computer will provide some new bells and whistles for blogging.

We tend to replace computers every ten years, so I hope it works well enough.

*The HP has something called tetrabytes; the old Dell had only gigabytes.  Whatever that means.