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October is icumen in, lhude sing, cucu:
Groweth sed and bloweth med,
and springth the wde the AIDS walk.
Someone and Urs Truly will be walking (hand in hand?) this month in the Phoenix AIDS walk. This year, we will have (as our special guest) the intrepid Harper as companion and co-rover.
We have erected widgets on both our blogs for any Spo-fans and Someone-supporters who wish to sponsor one or both of us. Heck, you can sponsor Harper too.
Like last year, whoever puts out the most* wins a Spo-shirt. Here are the fabrics from which to choose lest you be the lucky winner **.
Previous winners and current owners of shirts are more than welcome to bid. Sniping is welcome and outbidding is condoned and entertaining too.
Thank you for your support.
*Based on an aggregate among the three contestants.
** If the winner doesn’t fancy any of these, he or she is welcome to send me three yards of their own fabulous.
My back is out again. Yesterday while doing Smith Machine back squats I felt the far too familiar sudden tightening in the my lower right side. I knew in an instant what this heralded and this ride was closed. It isn’t so bad as some of them. I will munch Motrin and sit in the hot tub and give it a break. I suppose it was my fault for going too fast and not doing proper form.
I am no longer going to use the List app on my iphone. Once again all of lists have simply disappeared, goodness knows how. This is the 3rd or 4th time I compose things only to have them mysteriously vanish. Last night I heard of a new bourbon to someday sample; I opened my ‘Whiskey to try” list and – gone. Nada. Zilch. It was erased along with the Bucket List, Places to Eat, and Words to Learn. Someone tells me this has never happened to him. Happily I have ‘back up’ lists written in longhand on paper. This confirms my technophobic superstitions computers are capricious and you can’t trust further than I can kick this here lemon pie.
But let me blog on something pleasant. Several boxes of tea arrived in the post. There is nothing a like a new type of tea to brighten up my day.** The good folks at “Celestial Seasonings” sent me “Harvest Pumpkin Spice” and a mixture of tea with mate. Unfortunately I ordered (to make it a three-way) a box of Chai, forgetting I purchased some high grade no rubbish Chai last month. That chai is rumored to be good with milk but even more brilliant with Bailey’s. I need a cool afternoon to try this – probably late November.
To go with the new leaves I have a new tea cup. It is white and large and could hold Lake Michigan. I got it at work in the latest ‘garage sale’. Periodcially the house manage collects all the abandoned cups, plates, and kitchen sundries into a box and announces the owners need to claim them by the end of the week or off to Goodwill they go. The mentioned white whale cup was about to be tossed, so I claimed it. It hadn’t been washed but it came out looking lovely, like teeth after a dental clean up.
With a sore back I declare this day to be ‘Keep it sweet Sunday”, consisting of not much but sitting and sipping tea. I am quite behind on reading blogs which will soon be remedied. I can think of no more pleasant afternoon than this**.
**Well, I can think of a few other things, but I’m saying nothing.
The bean counters at WordPress inform me this is post #3000. I am not certain if this means my 3000th post since I transferred over to WordPress, or my post from Blogger.com combined with WordPress total 3,000. My inner-bean counter wants to know how many of my entries are ‘spo-reflections’ vs. ‘random thoughts’ vs. etc. I shan’t worry about this now but celebrate nonewithstanding. I will lump all entries into the common category ‘elegant prose’ and have a snort* in honor of my industry.
I’m too tired to write anything profound or self-congratulatory. Rather, I pause on this momentous occasion to say thank you to Spo-fans far and wide coming along with me. I hope to write 3,000 more and then some.
Where I am going is a mystery.
*Coyote White Whiskey from Santa Fe. No rubbish, indeed.
I saw four new patients today; I suspect none of them will be coming back. My intuition is quite keen and I am seldom wrong. They had in common they didn’t like what I told them. I asked each of the members of the Fantastic Four to do something none of them wanted or were willing to do: give up sleeping in, give up smoking marijuana*, give up the supplements cocktail (for something more efficacious), and give up living in The Victim complex. Alas, it is time consuming to dictate all of this. Spending the evening writing for someone you will never see again feels like a waste of time.
Keeping me busy is high on my boss’ priority (as I am on salary). Alas, a day like today doesn’t ‘fill my dance card’. I will quickly get four new contestants for my game show. The irony: I recently dismissed several patients as no longer needing my services (who says “only hams get cured”?) or have moved away. For probity sake, I don’t use well patients to pad my schedule. These factors lead to rather large holes in my professional Swiss cheese. This will further upset the bosses.
I think my job is nevertheless secure because board certified psychiatrists are as rare as snowballs in Phoenix. But it does make for some unsettled feelings.
It’s 10PM and I should go to sleep. I wanted to get something posted. I hope this wasn’t too bromidic.
* I am certain to get angry emails or comments on this one viz. marijuana does no harm in anyway. Since I can’t discuss details rest assured pot smoking was ruining their life and was step one in improving things.
I regret I am not a DIY type. As a boy, I didn’t have any opportunities to become a DIY type of guy . If something needed repair, Father did it as “his job”; he didn’t bother or think to teach us how to do it ourselves. Painting or wallpapering the walls, car repairs, and plumbing problems were never “DIY”. If something was broken, we usually either bought a new one or called a professional to have it repaired.
I wish I had learned the DIY approach to life. I daresay there is something manly about being this sort of fellow. I surmise there is a quiet satisfaction in the knowledge you can change a tire or install a garbage disposal yourself. I also suspect it installs self-confidence in tackling life’s problems: when faced with something “broken” the DIYers address the matter themselves while we ‘non-DIYers” feel helpless and turn to someone witha passive ‘help me”.
I suppose this is why I have such a satisfaction and pride in my shirt making. This is something I picked up and learned completely on my own, starting from scratch as it were. I had a good perspective; I knew the first shirts would be crude. I took a positive approach: mistakes would be made, but these wouldn’t be discouraging but to wisdom (and better hems).
I am now over 50 years old and my time is precious. The time it would take me to learn now to fix the house problem de jour outweighs the price and time savings of picking up the phone and calling in the appropirate repair man to do it for me.
Time and money savings are not the points of DIY; it is the psychology benefits that makes DIY worth the while.
There is no lack of things around the house that want repair. Despite the drawbacks I plan to try some DIY to a few of them. I hope this gives me some self-satisfaction and some encouragement towards even more DIY and a greater sense of mastery.
Hello, I am Harper. The Other Dog’s bosses – the grumpy guys with the horns – asked me to write today’s entry. They said The Other Dog is writing nothing good and may as well use me. I was happy to oblige, especially as there was a bone stipend.
I live in the desert with my master The Friendbeast and his other pet, The Other Dog. My friends Molly and Petey told me it’s good to describe things from a four foot point of view. I don’t have opposable thumbs to type so I am dictating this through the black collar The Other Dog puts on top of his head and speaks into it. My black collar goes around my neck.
I am working on breaking The Other Dog’s bad behavior of not wanting to go on a daily walk. In the morning he wants to sleep in (in my space!) and in the evening after dinner he sits and stares in front of the flat, square screen that lights up. He seems to enjoy his walks but he hasn’t gotten ‘the hang of it”. I like to stop frequently to sniff things, while he likes to ‘keep going’. At the park I let him off the leash so I can run; he tends to keep walking, staring into that handheld flat screen thing. I don’t know why these two-foots do this when there are rabbits to chase.
I am always happy to see The Friendbeast but sometimes he does things I don’t like. Once a week or so he pushes something across the floor which makes a horrible sound. Sometimes he wants me to go with him into the large puddle in the backyard. Both give me the creeps.
I’ve got The Friendbeast and The Other Dog well trained. When I tap on the door they get up and open it for me. I go in and out all day when I please. This is always a good when I can think of nothing else to do. They say I have ‘Lack of Attention Deficit Disorder” but that doesn’t sound as bad as fleas.
The Friendbeast doesn’t ‘put out’ when he is eating. The Other Dog gets dibs on the food; sometimes he passes some on to me. I’ve learned to put my head on his lap and look up with the look I’ve learned from the animal shelter commercials. This almost always works but sometimes I don’t get as much as I want.
Sometimes both of them leave the house and go for a very long walk and they don’t return for hours, but I am always happy to see them return. After I lick their faces we go to the pantry for my obligatory treat. So it’s worth the wait.
In the heat of the weekend I have inadvertently allowed myself to be transformed into a curmudgeon. It’s 9PM and still near 100 degrees. I am quite sick of the heat. For those who live in colder climes the end of September is not unlike the end of March in the Midwest: the periodic returns of snowstorms is enough to drive one to distraction. Rumor has it we may see ‘lows into the 60s’ next week, but I’ve seen this before. It is another case of ‘jam tomorrow’.
Another source of rancor is technology. I spent the afternoon first downloading the latest setting of the iPhone, then tidying up iTunes. I think it’s all back. Nevertheless I feel a bit icross at my day off used up this way. By the way, if any of Mr. Forbe’s minions are reading this, the ‘new look’ looks like a step back viz. the app buttons look worse and I can’t find anything.
I went to several grocery stores today trying to locate Celestial Seasonings “Sweet Harvest Pumpkin” but there was none for sale. You would think it would be everywhere at this time of year. Determined – I ordered some online. For all the fuss this had better be worth it.
On the positive, Harper got some nice walks today, and I had a very good workout. Today was ‘legs day’ and it went well. I’ve always had skinny legs and they are beginning to look halfway decent.
Besides tea, I bought ‘This was”, Jethro Tull’s first album. I am working on my Bucket List; one item is to hear/own all of Mr. Anderson’s albums. I think I have 15 to go.
In these recent weeks WordPress has sent several announcements new people are following my blog. This is a marvelous thing and I am honored so. It does make me feel some pressure to “put out” something deep, insightful or at least humorous. I am more likely to success with the later. Being a clown is easy; at an early age I realized people were laughing at me so I figured the least I could do was to try to be funny.
Alas, nothing profound nor doggerel is leaping out of the recesses of my pumpkin. All I have today is dust thoughts. Apparently this is not the first time dust has evoked my ire. For no good reason I’ve been preoccupied again with the stuff. I’ve discovered dust accumulates on the tops of all the picture frames. Even the light switches are surmounted by a thin gray film. There is a mild satisfaction to wetting a rag or paper towel and making a quick sweep across a frame and coming away with a grimy gray spot, knowing the world is just a little more clean from my sublimated OCD.
Like a lot of ‘hobbies’ when I find amusement in something I tend to go with it. I am flitting around the house looking for dusty tops such as found on the back of chairs or the tops of bed knobs. Jolly good fun. “Give Alice two pencils and she will be amused for hours” goes the expression.
No doubt this zany past time will peak and dissipate when I grow bored or there are no more unswiped surfaces or Someone takes away my Windex or I am finally medicated.
Dust – Sydney King Russell
Agatha Morley
All her life
Complained of dust
like a good wife.
Dust on the table,
Dust on the chair.
Dust on the mantel
she could not bear.
She forgave faults
In man and child
But a dusty shelf
Would set her wild.
She bore with sin
Without protest,
But dust thoughts preyed
Upon her rest.
Agatha Morley
Is sleeping sounds
Six feet under
The mouldy ground.
Six feet under
The earth she lies
With dust at her feet
And dust in her eyes.
Today was rawther unusual that most of the day consisted of ‘no shows’. This is a term for patients who don’t arrive for their scheduled appointments. On the screen, scheduled patients are ‘green’; no-shows are in red. By the end of the day my roster looked like a bloodbath. It’s normal to have one or two no-shows, but today’s dearth of customers was astonishing. “Why” this occurred is a mystery. Theories abound:
The telephones were down for a few hours this morning, so this had somehow caused it.
It’s September: people are too busy with their kids back in school.
When I go away for a week, there is a rebound absence of patients a few weeks after my return.
Word’s out I am a quack.
Although I had plenty to do, I knew the bosses will be fretful. I intuit what will happen next. They will cast their nets far and wide to fill up my dance card with as many “evaluations” as possible. This will cause a glut of new people whom I will need to see frequently for awhile and they won’t be able to get in. I’ll be swamped. Then the cycle repeats, more or less.
Alas, there doesn’t seem to be a way to keep things going at a constant velocity rather than schlepping along like a slinky. Two weeks ago I was being lauded as a great employee; now I’m seen as problematic.
With plenty of time today to accomplish things, there was an incredible consequence: I had an evening without homework. There were no phone calls, no notes to write, nor forms to fill. I had a free night. True! I’m not making this up you know!
I could have been oh so productive but no. I went to the gym, I took Harper for a walk, and then I spent some time gabbing on Skype. Afterwards I wasted time watching Youtube. Sloth and vice. My Protestant Midwest blood is bubbling in wrath and guilt. Not only did I not do a decent day’s work I widdled away the evening. I will be no doubt punished for my indolence.
Besides being a sluggard, I am going to be a poop. It’s 9PM. I am soon going to get into bed with a book and call it a night. Reading blogs and other evening past times will have to wait another day.
Sleep well Spo-fans.
I just finished reading “The Pickwick Papers”* by Charles Dickens. With its completion I have achieved one of my ‘Bucket list” items: read all of Dicken’s major works. This looks like it’s taken me a long time to accomplish this task. Truth is, I’ve delayed reading this last book, for it means ‘There are no new Dickens left to read’. Happily, his works can be reread many times and I plan to do just that.
Fellow members of the bibliobibuli know what I mean when I express the bittersweet feeling I get when I come to the end of book and realize ‘there is no more’. I’ve purposely slowed my pace when approaching the end of a TGR**, for I don’t want to hurry to its conclusion.
But in the great cycle of life (or reading) the sad feeling of a completed book is quickly coupled with the excited anticipation of picking up a new one. The sound of the binding cracking as I enter a new tome is music to my ears. Or, if the book is a relict from a used bookstore, it emits an aroma of old ink and faded paper which sends my heart pounding like a whiff of amyl nitrate.*** A Kindle can’t do either.
My ‘to read’ book pile lacks no options. I will close my eyes, put out my hand, and see what jumps into it saying ‘Read me next!”.
*It was a jolly good read, indeed!
** Thumping Good Read
*** Pretty, no?
Spo-Reflections 