What’s top of my mind: Summer plans. There’s a lot I wish to do, particularly traveling. Some of the pleasure trips rests on clarifying when I ought to go to Michigan for my turns at visiting and caretaking Father. I need to get these in place. Afterwards, I need to get Someone to sit down with me to plan what we can do/afford to do as traveling being expensive. We have an elderly dog to consider. How long/far can we go with her at the boarding place? Many variables to consider.


Where I’ve been: Costco. I went last Sunday afternoon and I went alone. Oh the horror. If Mr. Dante were alive today he’d put this scenario in his Inferno, perhaps between levels 2 and 3. With that said it wasn’t too hellish. It was a sort of game of trying to maneuver around the shoppers with their oversized carts to get from A to B without ructions. Costco sells things in bulk. We now have enough paper towel and bathroom tissue to last a life time. I also got a tankful of Tide detergent, enough to wash our clothes until Christmas, which is good that I don’t have to return to their vast halls any time soon. As a treat, I brought home one of their broiled chickens, you know the ones, the birds they glaze with some unidentified addicting habit-forming substance. We’ve been eating off this bird for a few meals. I will use the carcass to make stone soup.


Where I’m going: The Good Dentist. This afternoon I see The Good Dentist for a routine check up. I hope he tells me all is good. I’ve been procrastinating going back to the oral surgeon to get a replacement tooth for the back molar that was pulled in early 2020 prior to the shut down. Getting a replacement will be time-consuming and quite costly; I often wonder if it is is worth it. Thanks to my journals, I was able to look up and recall the name of my bouncy young dental hygienist* so I can go in greet him today by name. He is a dear well over four feet. He makes me feel eighty years old.


What I’m watching: The cement pond. Last weekend it developed an emerald green coating around its edges and on the steps going down into the deep end. That ain’t good! I gave the thing a good scrubbing with a stiff brush not unlike toothbrushing. Then I “shocked” it with a bag of nasty chemicals that made me asphyxiate but it seemed to clear the waters up. Once algae appears it can be a challenge to keep from returning. Jenny Greenteeth will be quite cross I cleaned her abode so. I must remember to swim with the light on so she doesn’t drag me down to my doom for my industry.


What I’m reading: ‘Stuck between two bad options? You need to ‘knock the flagpole down”. This funny saying is based upon a real-life contentious debate about flying flags on a certain pole. No compromise could be made. The impasse was solved as it were when someone (accidently or intentionally) backed up into the thing and knocked it down. Problem solved. The gist of the article is trying to get people to look at other solutions than “mine or yours”. When we’re stuck between two bad options, our mindsets become fixed. We think: These are the only options. And then we stop getting creative. But of course, there are always more options. When we knock the figurative flagpole down, we are clearing out space to see beyond our problems. We are giving ourselves permission to take action, rather than to simply settle.


What I’m listening to: “Castle in Spain”. This is a Disney tune from ‘Babes in Toyland” I don’t remember the movie much, but I remember the song, for as a boy I had a LP record. Later in life during my dancing days (circa the 90s) “Castle in Spain” was often played in dance class as the students learned to tango. In my innocent days, I had no clue to the economic references in its lyrics. It’s actually a nasty capitalistic song but jolly good fun to dance to. When I hear it, I can almost remember how to tango.


What I’m eating: A doughnut. To be specific, a chocolate doughnut with chocolate glaze. It’s been months since I had anything like this. In celebration of my lab work (see below) I thought I would ‘celebrate” with a sugar-fried cake of death. Oh the horror; oh the euphoria. After months of ‘no sugar” this tasted obscenely sweet and not in a nice way. It was sort of like one note really loud, with no nuance. On the other hand the dissolution of the dough and the taste of chocolate came together in my mouth like The Wonder Twins to make a scrumptious euphoria. Funny though I don’t see myself wanting to do much sweets anymore. I’ve grown accustomed to the ‘no sugar’ taste of food. I can live without it.**


Who needs a good slap: Thems who run the stoplights at entrance ramps to highways. Most of the ‘on-ramps” in Phoenix have two lane merging into one, each with its own red/green light to make people enter the highway one at a time, every other car. Cars often run through these, not even bothering to slow down in a show of feigned compliance. It is a simple case of folks breaking the law as they know no one is looking and they can get away with it. I’ve been honked at from behind for following the law and stopping at the red light for my turn to go. I wonder about these folks who break the law because they know they can. What else do they do? Steal from work? Cheat at their taxes or their spouses? I define integrity as doing the Right Thing even when no one is looking.

On my 1-5 rating scale, I give 2 slaps.


What I’m planning: An outrage. I am rather shocked at this, but when I thought out the question this is what popped up. Sort of like Tolkein saying out of nowhere he wrote on a blank piece of paper “In a hole in the ground live a hobbit”. Now where did that come from? Possibly The Skanks or someone like them. When I think of ‘outrage’ I think of the Monty Python line to ‘set fire to some public building” or the voice of Binky The clown advising you about your boots to through them out the window. I’ve been oh so conventional these days; perhaps a bit of outrage would be good. Perhaps I could run a red light on the on-ramp?


What’s making me smile: My latest lab work. Happy Joy! I am pleased as Punch to announce my non-pharmaceutical interventions of diet and exercise were adequate to normalize my labs. There is no sugar in the urine and my fasting glucose is 93. No metformin for me! The Good Doctor was pleased too. My PSA was OK too. My viral load came back again at non-detectable, which has been the case for so long I don’t remember when last it wasn’t. So it looks like I am sailing into my sixties relatively in good shape.

*Jason

**With that said for my birthday in July I plan on making love to a big bag of Gummi-bears.