does this bother you?
desperate need of mending?
feel need to fix it?

Based on the article, Experts Agree: Nobody Knows What ‘Bimonthly’ or ‘Biweekly’ Means By Nitsuh Abebe in the New York Times Magazine where Mr. Abebe writes:

There are also usage guides for “biweekly” and “bimonthly,” but most of their advice just face-plants right back into uncertainty. Merriam-Webster suggests using “semimonthly” for “twice a month,” which doesn’t much clarify “bimonthly” unless people know you’re doing it. An English professor named Michael Adams told CBS News that we should bring back “fortnight,” the old shortening of “14 nights,” so that we “don’t have to worry about ‘biweekly’ or ‘bimonthly’ meaning two things.” But two weeks and half a month are not the same: A semimonthly paycheck arrives 24 times per year, a fortnightly one 26. Every “biweekly” or “bimonthly” explainer seems to arrive at the same drastic conclusion: Abandon these words. They are hopelessly compromised. Just say “twice a month” or “every other month” or whatever.

The trouble is that deciding what is “correct” does not really resolve ambiguity. There is, for instance, solid agreement that bi- will for some reason affect “annual” in the opposite way it affects “monthly,” giving us “biannual” (twice a year) and “biennial” (every two years). This does not remotely stop people from confusing the two: Clarity solves nothing.

My question is: Does this bother you? Does it feel like a tiny piece of linguistic machinery has snapped off and is clanking around in desperate need of mending? Do you feel a need to fix it?

I enjoyed reading the article very much as it was focused on words.

But that last quote.

Does this bother you?

Does it feel like a tiny piece of machinery has snapped off and is clanking around in desperate need of mending?

Do you feel a need to fix it?

I really need to ask these questions of just about everything today.

Because …

So many things bother me.

So many tiny pieces of machinery have snapped off and are clanking around in desperate need of mending?

I feel a need to fix these things.

And I don’t want things to bother me.

I don’t want to feel anything is in desperate need of mending.

I don’t want to fix anything.

Just let me go to the beach and I am good.

Maybe in a fortnight or so I will be ready to get back into letting things bother me.

missing my missing
hour each morning disappears
where does the time go

I wake up, or I am already awake, staring at my bedside clock and I know it is time to get out of bed.

I look at the time and no matter how hard I look, the time keeps changing out from under me.

Then suddenly, it is an hour later and I am dressed and my back pack is on one shoulder and the wife says she is ready and I am off to work with her driving.

In that hour I know that I:

Showered.

Drank a lot of coffee (moving closer to the brink of awareness with each sip).

Read several newspapers.

Played wordle and some other games.

Ate some breakfast or broke my fast with anything from left over pizza, to cereal, to raisin bread toast or maybe an ice cream sandwich.

Got dressed.

Checked the tide.

Checked the route to work for accidents or alligators or accidents with alligators.

Checked the time.

And it is a hour later.

That hour seems to be missing.

And I am missing that missing hour.

And I feel like I haven’t moved a muscle or thought a thought.

Maybe I am looking at this wrong.

Instead of worrying, wondering where I was when the time went.

I should say look at what I did all so effortlessly.

Later in my lunch time walk along the beach I watch the local catermerans moving up and down the Atlantic Coast.

All so effortlessly, just like my mornings.

I ain’t missing nuthin.

caffeine does its best
the first hit in the morning
when you’re at your worst

In the health column, We Ask the Experts …, in the New York Times, writer Simar Bajaj took on the question, “Can Coffee Really Boost Your Mood?”

Mr. Bajaj writes:

“Caffeine does its best mood boosting when you’re in some sort of deficit,” said Laura Juliano, the chair of psychology at American University, whether that’s being sleep deprived, pushing through a tough work project or running behind your usual cup of coffee. “The first hit in the morning is probably the most reinforcing because that’s when you’re at your worst,” she added.

But experts say that the brain adapts to regular caffeine consumption, making you less responsive to its effects over time. So, among regular coffee drinkers, the mood lift might just be relief from withdrawal symptoms, like fatigue and headaches, Dr. Juliano said. Your daily coffee might just bring you back to normal, but moving out of a slump still feels satisfying, she added.

However, getting a bona fide mood boost is probably limited to occasional coffee drinkers, Dr. Juliano said, since they likely haven’t built up the same tolerance to caffeine.

I dislike getting up in the morning and readers of this blog know that.

I like my coffee in the morning.

I get it ready the night before.

Fill the coffee maker with water.

Spoon on the coffee.

I have to be careful as I will do this just before I go to bed and the smell of the ground coffee can be a pick-me-up just when I want a calm-me-down.

I set the alarm and the next morning wake up before the alarm goes off.

I stare at the red numbers of the clock and here the clug clug clug of the coffee maker kicking in.

It’s new day and all that means and I am at my worst.

I don’t want to get up.

I want the oblivion of sleep.

To sleep perchance to dream.

But the clock doesn’t stop moving into the day and on the days I need to drive onto the Island to work, I got to get going or be stuck in traffic on a bridge the United States Corps of Engineers refuses to certify as ‘safe to use’ (and I am not making that up).

Showered up and first cup of coffee in hand, I take that first sip.

Experts say that the brain adapts to regular caffeine consumption, making you less responsive to its effects over time. So, among regular coffee drinkers, the mood lift might just be relief from withdrawal symptoms, like fatigue and headaches.

I might not be an expert on nothing but I am a regular coffee drinker and if all I get is the mood lift that might just be relief from withdrawal symptoms, like fatigue and headaches, well SIGN ME UP.

A mood lift from the relief from fatigue and headache is no small thing.

I can heartily endorse that my daily coffee might just might bring me back to normal, and that moving out of a slump still feels satisfying.

And let me say, there are those days where the path back to normal is long and treacherous.

If I can get there through a cup of coffee, well slip me a slug from that wonderful jug

Waiter, waiter percolator, that bridge is waiting for me.