June 26 – footsteps up the stairs

footsteps up the stairs
ache in head starts, builds slowly
inevitable

It started yesterday as a dull point of aching near the top of head.

Hoping I could fight it off, I took some advil.

As usual it had no impact and the dull point of ache slowly expanded to take in more and more of my head.

When I went to bed I knew today would not be a fun day.

It’s isn’t disabling.

Just nagging.

Just there.

I have done profiling, writing journal and recording foods, events and thoughts trying to figure out what triggers these things.

There seems to be no pattern, no rhyme and no reason.

And they usually cannot be stopped.

When I feel that first pulse or throb or echo in my head, I know that anywhere for the next 12 to 36 to 48 hours I will be walking around with one boot off so to speak.

When my sister was in Med School, she explained to me once how it had to do with the capillaries in my brain. She was talking mostly about the use of caffine and how it caused the capillaries to constrict and when you didn’t get the caffine you were used to, the capillaries not only failed to constrict, but actually swelled up a tiny bit in your brain which caused the ache.

Or was it the other way around?

It is these tiny, tiny capillaries that caused the ache.

Of that, I have no doubt.

Through creative visualization, I can see them swelling in my brain, pushing on the nerves.

Not much, mind you.

But enough and slowly, slowly increasing.

How can something so small hurt so big.

I am reminded how much a sliver in my finger hurts.

When the sliver is out, I find it difficult to believe that that tiny piece of wood could have hurt so big.

June 21 – good day good enough

good day good enough
to make up for the bad days
ebb and flow continues

Summer Solstice – 2019

Google ebb and flow and you can get the response, “a recurrent or rhythmical pattern of coming and going or decline and regrowth.”

My day can change like the weather, with the weather.

A sunny day can make all the difference.

Maybe spending the first 50 years of my live in the Great Lakes State, where the great lakes create a climate that produces 290 cloudy days every year has something to do with it.

Of course, nothing can make my day better, faster, than to see what any of the grand kidz are up to.

**Jaxon … caught in the act and learning to climb to what ever he wants!!**

Today is the longest day and sunny is forecast.

Cheers for a long, good day.

June 7 – woke up, no headache

woke up, no headache
no stomach ache, feeling good
of course its raining

While Georgia’s driving skills in snow (non existent, just stay home) are well documented, it is not as well known that when in rains down, Georgia drivers forget how to drive.

Drivers in Georgia are taught from youth to NOT DRIVE in snow and never drive over ice (it might blow up or something, just don’t do it).

They are somewhat prepared for snow and ice.

Rain, however, throws them for a loop and they forget how to drive.

Why they is just as happy as a fox in the hen house to put their emergency blinkers on, drive 45mph and lock on to that spot on the freeway until the rain stops.

It’s an odd phenomena and has to be experience both to be believed and understood.

What with non Georgia drivers skittering all over the freeway, dodging the slow moving Georgians and all the emergency flashers going, its like driving on the surface of a pin ball machine.

Which does lead to accidents.

I counted about 11 accidents just this morning.

Rain.

Ruins my day before its starts.

June 4 – right mug

Have to have right mug!
Not sure why, with shelf of mugs?
… or its a bad day

My morning routine is pretty set in concrete with a strict time table.

Alarm at 5:15AM.

Make coffee, shower and in kitchen by 5:30AM.

Coffee and whatever I feel my stomach is ready for for breakfast. Most often, my stomach is NOT ready for anything.

With my coffee, start with reading my Bible then the newspapers on the iPad.

Still start with the Detroit Free Press. When I was a kid, our neighborhood in Grand Rapids, had DAILY MORNING DELIVERY by a PAPERBOY of the Free Press. I cannot remember a time in my life when the morning didn’t start with the Free Press.

First sports then the front page. Though on the Free Press App, more and more sports stories end up on the Front / TOP STORY page, I still go to the sports page first.

After the Free Press, its USA TODAY, sports first then front page and finally Google News and the Guardian (UK).

At 5:55AM, I am in the kitchen assembling something for lunch. Not a lot of variety to my lunches as I can’t think of much at this time. I think about how in High School, I made a ham sandwich everyday for the same reason.

By 6:00AM, I am back upstairs getting dressed.

Before 6:10AM, I want to be in the car.

I know all this and I have done this routine time and again, yet when I open the cupboard to get a mug for my coffee, if I don’t see my regular mug, the morning train comes to a stop, my brain freezes and I stare at the stack of other mugs, trying to decide which one to use.

And it can take a long time to decide.

Throws off the rest of the schedule.

The mug won’t change the way the coffee tastes, but it does.

The mug won’t change the way the day goes, but it does.

Even more stupid, we have several other mugs in the exact same style as my favorite, but the color scheme and the company logos on the mug are different.

But if I don’t have the right mug, the day, while not ruined, doesn’t feel right.

It’s going into a fight with one boot off or whatever they say in Texas.

Later in the day, you could look at me and ask, “gosh, whats wrong?”

If I was honest, I would say, “didn’t have the right mug.”

May 24 – Kitchen table

kitchen table
set for breakfast, room smelled
of coffee, bacon

Admit it, you can smell the bacon.

You can smell the bacon and it made you smile.

Last week while visiting my sister Lisa, she made bacon and eggs from breakfast on cold dreary day and I can still smell that happy smell.

This is based on this excerpt from Charlotte’s Web.

When Mr. Arable returned to the house half an hour later, he carried a carton under his arm. Fern was upstairs changing her sneakers. The kitchen table was set for breakfast, and the room smelled of coffee, bacon, damp plaster, and wood smoke from the stove.

Yesterday’s quote from Charlotte’s Web got me to thinking about this great book.

Sure sure it’s all about teaching kids about life and death and everything.

But for me it was just a joy to read and have read to you.

I never saw the great, dark picture of life that others painted from the book. (This is a reoccurring theme in my life of missing the possible intended pathos for the romance.)

Much of what is written about Charlotte’s Web reminds me of when I was in college and one Professor assigned a book that was written by another Professor at Michigan that I had a good relationship with.

To answer the first Professor’s assigned questions about the book, I walked over to talk to the Professor who had authored it.

That Professor looked at me, tossed the paper with the questions on his desk and said, “That guy has been telling me things about my book I never knew since I got here.”

EB White himself read the book for a recording and you can listen to it hear from YouTube.

(If you want to download this as an MP3 and add to your phone to listen to later or while at pool, use https://www.onlinevideoconverter.com /.)

For me, the magic of hearing EB White reading his words in his New England accent with his own phrasing, pausing, infliction and emphasis is real and beyond words.

You can smell the bacon and wood smoke and can hear the geese and see the barn.

One last tidbit on the book, I read somewhere that when EB White submitted the manuscript to his publisher, it was ready to go to press without any EDITING.

On the one hand, what else would you expect?

On the other hand, it is still a fascinating comment on EB White.