Ponderings and Musings

Earl is out of town in New England tonight on business. Suspiciously, when I called him to see how things were going, he informed me that he was currently winning at Foxwoods Casino in eastern Connecticut. “I thought your meetings were in Massachusetts and Vermont.” “They are.” I guess the casino was a stone’s throw away or something.

But that’s another blog entry.

Since Earl was out of town and my sister is back from Russia, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to meet up with my mother and her for supper tonight. So I trekked off to Syracuse after work.

Mom had a hair appointment after work, so Jennifer and I met up and caught up over a couple of beers and some munchies. She told me about living in Russia for eight months and all that entailed, I shared with her stories about recently traveling to Virginia and what’s been going on while she was gone. Mom joined us a little later (with a spiffed up ‘do) and we enjoyed some good conversation over supper. I know Tully’s is a chain of restaurant, but they seem to have a stamp of “Syracuse” on them, and I’ve mentioned before that I’m very “Syracuse Proud”.

It may be the beer in me that’s getting me all sentimental but I guess I’m a lucky guy to have a sister that I can call one of my best friends. When we were growing up, she always joined me on my little schemes, whether it was rearranging trees in the woods behind the house, jumping over the electric fence to do our own version of running with the bulls in the pasture or setting up a play grocery store, complete with express checkouts, in the basement. Hell, she even sang Linda Mc Cartney’s part in “Silly Love Songs” when I decided I want to sing a number one track while using the wood pile as a soundstage. Now that we’re adults, we tell each other just about everything and still giggle and laugh at the same things. And my mom joins right in with the conversation; she’s always been her own person and still lives up to that – I mean how many 50+ year old women decide to dress up their Saturn sedan by having flames added to the door panels?

While I miss Earl tonight as he does his business trip, I’m glad that I was able to hang out with a couple of my friends, who just happen to be family.

Mother Nature threw us a curve ball today in an effort to remind us that we live in Upstate New York. It’s currently in the low 30s and there’s a mix of rain and snow falling.

Such a lovely day in April.

Since I woke up so cranky this morning, I was extra determined to get myself in a good mood. So on my way home from lunch I cranked up a spring-type classic track from the 60s.

“Grazin’ In The Grass” by the Friends of Distinction.

Grazin’ in the grass
It’s a gas
Baby, can you dig it!

It might not feel like spring outside, but I have spring dancing around in my head today. And this has improved my mood immensely.

Can you dig it!

Sometimes I get a little freaked out when I find out who exactly reads my blog. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a welcomed boost to my ego when I get comments and whatnot about my little ponderings and musings about life, but once in a while I’ll meet up with someone that recites verbatim something I’ve written and I have to stop and say “whoa”. Then I feel a little bit of pressure to come up with something even more witty or inspiring than previous entries and then it happens.

Brain freeze. Creative Seize. Help me, help me, please.
Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight.

I know that there’s a few people the read my blog on a daily basis. And I think that’s great. I don’t know who you are, but your little IP address pops up on my monthly report that gets e-mailed to me and I hope that you enjoy my little missives. But then someone (we’ll call her Maude) has to chime in, “say something nice about (so and so) in your blog, they love it so much.”

I just can’t do that.

It throws my chi and my creative flow in an awkward direction and then I don’t know what to write about. You see, if I’m going to do homework of sorts, I want it handed to me on purple ditto paper so that I can get high from the fumes. It’s not that I don’t like so and so or whatever, it’s just that my blog is a form of my creative expression and I can’t use it to do “shout outs”. I had enough of that back in my radio days.

“Justin says nighty-night to Amber and hopes you’ll go steady with him after lunch tomorrow.”

Yes folks, I had to say things like that on the radio on a nightly basis. It was vomit inducing. I hated that more than having to say “Thank you for shopping at Wonderful Hills” to every customer back when I was working as a cashier. Hills was a fine department store, but I can’t think of one person that could say “Wonderful Hills” with a straight face.

So if you enjoy my blog, I’m happy. If you have something to say, by all means say it. And if you want to acknowledge that you read my blog when you meet me or see me, just say “Thank you for shopping at Hills.”

Yesterday I stopped into a brand new Rite Aid in our area to pick up a few things. I’ve had this little dry skin thing going on under my right eye and on the bridge of my nose for the past couple of months and I wanted to zap it with a little cortizone cream and get rid of it once and for all. I also had to pick up some shaving cream for my head.

I always find it such fun to browse through the Men’s toiletries area of a store. Over the past couple of months Earl and I have been using Axe shower gel to get ourselves presentable. We both enjoy the scent, it’s clean but not overpowering. Well I was delighted to find that this Rite Aid had a new scent of Axe shower gel called Snake Skin. This stuff is da bomb! It has a little bit of grit to it to help shed dead skin cells (hence the name) and it smells fantastic. I love the stuff.

While I was browsing about I also noticed that Rite Aid carries the Headblade line of shaving supplies for men that are BBC (bald by choice) like me. I tried the Headblade a number of years ago and never really got the knack of using it, opting to stick to my Mach III instead. I had never seen any of their other products; they have a shaving cream and a moisturizing cream to use after you shave your head clean. The name of the moisturizing cream?

Headlube.

I love it. It comes in matte or glossy finish. I opted for the glossy since my uncle commented on the glare of my head at supper the other night, I thought I might as well go for the gold. The Headblade shaving cream is pretty good too and has earned a place in the shower, replacing a long legacy of Kiss My Face hypoallergenic stuff that I’ve used for the last couple of years, except when I was out I’d grab a can of trusty ol’ Barbasol that has lived in our bathroom since we moved here.

No one has commented on my shinier head today, but I have noticed a little bit of glare from my reflection in the window near my cubicle. It’s pretty cool.

Front Porch.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

In celebration of the sunshine, Tom and I sat on the front porch together for lunch. For some reason he doesn’t feel the “Thou shall not nudge the PowerBook” rule applies when we’re doing a little sun surfing. Perhaps I’ll have to remind him how these things work.

It’s always so refreshing to sit outside and just listen to the sounds that ride the breeze. A crow screeching about something in the back lawn. Song birds tweeting a sweet little tune. The sounds of the New York Thruway off in the distance, the warning signal of an Amtrak train. I could just sit back, make myself comfortable and listen and observe for hours. I find it so peaceful.

A great way to recharge the batteries in the middle of the workday.

As I’m sitting here at the kitchen table getting ready for supper, I look out over the patio and notice a jet contrail in the sky. Normally I wouldn’t pay much attention, except the contrail is dark. And the jet is apparently doing a U-turn.

Undoubtedly the trail is dark because it’s nearly sunset and the sun is creating some odd shadows in the sky.

To the right of this little spectacle we have two smaller contrails, presumably further away, that are running in parallel with each other, same direction, same speed. That strikes me as odd too.

Now I’m going to have to pay attention to the sky and see what’s going on.

Now that the sun is actually showing itself and it’s starting to feel a little like spring in these parts, I’m noticing more and more people are coming out of their hibernation and starting to walk the streets around downtown. You can always spot the winter shut in type, they are still wearing a heavy coat while others around them are making due without a jacket. And they look very, very pale.

When I was growing up my sister often referred to my coloring as “lily white”. Now that I look back on it, I think that was kind of rude. Nevertheless, while I wouldn’t paint me in the same corner as Casper, I will admit that I don’t get much color on my skin. I’m the type that burns and then peels, rinse and repeat. I go from “lily white” to shocking red to yuck and then back to pale white.

I think my sister hogged all the tanning genes in the family. I don’t think she’s ever had a sunburn in her life. But then again, I’m the only redhead of my generation so maybe I just got an extra helping of the low sun tolerance genome.

I’m going to attempt to get a little color this year without getting all sunburned. That way when Earl and I go traveling this summer, I won’t spook everyone at the beach.

Eating healthy has been the name of the game in our merry little home and Earl and I have been joined by another family member in the quest for a better body.

Our cat Tom is now on the bandwagon.

Tom has his annual trip to the vet a week or two ago. It was the usual routine, he sees the cat carrier and jets underneath anything that would restrict access to him, be it the bed, the couch or the piano. Being the mean ol’ daddy that I am, I coax him out by pulling on one his paws until he follows along, literally kicking and screaming all the way. Then I give him a shove into the cat carrier, in which his paws spring out in every direction but “in”, so I end up turning him this way and that until he finally admits defeat and actually gets in the carrier. On the ride to the vet, anything that will come out of cat, except blood, will. He must figure that it’s easier for him to give all the samples in the car instead of the in the exam room.

It’s such a lovely experience.

Anyways, since Tom has been with us he’s weighed between 10 3/4 and 11 1/4 pounds. This visit he clocked in at 12 1/4 pounds! I resisted the urge to point out to the vet that he was on a different scale for the first time and that he had hit “stop” when the dial was turning and it had stopped on 12 1/4 pounds. Perhaps he was secretly saying “no whammies, no whammies, no whammies.” Who knows.

So he suggested Tom get away from the moist food we were giving him as a side dish to his kibble. He wanted to recommend some expensive, prescription required food but I told him the last time we tried that Tom refused to eat for three days and made everyone’s life miserable until he was served something with flavor.

So we’ve found this light kibble for adult cats. Unlike human food that’s branded ‘lite’, I don’t think there’s splenda in it.

So now that Earl and I are eating heatlhy, we have Tom joining in on the group effort. We’re going to be a fierce looking family come summertime.

In less than an hour it will officially be spring! Winter will be over and spring will be upon us. I think Mother Nature missed the memo, it’s in the mid 20s right now.

Happy Spring. Have you hugged a daffodil today?

For some reason I awoke this morning in full domestic mode. I wanted to clean. I wanted to redecorate. I want to make this house POP. So after a nice little breakfast, Earl and I started cleaning and scrubbing the house. He did bathrooms, I did the kitchen. I actually scraped enough gunk off the stove to find out the original color of it. It’s off white! Maybe it’s almond. Earl came in and said, “Hmmm… I always thought the stove was avocado.” Nevertheless, it’s looking spiffy now. We’re afraid to cook in fear of getting it dirty.

Earl continued to work on the bathrooms while I tackled the next chore, dusting. I have to admit I’m not a big fan of dusting. I don’t like spraying crap on the end table to make it shine. The cat slides off when he jumps on it and it’s smells way too lemony for my taste. So we just swiffed our way through it with a handy little Swiffer duster. Much quicker and much better.

No cleaning project is complete without mopping the kitchen floor. So I did the honors and found the original tile pattern after a little bit of elbow grease. Earl and I are such sloppy cooks in the kitchen!

I must admit that occasionally I feel overwhelmed by our house. It’s pretty good sized and with both our busy schedules always grinding away, sometimes keeping the house up to health standards can be challenging. We’ve talked about moving to a smaller place just so we wouldn’t have so much work to do to keep the house clean. But I’ve decided I like our home. It just needs a little TLC once in a while.

Next domestic attack: the basement!