Ponderings and Musings

When I was a lad in elementary school Grandpa City retired from his job at the country club. Retirement was apparently an exciting thing that happened when one got older and he seemed happy to be retiring. At least that’s how I remember things.

After he retired we spent a few days visiting and I was curious as to why he and Grandma were still getting up quite early? If they didn’t have to go to work, why not get a few extra winks?

Now that I’m in my middle 50s, I’ve discovered the reason: even me, one of the strongest “not a morning person” type of people around, now gets up at sunrise and actually feels awake, alert, and productive in the early morning. Of course, Grandma and Grandpa City didn’t have a cat making louder and louder demands at the crack of dawn like we occasionally do here in the desert, but I’m finding my natural wake up time seems to be following the patterns of the sun a bit. Whether I’m up late or not the night before, I’m waking up with the sunrise.

I’m ready to retire.

I grew up in the Lake Ontario Snow Belt outside of a village of approximately 2,500 people. While we didn’t live on the “other side of the tracks”, we lived about four miles from the quaint little downtown area. A mile in the other direction brought us to a very small hamlet with less than a dozen businesses. The former was described as “going downtown”, the other was “going uptown”.

I have fond memories of shopping “downtown”. Some of my earliest memories are of a drug store that still had a soda fountain and I remember visiting with my mom and godmother after going to the nearby “yarn shop”. There was a Sears catalog store, a department store, a men’s clothing store, a ladies’ dress shop, and a whole bunch of small, locally owned businesses. I can still hear creaking floors and warm smiles as we walked in.

The last time I drove through “downtown” there wasn’t much in the way of commerce. There were a couple of service based businesses, a hair salon, a Chinese restaurant, and several of the storefronts had been combined to form a tavern that had apparently closed during the pandemic. The building that housed Western Auto and a grocery store was removed for a bank drive thru.

We often look back at our childhood and focus on the fond memories and I can’t help but smile when I think back to the excitement of going from store to store while “downtown”. Businesses began leaving the shopping district when the department store was built out by the Interstate. That spurred fast food restaurants and the relocation of some of the small chain stores from the downtown area out to the new commercial area.

As a guy in my mid 50s with a good memory, I’m happy to have experienced this earlier version of small town shopping districts. The world seemed bigger while the community seemed closer. There seemed to be more smiles on faces. In the 80s it was the malls and in the 00s it was about the online shopping experience.

When I go on my storm chasing trips I often drive through “Business Districts” (as guided from the roadway designed to bypass the original town), hoping to see glimmers of what I once knew. Once in a while I find it; this year it was Garden City and Independence, both in Kansas. Last year it was Gothenburg, Nebraska. Smiling faces, fairly business shopping districts, pleasantness.

Sometimes I wonder if moving to online shopping is really progress.

One of the perks of working from home is that it’s fairly easy to take a nap during a lunch break. I do this quite often. It doesn’t work out for me as well as it used to. Lately I’ve been feeling groggy after a nap. I used to be able to Power Nap.

I set a timer for 20 minutes. I immediately fall asleep and generally wake up with six minutes left on the timer. I feel like I’ve slept at least three hours, I can usually remember a dream, and I feel refreshed. If I get up then, I’m fine. It’s the “oh I have six more minutes” and I shut my eyes when things go sideways.

So starting tomorrow I’m going to try to not nap at all and get my body back on track. Getting old is interesting.

It’s been one week since my stomach bug and the extended downtime last weekend. I have surprisingly been able to keep the weight off for that week and am feeling better for it.

The biggest change in this whole thing is I gave up drinking Diet Coke or Coke Zero. I’ve also ramped back my caffeine intake; cutting my coffee and iced tea consumption in half. This has helped my sleep experience quite a bit.

As I navigate my way through middle aged life, I have to remember that my body isn’t what it used to be and it’s not what it’s going to be. Paying a little more respect to this vessel has helped me have a productive week and a better outlook on life in general.

I like it when folks stop by the office to say hello.

This came up in my Youtube suggestions the other day and I just had to watch it again. I remember wondering the same thing when I was a youngster, “who is Rula Lenska?”

I refuse to be sick. It’s just the way I approach the idea of illness, I refuse to accept it and I press on. Nine times of ten I feel like this approach works to life but once in a while my body wins over my mind and I end up getting sick.

Hence the activities of Friday.

After repeatedly vomiting during the day on Friday and taking some much needed downtime from work, I decided to just approach the weekend to allow my body to do whatever it needed to do. Apparently, that meant lots of sleep. I am writing this on Sunday morning and for the first time in months I actually feel well rested. I took three or four naps yesterday, went to bed early last night and ended up sleeping straight through until my usual wake up time, which these days is around 06:00. I get up early because after all, I’m a middle aged man and that’s when middle aged men apparently wake up. I also have a feline that likes to stir a bit at sunrise.

When my body wins the illness battle and convinces me to slow down, I take a moment and realize that it’s time to listen. So that’s what I’m doing. As a riff on Friday’s theme, I’m calling this weekend “The Great Purge”. I’ve made a few promises to myself in regards to tamping down on some of my habits (caffeine intake, calories intake, etc) and trying to get myself to a better place, both mentally and physically.

My career can be stressful. It’s manageable, at least I think it is, but it is stressful. Sometimes I think I take work things a little too seriously.

Home life can be stressful too. Again, I think it’s manageable but sometimes a house of five grown men can be overwhelming.

As one that tends to read into things, I feel like this bout of illness was my body and brain ganging up on me a little bit and saying, “hey, slow down a little bit. Get your act together.”

And that’s what I’m going to try to do.

A casino, a martini or some champagne, lots of money, tuxes, and a sexy vibe. The perfect Saturday night. Alas, enjoy one of my favorite dance songs (and video) of all time. On a Sunday night.

Here’s Armin van Buuren featuring Nadia Ali, “Feels So Good”.

As I looked at the calendar this morning and it clicked that this weekend is Memorial Day here in the United States, I was reminded of the excitement I used to feel about the “unofficial beginning of summer” when we lived up north. Back in my radio days songs like “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama and “Summertime Summertime” by Nocera would get added to the playlist.

Even though we’ve lived in Arizona for over two years I still get confused as to what time of year it actually is, and that’s because it’s sunny for over 300 days of the year. The weather forecast is calling for possibly hitting 100ºF/38ºC this weekend. The trick is to avoid the sun and subsequent skin damage. I find the heat rather easy to deal with until it gets over 112ºF or so. Then it’s just too hot.

I kind of miss that feeling of “ooh it’s summertime!” excitement but then I focus on the fact that we don’t have “shoot, summer is over” later in the year so I guess it all balances out.

Our friends Richie and Jake are visiting for the week. They’ll be here through this weekend. In a rare occurrence, the whole family went out to dinner at one of our favorite local eateries. The Barnyard is not far from home.

Lucky and Jinx stayed home for their longest duration alone thus far and survived the ordeal just fine. There was much rejoicing when we got back home. I doubt Truman even noticed our absence.

It’s still exciting to me that we eat outdoors in May in a space with large swamp coolers to keep the customers cool in this Arizona heat. But then again, we’re quite comfortable eating outdoors in January so I suppose it all makes sense.

I had a Champagne and Orange based spritzer as my one adult beverage since it was a school night. We had a very nice time.