Humor | Playing for Time

I’m okay with real.

11 Jun 2016 5 Comments

Summer water classes started on Tuesday so this chicky is in the swim again. It’s great exercise and a lot less dance-y than my initial plunge at another facility – this could work out. The instructor is easy to love and it’s all friendly funny women plus one cute shy husband. Other than a few younger women we’re all approximately from the same era, including our badass sweetheart of a teacher, so there are lots of Judys, Susans, Paulas, Lindas, Nancys, et.al.

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Other commonalities – surprise, surprise – would include hearing loss, bad backs, arthritis, sucky balance, and a laundry list of other choices. There’s a certain comfort in knowing I’m not the only person my age who’s falling apart, but it’s even sweeter to know that everyone in the class, including Token Man, cares about her/himself or they wouldn’t bother showing up. I see it on all the faces – “I matter. This part of my life counts big-time. Let’s keep it evolving upward.”

Humor is how Baby-Boomers roll, because DUH, without it you stop rolling. I advise you, boys and girls, to maintain a healthy personal space between yourself and humor-challenged beings – close interaction rarely ends well. And if you happen to be a libtard “feeler” like someone I know well, you’ll haul the sand from every encounter until it all finally sifts out through your sandals. Our happy lil’ class is populated by people who love laughing at themselves in the good ways – how does anybody keep putting one foot in front of the other without that? Yikes.

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Their sweet little downcast faces ^^^ would break your heart.

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Image by Judy Smith

Remembering a writing mentor who probably never knew it…

09 May 2016 Leave a comment

This is wonderful. My friend Ned Hickson wrote it and I stole it to share with you.

A mentor every writer should’ve been lucky enough to have.

Anyone who follows my weekly Nickel’s Worth on Writing knows Publisher’s Digest and The Master of Horror® Stephen King are frequently among those offering accolades touting the value an…

Source: Remembering a writing mentor who probably never knew it

Image by Judy Smith

A day in the life…

12 Apr 2016 2 Comments

The sun’s shining, the air’s warming, and my competent young orthopedic surgeon shook my hand twice this morning before officially kicking me out. Celebrating will happen later with Kimmers, and tomorrow I’ll start working on my own rehab follow-up at Rock Chalk Park while he’s playing PickleBall. A heinous winter has come to an end far less painfully than we’d envisioned on our way to the ER, and two of us lived through it. Thank you, universe, your encouragement was highly appreciated, but throwing Maddie’s trek across the Rainbow Bridge into the mix was a nasty twist and you owe us for that.

During one of our final therapy sessions, the assisting tech asked me about retirement – and moaned when I described it as feeling like we have all the time in the world. “Oh, I SO want to be retired!” She hasn’t made it past 25 yet, pretty sure, so I feel for her because time and health are the most valuable currencies in human existence and she has a long way to travel before time is truly her friend. However, I say that knowing she’d be bored, frustrated, and guilt-laden over retirement right now. Having “all the time in the world” also means we’re personally responsible for filling those hours with things that matter in some way – things that add to our usefulness in our immediate world and inspire us to get out of bed every morning. Kim has never had a problem with that – he’s Rise & Shine Guy all the way. The retired girl has worked her way up to that status, in body at least, and is now disappointed if she misses a sunrise. I might not be awake until 10am, but I’m up, dammit, and the world is mine.

Life has gradually taken on a sweet rhythm, the pace has settled into the doable, if not always the desired, and we’re uniquely suited to the lifestyle because continued accomplishment is fun and happens of its own volition, but we’re basically lazy AF and our consciences are easily assuaged by small victories.

Breakfast is an event at least four mornings a week – biggest meal of the day – and for the remaining three we bow to the reality of late-life weight gain and decreased mobility. Mostly speaking for myself – Kim is far more capable and disciplined, bless his manly self. I’m working on it – never doubt what you can do when life goes right every once in a while.

Kim does the things I can’t do anymore, and I do the rest – it’s a division of labor that’s worked for us for almost a dozen years now, and every new day confirms that the naysayers were not only mistaken, but misguided, bless their hearts. If you know something, don’t let anyone rain on your parade – you’ll be scooping up any horseshit that falls, not them, but better than that, you’ll be reaping all the benefits. Unless the rain gods are paying your bills, their opinions aren’t worth the breath it took to blow them all over you, so walk away.

We spend hours every day writing at our computers – I spellcheck him and he edits my stuff for awkward syntax. On weekends our spa soaks are full of conversations we wish we could recreate later, on a full range of topics including politics, religion, sex, marriage, friendship, theatre, all the biggies. We’re hilarious and wise, and anyone else would find us insufferable but they’ll never have that opportunity because it’s all done entirely naked; therefore, it’s snobbishly exclusive, sorry.

After trying out a lot of the restaurants here we eat at home 99% of the time – it’s easier to the budget, and there is no better place anywhere than Chez Kim – at least not within said budget. Best food in town, and kinder portion sizes.

Evenings from 5pm on are balcony time on nice days, and from 5 to 6 no phones are allowed. The more friends out there with us the better, though, so if you’re on that list and within driving distance, get here – open invitation! Text first in case we’re naked.

Bedtime comes when we can’t keep our eyes open any longer…and the next morning we start the game fresh again. Any anger or mini-grudge has a 24-hr. statute of limitations – say what’s on your mind and get the f*ck over it because life is ridiculously short and we started late, so there’s zero time to waste on selfishness.

Sorry so long this time, but our days end up full one way or another. I hope you’re taking notes because unless we step in front of a bus we all end up at this stage of life and it helps to know some stuff going in. You’re welcome.

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(S)he had a face like a blessing … *

04 Apr 2016 2 Comments

*Cervantes

Last month a friend added me to a Facebook group, an action that would ordinarily raise the hair on my neck except for who connected me and to which group. I like to be asked first, but if you actually know me you can probably slip that cheese past me without an implosion. Oh, but hoo-boy, the misguided adds I’ve quietly tiptoed out of! What was it about my posts over the past eight years that revealed a secret affinity for Home Canning groups, Fundie Prayer-Chains, or a support page for Nursing Mothers? {Hypothetical examples to spare the guilty, who clearly did not know me.}

This new page, though, is serendipity – all about women and faces and selfies. One of those things is not like the others. Women and faces = good. Selfies = I suck, both at taking them and accepting the results. But happily, this is all ABOUT acceptance – for ourselves and other women. Without camouflage, before coffee, after a run, in sadness, elation, frustration (!!), other women’s faces are endlessly beautiful to me and seeing them every day is showing me more about genuine acceptance of my own features than anything I’ve encountered until now. If they can all be real, why would I think I couldn’t? When someone shares a shot that’s possibly less than bare-faced, I think “No, please, show us your genuine, natural, beautiful self, the one who can trust her sisters.” So maybe I could dare hope my sisters would think the same on seeing photos of me.

Over the past decade or so my body has been in the process of betraying me, but even at that we’re better friends than back when my pudding-stage brain thought I was such an irresistible speck of humanity. I’m getting pretty comfortable in this body with this face on it, but my selfies still shock me every time. “Hello, Me, this is what we really look like now from the outside, can you believe this shit?” I choose to blame it on Bad Inanimate Face because Resting Bitch Face sounds so ugly and judgy. Pretty sure two things are at work here to make me uncomfortable with my own shots:

It’s MY face in the viewfinder.
Selfies allow me to study my face in a way that invades my personal space and hurts my feelings.

But…sigh…the suggestion is that we each post a selfie every week for a year and write something positive about every photo we share, which I think is delightful advice, in theory. I’ve managed one so far – right now I’m busy drawing from other women the inspiration to be as naked as they are. Faces, guys, naked faces. As you were.

And being real at every stage of life is all that matters.

“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” – Abraham Lincoln

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Yasss! Weekend!

02 Apr 2016 Leave a comment

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but weekends even in retirement have their own aura – the barely-discernible pace slows, and the party mood amplifies. There are nights when we stay up past midnight and have not two vodka tonics but three, possibly more – are there no fences anymore whatsoever? Makes me a little wistful …

I’m currently without adult supervision as Kimmers is out walking, taking advantage of the cool, crisp morning air while he stretches his legs and thinks his own thoughts. I’m doing things, too, of course. I made the bed and…I made the bed. Because weekends are different in that they contain no residual guilt over the perks of voluntary unemployment. I’m happy as a big sunflower, sitting here in my own company, bedhead extraordinaire, coffee on endless spigot, playing my music, IM-ing my insolently profane girlfriends, and eating goldfish. It’s a high all its own that rarely gets better. I didn’t say never, I’m neither stupid nor a fossil.

A fun thing I like to do on weekends is rummage through old photos, either in boxes or my online files. Some could embarrass friends or family, but is that not what social media is all about? I’m sayin’! I love this one…my cousin Bruce and me in our grubby training pants…he’s ready for a nap and I’m pretty sure I just tried eating a bug, the other two choices, of course, being Milk Dud or turd. See more about my cousin here: So Healthy It Makes Me Sick

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Enjoy your weekend to the max, boys and girls! And if you have to work … gah, sucks to be you.

Image by Judy Smith

Things are all screwed up …

31 Mar 2016 4 Comments

You know, you can be operating in full-scale denial mode and still pick up on things pertaining to precisely what you’re ignoring. For example, I’m noticing a whole subculture in terminology that hadn’t resonated with me until just recently. Today in the AARP Bulletin {Hey! The smug grin was uncalled for – the rag was in the mail, who can fathom how or why!} this sentence jumped off the page at me – “People think of ‘elderly’ as this gray plane, as if [older people] are all the same and shouldn’t be seen.” Wow, cold, dude.

So we have da’ yooths, who so far as we know all think and behave alike, and then ya’ got yer generic interchangeable old farts, which why are they even allowed off the grounds on their own? In the middle we have The World of Everybody Else, a world which neither youth nor old-fartism is expected, nor particularly welcomed, to grasp. Nothing personal, most likely, in most cases, just a perception – one that’s always existed and probably always will unless future technology gives us ways to read each other’s thoughts and feelings. People in the know are pretty sure the young and the old are not part of their ranks, a perception that clearly cheats the world to an astounding degree.

I had two remarkable grandmothers who were as different from each other as chalk and cheese, and each of them managed to get across to me the reality that we stay who we are on the inside all our lives while our bodies go to shit around us. One grandma, forever young, accomplished that by example, the other through stories. One night in her 80s, that grandma dreamed she was nineteen again and danced all night in a long flowing skirt and a sparkling-white Maidenform bra. Advertising in the psyche, man, but it was clear how real it all still was in the light of day. Her disappointment that it was only a dream was palpable even to a self-absorbed cheerleader-head, but the gut-punch was when she said “It was so wonderful – my body was as young as the real ME again!” That one stuck.

You can’t convince some folks that people under 18 are, indeed, people, and you can’t break the idea that after a certain age we’re all disposable. But you can try.

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Image by Judy Smith

An ti ci pa tion …

24 Mar 2016 1 Comment

Kim, browsing my Facebook Saved list for recipes: You have a lot of stuff in here, like really a lot. What are your plans for all this?

Me: My plans are to watch the videos, listen to the music tracks, read the articles, and use some of it as a springboard for my blog.

Kim: Really?

Me: Yeah.

Kim:

Me: During lulls when there’s nothing else on my mind and Facebook is boring and I’ve already purged all my email files.

Kim:

Me: Seriously. There are down times.

Kim: So you save stuff every day because you’re in a rush, but you’ll have time later to go back through all of it?

Me: Well. Mostly my attention span isn’t that long, and after the first handful of big-ticket posts I start to drift, but I don’t want to lose them.

Kim: So they stack up. Doesn’t that bother you?

Me: Not much, they’re out of sight. And I’m waiting for Marky to come along and give me folder capabilities for saved stuff so I can sort and find.

Me: And delayed gratification is my bag.

Kim:

Poor Kimmers. Clutter, even the thought of it, offends his OCD worse than any other, and in my morally-lax final third I’m an endless trial to him. He’s out of the house most mornings now, so I’m probably working my way through the For Later list, right? No, not so’s you can tell yet, because there’s another fact of life at work here — one must be IN THE MOOD.

And guess what, bitches, I got IN THE MOOD to compose and handwrite that belated note to Maddie’s veterinary staff. Mailed it yesterday. Booyah! I should have taken a picture for you — work of art and worth the time spent agonizing over it, except not really. Oh, life, I adore your continuing education classes.

A final Easter Egg for the faithful who read to the end: The Wurlitzer recital in my head, precipitated by my fall on the ice, ended approximately ten days after we upgraded my hearing assists and added a masking track. I’ve busted it several times trying to make a comeback, and it slinks back under the bed. Peace is not overrated.

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Just say it!

21 Mar 2016 8 Comments

Queen of Overthinking here, hand in the air, self-admitting for rehab this morning because see, the problem is, I have the uncanny ability to sniff out a plot, a mad-on, a what-did-they-mean-by-that comment; become righteously offended enough for all of us put together; and take myself to the brink of various irreversible reactions quicker than you can whisper “This isn’t about you, cupcake.” It’s like my brain has a life of its own and gets off on working overtime and then I need an intervention.

When one has spent (long, you wouldn’t believe, bubbie) years UN-becoming a pleaser, one oh so does want to believe that perceived slights, digs, and omissions mean nothing. Nothing at all. Why, then, does one’s tiny “I remember potty training with its attendant shame and failure” brain still have the power to do such a number on one’s heart and psyche? Well, never mind, I guess — that’s one for Freud and Co.

Fear of rejection! It’s why we don’t just say what we feel, and mean what we say — give it a rest, Sigmund, I’ve got this. My years of diligent Facebook application have brought me to this bold moment wherein I ask: Why don’t we just say what we feel and mean what we say? Did I not just say that? And the answer is right here in bold, jeez, are you not paying attention?

Fear of rejection almost tricked me into jeopardizing some irreplaceable friendships just recently. Tiny Brain told me “You’re in the way, back off, give space.” Turns out space was the last thing my friends needed so it was pretty much looking to them like nobody cared. Just saying how I felt would have been a smart thing to do. Note to self: Tiny Brain is not to be put in charge of anything whatsoever at any time, in any place, as pain will ensue.

I overthink most things, though, not just what I think other people are thinking. There’s a card here on my desk that we received three weeks ago from Maddie’s veterinary office, not only signed by everyone there, including Seth the pharmacist, but with a personal note from each doctor and staff member that let us know they genuinely saw our little fur-girl and recognized her spirit. It made both of us cry big tears all over again and I was absolutely going to write a heartfelt reply that evening except that other things intervened and it all cooled down just a bit while I was thinking, but I still want to say exactly the right things because their caring touched us so much, and I’m still looking at the card … here on my desk … unanswered. An imperfectly worded but genuine response will be written and mailed today, somebody hold me accountable, please and thank you. Okay, too busy justifying today, so tomorrow for sure. I’ve started a rough draft …

I read a great article the other day about why we procrastinate, but I immediately forgot what the hook was and I’ve inexplicably been putting off going back to look for it, ha. Queen of Overthinking / Queen of Procrastination / World Domination.

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And life is too short and relationships too valuable not to say what you feel and mean what you say.

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Naked conversation …

15 Mar 2016 Leave a comment

This weekend’s spa soak found us once again solving world problems by means of logic, common sense, and positive thinking in the face of current events. No, really.

KIM: So if the economy crashes again, we should have a realistic idea what we might do.

ME: Realistically, a van down by the river would be a plan. No problemo, baby, I’d live under a bridge with you.

KIM: Or how about an Airstream? We could get a cool antique truck to pull it with.

ME:

KIM: What?

ME: You need to focus.

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He knows I’m serious about the “whither thou goest” schtick, though, partly because we were in the bathtub when I said it and he always tells me you can’t lie to somebody when you’re naked.

Also, Headline Checker App, I didn’t appreciate my low grade on this one and I’m not sure your management style meshes with our goals at present, so buh-bye. Who needs that kind of negativity … jeez.

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Has to be spring …

13 Mar 2016 1 Comment

… because they’re telling us it’s time to cut the top off the blanket and sew it onto the bottom, thus allowing DST to wreck us once again. Found comment I can get behind: Let’s make Eastern & Central one time zone, and Mountain & Pacific another and be done with it.

If that sounds like an outstanding plan to you, start a petition or a march or something, please? I’m going back to bed …

Spring_Forward

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And because it’s apropos in some weird way and made me laugh …

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The Nickel Tour …

07 Mar 2016 Leave a comment

As promised yesterday, a brief reading list from Playing for Time’s archives. Bets are now open as to how many I can repost without editing …

NOTE: Each link should open in a new window.

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2013/01/30/behind-every-good-woman-is-a-good-man/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2015/10/31/everyday-garden-variety-bleeding-hearts/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/12/08/what-scares-you/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2013/03/12/why-yes-as-a-matter-of-fact-i-was-raised-in-a-barn/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2013/05/22/memorial-day-reflections/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/09/30/well-this-sucks/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/09/23/queer-eye-for-the-straight-girl/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/10/28/a-tuesday-full-of-thankfulness/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/10/24/my-brothers-keeper/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/12/22/not-going-down-without-a-rant/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2015/07/18/the-tale-of-the-topless-dancer-the-baby-clown-and-the-cross-country-heist/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/12/04/a-fairytale-for-throwback-thursday/

https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/10/25/its-saturyay-try-something-new/

There you go, and I was generous — these are favorites from the past three years and I hope you’ll enjoy one or more. Actually, I hope you’ll adore every single one of them, but how needy would it sound to say that out loud, jeez. I reposted them as I found them, and they’re a semi-cross-section of my blog, including humor and tears, longer posts and shorter posts, nostalgia and brashness, and maybe a window or two for peering at the writer in her cage.

If you like poetry there’s some of that sprinkled around, and a few of the creations are my own. It’s a genre I want to spend more time working with because of the way it pulls words and feels out of me.

The last link is one recipe that is tried & true, in case you read yesterday’s post — Kim has made dozens of these, inspiring awe and reverence each time, so you can trust it as well as many other recipes we’ve enjoyed since I posted them. If you have concerns, of course, just ask. I recommend asking someone who writes a food blog.

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Sit here by me …

06 Mar 2016 2 Comments

Hey, hi, if you’re new to my blog and wondering how you got here, wondering if you want to stay here, wondering what’s for lunch, I’m here to help. 1.) I have a page called ABOUT that you can take a look at and I hope you will because it has its moments, but it tells you mostly about me, which why wouldn’t you want to know? However, it probably gives you not much clue as to what my BLOG is about, which may have been what you were wondering. 2.) Nor can I personally give you much clue as to what my blog is about because it ends up being about pretty much everything. 3.) Lunch is not my problem. I lied about helping.

If you sort of collect food blogs, this isn’t that, even though I go off the rails and post a recipe once in a while because although I haven’t cooked in close to fifteen years it’s like riding a bicycle and it’s always fun to find recipes I know would be fabulous, hand them to Kim, and sit down and eat them. That shit never gets old. Hint: A respectable food blogger would not share recipes, techniques, ingredients he/she hadn’t personally tested. I have no such scruples, so cook at your own risk.

Do you love book blogs? Books are precariously near the top of my list of loves, but this isn’t a book blog, I just hold forth sometimes on things I’ve read that end up making my bravo list. If you’re looking for erudite literary fellowship and enlightenment I’m not your girl, sorry not sorry, there are plenty of those guys and girls out there to call on. I read what I like and write what I know. Chances are good that since you found me we share a few of the same tastes and/or philosophies, and that’s always a rush — that ZOT!! of connection.

Playing for Time isn’t a self-improvement blog, but if growth happens for me in the process of writing — BONUS. And if in some small way my invaluable insights affect you through osmosis and you benefit, I expect a cut.

This is emphatically not a fitness blog, bwahahahaha!! If you follow me very long you’ll know why that’s funny.

Not a travel blog, either, although I think I’d be darling at it. Once we settled into our happy place in our happy town, leaving on a jet plane doesn’t sound like as much fun as it used to be. THAT’S BECAUSE IT ISN’T. What a Not-Happy Place for man or beast. So yeah, I’m not jetting around the globe dashing off travel reports to my publisher that are stream of consciousness and sparkling with wit. Crap.

Not a self-defense blog. HA! (See fitness, lack thereof.)

Not a relationship blog, even though that’s up there above books in my stack of good stuff. I’m still figuring it all out myself … so no … relationship gets talked about quite a bit here, but not on the advice end of things, so no worries.

There are obviously a lot more things my blog isn’t than things it is, so I’m caught lying to you again because I told you that “it ends up being about pretty much everything.” By which I meant, of course, everything I want to make it about. Tomorrow I’ll post links to a few of the pieces I’ve written — it can be frustrating trying to find something that interests you. And maybe these won’t but they’ll be ones I sort of like.

I’m glad you’re here and I hope you’ll talk to me in comments.

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Word Salad

18 Feb 2016 4 Comments

by Judy Smith in Humor, My Thoughts, Throwback Thursdays, Wisdom

Morning kids, me again, here in my Do All Things With ~~CARE~~ CAKE shirt, thinking about the state of the world. Bwahahaha, I meant thinking about my own personal world — stay sharp.

I have to tell you …

I miss my little Maddie so much it takes my breath away. It hurts worse than my bones and keeps my heart so raw I’m just marginally safe for human interaction, which of course means here I am on my blog holding forth in public, or the miniscule percentage to which the universe grants me access. And heard is a sigh of relief from the remainder.

Adding to the joy in the world and subtracting from its woes are the dear ones who heard my pathetic “cry for help” yesterday and offered not only information but viable solutions, as a result of which I have good news: My private concert continues unabated, but it’s taken on a muted, slightly disgruntled tone as of this morning’s wake-up. It’s a start, I have to believe that.

“Hope is often bitter, but it drives us, and we cling.” ~Michelle Sagara

This is my first brush with Michelle, but one hopes she herself was driven enough to cling until the bitterness was over, that would only be right.

So, what else … well, I need to let you know that if you should ever become afflicted with auditory hallucinations, which I have learned via those same dear ones is most likely the proper term for my Wurly-Blitz … {and here’s a fascinating article in case your curiosity should happen to temporarily distract you}:

Can’t Get It Out of My Head

… also I was deeply gratified to read this entry in the Journal of Laryngology & Otology …

Case report: A 70-year-old man with acquired hearing loss suffered a whiplash injury in a low-speed road traffic accident, and subsequently presented with bilateral ‘tinnitus.’ On closer questioning, he described hearing orchestral music. There was no evidence of psychosis, delirium or intoxication (emphasis mine), and the patient was managed expectantly.

Conclusion: This patient represents the first published case of musical hallucination precipitated by whiplash injury. We explore the possible pathophysiological underpinnings of musical hallucination and highlight the need for a greater awareness of this disorder. A management strategy is suggested. (Which suggests to me there might BE such.)

… and where was I … okay, that’s right, if you someday find yourself plagued by earworms, ask yourself if you’ve been taking oxycodone and if the honest answer is yes, Job One is to stop that. My last was approximately 36 hours ago … and my sweet hope, in defiance of gravity and other realities, is that 48 hours out, the difference will be highly discernible. It occurs to me that I should have volunteered for a clinical study — it could have been the shining moment in which my brain made an imprint upon the world that wasn’t a skid mark.

So get off drugs if possible, and your next soldier in the battle is music. I know, music is what started the whole thing, is that not a metaphor for life?

This morning my head has been full of the earworm-crushing sounds of Living Room Songs – Ólafur Arnalds (exquisite — find them!) … the soundtrack from Catch and Release, with its delicious quirk and subliminal voices … and now my brain is swimming in the silky melancholy of Mr. Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours. There’s nothing like the sappiness of Glad to Be Unhappy for confusing the squirrels, and the classic angst of Mood Indigo puts my parents and grandparents, my smooth Reese uncles and snappy Cousin Chet in the room with me, along with that whole over-romanticized WWII vibe, which is not a bad thing at all right now. The near-keylessness of Frank’s Ill Wind should finish jangling things nicely — how the hell did he pull that off?

And now I’m treating my ears to The Union with Elton John & Leon Russell –GLORY!! Unanticipated bonus = I can’t sit still for If It Wasn’t For Bad or Eight Hundred Dollar Shoes or Hey Ahab (good god!) and here comes Monkey Suit !! so shoulder therapy is happening. There is also brazen singing along because Kim is at the grocery store, and I this second realized I can once again snap the fingers on my left hand. You can’t tell me music isn’t the best therapy known to man — it’s loud enough that it feels like it’s coming from inside my chest and if this plus a supply of Yasso bars (find those, too, I promise you’ll thank me unless you’re a salted caramel-hating psycho) doesn’t fix me, I just don’t know what to tell myself.

Holy cow, you’re still here? It isn’t even morning anymore and this has grown to the length and juice of an overworked stump speech, so for the determined stragglers here’s an ice cream cone for your stubborn devotion. It’s so beautifully written it left me in tears and I have to share it. DISCLAIMER: I’m an unapologetic Obama lover — but if you aren’t I hope you won’t let that keep you from this wonderful story.

Meet the man …

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A cry for help …

16 Feb 2016 Leave a comment

I’m being a wastrel today. With a temp of 44º, 25mph winds, and 68% humidity it feels achy cold outside and that’s sufficient to keep me in by the fire, but only because I’m a delicate prairie flower. I’m just over here trying some therapy for the squirrel party in my head (see Make it shtahp!) by playing nonstop smooth jazz/funky chill-out/trance through my headphones. Success rate after ~~three~~ ~~four~~ six hours = zero%. Within seconds of removing the input we’re back to the Never-Ending Wurlitzer Dream Concert, and by dream I mean a nightmare I can’t seem to wake from. No effect is spared, no stop unpulled, no member of the orchestra left partless. You got your strings, your winds, your muted brass, percussion section, and the random harp or two, did I forget anybody! It all sounds the way this freak of nature looks and could end up being the tipping point between my continuing to function as a viable member of society or becoming fully unhinged.

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Now I’m employing reverse psychology “Gosh, I hope the music never stops, it’s so cool to have my own soundtrack, and straight out of my parents’ playlist, bonus! After all this free entertainment what if I would wake up to silence some morning, oh noooooo!” but nobody is deceived. This is not our first goat-ropin’.

So the floor’s open, boys and girls, keep those cards and letters coming in. If you know a proven, or even rumored, method for annihilating an earworm, reach out and touch this one at your first opportunity. I’m sure I could devise an appropriate and destined-to-be-cherished door prize for the first blogosphere comrade to share a remedy with the juju for this beast. Please hurry, we’re looking at everything from The Lawrence Welk Show to full-on jazz, every note delivered at dirge speed and with all the intrigue of a stranger’s black & white photos — if you’re not in them and nobody’s having sex, meh.

Desperately yours and TIA,

Wurly Gurl

Video by Judy Smith

Make it shtahp!

12 Feb 2016 2 Comments

Talk to me, friends, this is getting wackadoodle. Ever since the recent ice capades on the balcony, my life has had a sound track! That might make me happy except that it’s the lamest, most insipid music on the planet — somebody’s inside my head playing a big honkin’ Wurlitzer, an organ I didn’t even know was on my personal parts list. It’s been droning on for weeks now, virtually nonstop until I fall asleep. A B3 would be fabulous, but no, this is old-school swirly-wurly all the way. The sedate tempo never varies, the glisses and runs are utterly predictable, the plummy bass notes swell and rumble, every ending abides by a schmaltzy-sounding template. It’s all tediously drama-infused, and just as I reach the edge of madness the tune changes, always transitioning directly from one song to the next, some of which I recognize but most of it painfully generic, although yesterday’s selection was Desperado on ‘ludes and endless loop.

It’s like I’m living in a mortuary or I wandered onto the soundstage of a Gaither Reunion in full-on veneration mode, and very little external input has the power to punch the mute button. This is new territory but it doesn’t feel creepy … yet. My head did thump the ice and concrete fairly aggressively, so there’s that. And there’s all this better living through chemistry that’s been going down for the past month, giving me reason to hope that once my friends morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, cyclobenzaprine, et.al. go back into the closet the music will find a hidey-hole of its own and go there to die. Not all of it (!!), just this mawkish, never-ending recital of every trite melody ever devised. Bizarre, fascinating, and some of the chord progressions are precious, but I’m so over it — can’t I please go back to the sounds of silence up top now? That would be nice.

Meanwhile I’m nothing if not pragmatic, so … ALLLL SKATE!!

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ALL the stuff …

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