The Man With the Moxie

If half of the politicians in the U.S. were half as smart and half as concerned as this guy, I would be much less afraid for the future of our country.

Really Stupid Songs

Often, songs that I heard as a child will play in my head, or snatches of them. Thank technology for the internet, so I can find some of them and try to banish them forever. Here's one:

O dear, what can the matter be?
Dear, dear, what can the matter be?
O dear, what can the matter be?
Johnny's so long at the fair.

. . . He promised to bring me a bunch of blue ribbons
To tie up my bonny brown hair.

I just remembered 2-3 lines of this one, but that was three too many:

He sat down beside her and smoked his cigar
Smoked his cigar, smoked his cigar
He sat down beside her and smoked his cigar
Smoked his cigar-r-r


She sat there beside him and played her guitar,
Played her guitar, played her guitar
She sat there beside him and played her guitar,
Played her guitar-r-r

Each of the following lines is a repetitive stanza like the two above:

He told her he loved her but oh how he lied...
She told him she loved him, but she did not lie...
They went to be married, but she up and died,,,
He went to the funeral, but just for the ride...
She went up to heaven and flip-flop she flied...
He went down below her and sizzled and fried...
The moral of this tale is never to lie...
Or you, too, may perish and sizzle and fry...

I may write a poem called "Sizzle and Fry."

"When you don't see him, he's somewhere else."

Last night I watched "Michael," the movie. That has to be one of the best, or at least among my top favorites.

Why didn't anybody show the Alabama game yesterday? Since those overblown giants of LSU beat them by a hair, I guess the Tide is not considered worth broadcasting. That LSU win was shown at least a dozen times on TV in the past week. It really was a big accomplishment, to beat Bama.

I've been decorating the dollhouse. I can't help it, tedious though it is.

Coffee! For the love of heaven, coffee!!!

I saw Mo curled up in a spot of sunshine on the carpet. Made me want to do the same. There's a poem in that somewhere. I guess Mo is older than I am, in cat years. Still, it would seem inappropriate for me to curl up on the floor and go to sleep. I may do it, anyway.

Yesterday was a bit stressful, so I went to bed about 7:30 p.m. and slept until ten this morning. I'm still so sleepy I can't sit up straight.

Thing is, I had a dental procedure yesterday, and they said not to drink coffee or anything hot for "several days." How many days  can I survive, awake, without coffee? Makes me think of Ramey's espresso-colored tee shirt that says "Instant Person--Just Add Coffee."

Iced coffee?

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Iced coffee with lots of creamer and a little bit of sugar is really good, I find. But it doesn't work the same as a big mug full of the hot stuff.
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Back about 1949, I wrote a poem called "Kitten in the Sunshine." But I've lost it.

things are bad all over

When a new crisis arises, I have to give myself a day or two of craziness before my usual sense returns. This crisis is a dental one, so the rest of this year will probably be dominated by running back and forth to the dentist, needles, screaming and running mad. On top of the doors, the basement, and the wee little piddling retirement income.

It's enough to make you cry, or laugh. Or start feeling your age. I was ten years older than Joe Frazier, who died Monday. And I'm still running around in my raggedy jeans and tee shirts like a 60-year-old, moaning about my little crises. A hundred years from now, who'll know the difference?

Crossroads

Yesterday I discovered that I have a lot of purchase "points" on Amazon. So I ordered this video that I've wanted for a long time, free of charge and free shipping. Ralph Macchio and Joe Seneca. And Jamie Gertz. This is one of my 100 favorite films.

I've fallen behind in my clean-up schedule this week. But I haven't given up. Today I aim to FINISH THE DOLLHOUSE and get it out of the way. Or off my mind. All I have to do is install the stairs--they're all put together and painted--and touch up the paint here and there.



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6:00 p.m. The D.H. is finished, so I can relax and watch the Tide beat LSU (knock on wood).

Night on Bald Mountain

In the middle of doing laundry, I was thinking that if I ever got thrown into solitary confinement, I could occupy myself by hearing music in my mind. Mozart string quartets, Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique," Beethoven piano sonatas, Chopin preludes and piano concertos. Then for some reason I thought about "Night on Bald Mountain," and I thought Berlioz, but it's not by Berlioz, it's Mussorgsky/Chernov/Rimsky-Korsakov. So I ran to the computer and found this arrangement on YouTube, all piano with the sheet music pictured, and spent ten minutes listening to the ghosties and devils and witches and stuff on the "Bare Mountain." Why didn't I think of it during Halloween? It would be perfect to play and scare the trick-or-treaters. If one had any trick-or-treaters.

Anyway, I posted it in my Music Links in the left column. It's really a pretty piece of music, with a lazy left hand and a real workout to try with the right hand, if one had a piano.

Welcome, November!

Boy'm I glad Halloween (the whole month of October) is over! Everything on TV was haints and horror, and old reruns of Project Runway.

Counting Reed Sunday night, I had six trick-or-treaters, three of them in one visit. So there's the great bowl still full of every kind of Tootsie Roll candy ever made. I kept urging the little ghosties to "take some more--don't you want another Tootsie Roll pop?" But they were all too polite to be greedy.

The weekend was sort of fun and sort of disappointing. On Saturday, Jed and I went to Montevallo U. to the ASPS Fall Awards luncheon. I signed up to sponsor a spring contest, to the tune of eighty bucks. As to awards, I won an honorable mention (aargh!) and a second prize, out of all those good poems I entered. At least I thought they were good; the most disappointing thing was my wondering if they weren't so good, after all. But, compared to the winning poems that were read aloud, I believe they're pretty great.

Like a fool, I left my keys at home and all the doors locked. So Jed had to break the foyer door to the stairs. So now I've got to go to Lowe's and buy a door and get them to install it.

So, this morning I paid bills, and finished all the painting for the doll house, and started washing the heaps of dirty laundry. Yesterday, besides the 2-pound bag of treats, I bought allergy masks, gloves, and other supplies for cleaning the back room of the basement, which I plan to finish up this week.

Shirley S., my first landlord at the Southside apartment, once said that she liked for everything to be fun. I managed to make the nose surgery sound like fun while it was going on, so maybe I can get a laugh or two out of cleaning the basement. Speaking of the nose surgery, today I received a bill for $300 due after Viva and Medicare paid their parts. It's always something.