Birthday, again?

   Not having a school year, nor other timeline for time's passing it seems to come up quicker.

    I decided to pretend I am seventy, when only sixty-nine, because it is my seventieth year upon the planet.  There is too large a cake upon our table with a package underneath I only need the love that comes with the thought of giving me something in celebration, but because I don't need the food nor the gift - I will be happy I was so well thought of and treated, and I will pay the price in my future for their kindness. A hug and a smile always go farther for making my world better, cultural norms based on economic values are easy to measure - but a real hug and a real smile will always be beyond price.

   I am going to shift gears, when will that phrase be gone from conversation? Straighten up the desks and the bookcase in the Computer cave. Just so I have area to set more stuff down until I get it out to be boxed for future consideration. It has to start moving, being a perfection that wants more, the best and don't ever throw away the rest.  I have stuff, too much stuff.  Did I trade love for stuff? I have so much, stuff.   Pile it, catalog it, pack it up and out - to be considered another day, in another world.

    I have been promised a steak dinner, might even sneak a movie in - just because the memory is going to be so much better than more stuff. Happy birthday world, another year with Earl in your history.

   

Now where is that stufff...

  I was looking for something, and couldn't find it, asked for help and didn't find it. Then this morning, early, as I made coffee I found it, put on my reading glasses and read it. As I was shuffling papers I found the Porcupine Patrol patch, amazing, finding one thing after another.

  Went to Facebook and didn't find anything worth noting, seems that the fake news has over taken the national media, the political media, and Facebook is constantly generating fool stuff to check your level out against...

   So, breakfast, pack for YMCA and depart at 0758 because I have stuff to do and it just isn't getting done.

Coffee and contemplation... the final day of my 2016

  So I wake early, old man stuff, and go to putter around. It is cold outside, two bunnies on my walk, I post the bills from last night. And sit down to run through the future and the past, just me and my mind. Then I look at my home owners insurance that I didn't get a bill for, and I call 'Jake' from State Farm - it wasn't Jake it was Nadia and some other company - she has just a hint of an accent from New York metro, street level.  Very cool, professional and helpful, she worked with me and now we are correspondents, can I say I'm in a relationship?

  So much to be thankful for this past year, so much to look forward to in the next year. Having said that I can go to bed now instead of pretending what ever happens at midnight anywhere on the globe makes any kind of difference. But you all may party, celebrate, hug your loved ones and pray for peace - some of us have never stopped since the last New Year.

  Did write out the first two checks of the New Year, post dating them to the 1st of January, 2017. The most difficult task is to not write 2016 tomorrow, unless I am doing a biography.

   There has been a list of resolutions on my wall for the last several years - I was smart enough not to date it.  The three items with specific goals (in health, strength and speed) should be generalized to: good, able to lift body from recliner, and walk away without aid.

   The others are fine:

                 Go with God
                 Husband wife
                 Gentleman warrior
                 Be one that people look forward to meeting not hiding from
                 Cause more happiness than concerns
                 Love more, and more and more... practice making perfect

Pretty good, hope your list isn't too much longer, memory is in short supply. Take care out there and I will see you on the other
side, God willing and the creek don't rise.

Keeping busy, rebuilding the dwelling without touching the foundations...

Nothing is actually being rebuilt; just shuffling dust, cleaning corners, and moving more to a longer term relationship... it has been twenty-one years for some things.

   One of my projects today was to recover an undershelf light so it would work, first a bulb, then a starter, and then rebuild (I had to take it all apart), then take apart again because I got a bit out of order, put it all back together and now it is done and working. Looked like I was on a roll, so my wife tells me to take curtains down for cleaning (when ever I had some time), and I then decided that to really learn anything about my latest computer and Microsofts goodwill, I would have to collapses the laptop and store it...  All part of the reorganization of the dwelling.

   I have the older kindle, and now a kindle paperwhite - please remind me not to ever upgrade, especially as I never learnt all the things I could do on the earlier model, and now have a newer version with more to learn that I don't bother about - because for me it is the reading not the advantages. Sigh, kind of like getting new tools, firearms, automobiles and sexual partners -- just not worth the effort if you remember what you expect from the item.

  Rest time for today, still not finished but I can get those curtains down.
  

The clock glows 3:12, there are two of them...

   Allow me to make some coffee and get back.Okay, that didn't take long, about forty-five minutes, because I had a lamp to fix, the coffee to make, the weight to take, recording, blood pressure, a mask to make, some recycle to move, and many errant thoughts to gather as I grabbed the last piece of pie to share with coffee and the eight medicines and placebos.  I move the mouse mat to exactly where it should be for proper control of the mouse.

    There are two of them, electric radio alarm clocks on top of my chest of drawers. Two different alarms for two different working schedules - serving only one master - TIME. And I keep thinking as I wander the house, full of stuff that has served its purpose but remains exactly where we placed it almost twenty years ago, some change would be good.

   I thank the LORD for a very fine day yesterday, my wife slept a majority of it, between bouts of medicine inhaling and fussing. I spent it finding the top of  my desk and some other stuff that had been buried beneath my better ideas as I procrastinated, or I fooled around over a long past ignoring what I should do for all that I wanted to do. That wouldn't be a problem except that want to do list is like a bubbling volcano of more to come - ready or not - here it is!

   Stop! drink some coffee, lovely stuff, in the evening I switch to hot water in a black mug, because it is the symbolism not the coffee and the pot was emptied long ago. Microwaves, how was life before everyone had them? Oh, we spent time preparing breakfast, tea water, mixing pancakes from scratch, didn't know how much time we were using up. We took different parts of the day to make it better, sharing chores as the nation went instant and prepackaged.  Little craft, art nor love left in the common things - like sharpening knives.  I cleaned my newest pistol, which in current time, isn't new.  Everything you need is on the internet, documented in YouTube.  I am again, armed and so much less than dangerous. The pistol is to always be treated as dangerous. Springs and rods will always fly at the first failure to pay attention to them during maintenance. My machine gun comes to mind immediately. And there are springs behind stuff in many tool rooms.

   I note that time, which we measure and try to save for some reason, dribbles away. And family and love and life isn't hiding when you find that pile of daylight saved, you think it should be but it isn't. What was that phrase? Carpe Dium?  Don't you wish I learned Latin or how to spell? Carpe diem. Seize the Day! Make the most of what you have, at least love the memory more than the dream.

  Well, two hours to write five minutes of thoughts, about how I should have but didn't. There are plans, see the bubbling of more to come, for our near and farther future. But you would be bored listening as they keep coming and we aren't centering well, kind of like standing up and waiting patiently for your mind to move and catch up with the brain at the top of  the tottering fool.

   I wonder as I reread that last line, did I forget to put an r at the end of you to make it your, or did the computer decide I didn't need to say it the way I thought it?  You know I can never be alone in my thoughts, seems like there are four or five programs trying to improve my computer, my life and my loves.  They really don't know me, but they keep trying.  Be good out there, and I will do my best to be so here.  Love


 

Christmas Eve, past... there have been many...

   One I remember was during the Christmas truce in the Republic of Vietnam.  The radios were on, the chart tables had artillery red cloth covering them and were laden with goodies, all that wonderful stuff from back home, Stateside. That mythical place where someone loved us. I had added my mother's homemade fruitcake (which was never a brick like so many baked for shipping). She had soaked it with some of Dad's rum, then carefully wrapped it in foil with folds, but when I opened it I found enough to really wet my whistle.

   Since there were no H&Is scheduled I could sit my hammock and write letters to people that would write back and tell them I was thinking about them and wished them the best. I got all those done and still had time before the shift change, so I wrote President Nixon, everyone knows 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Same thoughts, same good wishes, same complaints that I couldn't be where he was... about three and a half weeks later I got an answer and a mention of his service in the Pacific in WWII. Someone, probably on staff, knew where I had spent Christmas Eve. We were already drawing down and allowing the Republic of Vietnam to continue the war. 1971

  Nineteen years later I was in the desert, waiting for Sadam to finish or get off the pot. The Saudi Arabian desert, they muted the celebration as much as they could, not wanting the host country to be offended. Quiet but I still got mail, the Armed Forces had to build up a massive mail delivery system, since they only do it when the personnel deploy.  My Dad had sent me Ken Burns' The Civil War, fine viewing for troopers that weren't sure about many things, time gives you a place to sit and stew about all the things you can never fix.  Awards would be given for people that managed to provide hot showers five days in a row.

   Like most celebratory times, where family and friends and frolic were the norm, we did a lot of watching each other to make sure no one got bad news from home, too quiet nor too aggressive. Christmas eve with a night sky that shows more stars beyond the ground lights, makes you know how small you really are, in the big scheme of things... just one biological being in a universe beyond our ken. Never saw so many sober soldiers around Christmas, unless they were on guard. Somewhere this evening are soldiers on guard, far from home, and normally under-employed (officers will do that to give them time to celebrate - even when they can't and have to wear a reflector belt and carry their personal weapon in gym clothes...) rules, got to have rules.

   Will say a prayer for them before I rest tonight, they deserve some company to help with the watch.

Moving well today, thank you... so happy you are, too.

    A few heavy days of watching the movies and news on my monitor, makes me really wonder what alien civilizations would think about us if they hadn't seen Ozzie and Harriet, I love Lucy, and Leave it to Beaver first...  They might have our problem with perceptions, everything that we can't relate to we pretend didn't happen differently.  In America, there has to be one person that is the main character to tell the story around. Life isn't like that, one person doesn't a revolution make, an empire build. Still we keep trying to keep it simple and it is complex and changing before the ink dries on the paper.
   Go back a couple of hundred years and preparation to celebrate Christmas was very different, some religions thought it shouldn't be a religious holiday at all, especially with heavy drinking and eating and those excesses celebration could cause. Quiet prayerful thoughts and calm thanksgiving somber dress and demeanor. Maybe some hymns, to lift to the LORD.
    Now there does seem a frenzy to give and get, to celebrate and pay it all in the next billing cycle, and wish everyone a happy new year, the old one being worn out and so few surprises left.

    I have checked the Lottery tickets, the news and the past, since it is Friday I have only this day to shop for my lover.  And no great idea what she needs or even wants that I can purchase, build or provide wrapped up in festive ribbons.

    Okay, I do know she would love me being healthier, my computer cave being cleaner and organized so she doesn't have to close the door if her friends visited.  She would love it if people she respected said fine things about us, didn't laugh at me, didn't ask why her husband doesn't do what all the other husbands do.

    I wish you all a fine holiday season, a merry Christmas, and that elusive happier New Year. Great things are going to happen when you and I start making our hearts pure, our vision clear and our goals founded on greater love.  God bless all our best.