Monthly Archives: August 2024

The day that got away…

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Some days get away from you unexpectedly. Sometimes you get a sense right from the opening bell that the day is going to be a foot race. Today wasn’t one of those. It slipped away in dribs and drabs, one Teams message or email at a time, until there was nothing left but to call it done.

I don’t necessarily mind days like that. It’s better than being bored to tears… but I’ll admit the writing sufferers a bit when it happens. In fact it was just 15 minutes before normal post time when I realized I didn’t have a thing feed up for Monday evening. A sinking feeling, for sure, but the muses at least let me fiddle around with this minor idea a bit before it was due.

We’re headed into a long holiday weekend – four days and a little extra for me. If I get luck, maybe the next three days will slip by with as little trouble. Then again experience tells me I have no business expecting things to go smoothly, but if it does, it would be an awfully pleasant surprise.

In any case, I rattle this out as fast as my little thumbs would carry me and then promptly forgot to hit “publish,” so I guess we all know now exactly how the week is going to go. Ah, situation normal.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Trashy people. It’s an exaggeration to say I’ve picked up a ton of trash since I started my daily walks, but even so, every day I come home with pockets filled with bottle caps, cellophane wrappers and toting bottles, cans and all manner of trash that someone has thrown out in passing. We’re almost the end of a peninsula, so all this is likely coming from people who “belong” here – property owners or at least residents. Why the fuck they decide they want to trash their own spot is entirely beyond me. Even here, in the woods, and 500 yards from the headwaters of the Bay, people are simply infuriating in their inability to consider anything more distant than the end of their own nose.

2. Thanks Obama. I got a fundraising text message using former President Obama’s photo to plead for cash for the Democratic Party a few days ago. Boy, using the name and likeness of the guy who “led” me through years of pay and hiring freezes to send fund raising texts is really goddamned tone deaf even for the Democratic Party. I might have to vote for you jerkwads, but after the way their guy fucked with my livelihood for half a decade, there isn’t a single circumstance imaginable where I’d give a plug nickel in his name. Just consider my donation the non-existent and miniscule raises I received during the Obama years. The goddamned audacity of some people. 

3. Chicken dreams. I had “chicken dreams” again last night. That’s how I’ve come to think of the goofy ass dreams I seem to have about one in three times I have some kind of chicken for dinner. Last night I was rushing back to Tennessee. Somewhere, somehow, I had inherited a dilapidated manor house in the woods and had to restore it. There was a series of oddball characters and charlatans equally set on helping or hindering the cause. I’m not sure where my subconscious was going here, but I do know I woke up grinding the hell out of my teeth, so something in there is percolating. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Self doubt. I’ve never considered myself plagued by self doubt. My ego has always been big enough to generally just assume I’ve made the right decisions. Every now and then, though, I’m intensely bothered by the “what if” of things. It’s not especially helpful way to spend any significant amount of time. I’d very much like to get back as quickly as possible to implicitly trusting my brain to make the right bloody calls. It’s another once of those situations where patience is probably a virtue… and that being the case is always vaguely annoying all on its own.

2. The social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Twitter, X, or whatever we’ve collectively decided to call it now is becoming increasingly unusable due to the amplification of right-wing advertisers, conspiracy theorists, “entertainers” pretending at journalism, and flat out misinformation being propagated has definitive truth. I’m finding I have to increasingly curate my list of “follows” to weed out nonsense and even then the algorithm seems determined to deliver content I have no interest in and refuse to engage with beyond smashing the “block” button… for all the good that does. 

3. Concerts. I have a concert coming up at the end of the month. It’s an artist I’ve been looking forward to seeing for a long time, but I’m troubled by one thing. The timing. I just happened to notice that the openers aren’t scheduled to kick off until about the time I’d usually be thinking about heading to bed. That quickly brought about a dissatisfied sigh. Look, I’m absolutely going to be there, barring unforeseen issues between now and then… but knowing that when the show ends and the lights come up, I’m going to be two states and at least 90 minutes from bed already has me feeling entirely worn out. If Broadway shows can put on Sunday matinees at a reasonable hour in the afternoon, maybe aging rock stars should take a page out of that book.

On hard decisions and heartbreak…

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Back in late June, Ivy was the cat who picked me while I visited the local cat rescue’s open house event. While I made the rounds, she followed me from one end of the room to the other and promptly jumped on my lap the moment I sat down. I couldn’t help but be charmed by her endless purring and loving personality. I submitted an adoption application thinking that surely, my sweet, relaxed resident cats would quickly adapt to a charming newcomer.

Following standard “slow introduction” procedures, the first week went well. They progressed rapidly from sniffing at a closed door, to eating on either side of the door, to observing each other through a baby gate, and eventually watching one another with the door open. Past that, things got awkward. 

As soon as Ivy had leeway to explore the house, Anya and Cordy retreated under the bed. Ok, back up to the prior stage of introduction and try again in a few days. This was when we entered the wash, rinse, and repeat phase of attempted introductions – with Ivy desperate to meet her new housemates and them hissing and spitting any time she got close. Rather than improving with exposure, Anya particularly became increasingly resistant and, in some cases, violent no matter how hard Ivy worked to project “friendly” body language. 

For the better part of two weeks, I ran the household in two shifts – With Anya and Cordy tucked in my bedroom from 5 AM to 5 PM and Ivy returned to her “safe room” from 5 PM – 5 AM. It was my misguided hope that as their scents and smells combined in the house, paraphs they’d desensitize to one another. 

Cat Reddit is filled with internet experts that will say six weeks was not nearly enough time to settle things – that it can take months or years for integrate adult cats. If anything, I feel like there’s a lot of talk in the rescue community decrying that adult cats are so often left in shelters and rescues month after month while kittens and youngsters fly out the doors. I always assumed that was a simple function of the “cuteness factor,” but I now have a sneaking suspicion that adult cats are so often overlooked, in part, because introducing adult cats and convincing them to live together can be a nightmare – or at least a significant unplanned hardship that the average person isn’t equipped to deal with. 

Having had many dogs and cats over the years, I consider myself reasonably animal savvy, but I was absolutely unprepared to continue on for month after month with Cordelia and Anya angry and chased out of their home while Ivy was increasingly confused by why she was being cast back into isolation every night. By the end, I suspect it had become a not particularly happy way of life for any of us. Capped off with three scuffles across Friday evening and Saturday morning when trying to re-initiate brief introductions again. 

To their credit, the rescue was incredibly understanding when I reached out to say I needed to bring Ivy back to them. I’d been keeping them up to date with the struggles, so maybe it wasn’t much of a surprise. I suspect the whole experience may have been more traumatizing to me than to Ivy. I opened her carrier at the rescue and she walked out without a moment’s hesitation, head butted the nearest cat, and made herself at home immediately. She was more comfortable and welcome in that room with 10 or 12 other cats in 30 seconds than Anya and Cordy had made her feel in six weeks.

I’ll never think of this period as one of my best moments. I’ll always wonder if there was something more that I could have tried or if hanging on for another week could have made any difference. I’ll probably never get away from thinking that sheer willpower is enough to drag things over the line, but in this case, seeing how Ivy reacted back in the rescue on Saturday and then how relaxed Anya and Cordy were on Sunday is probably the real sign that this particular hard decision was the right one. 

I wish doing the right thing didn’t so often involve being absolutely heartbroken. I really do miss that sweet calico girl.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Dick measuring veterans. I know, that’s a bold statement to say anything other than “thank you for your service,” but hear me out. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life working with active duty soldiers and a heavy helping of veterans who have opted to come back to work as civilian employees. The one thing that most perplexes me about the veteran community is the incessant dick measuring – You’re not a “real” veteran unless you were in combat, or this one is a better veteran than that one because “he only went to Afghanistan twice and I went to Iraq three times.” As an outside observer who honestly indifferent about the outcome of most “best veteran contests,” it really feels like the weirdest thing to try making hay over. The military is a big place and expecting everyone who raised their hand to have the same experience across a span of decades is simply ridiculous on its face. 

2. Cats. Ivy has been here at the house for a little over a month now. We tried the basic slow introduction and did well right up until we got to the last bit – letting everyone roam free. Ivy is determined that Cordy and Anya exist to be chased. In turn, they have mostly holed up under my bed any time Ivy is on the loose. What I seem to have created is a two-shift situation where Ivy is free to move about the place from about 5AM – 5PM and then gets relegated back to her kitted out bathroom while Anya and Cordy take over the house from 5PM to 5AM. It’s not ideal and absolutely doesn’t feel like a situation I’m going to be able or willing to keep up with indefinitely. Just how long I’m going to let it run, though, remains the uncertain variable. I don’t need them to be the best of friends, but I do need them to eventually coexist as at least disinterested parties.

3. The Islamic State. It’s hard to imagine a stratagem less likely to engender support for your cause than launching a terror attack on Taylor Swift in concert. I assume that ISIS and its slack jawed religio-fascist followers simply don’t grasp the magnetic force that woman holds over millions of devoted fans, who would simply demand that the western world’s governments scourge the wanna-be caliphate from the face of the earth if they hurt a single blonde hair on Dr. Swift’s enchanted head.

Is the juice still worth the squeeze…

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I’m tired. I thought when I cut back the posting to twice a week I might catch my breath. Maybe I have. Maybe the writing is even just a touch better and more cogent than it was when I was trying to churn out five a week. The fact remains that I’m tired. I’m tired of shouting into the electronic void. I’m tired of feeling like an increasingly isolated voice of sanity in a world determined to spin violently off the rails and drown in an ocean of screeching religious, social, political, and economic extremists. American “Christians” collectively losing their shit after entirely missing the point of the Olympic opening ceremonies leaves me wondering if it’s even worth trying to be anything other than a partisan wackjob. Is there even room for a voice that isn’t doing its damndest to be way out on the extremes? 

Maybe I’m just tired of giving a shit at all about forces operating well beyond my span of control or influence. Is it time to hunker down, circle the wagons, and focus on the thing on which I can exert some influence? After 4,043 posts, I’m not sure keeping on with this is the right answer. I’m not sure it’s doing much beyond creating its own little echo chamber. Sometimes I wonder if keeping on my soapbox isn’t, in fact, actively leaving me worse overall than I’d be if I just let the world’s fuckery roll past and around rather than sitting with it long enough to write down a few paragraphs of thoughts on the topic of the week.

I expect there’s not much that will ever stop me from writing, but maybe it’s time to go all the way back to basics. Maybe it’s time that I’m writing exclusively for myself without even the slightest consideration of an audience ever having eyes on it. That’s the kind of thing that doesn’t feed the ego, but it’s possible that might not be such a bad thing either. 

As I sit here tapping this out, I’m part conflicted, part disenchanted, part disappointed, part disgusted, and perhaps just a touch irrationally optimistic that there’s a chance we can pull up before burring the whole American experiment nose first into the ground at a high rate of speed. If we can’t, I don’t know that I have it in me to keep plastering over the wreckage with cynical commentary week after week. 

This isn’t an announcement or even a decision to stop so much as it’s a recognition that at some point I may just throw up my hands and walk away in disgust. At some point it all just becomes too absurd to carry on as if we haven’t entered a truly bizarre era in history. On the other hand, it’s the sort of thing that means having an inexhaustible supply of things to write about or comment on… so color me conflicted.