Zounds.

     It's such an immense strain just trying to stay relevant.  Isn't it?

Earwigs, Stupid Earwig

     It is said that the reason a song gets stuck in your head, and you keep hearing the refrain without meaning to, is that there are other things you don't want to think of.  So your subconscious fills your mind with song lyrics.  I don't deny that there are things I do not want to think about, so maybe that's why I keep hearing, and even singing, the lyrics to songs from the past.  I wish, though, that the songs could be more current, or even songs that I liked.  When I was a little child, I liked all songs that I heard on the radio because listening to them was a real treat, maybe on Saturday evenings when my father would attach the antenna and turn the radio on.  That was before we lived in a house that was wired for electricity.
      The first song I remember disliking went  something like, "Give me five minutes more, only five minutes more, give me five minutes more of your love."  I can't remember why I didn't like it, maybe because it was a love song, before I was interested in love.  Those lyrics, if indeed correct, started coursing through my head with little letup, when I was walking around outside, pulling a few weeds, or watering the flowers.  I mean, why would my subconscious or the id or whatever, pick that song.  Why not something I liked?
    Today, another blast from the past.
"Two little girls in blue, two little girls in blue.  One became your mother, I married the other, but soon we drifted apart."  I had no particular liking for that song either, but accepted it as something to sing, probably not giving it much thought.  But now that the song has materialized onto my mental playlist, I couldn't figure out what the heck it meant:   twins the storyteller couldn't tell apart? Double vision? Pre-marital hanky-panky?  Split personality?  Wishful thinking?  I had to look it up, back in the archives of old songs.  Turns out the singer is talking to his nephew.  Aha, after all these years...

Longhorn Steer Horns

    As restaurant lightposts?  I don't know, maybe a little creepy...

Inventory

     I live above an eclectic collection of items.  Seven bicycles, two old adding machines, a vintage electric typewriter, an antique cash register, a recent portable generator ( a gift), a large assortment of items for the pool, such as several covers, an insulated cover and a whole lot of chemicals, lawn furniture, at least four antique chairs, wooden and wicker, a highchair that once transformed into a rocking chair that I remember sitting in when I was a baby,several small stands and an antique piano stool kind of beaten up, four golf bags, a golf cart, a golf ball retriever, several dozen used golf balls, several pairs of skis and poles, a later  model air conditioner in addition to the two presently installed upstairs, an old Baby Butler dresser that supports the bags of  salt for the water softener, four artificial wreaths, Christmas tree stands and decorations, two Have-A-Heart traps, two little old stepladders that I withdrew from an ebay sale by request,  aluminum ladders, an old full-sized wooden one, two snow rakes, different sizes, old curtain rods, long and short, a bunch of books, a box of knickknacks, 3 shelving units full of tools and containers of auto and household products, some canning jars of course, the now stored bird feeders, and a trash can filled with planting soil and plant food, in addition to a number of flower pots and a dozen or so florist's vases.  A lot of old sporting equipment, bats, balls, badminton sets, a couple of them, a croquet set, dartboard,  a set of iron horseshoes, and boxes of toys.Other items too numerous to mention, but there is the body of a once motorized wagon that my father-in-law built for his son.  The spider plants, 9 or 10 of them , are outside now.  The only plant remaining in the cellar is an aloe plant that Carmen gave me, which is now too large and heavy to move out.  So it sits on a  large wooden spool table that was once a dance platform.  Come visit anytime.
    It may seem like the space would be very cramped, with all that stuff, in addition to the furnace, washer and dryer, humidifier and oil tank, but the basement runs the full length of the house, and while the house has less than 1,000 feet of living space, the basement is a single open space with two full-sized windows and a door which opens to the outside.  So actually, it's quite roomy.  The attic is a different story, haven't been up there in years for any inventory, but that day may come.  Or not.

Shark Tank Fails?

    Some products, even if funded by Shark Tank, are so astoundingly unnecessary that you'd have to wonder how they ever went into production.     I remember how outraged some people were when it was revealed that Jackie Kennedy had a towel warmer installed in a White House bathroom.  Now I see, via online garage sales, that people are selling their never-or-little-used Wipe Warmers.  Alert CPS:  somewhere somebody is using room temperature diaper wipes on their child.

.don't really care

The lady or the tiger, the dentist or the lion-----I don't really like any of them. They all eat their young.

What do you do with a moon?

   Driving home yesterday, in the late evening, I saw the moon in its absolute glory, round and orange and glowing.  The sight of it made me sad.  One if those moments in time came to me----of my mother calling me one evening to say that she could see the moon from her window and it was beautiful.  She said she didn't know if I was beyond the stage of looking at the moon, but she had to tell me.  My kids were still small, and I was much younger then, but I remember feeling sorrow for some yet unknown reason.