Month: December 2020

So, Christmas Eve morning I actually got up a bit earlier than my alarm, which is normally set at 7:45am with a clock’s math that’s been well figured after 3 plus years in this spot at an hour and a half from the time of wake up to the arrival at work at 9am.

I know, for those quick clock mathed of you, you’re saying “well that clock’s math is a bit off there Frankenberry, that would get you there at 9:15am”. Yes, it would. But I tell myself two things.

One: If I uncurl up yawn legs facing left as always from underneath my comforter a little faster and throw them to the right side of the bed foots on the floor a little quicker. If I wash tomorrow’s cats bowls the night before so they’re at the ready. If I walk with a bit more haste to the shower and only give Bella two belly rubs amid her morning “Steve’s awake” yawn from my other comforter layed perfectly spot in the large closet instead of three, If I don’t tiredly sing that song stuck in my head all the way through, only maybe the chorus, while soaping and rinsing, if I don’t say good morning for too long to Celie in her kitchen downstairs as she coffee’s, if I only also say good morning to just half of the fur and feather here on the hill instead of all of them (which I could never do) as I try to hit the door I might be able to shave a couple of minutes off of the 9:15am.

But you’re probably also saying “Well, why don’t you just set your alarm for 7:30am instead of 7:45?” Nonsense I then say!! 7:30am is always the intention but that 15 “extra” minutes is huge the night before as you time out a wakeup and how much is left of that episode of your latest obsession that you told yourself not to start.

Two: Fudge. You do have an App for the timeclock on your phone and an eye for cops who might think you’re texting or maybe leave the door open to your little studio the night before with your lamplights on as if you were there, leaving any who may get to checking to think you’re just downstairs morning Frankenberry sandwiching.

Anyway, I actually got up a bit early, around 7, right side bed foots and a silencing of my alarm, as I had things to do at work that have been pressing on me and I thought an early start might actually allow the 3pm leave early that is always the hoped case on Christmas and New Year’s Eve which of course didn’t happen (screw you universe). I even tried to take all of the steps in point one to save me MORE time after this early wake up though Bella’s yawn demanded her third belly rub … seconds Bella! You’re costing me seconds!!

But after my shower singing only the chorus of that song in my head which thankfully wasn’t Mariah Carey’s “All I Want Is You” from a couple of mornings ago – what a nightmare, but instead was my head’s go-to  of Counting Crows “Rain King” which, for some reason is always there, somewhere in the back, and as I grabbed my underwear off of the futon dresser from last Saturday morning’s throw of a hamper of the washed and dried I realized I was trying to pick out which pairs wouldn’t fall off of my ass below my pandemic sweatpants, the new pairs I had bought not too long ago. Seems elastics are not all that lasting these days. Hell, I’ve got some sundries older than your kids that still do the purpose and you can’t give me a waistband that will last now? What happened in the interim from my age old undies to this new useless version?

Then I remembered Bruce. The boss, a good boss.

No, hold that Spock-like single raised eyebrow question. Thinking of the boss and your underwear in one thought? Yeah, that worried me too, but you can put that eyebrow down and stop that think of calling Bev in HR. It was just a quick Eureka moment. Dude? You’ve got a gift card. From Bruce. A Christmas thank you. Some bucks to spend. I guess that eureka moment came because I don’t buy things, other than the keep yourself and the cats alive kinda stuff. I’m so accustomed to just not thinking of anything other than that, plus with my never inclination to shop it was a few dollared revelation.

Beer, cat food, Steve food, or cat food, Steve food, beer or, hell whatever order they’re in and I’m good. Ok, litter and toilet paper as well – we all gotta go – and that’s pretty much it. My stuff works though old it may be. My t-shirts t-shirt, my Pirate hats Pirate, my sneakers sneak, though with a cue ball smoothness to the tread on some, my coats coat, my socks sock, my underwear underwears. But, as to the latter, and the “new” ones, they don’t really underwear anymore which is disappointing as I had actually shopped and bought something new. But I now had what can be almost be considered disposable income (woudn’t that be nice). And I have to use it at a particular website, I can’t turn it into cash for the aforementioned sustenance things as is always the first thought whenever I come about an extra. (future reference – always give me specific gift cards if you are ever inclined to do so as I’ll be forced to use them for things for myself).

When our local K-Mart was going out of business a few years ago I took full advantage of their 25%, 40%, 60%, 75% deals as their days counted down. I know I just said I don’t buy stuff, but my one of two “extra” paychecks happened to coincide with their countdown (I get 26 paychecks a year, but I pay all of my stuff with 24 of them, so two are my “extra”) so to not at least check out what they had to offer in their liquidation would have been just criminal. Ok, not criminal, I wouldn’t walk in and stuff my pants and then present an innocent look at the checkout, but just dumb.

Since Christmases or birthdays no longer come with the obligatory underwear and or socks of days of a prescient Mom of old that you shook your head at the time I thought to stock up.

And thus this underwear that proved to be such a disappointment, with a now unexpected gift card, can be replaced.

Yeah, I just wrote a post about underwear. What of it?

Go me.

We get a morning tray of bagels and some cream cheese delivered to work once a week. It’s a small but nice thing from a cool little bagel shop that brightens the day and is definitely appreciated. This once weekly has been the case for as long as I can remember at this place. Now, I don’t always get one as they’re pretty popular but, more often than not, it’s simply because I just forget and am only reminded of bagel day when I see the tray on a table after making make my way downstairs to the kitchen at lunch to the toaster oven for my cold cut & cheese toasted bread sandwich of the day/week or to the microwave to heat up some Beefaroni with hot sauce, or something else Chef Boyardee depending on how flush I am that week or the mood (I really like Chef Boyardee).

On those most occasions when I have forgotten bagel day, I am reminded by this …

… one or a couple of bagel half remainders in the tray and a partially used cream cheese with a plastic knife or two (no, no one ever thinks to put the cream cheese in the fridge) and I am, again, also reminded to continue to be fascinated by the mindset of whoever it is that tears a perfectly good bagel in half and then puts the other half back on the tray, as if almost being generous.

“Well, I don’t want a whole bagel, just a half, and I would surely be remiss, almost greedy, if I didn’t leave the other half for someone else to enjoy right? Plus I’m even spreading the wealth of a limited supply of bagel bounty” I think they say to themselves with a self-satisfied nod.

It’s kind of like trying to figure the mindset of that person who can peer into the at work kitchen’s community fridge and, knowing that not only HAVEN’T they purchased whatever it is that’s in there or that their mother did NOT make it for them, still find it possible to justify the taking of something. Like the devil on their one shoulder, after giving the angel on the other the heave-ho while flipping them off on the way down, has convinced their human that “well, it IS something that you like, and you HAVE bought something similar in the past so it must therefore be POSSIBLE that it’s yours”.

I realize the two things, the bagels and the fridge are different (and as to the fridge it’s the reason that I have my OWN medium sized one in my studio – greatest birthday present ever from years ago – thanks Ma, Beck & Nick) but it is the mindset of both that is so fascinating.

As to the bagel dilemma here? A few things.

One: When in my forgetting of bagel day and the eventual said discovery at lunch time of one or a couple of bagels torn in half being the last survivors note that this is the case, every fucking week. And they come pre-sliced for god’s sake making this even more ridiculous.

Two: it continues to happen because the bagel tearers obviously don’t come back down to the kitchen after sitting upstairs enjoying their torn half while just as surely enjoying the largess of their consideration for others.

Three: If they did come back downstairs they might understand that no one wants the other half of their manhandled bagel, EVER, especially now, though sadly, they would probably be more inclined to wonder how the rest of us could be so ungrateful as to ignore their gesture.

Four: I’m reminded now to buy a loaf of bread, preferably Rye, and put it in my fridge.

Five: Does this mean anything? No. I mean I still ain’t gonna be grabbin’ some half a bagel that has had someone’s meat paws all over it but I was just wondering at the silly and the mundane to pass some time. So necessary.

I’ve discovered after quite few parody tunes over the last number of years that I don’t just like to skewer the Orange, something always well deserved, but that I just like singin’ ’em, that I like the “let go” my little studio affords on an occasional Friday night when the work gang has left to whatever weekends might await them to then just be left alone to my own device, a singular one with headphones on, new words to play and a foot stomp underneath my board that I try my best to edit out or at least soften later on as I’m having fun.

This is another such fun.

Is it any good? Well that’s not for me to decide, I guess. I think they’re all good but to tell ya the truth I don’t really care. I mean, I’d like that you thought they were ok, that lyrically you’d be impressed and that you wouldn’t have to cover your dog’s ears at my singing. But in the long run? They’re only me doing karaoke with new words in my little comfort zone of a studio just minus yet another pitcher of beer and friends egging you on with hands at your back. Fun is fun and that’s been in short supply for a while now. I’ll take it where I can get it or, more to the point, where I can manufacture it.

Here’s to the occasional Friday.

 

He’s The Deceiver

 I thought e-lections were just a people’s choice

Stand in line or use mail as you saw fit

But he powers in delusions

Make see through his allusions  

To fraud as truth to prove out all his schemes

—

Then he lost the race

But still the deceiver

Fraud’s the claim

No doubt in small minds

It’s cult love

Ooohhh

What a deceiver

True dead believers

Fall in line

—

A hundred so Repubs did take a bold dumb stand  

Support sedition no matter what the-e cost

Ignoring what we stand for

Destroying what we asked for

Instead just backing true great leaders screams

—

But we know the face

A one of deceiver  

Though he lost the race

He won he’ll tell kind

—

It was a scam

Ooohhh

He’ll tweet his deceptions

Ask for corrections

Stay by his side

 

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

 

He just keeps on tryin’

Courts take attempts to dyin’

Ignoring all to try to stay his reign  

—

Now we know his face

The one of deceiver

Preach vio-lence

It’s the only real way

If you want a say

ooohhh

In a new order

Where truth’s still given no quar-ter   

—

All you’ll get is pa-ain

If you’re not a believer

All you’ll get is ra-ain

Of facts to disdain

—

Now he’s the deceiver yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah a yeah

—

No he’s the deceiver

Truth’s got no place

—

No he’s the deceiver

No doubt in small minds

—

Now he’s the deceiver

No doubt in small minds

The snow was tall, just tall as enough tall it needed to be against the front door to keep it from opening as I remember now, though 17 feet at least it seemed in my head then, though bear in mind that my tall was small (but with hope of a big someday). I was only seven or eight or so and I was mad. My parents had just bought their first house, a something numbered address on Archer road in Mahopac NY with me in tow. But I was mad, not the mad that some might attribute to me and my now of cats, a crazy cat lady guy and a need for solitude, that kind of mad, but with a just being mad … why the fuck can’t I open the front door to the glories of snow?

I hate snow, or at least I hate it now, the cold that it is and the down of that cold, the darkness of a light’s short days that come with it. But, again, I was seven or eight or so. Snow was a wonder then, something just waiting for the play.

It certainly, the snow, wasn’t 17 feet tall but it feeling taller than me it could have be 30 feet, or a hundred feet, or a however many feet that were necessary to dwarf me. It was as far away as just a glass door, that extra door that you doored on top of a perfectly good door, one that could become a screen in the summer months for a bit of air and I pushed, pushed against not 17 feet of snow, but enough, against the door, a silly angry kid pushing against a door. And I even had my galoshes on. Ready. Snow.

Man, that shit could bleed, knuckles after the mad and it’s push to open a door that didn’t want to be opened, a door that just said “leave me be son,” “I’ve been holding this off all night” “have ya seen the snow? It’s almost 17 feet.” That was my first scar, a one right atop my right hand. A fist knuckle and a hard punch. The only thing missing was the “motherfucker” exclamations that would come years later for all of the times snow would be 17 feet tall.

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Jonna and Keryl give me a pass, I think, as to our guests. It’s a show, Happy Hour, that we’ve been doing since dinosaurs searched out self helpers and what to do for their inadequacies. “I’m too big with short arms” “Mom wasn’t around for the long names that would come based on my bones” “I was a vegetarian though three stories tall and a bit ungainly”. They know I’ll never read the books, I can’t, I don’t read anything that isn’t filled with the wonder of places imagined, some of swords and kings, some of spaceships and distant planets, all of a simply not here, instead of just “self help” vaguereries that tell you of who you could be if only you could be. But surprisingly, some things, even in my cynicism seep through, our guests, all, have their moments for me. I Just patch them together, grab bits and pieces that may mean something and move forward. A lot of them are the same, just a more well known “same” than others, a some who just wish to be that same. But I grab that patchwork, a good patchwork mind you, and roll. No need more.

Recently in one of our shows Jonna talked of finally wanting to write her book. A something she has in her, like Keryl who has two now, Jonna’s Facebook posts evidence of the writer.

Jonna if you’re going to write a book please don’t think of it as the topic of a future interview for a podcast with a couple of ladies and some dude interviewing advice within a small world of such. Just write your book and a just a you book. Write too much, even make shit up if you must, but just be a book that books as a Jonna book will book.

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Bella has one PC chair while I sit in the other. I have two. One is the “Shoes” chair the spot he owned from the moment I took it out of the box years ago and layed my thin Steelers blanket on it trying not to have any assembly pieces left over. Then there’s the one slowly becoming the “Bella” chair as I sit on all nights and she sits with me after a dinner shared with Cricket the Blind on her footed paper towel for the recognized bits of food to come feel and an attempt at the same with Mimi the Quirky.

Bella is the most patient of cats, there’s not a of one of us who couldn’t be better off with the kind of patience she shows, not liking Cricket the Blind and only minding Mimi the Quirky, she exhibits her patience just for me, holds back any anger she may have at these “others” who have invaded our space for belly rubs on her dot of a small bit circle of carpet in the living room I never use in this two room place or another rubbed belly on her crunchy paper (my sister sends powdered vitamins once a month worrying of my possible vitamin deficiencies in a box that doesn’t really need any packing but she still does with that hard edged brown paper stuffed to the left or right of that packing box, depending on how you opened it – I think she knows it’s not needed but packs it just the same – she knows cats). It’s Christmas day every month for Bella when I get my vitamins and she gets a new lay on new crunchy paper layed out next to last month’s flattened such.

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I know this is a little disjointed but it’s one of the ways I like to think, in short blurbs of current things or memories that may not be connected or they might. This one is the former but it’s where my thoughts were this weekend, as some of you might be able to relate to disjointed thoughts, the brain being a bit of jumble during the upside down we live in. But it is a weekend where I’ve taken Monday off to give me 3 days, to at least breathe a bit (though apparently not to get my thoughts into any cohesive form here). I get 3 weeks a year of vacation time, or PTO for those technical. 15 days to do with as I will. I do this once a month and this month is a bonus with the holidays giving me a couple of others. I almost feel guilty knowing that the holidays afford me my once a month twice without paperwork and a minus #’s on my paystub but I’m not going to let that deter. A once a month Monday is a once a month Monday. The holidays are just gravy. Could I take a week at some point, call it a vacation, sure. But I’m a single dude always strapped and I have my charges. Plus, where am I going to go, especially now?

Some of you might be alright with believing a normal exists but I’m not a one and it doesn’t.

There’s so much that is 17 feet tall, hell, most of our lives are spent trying to deal with 17 feet tall, a seeming insurmountable task of too tall walls, placed there daring us to scale maybe even bloodied knuckles to come from the attempts.

But I’m in no mood to scale today. This is simply my acknowledgement of such. 17 feet? I gotcha. Tall you are. But I’m just gonna take an extra day and sit and surveil a tall wall for no reason other than no reason, and hunker a bit away, just me and the girls.

A one of two kittens that come by the pair, replete with four mittens and a wide eyed small stare, she moments to pause from a kitten cat’s chores, to jump and to hop and to run and to plop atop sibling who mistakenly stopped and a … plop … ahead of fast sibling play … a ball now of rolling fur squeaks, screeches, giggles, if kits do it seems take then to giggle and squiggle though surely they’ve no trouble to wiggle and wriggle into places way small, to thrust paws out by ones, after one, one by one with back ‘gainst small’s wall, they defend fun to the alls till an open can sounds … stop … plop … whatchya got?

This little fat tail (downstairs at the house) is what I imagine Cindy Lou Who’s cat would have looked like if Cindy Lou Who had had a cat … and that.

… the other of two kittens that come by the pair … he thinks he likes sinks, knows he likes sinks and of your opinion of his thinks of said sinks? Well, he’s decided that he’s just not one to care … so there.

I know that hoping after losing the election that there might finally be a lack of Trump material was a fool’s thought.

 

All Star – Lapdog  

Somebody once told me a stupid could get lonely

Allow an autocrat to pla-ay

In a nation of ideals this stupid gets the feels

A lun-acy embraced instead as a new spiel  

 

Well, four years got them running to the altar of the dumbing

Elevating them with welcome adoration  

Ignorance proved be an asset for drumming

A bold new stand with a white raised gun

 

They don’t want see, how they were used  

Blinded tools conned as nothing but fools

Allowing lies as a nor-mal

Dismissing truth for a new show

 

Hey now, you’re a Trump star

Get your ig-nor-ance on

Hey now you’re a trump star

Raise your white now, new Czar

 

And all Trump glitters fools go-old

Shiny old lie normals, you’re still in the fo-old

 

It’s a lost race but a loss that gets bolder

With every new challenge the truth it goes further

Claiming fraud but proof not forthcomin’

Claims shot down as the hits keep comin’

 

The lies they state, state by state

The Jenna’s & the Giuliani’s try to rate

Loyalist’s hoping to rise above fray

To prove they’re the best at holding down a Trump day

 

Hey now you’re a lapdog

Won’t you pet me they pray

Hey now you’re a lapdog

Crazy barks try hold sway   

 

Trump throws balls out for play

They take those balls

And jump as high as Trump will say-ay

 

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Hey now you’re a Trump star

Spittin’ maskless you gloat

Hey now you’re a lapdog

Desperation by rote

 

And all your subjects do do-ote

Hoping burn it down   

 

You rail loud ignore tasks that you pledged with right hand asks

To try protect us from a world gone astray

But that stray, is yours alone

Self interest was always the norm

As it’s always been since day one

Nothing’s changed there’s only you number one

 

Well conman’s still connin’, coffers still fillin’

Taking cultist’s money claiming fraud’s his cunning

He claims each fight is his necessary right

To prove he won being cheated a blight

While fights are lost he blusters more

And just fills pockets while out the back door  

 

He’ll keep himself in the Trump glow

Someone else’s buck that is the Trump show

 

Hey now you’re a Trump star

Spittin’ maskless you gloat

Hey now you’re a lapdog

Desperation by rote

 

And all Trump litters fools go-old

 

No matter truth they’re stayin’ in the cu-ult  

 

And all Trump litters fools go-old

 

A coin tooth check confirms what we were so-old