Challenges

I was reading an answer to a question about autism on the Quora website and I encountered this phrase: internalized stigma. Our culture says many things about people who are different or disabled in some way. These attitudes that people have toward disabilities can be adopted by the disabled and can negatively influence their feelings about themselves. They can feel that they are somehow, because of their disability, "broken” or “second rate” or “defective.” 

But it also occurred to me that we are talking about physical issues. Each of us is a spirit that is inhabiting a physical body. That body will go through many changes over the course of its lifetime, from the helplessness of a baby to the helplessness of very old age. The spirit inside a body may also experience helplessness caused by injury, or disease, or congenital disorders.

There is a grown man who lives near me and on warm days he sits in a chair on his porch and blows bubbles. I have walked past his house a number of times and seen him on his porch blowing bubbles. Inside his damaged brain is a spirit that cannot view the world as the rest of us, and cannot express itself as the rest of us. The connections in his brain aren't wired for that, but the spirit inside him is as unbent, as unbroken, as the spirit inside each of us who consider ourselves as "whole." Our bodies function, our brains function, and we call ourselves normal. We fail to recognize that our bodies are normal now, at this point in time. Our brains are normal now, at this point in time. All it takes is an auto accident to disable us. All it takes is a blow to the head to change who we are for the rest of our life.

So perhaps we shouldn't focus so much on what we perceive as a disability, and instead try to keep in mind the vision of a shining flame. Because inside every living person is a spirit, and that spirit is here, living in a body, in order to experience certain things, in order to learn. The same is true of people who do not have recognizable disabilities. We're all here to learn. I don't know what each of us is here to learn, but I would guess that love and compassion and doing the right thing are at the top of the list, and that those qualities must apply to every one of us. You cannot be a loving person while loving one and hating another. You cannot be a compassionate person unless you have compassion for all of us.

These truths have been spoken many times, but as long as some of us don't "get it" then we will need reminders.

Languages

My evening Skype conversation with my Costa Rican friend was concluding, and I said, "Good night." 

"Te amo," she replied.

Recalling some Hollywood-movie Italian, I said, "It's the same in Italian."

She shook her head. "In Italian, it's ti amo."

"Of course!" I said. "Can you say it in Portuguese?"

"Eu te amo," she replied.

"Do you speak Portuguese?" I asked.

"When I was young, I lived for a while with a Brazilian girl. I love the language. I know it somewhat but I don't speak it." 

When I was a boy I found a book in the attic. It was printed in Portuguese. It must have belonged to my mother or father, but I never knew which one. And why did they have it?

I didn't ask my friend how she came to know some Italian, or how many other languages she "knows somewhat." Of course, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese are all Romance languages. (Romance as in Roman.) They're all derived from Latin. So it's not surprising there are similarities. Although the same phrase (te amo) in French (another Romance language) is "Je t'aime" so the similarities go only so far.

I like languages and I wish I had an aptitude for learning other languages, but I don't. I've studied Spanish and though I'll never be fluent in the language, it's still fun to learn some of it.

According to dictionary.com,

Over 60 percent of all English words have Greek or Latin roots. In the vocabulary of the sciences and technology, the figure rises to over 90 percent. About 10 percent of the Latin vocabulary has found its way directly into English without an intermediary (usually French).

Many Spanish and English words are derived from the same Vulgar Latin words and are therefore similar. Does that make Spanish easier to learn for English speakers? I would think so. But then, I haven't attempted to learn Chinese yet. When I do, I'll let you know if it was harder to learn than Spanish. I haven't decided which Chinese dialect I should learn, but I'm leaning toward Mandarin. As I explained in a recent blog post, I'd like to know what those Chinese restaurant waiters are saying about their customers. 

"Foolish round-eyes, eating sweet-and-sour cat and don't know it!" Tell me they're not saying that! I enjoy Chinese food too much.

Christmas Day 2020

The song of the day is That's Christmas to Me from the 2016 album That's Christmas to Me by a cappella group Pentatonix. This performance was done at the 2015 Country Music Awards.

Christmas Eve

Gusty winds, lightning, heavy rain. That's the forecast for this Christmas Eve. The high temperature today will be 64°; the high temperature tomorrow will be 37°. That drop in temperature alone forebodes stormy weather ahead.

Let it rain. I have nowhere to go and nothing to do but laundry. In fact, the laundry can wait ... gotta have something to do on Christmas Day. Come Christmas Day I'll do the laundry, I'll change the sheets on the bed, I'll look around and see what else needs cleaning. Normally I'm not real big on house cleaning. Ask anyone who knows me. The sentence, "That VirtualWayne, he is so big on cleaning his house!," is a sentence you will not hear anyone say, ever. Very rarely, I will have a female visitor to my home who—to prevent her head from exploding—will clean and tidy up my house. Afterward, my house still will not look like one of those homes in the magazines, but it also won't look like a tornado just struck it, which unfortunately is its usual condition. My father once told me, "If it weren't for women, men would be living in caves." That is so true.

The sun is rising. My back door faces east and it's a sliding glass door, so from my computer I can look at the back door and see the morning going from dark to gray. The clock reads 7:21. That's the time for sunrise here. Time to eat breakfast.

That didn't happen. Instead, I went to bed. I slept for two hours during the night and suddenly two hours didn't feel like enough sleep. So I went to bed at sunrise and I went to sleep. I slept until noon. Now is the time for breakfast. Or rather, brunch.

So I heated leftover rice in a small pan, added butter and Lizano salsa, stirred in two eggs, scrambled it together, and added a side of grits and sausage links. That's a decent brunch. This is a meal I've been making all week, and I have one day left before all the eggs, rice, and sausage links are used up. 

Dimness pervades inside and outside. The overcast is thick. Rain falls on and off at this point, but heavy rain is on the way. Christmas Day is on the way, too. 

I have a Christmas card sitting beside my computer monitor. Some people still send 'em out. I used to send Christmas cards to my friends and acquaintances. But as the years went by, and social connections became frayed and broken, I quit sending them. One by one I quit sending them until at last, I looked at the short list of names remaining on my Christmas card list and I asked myself, what's the point? If you enjoy sending out Christmas cards, then good for you and by all means send them out. But when sending them becomes more of an obligation than a joy, then there's really no point. I still enjoy receiving them, however.

Merry Christmas to all my readers. Thanks for all the comments you've posted to my blog. I read every one of them. May you have a blessed Christmas this year and every year. 

Ellie Goulding

The song of the day is Love Me Like You Do from the 2015 album Fifty Shades of Grey by English singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding.

Winter Solstice

Today (which, by the time you read this, will be yesterday) was December 21, 2020, the day of the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year in Earth's Northern Hemisphere. This day is mostly over-and-done now. It was the first day of winter, and days will now begin getting longer. In the Southern Hemisphere, today was the longest day and shortest night of the year. For those who live down under, this is/was the first day of summer, and days will now begin getting shorter. By "day," I refer to the number of hours of daylight, not the 24 hour day, which is always 24 hours long.

Also tonight, the "Christmas Star" reappears after 800 years. The Christmas Star is not a star, nor does it have any legitimate connection to Christmas, so of course newspaper writers call it the Christmas Star. It's actually a planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. A conjunction happens when two planets come close together from our perspective. They aren't really close together, but their orbits take one planet near the other from our point of view. The event's true name is the Great Conjunction of 2020. For ordinary, non-star-gazing folk, the night sky will look like any other night sky. But if you know where to look, you might be able to see the Great Conjunction of 2020—the Christmas Star.

I felt tired this afternoon, and so I lay on my bed, and I fell asleep. When I awoke the time was 10:30 PM. I remembered that tonight is "Christmas Star" night. I went to my front door and looked outside and saw the Christmas Star. Holy smokes, it was huge! It was the size of the Moon! I went back inside and put on my eyeglasses and looked outside again. Now I could see that the Christmas Star really was the Moon.

I stepped further outside and walked down my sidewalk, looking at the sky. I didn't see any manner of Christmas Star, but I did see the constellation Orion, with it's easily recognizable Orion's Belt, and I could see the four corner stars in Orion. But there is far too much nighttime light pollution in my city for me (or anyone) to see more than a few stars, and that is a real shame. If I were to drive west to the mountains of southwest Virginia, away from cities, the sky would have thousands of bright stars. (I haven't actually counted them, so it might be hundreds. Either way, it's impressive.) I suspect people who live there take it for granted.

It is 11:55 PM and I'll have to hit the Publish button now while today is still the winter solstice, or else a blog post about the winter solstice won't be pertinent to the moment. If you badly wanted to see the Christmas Star and missed it, just go out and look up—if it's the 22nd. If it's not, then look again on the 23rd. It probably won't look much different than it does tonight. Happy star-gazing!

J.Fla

The song of the day is a mashup cover of DJ Snake's Let Me Love You and Alan Walker's Faded. This cover features South Korean singer-songwriter J.Fla.

Christmas Thoughts

There was a time ... I remember. I see it in my mind's eye. I was not here, but far away. I put myself there again, for a while.

I look out at the ocean. The shallow water is pale green and flat. Calm and peaceful. Tranquil. Pretty, even. Today. The ocean is beautiful today. Another day the ocean will be angry. It will be a killer.

Life is like that. One day life is calm, peaceful, beautiful. Another day life is turmoil. Perhaps the ocean is a metaphor for life. Or, perhaps life is a metaphor for the ocean. After all, the ocean was here first. The ocean gave birth to life. Life is a child of the ocean. We all carry some of the ocean in us. It is part of our blood, part of our sweat, part of our tears. Our body fluids share their chemistry with the sea. The sea is our mother. I suppose if the sea is our mother, then the Sun must be our father. Surely light came first. Light, and the warmth it provides, preceded everything.

But enough of memory. Today is day five before Christmas 2020, for those who celebrate Christmas. Today is cloudy and wet in my small city. The temperature is 38°F. A cold but gentle rain falls. I have moved my chair in front of the fireplace. I have a fire log burning in the fireplace. The log casts its heat and light onto my bare legs and body. It feels very, very good. For me, there has always been something primeval and lush about warmth on a cold day.

I have nothing to say today. I have written many words and said nothing. So I sit in my chair in front of my fireplace, holding my phone with both hands, with my elbows propped on the arms of my chair, and I dictate into the phone. The phone writes down everything I say and when I am done, a few taps on the phone will transfer what I have spoken into a blog post. What a world we have created! I hope a jovial Christmas spirit grants your wishes.

Eras

I saw a YouTube video titled, "Man in Nursing Home Reacts To Hearing Music From His Era." The title made me ask, "What is my era? Do I have an era? Does everyone have an era?"

Maybe "my era" is the era of Old Time Rock & Roll music (think Tom Cruise in Risky Business). Or maybe my era began with the Beatles. No, it can't be any of those because music is timeless.

Many years ago, I spent a winter in an unheated cabin on a lake in western North Carolina. I had no TV, only an AM radio. The little cabin had no heat, and every morning the faucets would be frozen. A glass of water left on a table would freeze overnight. In the mornings I would step into a sheet metal shower stall and only a trickle of water would come out of the frozen water valves. I had to stand there while the trickle of water melted the ice in the valves so that water could flow. I slept on a sofa under an electric blanket set to high, with several more blankets piled on top of it. Good times.

But late at night, that old AM radio tuned in WBZ in Boston, Massachusetts. WBZ was a 50,000 watt clear-channel station and I had no trouble receiving it at night. I listened to Larry Glick do some great interviews and play some great music. If you missed Larry Glick, you missed a radio gem. There are things that are impossible to describe; things of which people will say, "You had to be there." The Larry Glick show was one of those things. Think of American Graffiti and Wolfman Jack broadcasting from a high-power Mexican station and you'll have a sense of what I mean.

I suppose my era was an era of transition, because so many things were in transition at that time. Technology was in transition. Culture was in transition. I was in transition. I was preparing to take a journey across the United States, twice. From central Virginia across the northern states to Seattle and down the Pacific Coast Highway to L.A., then east across the southern deserts and back to Virginia—via Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, where I stayed a few weeks and studied Transcendental Meditation. I drove through the Great Plains where there seemed to be nothing but flat grassland to the horizon. I suppose the winter I spent in western North Carolina and that trip around America signaled a transition—the end of one era and the beginning of another.

How many eras does a person get to have? I was a child, I was a teenager, I was a young man, and so on, each era having its own priorities, its own memories. I'm coasting now—not trying to set fire to the world, not trying to invent the next gee-whiz gadget. Some would call it running out of runway, but that is as it should be. 

If I had to summarize my life in one word, that word would be learning. I came here to learn, and I've learned a few things but, I think, fewer than I should have, but with luck—with luck—it will be enough, it will be sufficient. I will tell you a secret, to believe or disbelieve, to do with as you please. Here it is: When you die, when you pass on from this world, you will meet the Angel. The Angel will review your life with you, the "good" things and the "bad" things, and then the Angel will ask you, "What have you done that is sufficient?" Try to have a good answer.

Christmas Week

Today is Friday, December 18th, so Christmas Day is seven days away: one week, less about 3 and a half hours. I don't celebrate Christmas, though I don't care if other people celebrate it. When I was a kid, Christmas Day was exciting. There was Christmas music on the radio, and Christmas shows on the television, and Christmas parades through the main street in town with pretty girls in cheerleader attire. And for the nighttime parade there were carbon-arc searchlights, which haven't been built since 1944, having been replaced by the invention of radar. If you're a kid and you get to look into a carbon-arc searchlight, it makes a lifetime impression. And the high school bands in the parade would march by, with the drummers beating those big base drums that vibrate all your internal organs, especially your heart. And convertible cars drove by with beauty contest winners in evening gowns sitting high and waving. And Santa came by last, throwing candy here and there. 

The Christmas TV shows always included Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life—though for the latter I preferred the remake with Marlo Thomas, It Happened One Night. Do stations still air Christmas movies? I haven't seen one for several years. They probably come on channels I don't receive, like Disney or Hallmark. It's okay, I've seen enough of them to last a lifetime. 

Just seven more days and Christmas morning will be here. In this time of Covid-19 with so many layoffs and store closures, I hope there will still be some Christmas cheer to be had. But I know some families will be worried about paying the rent and buying food and not so much about buying Christmas presents. I hope those families with money to spend on presents for their kids understand how blessed they are. I hope they understand that many families are not going to be blessed as much this Christmas season. It's easy to take blessings for granted, but they should never be taken for granted, lest they be taken away when you least expect it. Give to the food bank. Give to the Salvation Army bell-ringers. If you have, then consider sharing, even if just a little bit. And may your Christmas season bring you unexpected blessings.

Pentatonix

The song of the day is God Only Knows from the 2019 album The Best of Pentatonix Christmas by a cappella group Pentatonix.

I'll Be Back!

What person who has seen the film The Terminator can forget Arnold Schwarzenegger's character, the Terminator, and his classic line, "I'll be back!"?

One day, perhaps, I'll look up from my death bed to the people around me, and I'll tell them, "I'll be back!" Because I will. All of us will be back. Again, and again, and again, until we get it right.

Each of us is playing a role in the longest running drama of all time: creation.  We're babies in this creation and we have to learn. Said William Shakespeare in As You Like It:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts...

Make of that what you will. In this world we are all mere players. We have our exits and our entrances. We have our roles to play.

We begin as novices with much to learn. We make mistakes, but we learn and we remember. As lifetimes pass, we make fewer mistakes, and the mistakes that we make are more subtle. Still we learn, because we experience the consequences first-hand. The only way we can learn is to try, fail, and try again.

Have you ever met someone who seemed much wiser than their years on Earth? Have you ever met someone and thought, "That person is an old soul"? If you have, that person very likely was an old soul.

I'm climbing a long, long ladder. Those who understand me are near me on the ladder. Those who do not understand are far below me on the ladder. But those who are far above me on the ladder are the "old souls." They have learned lessons I have yet to encounter. 

We choose our lifetimes; we choose our lessons. We're not thrown into the struggle without thought or reason. We're given a life that offers us a chance to learn a lesson—a chance to evolve spiritually. What may seem pointless now, does have a point. What may seem random now, was carefully planned before we were born, in a timeless epoch that is our true home. There is a reason things may seem random and senseless, and the reason is that we can see only one page in the middle of a long novel. First we trust, and eventually we know, that the other pages are there. 

For your life to make sense, you have to trust. "What goes around comes around" is a modern version of a verse from Galatians, "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Wisdom is timeless and Truth will always prevail at the end.

Contentment

It might surprise you to know that I am content. There are things I could do that I would enjoy, but if I don't do them I am not disappointed, nor do I feel I have missed something. I feel content when I sit in my house. I feel content when I walk down the street. I feel content when I sit in a friend's house and chat. I feel content when I read a book, listen to music, watch a video, experience the outside world: the buzzing of insects, the shouts and squeals of children at play, the scent of flowers and freshly mown grass. I feel content when I write a blog post at 2:00 AM. I feel content when I get behind the wheel of my 25-year-old Jeep and let it take me somewhere. I do not ask life to give me things to make me content. I feel fortunate to have the things that I have, while I have them, and one of those things is contentment. I do not expect this comfort will last forever, but while it lasts, I am content.

I do not envy the wealthy. The things for which they strive are ephemeral and mean little except in the eyes of the equally blind. I do not envy the wealthy because they are struggling with their own lessons and wealth is a trap for them. I care little for outward appearances. I admire qualities that cannot be easily seen but are more real, more lasting, more meaningful.

I live in my own world, but I know where I am and where I've been and where I soon may be. I am okay with that. My memory is a stream of places and people. Once hurtful memories have lost their edge while good memories get better with distance. But even as I write this, and even as I know this, I know I have fallen short and will fall short again. 

Samuel Beckett wrote in Waiting For Godot, "At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on."

I have been sleeping, but at least I know I have been sleeping, and that is one step forward.

Sam Fischer

The song of the day is 2018's This City from the EPs Not a Hobby and Homework by Australian singer-songwriter Sam Fischer.

Small Mysteries

I came home from a grocery store trip today and when I got to the back door of my house, the sliding door wouldn't open. Despite the fact that it was unlocked, the door would not move. I made several attempts to open it, then gave up and walked around the house to the front door. There, sitting on the front porch in front of my door, was a UPS package. Were it not for the stuck back door, I would have entered the house as usual and would not have known the package was there.

The stuck back door was a "first-time" event. The door had never gotten stuck like that before today. I picked up the package and entered the house and walked to the back door. I was easily able to slide the door open and closed. I did nothing to fix the door. It simply was no longer stuck.

I don't know if there are "porch pirates" in my neighborhood, but they seem to be everywhere. So, I'm glad I found the package before it could have been stolen. Which means, I'm glad the back door was stuck, thus forcing me to enter the front door. 

The package wasn't for me; it was for my Latina guest (who left four days ago) and it arrived late. It was supposed to arrive on December 3 and it arrived on December 9. If an angel was involved in protecting the package, he (the angel) wasn't helping me, he was helping my guest. 

Why do I refer to the angel as "he"? In religious contexts, many angels are referred to as "he" and "him." Recall the archangels Gabriel and Michael. Recall the archangels Raphael and Uriel. If an angel was involved in such a trivial matter—and why not? and who are we humans to judge what is trivial and what is not?—then the angel involved must be Raphael. How do I know? That is a long story, and it involves many nigh-unbelievable events that I cannot yet write about and which the world may not be ready to hear. 

I have a guardian angel. I must have, because in my younger years I did some incredibly foolish things and I somehow came through unscathed. Some would say I was lucky. I would say I had a guardian spirit helping me at those times. I think we all do, but some of us refuse to listen. I once had a married, female friend who already had two boys when she got pregnant again. She lost the baby through a miscarriage. Eventually she became pregnant again. One night she phoned me and told me that she had started spotting, and she said that is how her previous miscarriage began. She asked me to send my angel to her and save the baby. I did ask, and the spotting stopped and a few months later a healthy baby boy was born. Was an angel really involved? Did I play any part?

I don't know. The world is far stranger than any of us can fathom. We only think we have it figured out, but no one has it figured out. I want my Latina friend to write about her angel—Raphael. But time is fleeting and filled with busy trivia that seems important at the moment it's happening. Mystery abounds, and sometimes we discover the why of things, but much later, and sometimes we never discover the why. 

As Paul said, "For now we see through a glass, darkly..." We don't even know all the questions, to say nothing of all the answers. It is something I ponder in the early, dark hours of morning.

Back to Normal

While my guest was here, the dirty dishes washed themselves. It worked like this: we would eat a meal, and then I would get up from the dinner table and do something and when I returned to the dining room, all the dishes and utensils and even the pots and pans had been washed and were in the dish drainer, clean and shiny as new. It was like magic. I don't know how it happened, but I figure poltergeists were somehow involved.

I had an errand to run this morning, but when I got out of bed the outside temperature was 27°F and to my recently hibernating body the inside temperature felt not much warmer. The thought of walking to my car filled me with shivers. Then I realized that I could run my errand tomorrow instead of today, and the decision was instantaneous: I returned to bed. Because I believe in that old adage, "never do today what can be put off until tomorrow." Or something like that.

When I cleaned up the supper dishes, I found a pound of bacon (uncooked) lying on the kitchen countertop. It had been lying there since about noon. I would like to report that it was hidden in an inconspicuous corner of the countertop, behind one thing and under another thing. But alas, it was in plain view and I didn't see it. The package was open and had been off refrigeration for about six hours, and I wondered briefly if it was still okay to eat. Then I thought "Sure it is," because it wasn't cooked. After I cook it crisp, all the germy critters that have been growing in it for the past six hours will be deceased. Probably. So I stuck the bacon back inside the fridge. Now, I'm thinking of that bacon less as food and more as a science experiment.

It's evening and the outside temperature is 27°. Looks like tonight will be a repeat of last night. Tomorrow morning I'll get up and take a shower and watch some TV news and then I'll get my Jeep out of the garage and drive to LabCorp where I'll be stuck with a syringe and some of my blood will be drawn out for tests. It happens every six months. The results are always the same. My cholesterol and triglycerides will be too high. My doctor wanted me to take a statin. I resisted for a long time, but I finally said "okay" and I took the statin. It made my cholesterol number go up! (In case you don't know, statins are supposed to make one's cholesterol go down.) On one visit, my cholesterol was so high that I asked my doctor, "With my cholesterol so high, how is it that I'm still alive?" She responded, "Some things we don't understand."

After LabCorp, I have to go to the grocery store. Maybe if the doctor knew what foods I eat, she would understand my high cholesterol. Or as I put it to her once, "Doctor, how many Whoppers do I have to eat to get my recommended daily allowance of chocolate?" 

She didn't answer. It's possible she thought I was joking.

To Be Continued?

My guest flew back to her homeland today. I drove her to the Richmond airport. Proof she is no longer here is my evening meal: factory-cooked chicken nuggets with Buffalo wing sauce. Plus a BBQ sandwich. While she was here, I ate real food with actual veggies cooked on the stove top. Now I'm back to eating faux food, the diet of many single men, I'm sure.

This morning I drove my guest to Richmond International Airport. We went to the ticket counter to check her bags and there we hit a snag. She was boarding "paperless" and the ticket agent asked for her QR code. This was new; neither of us had ever been asked for a QR code. (QR codes are ubiquitous, but I'm talking about the QR code you receive as a mobile boarding pass.) How would someone without a functioning mobile phone be able to fly? That person would have to go to the ticket counter and get a paper boarding pass. So if you're flying paperless, you might want to print a backup boarding pass to carry with you, just in case. (If you're thinking that printing a boarding pass kind of defeats the purpose of going paperless, well yeah, it does. But it's better than returning to the ticket counter, standing in line, and maybe going through security twice.)

We got that issue settled and walked to the concourse entrance and said our goodbyes. She sent me a video from her plane as it took off from Richmond. I returned to my Jeep and drove home. What will happen next in this international relationship? I don't know, but I know this is not the end.

Dance

Morning arrives. I get out of bed, I eat, I go back to bed for some more zzz's. Phone call. Glasses are ready for pickup. Up again and drive to Walmart. Try on glasses. Adjust frames. Leave store, drive home. Tell my guest we're going for a ride. We go to the Jeep and I drive down to the river.

Looking upstream into the afternoon sun.

This is another part of the greenway, maybe a mile further up the river from where my previous walk on the greenway took place. It's closer to the river.

A few cars are parked around the area, but only a man pushing a boy in a wheelchair are visible. The other people have probably walked out of sight. The greenway goes this way and that way, so you don't have to walk far to get out of sight.

The river looks muddy, but there are plenty of fish in that water. And there are plenty of ducks and geese on the river.

The leaves that remain on the trees have lost most of their color and won't be on the trees much longer. The high temperature today was in the mid-50s. The sunshine made it comfortable. Still, a light jacket or hoodie was necessary to be really comfortable. 

The Appomattox River flows down to the James River and thence to the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic. I've made the trip down and back more than once. In fact, I've blogged about a few of those trips. They were memorable, and not in a good way.

We leave the river and drive toward my home. I stop at a friend's house on the way home and we spend an hour with him and his Shih Tzu named Lizzy before we continue on our way home.

Eventually suppertime arrives. My guest fries pork chops that she batters with beaten egg and bread crumbs, while I stir-fry pieces of white onion in a wok with a little sesame oil, soy sauce, oyster sauce, and red pepper flakes. When the onion starts to become translucent around the edges, I dump baby spinach leaves into the wok and continue stirring until the leaves are wilted down. The meal is very good. Tomorrow night I'll make the same dish but I'll use hoisin sauce instead of oyster sauce. Because, why not?

After dinner I make a fire and turn down the room light. The mood is cozy. I put on some music and my friend stands up and walks to me and takes my hand. We dance. In the middle of my living room, lit by the glow of flickering firelight, we dance. I've danced with women in my life, but I can't recall slow dancing in my living room with firelight setting the mood. I should do that more often. Maybe everyone should.

Gallo Pinto

Another very good, ordinary day occurred today. I was up and at 'em at 9 AM, but my guest usually arises at about 6AM. She made my breakfast: Gallo Pinto, scrambled eggs, and pork sausage. Unless you're Hispanic or Latin, you may not be familiar with Gallo Pinto. It's basically black beans and rice and chopped onion cooked in oil and various seasonings.

One of those seasonings is Lizano Salsa, with which I was unfamiliar (other than hearing the name) but now I have a bottle in the cabinet above my kitchen stove. The Gallo Pinto was tasty and went well with scrambled eggs (though I understand that fried eggs are the more usual accompaniment). I want her to explain, slowly while I type, how she assembles the ingredients for this dish. In other words: her recipe. Yes, there are recipes on the Web—probably dozens of recipes. But I want the recipe I tasted.

Usually, when I want breakfast sausage, I defrost a couple of Jimmy Dean's pre-cooked sausage patties, but the real thing blows away Jimmy Dean's version. My guest cut them to about the size and thickness of biscuits, a manly sausage patty! Then there's taste. Not that Jimmy Dean's frozen, pre-cooked patties aren't good; they are. But they can't beat the real thing for taste. Frozen cooked sausage and a microwave oven are pure convenience, and there's nothing wrong with that, if that is what's most important to you.

After breakfast, I drove to Wally World and dropped off my guest. I went home and waited for her to text me to pick her up. The traffic in and around the Walmart parking lot was about as congested as it can get. Nevertheless, we got home unscathed and unpacked her purchases. They were mostly Christmas presents for her family in Central America. The things she bought would cost much more in her own country due to import duties. And some items here are simply not available in her country. Hence, the shopping trips.

Tonight, I "cooked" dinner: chili dogs with store-bought coleslaw and potato salad. The chili dogs were very good. Junk food usually is. Partly, it's because the food is jam-packed with sodium. It's also high in "bad" fats. When I say "bad" fats, think about it: would you rather eat bacon or olive oil? 

After dinner we sat beside the fireplace and watched the movie "10" from 1979. (It holds up—a mark of a good script.) Once again, the lights were low and the flames in the fireplace cast a comforting warmth over us. I could get used to this.

An Ordinary Day

Morning. Daylight awakens me. It's going to be a nice day, but a cold one. My guest informs me that we are going to Walmart. Super-crowded, 20-shoppers-per-register Walmart. She buys things to give as Christmas presents. I, too, buy a few things, including fire logs.

Then we go to Target, where we burn time and buy nothing. I navigate the shopping center to an exit road and we go home. The Jeep is unloaded and we walk up the street to visit my friend Butch. For an hour or so we enjoy conversation. We leave.

Back at the house, we put things away and I take a short nap. When I get up we talk for a while, and my guest tells me she's hungry. "What do you want?" She shrugs. "Hot dogs?" she asks. That sounds easy, so I assemble two chili dogs with sides of coleslaw and potato salad. They're good.

I light a fire log and we sit at the end of the sofa, beside the fireplace, and watch Leonard Cohen videos. We both are fans of his music. I've been a fan from the evening I watched him perform a concert on Austin City Limits many years ago. That concert is now on YouTube.

The house lights are low and the fire casts its hypnotic, flickering glow on us, over us, around us. She goes to bed, and I go to my keyboard to type a blog post that I did not have time to write earlier. It's a post about nothing special, about an ordinary day in many ways, but a very nice, ordinary day. Except for the firelight, the house is dim. The air is 37°F outside, on its way to 29° tonight—a foretaste of winter. Tomorrow's high will be 57°. The boiler in the cellar provides our heat; the fire log and the music provide our comfort.

Good night, all. I hope your evening is pleasant, too.