The City Mouse in the Country

This is the "personal" piece that I didn't plan on writing at all. I keep this blog to help me sort out the jumble of thoughts and emotions that are always bouncing around my head and for the sake of history.  For example, I knew I suffered from depression when I went back and read my personal journals; noticing how I was always bitching about the same things but never doing anything to change it.   The old saying about repeating the same pattern and expecting different results is very true.  Once I broke out of those patterns (with help from a mental health professional) my life got a whole hell of a lot better.  Thus it sort of pains me to see me considering going back into a career that I never expected to be in the first place. Call Centers/Customer Service have been what I've done for the majority of my life.  When the pandemic came, I was able to work form home, and I got used to sitting around in my PJ's drinking my coffee and answering call after ca...

I feel like an old man as I watch the blustery snow swirl outside my window.  I'm wrapped in a warm sweater, drinking an aromatic herbal tea and I am at peace.  " All I am missing, " I think to myself, " is a pipe and my cranky old man persona would be complete. "  Winter gives me time to think.    I hate the winter, the cold and the dark of it.  I hate the short days, the snow and the cold rain.  I hate the very thought of dealing with it. It was winter that drove me south all those years ago. We have yet to have a harsh winter since moving back to Western Pennsylvania.  We have had cold snaps and snow of course, but the snaps haven't settled in for months and the snow - while heavy at times - has generally melted away quickly.  This has made the winter bearable for me. Winter gives me a break, a moment to stop and catch my breath before the busy seasons begin again.  Lately I've been thinking about work and what I have to do come ...

I'm slowly but surely becoming more of a vegetarian.  I find myself ordering plant based dishes whenever possible when eating out.  I've packed myself plant based dishes for lunch. If I'm on my own for dinner I've been known to have some veggie pizza or plant based seafood from time to time.  I don't mind tofu, lentils and chickpeas and even have some falafel and saitan in my freezer although I've no idea what to do with the latter.  I'm sure I'll figure it out.     I've made paneer and used it as a meat substitute .   My diet started to change for several reasons, but reducing my carbon footprint was certainly one of those reasons.  While I'm sure this is going to upset some people, animal welfare really didn't play that much of a role into my decision to go flexatarian . So the question becomes; if I believe in plant based diets and it's ability to reduce my overall impact on this planet.  Why in the hell did I buy one half of a c...

Even though we are nearly two weeks away from the New Year, I've decided to try and write what has traditionally been the last post of the year now.  For me it's always been a brief review of what I've covered, accomplished and achieved in the past year.   Like the above meme says....I made it through. Maybe it's due to seasonal depression, maybe it's due to my writing this blog for slightly over three years and my audience is still in the hundreds, not the thousands like previous blogs have been but I think this blog may be coming to an end. Although the low readership that I have could be due to the blogging platform I use, which is neither supported by nor promoted by Google anymore.  However I love the ease and simplicity of this particular platform and see no reason to change it at this time. This lack of comments and low readership are making me wonder if it's worth it.  Plus, if I'm being honest with myself, this blog has lacked focus as I seem to be ...

 First off, I don't write fiction.   However it occurred to me that what I've been writing about lately is difficult to get our heads around.  Climate change is really happening in today's world, and at the risk of hyperbole, it really is end of the world type stuff. I needed to find a way to break it down to the indivdual level.   That thinking, and some natural curiosity about the New Madrid fault lin e got me thinking about how easily things could go bad for a society if a series of natural disasters hit in rapid succession.    Thanks to this writing prompt, something started to form in my head.   Please keep in mind that this is the first draft and it deals more with the themes I'm hoping to explore.   It does not have a current title. So without wasting time...here we go. The world, at least as most people understood it, ended on a rather ordinary Tuesday afternoon.    I remember it was a perfectly ordinary da...

It hasn't been reported much by the national news here in the States; that COP 28, or the 28th meeting of the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Climate Change Conference is currently being held in Dubai, a major oil producing country (more on that in a bit).  It is open to  " Business leaders, young people, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples, journalists, and various other experts and stakeholders" in the future of our planet.   It's meeting in a variety of ways current ongoing from November 30 through the 12 of December this year.  So as I'm writing this it's still ongoing and already simplifying complex and complimented decisions, creating empty promises, possibly committing or planning to commit fraud and full of controversy. It's been a failure on the environmental front for a variety of reasons. The idea of COP28 is a simple one according to the UN ; it is to allow the major players and countries in the world to...

  I don't have a photograph of her. That's what I remember thinking when I learned she had recently passed.  I'm sure somewhere in the boxes scattered throughout my life here in Western Pennsylvania is a picture of Teri and I.  We were married 10 days after September 11th, 2001.   I still remember the day of our marriage, as we scrambled to make sure that we had a back up best man and a back up "father to give away the bride" just in case my best man, who was in the Air Force at the time; and her brother (Navy) were called off to active duty. It was a wonderful open air wedding with great food and lots of dancing and seemed like a great start to our lives. Two young people ready to take on the world.   Needless to say, the world won. Our relationship started off well but by the economic collapse of 2007/2008 we started to show signs of stress.  Sadly I lost my job and fell into a deep depression, I often say that I was "frozen" as I seemed unable...