A forum post asked the question “What song would you want played at your funeral?” I had to think about that one for a little bit. The usual moody or well-known songs passed through my brain, but eventually I decided that the song When I Die, by Blood Sweat & Tears, would be my choice. We used to listen to this band a lot while cruising the local hillsides, and I always liked this particular song.

If you’ve never heard it, you can listen to it via this YouTube video.

It fits my outlook on life and my overall state of mind on a day to day basis. Especially lately. ie, on the one hand, it’s kinda bouncy and jaunty, but on the other hand, it’s kind of….not.

I’m not scared of dying, and I don’t really care.
If it’s peace you find in dying, well then let the time be near.
If it’s peace you find in dying, and if dying time is near,
Just bundle up my coffin ’cause it’s cold way down there.
I hear that its cold way down there.
Yeah, crazy cold way down there.

Chorus:

And when I die, and when I’m gone, there’ll be one child born
In this world to carry on, to carry on….

Now troubles are many, they’re as deep as a well.
I can swear there ain’t no heaven but I pray there ain’t no hell.
Swear there ain’t no heaven and I pray there ain’t no hell,
But I’ll never know by living, only my dying will tell.
Yes only my dying will tell.
Yeah, only my dying will tell.

(Chorus)

Give me my freedom for as long as I be.
All I ask of living is to have no chains on me.
All I ask of living is to have no chains on me,
And all I ask of dying is to go naturally.
Oh I want to go naturally.

Here I go, hah!
Hey Hey!
Here comes the devil,
Right Behind.
Look out children,
Here he comes!
Here he comes! Hey…

Don’t want to go by the devil.
Don’t want to go by demon.
Don’t want to go by Satan,
Don’t want to die uneasy.
Just let me go naturally.

And when I die, and when I’m dead, dead and gone,
There’ll be one child born in our world to carry on,
To carry on.

Awesome:

1. inspiring awe: an awesome sight.
2. showing or characterized by awe.
3. Slang. very impressive: That new white convertible is totally awesome.

I was re-reading the last few entries and I noticed that lately I appear to like the above word far too much.
I also noticed that I need a proof-reader. There’s something about typing out a blog entry on the PC that makes me misspell, forget to insert words between other words, use bad sentence structure, change topic every sentence (kind of) without realizing how it’s going to “read”, and so on. No matter how much faster typing is than handwriting, unless you’re the Superman of typists, nothing matches the word-speed of the mind. And if you’re also a lazy typist who’s just trying to get something written so you can move on to something else, heaven help you.

Windy, cloudy, not-summery weather in June makes me “Blah.”

Baby-kitty definitely feels a lot better now. He’s bright-eyed, chipper, etc. The only odd thing is the past few days he’s developed an odd sound when he eats. It’s a “clacking” noise…it doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s loud - as if someone is whacking a small hard stick on a plate. I’ve watched him while he eats, and he doesn’t tilt his head or grind his jaw or anything like that - if anything, he slurps up his wet vittles faster and with greater ease then ever before. Maybe a piece of that tooth root the vet couldn’t remove is working its way loose and is “clacking” against his lower teeth sometimes? I don’t know, but it’s strange and kind of amusing. I guess as long as he looks/acts well and eats fine, I’m not going to worry about it - but it sure is a loud and freaky noise.

My thumbs….on the one hand seem to be getting better, but on the other hand they’re definitely stiffer and less bendable than they were before. Both the top joint and what I think is the carpometacarpal joint (see image) are still prone to popping out and “freezing.”

The popping isn’t happening as often, so that seems good, but the general ache/weakness of the thumbs, including the meaty part of the palm by your thumb - seems worse…ie, maybe they’re slowly healing, but healing poorly, if that makes sense. Ah well. So I’d guess I have early degenerative arthritis of the thumbs. Which is mostly irritating because it means I have to be very careful not to strain them w/the motions that bother them, so hopefully they won’t degenerate further from wear/tear, too fast. I guess what I thought was just a little strain/soreness from too much hand-usage during the house-moving process was more than “a little” - the fingers healed up fine, but it pushed the thumbs over some proverbial edge or something.

Sigh. Well, hubby and I are going to see the latest Indiana Jones movie tomorrow afternoon. Maybe that’ll bring me out of the grumpy blahs.

Our neighbor was on his roof this afternoon, trying to shake down some avocados from their tree. I don’t know how many fell into his yard, but 7 of them fell into our yard, and they’re ours now. Hah! Some of them are really big, as you can see in the picture below, where I used a banana to compare lengths.

It was nice to get some “fresh” avocados this time around. The avocados currently left on the tree (and there’s still a lot of them) are so high up that we’d need a 20-30 foot pole to knock them down ourselves. So most of the time, we just wait for them to fall to the ground on their own…or for the squirrels to knock them down for us. I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned that the squirrels like to do that? They bounce on the branches to get the fruit to fall, and then spend several days chewing holes in the avocados at their leisure. Our yard near the fence is littered with avocado pits…oh, we recently saw a raccoon run across the back fence, so maybe he eats some too.

Anyway, between gravity and the squirrels, we might manage to grab one or two un-chewed upon avocados a week. Getting seven at once, where they were largely undamaged, is cool. Thanks, neighbor.

Parts of California are in the middle of a “record breaking heat wave” this week, including where we live. This means, as always, that I’m one grumpy customer. Temperatures reached about 98F yesterday, and today doesn’t look much different. It is, however, supposed to start cooling off by the end of this weekend to what I would consider a bit more normal, for the area. But that news doesn’t make me happy right now. My aversion to any temperatures over 75F has been noted before, which is why I don’t live in places like Texas/Arizona/anywhere desert-hot. I know some people love hot weather and like to go to parks, beaches, and run around in sprinklers while throwing a frisbee, but all I want to do is stand in a dark room with frozen wet towels around my neck and a fan on high. No energy, no motivation, and Ms FrownyFace. Days like this I “hate” my husband, who marches around happily in the sun, sweat rolling off his face as he does yard work or something, and who starts complaining when the temp drops to something frigid like, oh, 78F.

Normally our new house cools off very rapidly at night, because of a combination of cool evening breezes, a lot of trees, and awesome air circulation when you open the doors/windows. It’s been something I’ve enjoyed immensely, after years of living in that poor-circulation/no shade house in SJ. On days like this, however, there’s no evening breeze so the house never cools off and I feel like we’re back in SJ again. For example, this was the temperature in my library/pc room at 8:30pm last night, after I had the doors/windows all wide open and two fans on for a couple hours:

By 11:30PM, the temperature inside this room had dropped an entire 5-6 degrees. Wheee.

By 4am, the temp had dropped to about 80F and I grumpily went to bed…to wake up at 10am and temps that were already close to 90F. The end of the weekend, and (hopefully) temperatures back in the low 80’s or less, cannot come soon enough.

Edit: It’s now 8PM, and…YES!!…the glorious evening breeze is back today, meaning the house is/will cool off a lot more tonight. You can’t see it, but I am doing a happy dance.

While we were at the store hunting for plain ol’ beefsteak tomato plants - which aren’t always easy to find since there seem to be 50 different varieties of tomatoes/new hybrids now - we also picked up something else.

Yeah, our own little jalapeno plants. We love jalapenos - I use them a lot in cooking - never tried growing them before, but there’s a first time for everything.
And lastly, one of our neighbors appears to have a lot of blackberry bushes growing on the side of their house, and they are starting to poke through/under the fence into our sideyard. Which is cool, because before long we’ll probably have a nice blackberry bush area growing by the garage. Hehe…this place is awesome.