Loose Leaf Notes

1. I don’t have a lot to juggle in these pandemic times, but so many parts of my life feel up in the air.

2. Don’t try THIS at home, only at Grandma’s house.

3. “The pandemic is a beautiful thing for an old guy like me. Young people do all the complaining so I don’t have to, I’m free to be cheerful. I detest physical exercise and now I have an excuse: heavy breathing spreads the virus. I also have a cover for not wanting to travel: Europe doesn’t want us. Even the Canadians don’t want us. As for restaurants, I never liked eating out; I haven’t hung out in bars since I was in college. I’m an introvert and social distancing comes naturally to me. Down deep, I have an aversion to people who subscribe to complicated conspiracy theories or who think the virus is a hoax or who like to use the word “systemic” and now I can block them on my phone. I love to watch baseball without spectators in the stands, no video close-ups of couples kissing, no mascots dancing around in cartoon outfits. And I’ve discovered that if I put one tablespoon of fermented mead in my wife’s Cream of Wheat, she becomes giddy and laughs at everything I say.” – Garrison Keillor

4. Floyd Facebook post: Alert! do not leave your vehicle in Floyd town unlocked or someone you know may put vegetables in it!

5. Window Swap? Let’s face it. We are all stuck indoors. And it’s going to be a while till we travel again. Window of Opportunity views around the world HERE. 

6. What now sparrow? / Will the meek inherit the earth / or will the squeaky wheel run over it? – Read the rest of my poem Fight or Flight HERE.

7. Drum roll please for Phlegar Road, who we saw and danced to at Dogtown on Saturday.

8. I’m not into face mask fashion like I’m not into emojis.

9. THIS is my kind of Yoga class.

10. The word juggle and jiggle kind of make me want to giggle.

11. Today I learned what a contronmym is: Single words that have to contradictory meanings, like bolt: to secure or to flee, dust: to add fine particles or to remove them, left: remained or departed, sanction: to approve or to boycott, weather: to withstand or to wear away.

12. “Every word is a bird we teach to sing.”  That’s the name of a book by Daniel Tammet, a high functioning autistic savant with synaesthesia. I’m currently reading his memoir Born on a Blue Day.

13. “Because there were so many books in the library, with so many different names on them, I’d assumed that one of them somewhere had to be mind. I didn’t understand at the time that a person’s name appears on a book because he or she wrote it.  Now that I’m 26, I know better. If I were to ever going to find my book one day, I was going to have to write it first.” -Daniel Tammet

___________ Thirteen Thursday