Heading for the Shoals

Is it OK to take a call on a stair master routine and toggle back and forth between mute and un-mute on a scheduled call?  I tried to do this, this morning.  I started the call on the drive over and managed all pretty, well, parking, walking through the building, heading up the stairs, chatting away.  I didn’t need to say much more than “Yes.”  “Indeed.”  Until a point where it became clear that the conversation was heading for the shoals and I was huffing too loudly to be able to calmly return to the chat-stream without sounding like I was in a boxing match.

Soldering through a post-tired groove right now.  Could write for a while or slip off to nod tracing a nonsense thought . . .  There.  I was just in nod.  Y’all didn’t know.  I did.  I was considering a painted turtle.  Why?    Painted turtles are the logic repository of my six-year-old mind.  Painted turtles were achingly important at that time.  They haven’t been especially important since then.  But my napping mind needed a protagonist, it needed something I have at one point or another invested meaning in.  It found turtles and sure enough my consciousness rose to the occasion and began to weave a flimsy narrative around this.

The news is literally overwhelming.  DJT has the brand spankin’ new CIA director setting up a meeting for his sagacious-self with Kim Jong Un.  Trump is pinioned in with lawsuits from all directions.  His popularity among Republicans doesn’t seem to have waned much. Trade war looms.  Return to Pacific trade talks?  Bomb Syria again? I think the wisest editorial I read amidst all I consumed on the topic was Jim Newell in Slate suggesting his impeachment was not going to happen any time soon.   We all want out.    We’ve all got a long way to go. 

Now It’s late.  My wife is typing at my desk.  She has late night stuff to do to.  My older one will get up early and head to Shanghai for a soccer match.  She was all wrapped up in what she had to do this evening, frustrated, short, impolite.  I think it dawned on her that she wasn’t alone on this space craft when I called loudly for her to get down and set the table.  Yes.  “And wash your plate off.  Don’t just leave it there.”  Oh right, other people.  

Wednesday 4/18/18