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Down With Funk? Up With Junk! A Fresh Drawerful For Ya!


The return of Blazer malaise got ya feelin' dazed? Try talking about anything else here!

How was everyone's holiday? Food good? Any funny drama? Ugly drama? Let's be here for each other's drama. We can relate, can't we? Or try at least.

The next holidays are already bearing down on us. Well, mainly Christmas anyway! I've never seen so many freshly bought trees strapped to the tops of automobiles in the days BEFORE Thanksgiving than I've seen this year. And cars with multiple trees. Preemptive strikes in the wAr AgAiNsT ChRiStMaS starting earlier each year, I guess.

Anyone got any stories about how to drop hints for gift ideas to your spouse or whomever you expect'll buy you a gift? My wife has suddenly become very blunt about it this year. I've tried to hint that I want an electric guitar built by a good friend of hers who has been building electric guitars for years now, but she got me an acoustic guitar last year after consulting with our guitar-making friend. I'm hoping that my having ignored that guitar for an entire year has worked!

So, I was gone all last week and couldn't even bond with y'all over our most beloved basketball team. Drove the family down to Sacramento for the week of Thanksgiving only to arrive with scratchy throats and coughs and Una feeling kinda hot. Just a mild fever, so naturally we figured we might've caught a family-wide case of COVID. We used long-expired test kits that were left over at my uncle-in-law's house where we always stay, and it told us that Una might've been positive. I let everyone we had just seen the prior day know about it and also warned all the grandparents and aunties and cousins. But then we all felt better--Una especially--and once I got a buncha fresh test kits, we never tested positive again. So I reckon Una's first positive was actually an invalid result. Not only was the kit expired, but my stupid fingers touched the wrong side of the test strip. I'd never used that brand before. I guess it's "almost exactly like the old home pregnancy tests we used to have," said my mother law before wryly adding "Not that I'd know anything about that!" My in-laws fully embraced having us there, but my folks remained scared that we actually had COVID and refused to see us, or just didn't seem able to motivate themselves to make it work. Kind of a bummer.

I think I've shared with you before that my mom cocoons herself in an accumulated grief for every loved one who has died since her mother's early passing at age 53 due to IPF (idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis) which also claimed the life of her brothers. I had thought having another grandchild would help a bit to make holidays something she would want to participate in. She has occasionally talked a good game about wanting to. But as yet, she still gets oddly silent or bristly in the days leading up to a holiday (or the birthday or death anniversary of any of our dearly departed). And if she's out, then my dad is out, too, because he has become so much more dependent on her, and no one can communicate with him except through her. There's so much I could unpack about it, but I'll leave that there except to add that I sometimes wonder how many more times I will see my parents before it's at a funeral for one or both of them? At this rate, I reckon it's only maybe a few times. Yet I'm also always scouting the real estate listings near daily for nearby houses where they (or inlaws) could live all on one level. And what would it take to make 'em move there? I'd practically hafta kidnap them.

As usual, please share whatever movies and TV you've seen and whatever else. Keep the junk drawer junky!