There are two kinds of tired; one requires sleep, the other requires rest.

Ethel sat in her rocker on the porch of the old folks home, watching as the little girl raced her kick scooter up and down the sidewalk. As she watched, she felt a twinge of jealousy come to her mind knowing that as a child she never had such a toy to play with.

At one time her Papa had be a successful farmer, raising milk cows and growing hay. When she was about six, that all changed with the crash of Wall Street and the Great Depression.

There was never enough money for fancy things.

By the time the depression ended, Ethel was an older teen and the idea of toys had long since passed. Then came the attack on Pearl Harbor and she joined the Army, becoming a nurse.

She didn’t have time to think of toys until she began a family of her own. By then the idea of playing with one of her girl’s dolls or tea set seemed unbecoming and she refused to do so.

Now, she was old, alone and vaguely envious of the child laughing and carrying on as she raced by the open porch along the wide sidewalk. Then Ethel felt sad for herself, for not having played more when she was younger, and now it was too late.

“Is it too late?” she asked as she answered the call for dinner.

That evening, as she looked out her bedroom window she saw the little girl’s scooter laying against the sidewalk in the gutter. An idea took hold in her as she planned to go out after everyone was in bed, and try kicking the scooter up and down the street.

Quietly, Ethel slipped out the front door and down the steps. She shuffled along the walkway to the scooter, picked it up and pushed it up and down the street.

Finally, she stepped on it and gave a gentle kick with her other foot and found herself gliding down the street with easy. Back and forth she kicked, enjoying the breeze created as it blow in her face and flitted back her gray hair.

Eventually, Ethel grew bold enough to coast back and forth on the sidewalk, taking delight in the gentle dips downward and then up as she passed over the rounded curbs of the driveways. Then it happened, she was on a flat stretch of sidewalk when she lost her balance and fell hard to the cement, bouncing half way into a yard.

There she lay, hip shattered and in pain through the remainder of the night and morning hours where a neighbor walking her dog found her. In those intervening hours, Ethel floated in and out of consciousness, certain her Papa had come to visit, stroking her head and holding her hand.

Hours later, as she lay in a hospital bed, she heard, “Whatever was that old woman thinking?”

She smiled as Papa came to her bed side, soon leaving hand-in-hand with him, a little girl once again.

I don’t need to meditate. I have dogs.

Over the last 185 days of self-isolation, social distancing and collections of face masks, I’ve watched as my blog readership has dropped off. I did the unusual things to help refresh interest, like slowing my daily postings, changing the name of my blog, reformatting and even changing subjects.

None of it helped.

Finally, I stepped back and looked over the entire situation: people are simply suffering burn-out when it comes to visiting blogs and other media platforms. After all, there is only so much we can take in before our mind begins to shutdown or search for other avenues of ‘escapism.’

So with all this in mind, I have concluded that the only thing I can do is continue writing and posting to keep my mental health on track. Perhaps by returning to my own ‘normalcy’ of writing and posting as often as I like, I will be helping someone else come into their own ‘normalcy.’

With all this, I say screw ‘new normal,’ the ‘old normal’ was never really busted…

Feeling lost and alone
And without one word
I hung up the phone
Having heard what
No one wants to hear.

So long my old friend,
I will remember you
And the things we used to do.
Who knew this was the end.

I went to the refrigerator,
Found what I was looking for.
Stepped out the front door
Drank that cold beer while
Watching the sun disappear.

So long my dear friend.
I will remember you
And the things we used to do.
Until we meet again.

No song will I sing,
No tune can I hum.
At the close of day,
Only the unspoken trial,
A memory gone numb.

So, so long my friend,
I will always remember you
And the things we used to do
Where we will do them again.

I don’t always carry all my groceries from the car to the house in one arm, but when I do, my keys are in the wrong pocket.

With a need to escape smoky skies and my own aloneness, I decided to go photograph a tunnel I’d seen south of Yerington, along US 95A. And while fresh air, blue sky and sunshine were not to be found, I did drive directly into a smoke that was worse than that which I’d left.

With the air still full of smoke, I finally found the tunnel. After snapping a few pictures, I returned to my truck, finding it was stuck in the sand and had to spend extra time stacking stones in front and behind my back tires so I could get unstuck.

Back on the road, I took the Fort Churchill cut-off, following the dirt road that’s the historic route used by both the Pony Express and the US Army as they moved from the fort to Virginia City. Having traversed the 15-mile wide Carson Sink, I came out at US 50, east of Carson City.

Here, I got my internal compass reversed, heading the wrong way, realizing my mistake when I drove through Stagecoach. A friend, who lives there, rightly describes the smoke filling her skies as a ‘London fog.’

She’s correct, as one can envision Charles Dickens’ “Bleak House,” where he writes: “Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes – gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.”

Once turned around and heading in the right direction, I finally found the freeway interchange and pointed my truck homeward. That was about 10-hours ago.

Since then I’ve been sitting up, coughing, unable to lay down because it’s hard to breath. And with it approaching 0230 hours, I’m wondering if I’ll get any sleep by the time the sun rises in the smoky east.

It’d be great if pillows recorded dreams and we could plug it into our device and enjoy them again.

Whose Molotov cocktail is that? I think I know.
Its owner is quite angry though.
He was cross like a dark Othello.
I watch him pace. I cry hell no.

He gives his Molotov cocktail a shake,
And screams I’ve made a bad mistake.
The only other sound’s the break,
Of distant glass, of heat and bake.

The Molotov cocktail is fire, destruction and deep,
But he has promises to keep,
Tormented with nightmares he never sleeps.
Revenge is a promise this one will keep.

They rise from their cursed bed,
With thoughts of violence in their head,
A flash of rage and they see red.
Without pause I turn, leave them dead.

You know journalism’s in trouble when the headline reads, “Planes dropping colorful chemicals helped squelch this fire.”