I’m losing most of my bets with the watch on my nightstand.
Lately I’ve been posing myself a little challenge when I return to earth from dreamland: Pop open an eye, peer around the bedroom, and try to guess what time it is based on ambient light leaking through the vertical blinds.
I was doing pretty well there for a while. Nailed it once or twice. But lately I’m minutes off the mark.
I’m not sure who’s to blame for the decline in my batting average. Possibly the “Harvard elite with perfect hair” who’s apparently behind all the psychos shooting the mortal shit out of each other around town. He’s certainly broken into at least one head down at Peterson Properties, which has more eyes than Avalokiteshvara and knows more about what you’ve been up to than Santa Claus.
We remain unventilated by pistoleros here at El Rancho Pendejo, though we have endured a busy week. Last Friday we moved Herself the Elder from the Dark Tower to the Bermuda Triangle, an assisted-living house a little closer to us. It’s where Herself had wanted to park the old gal when she first came to town, but there weren’t any vacancies. Suddenly there were. So it goes.
Wednesday was our 31st anniversary, and as we were both thoroughly shot up vaccine-wise, we went out to eat at an actual restaurant, El Patio on Rio Grande. It was my first sitdown restaurant meal in more than a year, and it was spectacular. Great food, excellent service, and we didn’t get plugged or burgled or tagged or nothin’, Harvard elites with perfect hair notwithstanding.
Today we’re baking bread and pulling weeds. Probably still working off some of those tasty El Patio calories. Gotta keep in fighting trim for the next 31 years.
Tags: El Patio, El Rancho Pendejo, Herself, Herself the Elder, Peterson Properties, The Bermuda Triangle, The Dark Tower
Mad Blog Media 
May 14, 2021 at 9:53 am |
Keller is a bit of a buffoon, but one cannot blame him for the OK Corral entirely.
May 14, 2021 at 10:31 am |
We went out last to dinner also for the first timein more than a year. Enjoyed the experience.
May 14, 2021 at 12:37 pm |
Such a little thing, going out for a meal, but so refreshing. We were there between the lunch and dinner crowds, and everyone was pleasant as could be. Our server even bought Herself’s anniversary margarita.
May 14, 2021 at 12:27 pm |
Happy anniversary Patrick and Shannon!
May 14, 2021 at 12:39 pm |
Thanks, matey. Meanwhile, I see the gods are trying to adjust the unreal-estate market over to Bisbee. Here’s hoping the mortals get that thing pissed out in short order.
May 14, 2021 at 1:01 pm |
Yep, up in Brewery Gulch uphill from the park you camped in on your tour. I haven’t seen any news on it today.
May 14, 2021 at 1:58 pm |
By the way, Happy Anniversary, Belated. Hopefully many more to come. Now that I’ve had my Long Friday Bike Ride(tm) I’m in a better mood.
Funny you mentioned waking up and trying to guess what time it was. I tossed and turned a bit last night and finally fell asleep again at about 3 or 4. Next thing I knew there was this blinding white flash and I let out a scream, scaring the bejesus out of my better half. Woke up and realized that “blinding flash” was the result of waking up after the sun came up. Sheesh.
May 14, 2021 at 5:13 pm |
Thanks, Hoss. Insomnia’s fun, iddn’t it? Mom suffered from it big time; she was always up at odd hours, doing whatever to pass the time. It got worse when she got the Alzheimer’s. She’d wander the house like La Llorona, rattling doorknobs and mumbling.
I have a touch of it myself, but I don’t get up. Like you, I roll around in the sack and hope it goes away.
Weird when you wake up and it’s light outside, hey? That was my M.O. for the newspaper years, when bedtime was 2 a.m. or even later. Now, after 31 years of marriage to an early riser, it’s rare for me to laze around in the rack later than 6 a.m.
May 14, 2021 at 5:18 pm |
I have a fifty five pound alarm clock that jumps on my chest or bladder if I don’t get up on time. But Back in the Day, my modus in grad school was to get up late, work till around dinner, get in a bike ride and food, and head back to the laboratory or library till around midnight unless there was a get-together of the gang. Then saunter home and zap out around two or so unless I was reading something unrelated to work.
I’ve never been a morning person unless the job required it. I love the morning, as long as it starts slow with plenty of coffee and NPR.
May 14, 2021 at 8:39 pm |
I usually go to bed not long after it gets dark and wake up not long before it gets light. I’ve been doing it since I moved here 40 years ago. I started to appreciate how nice a habit that is about 10 years ago. I do get up in the night once, occasionally twice. I don’t have to explain why to many of my fellow “Mad Dog Media” fans. But, it brings to mind an old sailor’s poem.
If you’re getting old
And your bladder is weak
Stand close to the John
Or you’ll pee in your feet
May 14, 2021 at 10:15 pm |
I have a schedule like Khal’s. I like my mornings and would rather not rush them. I do have a reasonably decent “wake up and guess what time it is” sense. Although it isn’t that difficult when the light starts shining through the window.
Congratulations on the anniversary. I hope it was splendid ! As a terminally engaged bachelor, I’m pleased as punch when friends and acquaintances have anniversaries. If you’ll allow me, I’ll raise a glass of cool clear water to you and your enlightened half this evening. Alcohol is out because su madre just got out of the hospital (a fine Mother’s Day vacation!) and is on anti-bios and a non-alcohol diet. The least I can do is enjoy the lack of intoxicants during her medicated duration.
A hint about late night bathroom visits: Carpet your bathroom and around the throne and you’ll forever be sitting for business and avoiding the splashin’ on your feet events. Nobody wants piss-soaked carpet around very long.
May 15, 2021 at 7:50 am |
Thanks, Shawn. We had a high old time. Glad to hear your mom is out of the hospital; hope she’s feeling better soon.
As for those nocturnal emissions, lawd, do I ever miss letting fly from the deck up to Weirdcliffe, with no one around save the bears, bobcats, coyotes, owls, werewolves, vampires, etc.
May 14, 2021 at 11:11 pm |
Between the ages of 12 to about when they let me into college, I was waking up at 4:45am, spent 12 very packed minutes downing a banana, getting my cycling clothes on, pumping up the tires and bolting out the door to meet the training group about a mile up the road at 5am for the every-day 35 mile fast ride. Got more fun in the fall when it was dark for the first hour of the ride.
Fast forward to today; I’m 64 now. I still wake up (if I was asleep at all) at exactly 4:45am. And then go back to bed. Because… I guess the pattern was burnt into my brain way back then in the early 70’s.
Patrick, I’m happy for you and the Mrs. that your M.I.L. is finally at the chosen facility. Ours was, but is now in a place that isn’t as well run. And in a week, we can finally visit her with Zooming.
May 14, 2021 at 11:12 pm |
Ugh. Proofreading is hard. *WITHOUT* Zooming.
May 15, 2021 at 8:01 am |
It’s tough to find the right place, iddn’t it? When we were dealing with my mom, we saw a place or two that seemed to be staffed by retired Gestapo. We finally settled on Namaste, a top-notch specialty Alzheimer’s outfit near The Broadmoor. She could afford it, thank Cthulhu, because we sure as hell couldn’t. I don’t even wanna think about what the place must cost a quarter-century later.
When I first started bicycle racing I was still a newspaper guy, which meant a 4 p.m.-1 a.m. shift and working weekends. Come race days I would get up at stupid-thirty after about two-three hours of not much sleep and drive someplace, usually Albuquerque, to pin on a number and get beat like an egg-sucking dog. I hated early rising before I picked up the racing habit, and I really hated it then.
May 15, 2021 at 6:44 am |
Agreed on the “morning person” nonsense. Since most of my career has been in manufacturing, it’s been on the job early. Several decades ago, when I was pretending to be a chemist, I had to run tests prior to the line starting up at 7 am, so 6:30 it was.
I’ve been flying a desk since then, and will retire in a year-ish. As i write this, it’s 7:30 am CDT and I’ve been up since 6. The alarm was set for 6:30. I too enjoy the slow morning coffee and NPR.
Nice to be in the company of folks of a similar mind.
May 15, 2021 at 8:05 am |
Herself likes to rise and shine, get cracking on some hellish list of chores she’s compiled. Me, I like to ease into my mornings like a fat man slipping into a hot tub. Arise when the body grumbles, “Enough awready.” A sip of java, a bite of toast, another sip of java, a casual eye on the news, etc. The Universe is in no rush to see me tackling whatever evil scheme I have in mind.
May 15, 2021 at 10:57 am |
I’m also doing dinner with a friend tonight. We’ve been supporting local restaurants via carry out. I’m a month double vaxxed and my smarter half is visiting her mom so me and one of my riding boyos going to a new place. draft house, no capital “d”. https://drafthousejanesville.com/
May 15, 2021 at 1:07 pm |
I recommend skipping the Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale. I got some during my last visit to Lexington, KY. Strong overpowering alcohol taste with little else. My niece and I drank two; thankfully we only bought two in a mixed six pack.
May 16, 2021 at 1:10 am |
I am a morning person, currently being semi retired, I rise at 5:00 to fool around until I go to start work at 7:00.
When I was fully employed, I’d rise at 4:00 so that I could do the 30 minute commute, do a 45 minute gym session & then read the paper & have breakfast.
To be totally honest, a major motivator was to get the hell out of the house before my partner, who is, * NOT A MORNING PERSON *, stirred.
May 16, 2021 at 6:41 am |
I like aspects of the morning, assuming we’re talking 6 a.m. instead of 4. In a desert climate, it’s usually pleasantly cool (56° here at 6:30). Also, I prefer to ease into the bright light of a new day, so if I get up 6-ish I can inspect the clouds and whatnot without resorting to the ol’ Foster Grants.
But I am pretty much incapable of tackling any consequential chore until I’ve had at least one cup of strong black coffee and about a half hour of quiet time to let the brain come up to a smooth idle. No music, no video, a bare minimum of conversation. Herself, meanwhile, is happy and chirpy and has accomplished a half-dozen tasks before I shamble into the kitchen like a zombie hunting brains.
May 16, 2021 at 2:03 pm |
My trigger is when I wake up during the night and look at the digital clock. Does it have ascending numerals – like 4:56, or descending numerals like 3:21?
Then it gets stranger. Take 3:21 for example – if you add the minutes (2 and 1), you get 3 which is the hour.
Or I could wake at 6:23, and if I multiply the minutes, I get the hour of 6.
I think I have said too much. i won’t speak of my dreams.