Your favorite food (#atozchallenge)

Your favorite food...

        Sadly, I've been finding that more and more the foods that have always been my favorites don't set well with me sometimes.  I've always liked spicier flavorful foods.   Favorite foods include pizza, Mexican, or Thai food.  But I'm also mighty fond of just about all Asian food and Italian when I'm in the right mood.   When you get right down to it my favorite thing to eat is food--period.

          Oh, there are a few things that I don't like so well, but if I'm hungry I'll go for just about anything.  Sometimes it might be a mood thing.  I might crave a sub sandwich or some soup.  Turkey dinners are great anytime--especially the Thanksgiving dinner like my mother used to make.  I can duplicate those Thanksgiving style dinners like my mother made so that everyone eating it seems to think it's great, but I can tell the difference.  When I cook it, those turkey dinners don't seem quite as good as my mother's.  Maybe it's like she used to say how you spend several hours cooking and then eating it just doesn't seem as good as it might have if somebody else had done all the work.

       I love ice cream, cake, candy--any sweets.  I'm crazy about sweets and that's bad for me.  Food, food, food.   I enjoy eating.  My wife thinks I'm a great cook, but that's maybe because she doesn't cook.   I'll admit that a lot of times my meals seem better than many of the restaurant meals we get.  And when it comes to spaghetti, forget about it.  It's been rare that I've ever had a plate of restaurant spaghetti that comes even close to what I make.  It's in the sauce.  Seems like you'd get a really good spaghetti gravy when you pay top price in a restaurant, but I rarely have so I rarely order spaghetti when I eat out.  Spaghetti is something best fixed when I fix it.  Same with chili most of the time.

         My favorite food if I have to pinpoint one might be pizza.  But if I'm not in the mood for pizza then my favorite food is something else.  It comes down to mood.   When I have a serious craving for something special and if I fulfill that craving with something that I think is really outstanding, then that's my favorite food.  For the moment at least.

          What do you tend to eat more than anything else?   Is there anything that you won't order in a restaurant?   Do you think you cook better than most people?

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X-Rays you have had (#atozchallenge)

X-Rays you have had...

         Not counting dental x-rays--I've had many of those since childhood--I can't recall ever having any x-rays until the past 15 years or so.   It's been since I got added to my wife's medical insurance after we got married.  Prior to that I never had medical insurance and fortunately no incident where an x-ray was required.

         Getting older often means feeling pain.  Inexplicable pain until medical examinations are done.  When I was first covered under medical insurance I was already nearing fifty which means I was heading towards getting old.  I was getting older and feeling more pain.

          During these past years of coverage I've probably had 7 or 8 x-rays.  Maybe more--who's counting really.  If I hurt and the doctors can't immediately determine why, they order x-rays.  I've had x-rays of my feet, my abdomen, my chest, my head, and my lower back.  Maybe there were more places x-rayed, but like I said--who's counting.

           They never seem to find much of consequence in those x-rays, which I suppose I should be thankful for.   There is a lower back issue--some kind of disc problem--but they said it would be better not to mess with it because surgery could cause worse problems.  The back problems have gone away for the most part.  So did everything else they x-rayed.

           I say the problems are gone, but I don't know for sure.  Right now I don't hurt and that's the main thing.   Besides, the diagnosis typically is that I'm getting old.  That's what the doctors usually end up saying, "You're getting older and sometimes you're going to feel pain."

           I guess I don't need x-rays to tell me that.  For that matter I don't really need a doctor to tell me that.  Still, sometimes an x-ray and a doctor checking me out is kind of reassuring.  I'd rather be getting older than have something really bad be wrong with me.

            How often do you go to the doctor?   Have you ever had an x-ray where something serious was discovered?   Do you think x-rays are harmful to the extent that it's better not to have them?

Worst Habit (#atozchallenge)

Worst Habit...

         I've got a few bad habits.  Sadly, most are bad habits that I've had all or most of my life.  Bad habits are often hard to break.  If breaking bad habits were easy then I'd likely not have them.  Why keep bad habits if I don't have to keep them?  

         One of my most annoying and self-defeating habits is procrastination.  I am continually getting distracted from the important life missions that face me.  Some of those things have never gotten done and faded into the realm of lost opportunities, chances I'll likely never have again.  So many times I'll find something to do other than what I should be doing.

        When I was a kid in school and later an adult in college, I'd put off doing homework, projects, or other things I was assigned.  There were books that never actually got read.  Papers done shoddily.  Tests not prepared for adequately.  Fortunately I was blessed with a certain gift of intelligence  and ability to fake my way through the things I needed to do.  I managed, but didn't excel like I might have if I had put an honest effort into my work.

          I'm not sure how the bad habit of procrastination enters into our lives.  I know I'm not the only one who does this because others have told me they do it too.  I've seen others put things off resulting in detrimental stress as they fret to finish their work or face the negative result of not finishing.  The act of waiting until the last minute can result in subpar work.   Or there can be the personal dissatisfaction of not having done the job they could have done if they had tried harder.

            I want to be better.  Maybe someday I'll try harder not to be a procrastinator.  Someday.

            Do you tend to put off starting things or finishing what you have started?   What would you say is your worst habit?   How has that bad habit affected you in your life?

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R-Reason to smile (#atozchallenge)

Smiley Face
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Reason to smile...

       Thinking about reasons to smile the first thing that comes to my mind is my grandchildren.  I don't see them too much, but at least my daughters regularly put up pictures on FaceBook for me to see.  Those pictures always make me smile.

         I can't say that I'm a big ol' smiley face guy, but I try to maintain a pleasant appearance as much as I can.  If I encounter someone I'll try to appear as friendly as I can be so I guess I'm probably kind of smiling.  Meeting up with people should be a good reason to smile unless it's someone that I am not happy to see.

         There are times when my wife or someone else will think I'm mad or upset, but it's usually because I'm just lost in thought or concerned about something.   If I'm thinking happy thoughts I'll probably be smiling and sometimes even laughing to myself.   I try to be careful about where I do this though as in the wrong place with the wrong people, smiling to oneself might make them think you're making fun of them or something like that.  In those cases you'd better be prepared to come up with something to give them a reason to smile too.

          Are you a naturally smiley type of person?    Have you ever made someone angry because you were smiling or laughing to yourself?    What evokes a smile from you?

Q-Question you are always asked (#atozchallenge)

 Question Mark
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Question you are always asked...

       Probably the question that I'm asked most is, "Are you hungry?"

       Most often it's asked by my wife.  In some cases it's me asking her.  Much of life seems to revolve around eating so I guess it's a normal question for people to ask each other.  Whenever there is a family gathering or if for some reason someone comes by to set a spell, invariably the hungry question will arise.  It's probably a matter of consideration, but I think most often it's because the person asking the question is getting hungry.   After all we all have to eat sometimes.

        Then there's something like, "How are you doing?"

         For over twenty years there has been a small market that I sometimes stop by.  Years ago it was for cigarettes, but then I stopped smoking.  Now occasionally I'll just pop in to pick up a lottery ticket. The store is run by an older Indian couple.  They've been there for years, hardly being shut down most of that time.  Their son used to be in the store at times, but I guess he finally graduated from college and now it's just the couple, sometimes just one of them and sometimes both, day after day from nine in the morning until maybe ten or so at night.

          The reason I bring them up is that many years ago when I'd stop by to pick up my cigarettes the the father and husband would always greet me with "How you been?" pronouncing been as "bean".  He'd say it in his Indian accent but it always sounded kind of street lingo like.  He sounded kind of cool.  He stopped saying that years ago.  Now I always call the store "How You Bean" when I'm with my wife.  She used to think it was funny when I called the store "How You Bean" but now that's just like the name we call the store.

        Both the husband and wife greet me quietly now when I come in or maybe they don't say anything at all except nod and acknowledge me with some nonchalant facial expression.  They work long hours and have been there so many years apparently resigned to the life they have.  It's not bad I suppose, it's just a life.  A question I might ask them is "When are you going to retire?"  Which brings me to a question that I've been frequently asked of late:  "How's retirement?"  This is because I retired in the past couple years and I guess some people wonder how I'm doing with it.
   
             Retirement has been okay.   But that's another story and I won't bother going into that right now.

            Is there a question that you are asked frequently?   Do you answer in detail and with honesty when someone asks how you are?   Would you like to be the owner of a small store where you had to be there all or most of the time?

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M-Middle name (#atozchallenge)

Middle Name...

       When I was a kid I hated my middle name.  My parents named me after my father who was named Robert Lee.   Since he went by Bob they decided that it might eliminate confusion to call me Lee.   I became used to it over the years, but there were times when I disliked the sound of Lee.

        During my fifth grade year I decided to go by Robert.   I also let my hair grow out from the buzz cut that had been my hair style since early childhood.  I'm not sure why my parents kept my hair cut that way, but I hated it.  To me the hair cut looked really dorky.  My father never had his hair cut like that.  He had a traditional cut that was kept in place with Vaseline Hair Tonic.    After my hair grew long enough to comb I begged my mother to buy me Vitalis Hair Tonic which came as a colored liquid--blue I think it was--and it didn't seem oily like the Vaseline.  But my father used the Vaseline and they didn't want to spend money on something different so that's what I had to use.  Even so, I was glad about the new hair style.  Looking back at old photos the style did give me a greater air of maturity.

       After the fifth grade name experiment I went back to using Lee for most of my life other than a period when I joined a magic show in 1975.   There was a Vietnamese young woman who was also named Lee so the people on the show called me by my last name, Jackson.  It wasn't like when coaches in my phys ed classes called me "Jackson"--I always hated that.  This sounded different--more distinctive and appropriate for the times.  Besides, Jackson Browne was popular at that time and that seemed pretty cool to me to be called Jackson.

         Not long after I joined the magic show the Vietnamese couple left, but I was still called Jackson until a young lady joined the show and she began calling me Lee again.   She and I got married not long after we had met and I stayed Lee from then on out.  Even after we got divorced.

         It's been Lee ever since.  I'm not bothered by the name like I once was.  It's just another part of who I am and who I have been.

         Do you like your middle name?    Have you ever gone by a nickname?     What would you have chosen for a name had it been up to you?   

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L-Last time you cried (#atozchallenge)

A toddler girl crying (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last Time You Cried...

          It's been said that real men don't cry, but I'll admit that I have.  I don't cry often and when I do it's a short cry and not some ongoing bawling and sobbing thing.   There are times when I have felt very sad, like when my parents died, but I didn't overtly cry.   Maybe I cried internally and in my mind, but nothing that one would normally think of as crying.  And in those cases there was a preliminary process of illness that prepared me for their deaths.  Death is very sad, but it's also nothing we can do anything about once it strikes.  Mourning does not always mean crying.

         As an adult, crying has usually been the result of frustration concerning someone I loved who was doing something to damage or threaten the relationship.   I did cry a few times when I was going through separation and divorce, but those tears did nothing to stop those things from happening.  The crying was merely an expression that mostly was part of the process of grief.   Divorce is one of the worst experiences that I've ever had.  In most cases it's a sad and hurtful experience.

       The last time I cried was at the end of a movie.  I'm the king of willful suspension of disbelief.  Last night I watched a film called The Music Never Stopped and I'll admit some tears welled in my eyes at various points throughout the film.  I related to that film so much and connected with it.  

        In other words, I really get into the movies that I watch and invest a lot of emotions into them.   Sad or even sweetly happy, I can cry easily if the story manipulates me in the right way.   There might be a tear or watered eyes, but not extremely noticeable crying.  My wife never seems to notice because it's a quiet short cry in the darkened living room.  It's a cry within me that comes and passes quickly.  That's a good cry because it doesn't leave me feeling sad.

       Do you cry when you see an emotion laden film?   What types of things can trigger the tears for you?    Do you feel uncomfortable if someone around you is crying?

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A to Z Reflections 2014 #atozchallenge

About Wrote By Rote

         This blog has been my pet project since its beginning in October of 2011.  At that time my main blog Tossing It Out splintered out into three additional blogs in order to move my interests in memoir, dreams, and Bible study onto their own sites and leave the main blog with more focus on issues of writing, promotion, and controversial topics.  The memoir pieces that I had been writing on Tossing It Out had been particularly popular and since I have a strong interest in writing memoir Wrote By Rote has been the blog I've been trying to grow.

         For the 2014 A to Z Challenge my thematic approach was as follows:

"During the month of April I will be doing a different spin on my memoir posts. It starts with a song. Each song will be followed by a brief essay that is evoked or inspired by that song. You might want to click on the YouTube link to hear the song as you read the piece I've written. Or you can listen to the song lyrics first and then read. Whichever way you choose, I mostly hope you'll read and leave a comment with your thoughts about my post. "

April Results

            Since the opening of the 2014 sign-ups Wrote By Rote has gained another dozen or so new followers.  If you are not yet following I'd love it if you'd be so kind to click on the "Join This Site" button in the sidebar at the right.   It would be nice to see the block of followers hit the 300 mark as a result of the 2014 Challenge.

           During the month of April my highest number of views came on day two with 161 visitors and my best day for comments was on the opening day when I had 26 comments.   As would be expected, after the first few days my numbers dropped significantly to an average of about 50 views per day and 10 comments.  This is much lower than my average per post views during the rest of the year when a post gets an typical average of about 250 views, but keep in mind that this rate is for posts that are active for a period of a week rather than posts coming up daily.  And my comment per post rate averages at about ten most of the time so that rate shows little change.  Taking into account the six posts per week count in April, my weekly numbers are considerably higher.

           The turnout was somewhat disappointing as most of the time I was promoting Wrote By Rote by using the signature link to this blog in all of my comments.  Reciprocated visits nevertheless mostly went to Tossing It Out.  I don't know whether to attribute this outcome to a fear of clicking on the links in the signature or the bloggers I visited just going to my main blog as a matter of habit or clicking on the name that leads to my profile.   Not many visits were reciprocated to Wrote By Rote.  

         Also it is important to add that I fell very short in my visiting to other blogs and leaving comments.  This was mostly due to issues with slow computer or internet as well as other interferences to my blogging activity.    I'll blame most of my shortfalls on all of my blogs to this factor.  There is a direct correlation in regard to reciprocated visits based on numbers of blogs commented on.    I scored very poorly on this account and my stats show this.   I don't blame the Challenge as much as I blame my own performance.  The large numbers of participants certainly diffuses visits on all blogs, but the active blogger is more assured of increasing visits to their own blogs when they show more attention to other bloggers.

My A to Z Posts Can Still Be Read

        I still have hopes that some of you might go back to read through my Challenge posts and leave your comments.   This is the blog that I had hopes would have the most readers.  My thanks go out to the following readers and I include what some of them had to say about my April posts on Wrote By Rote:

        First a somewhat lengthy endorsement from Faraway Eyes at Far Away Series:

I’ve read all of these A to Z posts this year.  I have not commented before this because I didn’t want to be tempted to start in on some of my own ‘stories’ that might relate to your post. Cheap, I know, but then, ‘you know me’. It’s my opinion that NOTHING should take away from the sheer beauty of your words here.

Today I decided to come back because I wanted to tell you something about you. These are marvelous posts, wonderfully written, the best thing I’ve read anywhere in the A to Z Challenge (or elsewhere for that matter) EVER. I have also been reading and following your posts at ‘Tossing It Out’ and perhaps if I was more interested in marketing or currently had something to market I would be more excited, but really it’s just more of what everybody else is posting, BUT these stories here are something I could read/listen to all day.

You state openly that your desire is to be a published author. Well, my friend, here is your ‘gold mine’.

I hope you don’t take this wrong, but after reading Wrote by Rote, I’ve decided you are a writer with real author potential and not just a yakker, like most of the bloggers out there. Oh look, now I’ve offended a whole ‘nother group of folks. Oh well, like I said earlier; ‘you know me’.

Please feel free to use any portion, or all of what I have said in your A to Z Reflections post. Actually I would be honored. I wish more of the A to Z posts were this interesting and well written. I've been faithfully following about a half dozen or so of the A to Z blogs, and some of them are really interesting, but not as well written as yours. So many of them are the same old, same old. So many of the participants are writers or at least wannabe writers, that it becomes easy to see who has any chance of making it as a real author. 

FAE

          Teresa at Journaling Woman, who posted her A to Z entries at her memoir blog The Ruralhood with some her own wonderful stories with accompanying photos, was another regular visitor at Wrote By Rote with uplifting comments like:  "You know what???? I'm really enjoying your Wrote by Rote posts. Love your choices of songs and artists."   My thanks to my long time blogging friend Teresa.

           JoJo at Tahoma Beadworks & Photography blog was incredible in her support at not only this blog but my other blogs.  I believe she left comments everyday and on a few days at my dream movie themed posts at A Faraway View  she was my only commenter.  A long time supporter of the April Challenge JoJo didn't participate in the A to Z on her own blog, but she played a big role behind the scenes as a member of Tina Downey's Terrific A to Z Team.   Thanks JoJo! 

            CW Martin at Tilting At Windmills said:  "What a wonderful life you have led. Every story makes one wonder how you packed it all in."

            I want to give a special mention for the support given by my long-time blogger friends Larry Cavanaugh at DiscConnected and Stephen T McCarthy at Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends.

            A big thanks also to all of the rest of you who visited and commented during April and the rest of the year as well.  I hope you will keep coming back.

For more Reflections Posts see the Linky List which will open on Monday May 5th at

a-to-zchallenge.com

.

Zing Went the Strings of My Heart (#atozchallenge)

Richard Himber & His Ritz-Carlton Orchestra   "Zing Went the Strings of My Heart"  (1935)





Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart

         People, places, and events have inspired songs in me for as long as I can remember.  There were the songs of the seasons and the songs connected with memories now nearly forgotten.  Memories of old loves and unconquered objects of my desire evoke refrains inspired during more passion times.   A feeling, a tickle of my senses, or any tapping into an old memory might make a melody come to mind.

           There are certain songs that I can pinpoint the time, the place, and exactly what I was doing when I first heard them.  Then there are other songs that seemed to have been merged into my life as I grew up or were there for long periods until the point when I suddenly noticed them.

           Music has been a thread that has connected the parts of my life.   In that sense music has been a soundtrack that accents the emotions, the activities, and everything that makes me who I've been.   Perhaps having always known movies with soundtracks and having always had music playing through most of my days, I've come to expect music to be playing in my mind if it wasn't entering my ears.  

           I wonder if before recorded sound if music played such an important part of people's lives?   Perhaps whistling, humming, or singing has always been an instinct within humans from the beginning of history.   How could it not be so?

           Now, at the least provocation, songs come into my head.  They may be the songs that others have written and I have heard and known.   Or they are sometimes songs that I make up as I go.   I used to write them down more often.  But now more often than not, I listen to my songs in my head until I am distracted by something else.  Are those songs lost forever?  They're probably somewhere deep within my mind, but unlikely to be found.

          Someday I might go on a mining expedition to dig up those buried songs.  Then again maybe I'll only be coming up with new ones.   I'll see something that inspires me and zing! another song fills my mind.   If I focus in on the song, then maybe I'll capture it.  I'll let the strings of my heart play as I write the words.

          Do you have songs in your head?    Do you ever write songs?     Do you think of your life as having a soundtrack?

          On Saturday I will return to my regular posting schedule with my A to Z Challenge Reflections for 2014.   I hope you'll join me then.

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Yeh Yeh #atozchallenge

Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames  "Yeh Yeh"  (1964)



Yeh Yeh

         My life has been like jazz.   Maybe a jazz symphony in like a hundred movements or more.  Themes and variations.   Music of the mind, body, heart, and soul.  My life in music.  The music of my life.

         Sometimes the melody is obvious.  You probably recognize it and might even hum along.   We're on the same track and you get it and I get it and it's like an old-fashioned sing-along.   Then there've been those times when I've gone off on some kind of improv.   I get in a groove and I'll be boppin' along or maybe just lolling low and mellow.  But I'm getting there.  Somewhere.  Maybe you're there or maybe I've left you lost far behind.

           I don't always understand jazz.  Maybe it's not meant to be understood, but to be heard, felt and wondered about with wonder and amused bemusement.  There are not necessarily any rules to jazz other than what rules might be putatively presumed by people who pretend to know all there is about music.  I think they're wrong.   Jazz can sound like many things.   And sometimes like nothing yet imagined.   Imagination set free, run wild.

           My life seems imagined at times when I look backward.   There are stories there.  Stories to be told and some to be held hostage in the secret places of my memory.   If I unleash my mind's treasury of memory, should it come in chapters, in books, in suspicious furtive looks.   This canister of thunken thoughts that I call my brain:   Will it safely retain the stories until they are lain down in written words that dance, that flow, that stumble across the paper or across my field of vision on my eyestrain computer screen?

           "Hurry, you've got a solo coming," the bandleader says, which is ironic since I am the leader of my band.  Play well and stay in tune unless discordant notes are called for.  Experimentation in the writing I do is sometimes my playful toil.   It's jazz after all, this thing that's my life.

          Accentuate the positive and play the sad parts sweet and low.  Slow down on the reflective passages and speed through the mundanities of the rush rush daily grind of life's same story.   It's a jazz life told in syncopations and synchronicities.   Tick tock, the clock counts the rhythm and time makes the rhyme.

           A good life has been lived and I aim to stay on the positive track.  Yeh, yeh.   Stay away from the downers.  Yeh, yeh.   Keep on gigging the good times in jazz.  Yeh, yeh.

          Do you tend to keep a positive outlook on life?    Have you had a tendency to be negative in your life?  Do you ever experiment with free-form writing styles or stream of consciousness?   

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Xanadu (#atozchallenge)

Olivia Newton John    "Xanadu"  (1980)




Xanadu

       The year 1980 lasted about four years for me--or at least it seems that way when I look back to that time.   What a roller coaster I was on!  The highs, the lows, outstanding times, depths of despair, and interminable stretches of waiting for something to happen.   But looking back having survived that year, it was a time I'd never give up.

       Let's see--during that year I worked for four different employers and lived in five different places.  I separated from my first wife and saw her move in with some guy whom I have no idea how exactly he came into the picture.   A few months later I met the woman who seemed to be my absolute soulmate and who became my wife for ten years.

        For the first six months of 1980 I was in my lowest of lows and then about the time Olivia Newton-John's "Xanadu" hit the airwaves I was feeling like I was in my own Xanadu of sorts.   Oh, my finances were not all that great and my living was not very luxurious by any means, but a burgeoning new love made up for all that.  And we were young, crazy and highly adaptable.

        My new love had worked at the marketing research company where I had come back to work after returning to Richmond so I could be closer to my son.  I had tried to get by in Tennessee working as a driver for an airport shuttle service, but by May when I had enough saved up to move up to Richmond, I high-tailed it up there.   I ached to be able to see my boy and thought maybe I could win my wife back.

          Seeing my son was in the stars.   Getting back with my wife was not.   However this new lady won me over in a big way.  She was a college student at Virginia Commonwealth University who was intellectual and seemed more mature than my first wife even though they were about the same age.   I was lonely and this vibrant lady with whom I could converse and share experiences was like starting my life over.

           Offers came in from some of my show business contacts for week stretches in exciting booking engagements.   My new girlfriend and I took the show gigs as a team.  Our jobs at the marketing research company were very flexible so we were able to sign up only for hours we wanted to work. If we wanted to leave for a week that was just fine.  We were always able to come back there to work and since we were both very good at what we did, our names were high on the list in the event that too many were wanting to work.   Also, my new companion was off from school for the summer so she was free to go as she wished.  

           We had it made as far as adventure and fun.  It was like a poor man's Xanadu.  They were good times and a preview of the decade we had ahead of us.

             Did you take advantage of travel opportunities when you were younger?    Did you ever experience a love on the rebound?   What are some of the jobs you had before you established yourself in your primary career?  

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