Deadlines. Where did this word come from? It sounds ominous. It is ominous. You miss a date that something is due, and you are shit out of luck.

I had two deadlines, one for an article for the People’s Paper and another for The Alaska Reads Act newsletter. I got them both done and to their respective editors today. The latter could have been considered late because I sent it after working hours, but I don’t think this will be a problem. Just missing your deadline is called (my phrase) overstepping your deadline. Picture the big toe, one inch over the line. The rest of the foot is behind the line.

Alys Raudi and Rainbow

I don’t work on writing-related tasks until they’re close to due. I think that this is because my subconscious sees no sense of urgency.

Speaking of time constraints – time now seems to be going whooooooooosh, and even faster in the mornings. I really have to keep my eye on the clock. It works like this: (if I have to be someplace at 11:15 a.m., and I leave at 11 a.m. – 5 minutes to 11 a.m., early, early, early. And five minutes after eleven, late, late, late. There’s a ten minute time span there, one that on both sides is fraught with anxiety.

Anxiety. I have often been wonderous in seeing cars and trucks going down the road, with black smoke coming out the back and the vehicles lurching along. I have often thought – why are they driving that thing? Why doesn’t the owner take it into the shop and have it repaired?

I will, from now on, be less judgmental because those owners that I dissed are us. DGNPNY is not well. Yes, there is smoke. Yes, it lurches. Yes, it backfires. It is becoming increasingly more unsafe. It dies out in intersections. I had thought that today’s good karma distribution efforts would forestall further problems. Today DGNPNY died when I was attempting to get into the left hand lane near the Bugge Park Little Library. Cars were coming from both directions. A nice man stepped out into the road and directed traffic. I wanted to put a cardboard sign in the rear window that read, “the end is near.” I may just write it in the grime, under the window.

Yes, I am now one of them and will remain one of them until I get a new to me vehicle.

The dealer at the Subaru shop remarked that Subarus are good for 250,000 miles. This one has 286,000 miles. Like many of the animals here, it has surpassed its expected lifespan. However, I do not think it will be following our previously geriatric animals up the driveway. A dead car is a gone car.

This Subaru used to belong to Jim, who is now deceased. I can see him, in the great beyond, laughing at us now mere mortals.

I rode Hrimmi today. I think we should go back to riding horses. But then, some have not in the past been nice to horses. We don’t want history to repeat itself.

127. 5/9/23: Whooooooooooosh