The Cougar Meets A Trouser Snake Part 2: Submission

Some will ask how this could be the second in a series and wonder if The Cougar Meets A Trouser Snake Part 2: Submission is just a title or if there was a part one.

I could tell you to click on that link and find out about a tale of the much older cougar who didn’t give me an in person birthday greeting nor an official rain check.

You wouldn’t have a clue as to whether I was just messing with you because it would be just like to me to create a story out of nothing. Hell, I do it for fun on the regular and have gotten paid to do it professionally.

It reminds me of a story about whether we ought to believe in soul mates or if we should call it sole mates. Given my former life as a resident of the Valley I could say fer sure or fer shoe.

Got a bill to my left for what health care provider didn’t cover and find myself wondering how I forgot to call the damn provider to ask why I got this charge when I never got it before.

They already stuck me for extra cash for my colonoscopy and some other tests.

Though I ought to add I pushed back and got some of it reversed because they were wrong. Pays to read and to be willing to dig in but that is not what this is about.

I’m Going To Throw It All Out

There are a few stacks of papers and things around me that are beginning to make the gauge in my head move from calm to irritated to I am going to burn it all down.

I don’t understand how these piles develop or why people don’t believe me when I say I am going to throw it all out. Surely after decades of living with me they all know in some areas I am fun and games until I am done.

It takes a while for the switch to flip but once it gets to that place you can describe as red or almost empty it moves into the next phase rapidly.

I have noticed one of the benefits of feeling flush is I always feel like I need far less and have a greater desire for trimming the fat. Also when you reach a certain point in life you have accumulated enough that it becomes easy to have lots of stuff.

That sounds like entitled whining but it is not.

Stuff doesn’t mean all you have is new and that it is the latest, most up-to-date and most expensive material.

Often times it means you somehow have multiple pairs of shoes, some of which are a decade old. You held onto them because they are a bit worn but if you have work in a muddy yard you can wear those and not worry about them.

Sometimes it means you have accumulated some family heirlooms. Stuff you keep because it is important to you but you don’t use because you fear it being wrecked by usage.

So you get a duplicate.

Whatever the reason, there is stuff, too much stuff and now I have to clear a chunk out because the clutter kills me. I put up with some because I do, but there are limits.

****

Got a few messages from some people who didn’t like what I posted. Some of them tried to goad me into responding to their diatribe which made me chuckle.

If you took the time to send me a note in which you try to taunt me and claim I haven’t responded because I fear to I won.

That tells me I own free rent in your head so I’ll stay silent. You don’t deserve the attention and I don’t owe you anything.

If you are clever enough to find this then you can take that as your response, you silly citizen of lollipop land. Ask the cougar if you’ll beat me at my own game.

It is not going to happen. There are a million people who are smarter and more clever than I am, but you aren’t.

Generations

You can estimate that picture as having been taken several decades before I joined them as the third generation Wilner men.

You can’t tell see they had bright blue eyes and unless you know me won’t be aware that I don’t share that in common.

I don’t see any resemblance to my grandfather though we share other things in common but I see a bit with my dad.

It is not exact, but I can see a connection between how he looks there and how I did around fifty years ago.

That is a funny thing to say because though fifty years is most of my life it is not all of it. And if things go as I hope that chunk of fifty will be a smaller part of my life.

Which reminds me of a conversation I had with my maternal grandfather not long after my grandmother died.

He told me that as much as he liked living and spending time with family it was getting harder. He missed my grandmother terribly which made sense to me.

They were married for more than 70 years and had known each other since they were 11.

But he also mentioned it was hard to realize he had outlived almost every friend of his and the few knew were still living weren’t necessarily in good shape.

So it was kind of bittersweet getting to experience some things and not be able to share them with people who would appreciate it in the same way.

I can kind of see it.

I am listing to a book on Audible that I read many years ago. It is one I very much enjoyed and am enjoying listening to but parts of it are dated.

So dated that even though I understand and appreciate it all this book from the 80s sometimes makes me snort because what happened there wouldn’t happen now…technology.

That is not a good thing or bad thing.

It just is.

The river never stops flowing and so it doesn’t matter if you climb back into it at your favorite spot it is never exactly as it was, it is always different.

Sometimes that is a good thing.