Yeh, it’s been another one of those. Sunday.

It always starts off with the best of intentions. Just like today.

i had one semi-major puttering project i wished to finish. Had it planned out. Wake up early, work out with stretching exercises, do a little writing, do some administrivia in the office, have another great Maureen breakfast, read the Sunday paper, sip more coffee, hit the project for a while, go hit golf balls, light lunch, a NORP, finish the project, have a nice dinner, watch a little television, write a little for my pleasure, plan for tomorrow and the upcoming week, go to bed.

Well, it didn’t turn out that way. i piddled instead of puttering. i kept getting distracted (remember my wihas affliction). Then when i went to purchase the board i needed to finish my project — it was a small project and i planned to use scrap wood and screws, nails, glues, and paint on hand to keep the cost zero; but i made a bad cut yesterday and had to get another piece of lumber large enough to replace the error…hmm, the goofy guy strikes again.

So i go to Home Depot to get the cheap lumber. One purchase. In. Out. Back home. Get the project done. But on the way, i get a call on my mobile. Answering with the bluetooth, i find Maureen wants me to get a thermostat. We have two heating systems and the thermostat on one had died a good death. It’s getting cool enough we will need some heat to knock off the morning chill for a couple of hours for a couple of months. So i, being a well-intentioned guy told my bride i would get two because the second thermostat had a bad light.

Great idea.

In. Out. Back home. Replace the first thermostat. Set the clock and the schedule. Turn it on. Nothing. Pissed. Go to the second thermostat. Start the replacement. Wiring by the installers looks a little screwy but i follow their example. Done. Doesn’t work. Pissed.

Don’t have a clue, but i have crammed this two-hour project into almost all of the day. Finally make one cut on the original project but have to stop to make a run for Thai (good stuff: the staff of Thai Taste 2 on Bonita Road don’t speak good English. They speak and cook Thai).

On the way home with the aroma of Thai cooking in my head, i get down. No, i get downer. Bad day. Like most Sundays, i messed around. Piddled. Not successfully. Should have gone to the driving range and chipping and putting green; had a beer.

But then, my music kicks in on the bluetooth. Right out of the bat, it’s Jimmy Smith. Jimmy Smith, the jazz organist, one of my favorite musicians of all time, not my friend Jimmy Smith of Lebanon and Vanderbilt fame. But both were cool beyond description. This Jimmy Smith always seemed to have Kenny Burrell as a sidekick. Couldn’t do better. This Jimmy Smith also had a soul kitchen down on Fifth in San Diego before it went posh and touristy with it’s new cool marketing moniker of “The Gaslamp District.” Wish i had known about that soul kitchen: it was gone before i found out.

But Jimmy Smith, the organist can turn my day around. He did this Sunday. “Johnny Comes Marching Home” was the tune. i was swaying with the music, marveling at the improvisation, smiling to myself, beating the time with my thumbs on the steering wheel. By the time i got home, it wasn’t such a bad Sunday after all.

Listen. Bet you can’t keep from smiling.

This is a whine, sort of. It just started building a day or so ago, and i decided i would just put it out there instead of letting it boil and fester inside. This time. Probably shouldn’t. Someone will take offense. So have at it.

i confess. i’m lost. Don’t know where i fit in this crazy world any more.

i feel emasculated, put down by association, burned by general accusations, and escorciated by flawed perceptions.

You see, it seems there’s a whole lot of grouping going on when it comes to people hating. One of the most reviled groups is the white (sic) American male. That’s me, folks. But it ain’t me.

i’m not white. As expressed previously, my old skin is scarily multi-colored, paler than many other humans, but it’s definitely not white. Besides, this sounds like a racial slur to me. i mean if we can’t call others black or red or yellow or brown (or green in some rare instances), how come we think not only it is okay to call me white, but even put it on forms  for me to check as my lineage.

i am American. But because i’m an American “white” male, i am labeled as a racist, a misogynist, an abuser, and someone who spouts derogatory terms about everyone. This generalization including me is doubled down because i also come, quite proudly i might add, from the South.

Also because my background is Southern, i am labeled a gun-loving member of the NRA, a fundamentalist, a conservative, a member of the alt-right, and a believer in white male superiority, a  fanatic college football fan (although i haven’t shot anyone like the ‘Bama idiot fan who shot the Auburn fan last week arguing over which team was best), and a car racing nut. Sometimes that even includes being really dumb.

i am not a racist, not by any stretch.

(i will discuss my relationship with women a tad later.)

i belong to no political party because their platforms make no sense to me and i agree with some issues on each side. i despise the ignorance and the hatred of any group that hates or shows signs of hate against any group of people.

i own two pistols but haven’t had any ammunition for them since 1985. i only fired one like one of them once, and that was in 1975 off the fantail of a ship. i often think of getting  a shotgun and a rifle to hunt for food if there is a cataclysmic disaster cutting off our food supply, but i’ve put that off for about twenty years. i also have thought about getting ammo for the pistols in case of someone tries to break into our house and harm my wife, but i keep putting that off as well. i don’t begrudge hunters hunting but don’t understand the pleasure they get from the sport (sic). i think believing we have a right to own weapons intended to kill many people is downright insane. But i fired guns bigger than anything any individual owns, and i loved it.

i used to be the “Figure 8 Racing” editor for a newspaper, and thought it was the craziest funny thing i had ever seen. Still do, but i think car racing is really boring and am amazed at the draw. If people want to do that, fine, but it doesn’t make sense to me.

i loved football and remain a fan of the college game, but that interest in dwindling. i enjoy Vanderbilt sports because i think they are trying to win the right way, but worry if they do, they will become too much like all of the other major college sports teams. i root for San Diego State because Sarah and Maureen are alumna, i live here in the Southwest corner, and they play an entertaining brand of football, basketball, and baseball.

And as far as that dumb thing goes, i’m not the brightest bulb on the lamp, but i think, therefore i am…not dumb. And even so, as Mose Allison intoned in “Jus Like Living,” “The smartest man in the whole round world really don’t know that much.”

i am lost because i just don’t seem to fit the mold ascribed for me.

Now about women:

Like most men, i don’t understand them or even attempt to try and understand them. However, i have the greatest appreciation and respect for them. i think there should be no limitations on women doing what they want to do (unless that doing infringes on the freedom of others).

i have worshipped them, put them on a pedestal all of my life. i probably have been to bed with more women than most men outside of star athletes, movie and television stars and moguls, sexual predators, and politicians. However, i have never ever tried to coerce any woman into a sex act of any nature. Every relationship i have had with a woman has been to make love in the most beautiful sense possible. i find anyone who mistreats a woman, coerces her, forces her, manipulates, threatens, or blackmails her for any form of sexual abuse is a deviant who should have his balls cut off, no questions asked with no legal recourse.

Yet i don’t understand all of the hullabaloo about what i should call them or how i should act towards them. i don’t understand why i can’t call them “lady,” or “ma’am” or other words to show my respect. Some women like that, but some would castrate me, if they could, if i used those terms around them.

i am amazed how far we have gotten from the family unit as i knew growing up. Or at least knew it even though my mother, in fact all of the women in my family were redefining it. The ideal was the mother of the house stayed at home, cooked, took care of household requirements, raised the children, and shopped for groceries. In their free time, they played bridge, went to teas, were members of women’s clubs, and did wonderful things for children. They dressed immaculately, and always looked good, smart, and i don’t mean sexy.

As i noted, my family’s women didn’t quite fit that mold. They all, except for my paternal grandmother, had jobs, mostly full-time. But the ideal was to not work in the business world and do all of the things i would find satisfying like doing all of the household tasks, taking care of the children, even cooking. i could have gotten into that kind of life.

But not with an abusive or demanding mate. And i don’t begrudge women wanting to do things that historically have been in the man’s purview if that’s what they want to do. They have that right as do all of those with different sexual preferences to mine. i just don’t why they feel (or any group of people who feel, usually warranted) they need to disparage other lifestyle choices.

And i like to make fun, tell a joke, be a little sarcastic or ironic. i think life is very sad if you can’t laugh about most of it. But i am afraid to open my mouth, or in this case, write something down that strikes me as funny. Somebody, somewhere is going to take offense, and offense today is tantamount to legal suits or being drawn and quartered in some public forum.

My watchword has been my guide for living for as long as i remember but only articulated by my close friend Peter Thomas several years ago as “Do the right thing.” But more and more, i find doing the right thing as a perplexing conundrum.

So i am lost, a lost commander.

But i am also old, so i really don’t have to worry about it. i can write, say, do almost anything i want, and people will just write me off as an eccentric, even crazy old man. And if they disassociate themselves from me because of what i said, wrote, or did, then i will miss them, but it will be okay if it makes them feel better.

i am sorry to announce i have wihas (pronounced WĪ·HAZ′), a disease. i have had it all of my life, since birth.

It is a hereditary disease, but it has been greatly amplified by my life style and choice of careers. My father had it but definitely not quite as bad as i have it.

This debilitating disease has been around almost since the beginning of man, and some medical scholars, at least this one…oh wait, i’m not a scholar, but what the hell, believe it can be traced to Adam in the Garden of Eden.

The good news is wihas is not as bad as ADD. But it’s close. It also gets closer with age.

It keeps me from getting anything done. Actually, it grows the list of all of the things i can’t get done. The natural hereditary characteristics of the disease were amplified by my 22-year Naval officer career. i served on ten ships and had two shore tours (nice, but too many: i wanted my Navy to consist of being at sea only). There were very few things i actually got done. Oh, i had my share of successes, but most of the projects were left for my relief to finish. i was moving on to a new project.

Also, as a Navy officer, you can never do just one thing. For example, as the First Lieutenant on the USS Anchorage (LSD 36) (the greatest job in the world for this mariner), i was the sea detail and general quarters officer of the deck and stood bridge watches in four sections. During amphibious operations, i was in charge of everything except the bridge and combat information center: well-deck master, flight operations, debarking troops, crane operations, boat operations, load and offload operations, coordinating UDT detachment and the beach masters, any ammunition transfers, any gunnery, and probably several other things i forgot. i had about twenty collateral duties. One which was not collateral was the preservation, maintenance, and painting of all things ship not interior and quite a few of those as well (oh i wish everyone how clean and impressive our anchor room was.

i loved it, but just when i was about to complete a project, a problem needed to be addressed in another area — did i mention i also was assigned do conduct a JAG investigation — it did little to help focus on doing one thing.

Then, when i completed my Navy active duty service, i continued to jump around. i was mister mom; writer; organization development director, strategic change, team-building,  customer service, and quality consultant; columnist; blogger; writer again; safety, environmental compliance, vessel certification, Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard liaison, business development, proposal writing program manager for Pacific Tugboat Service; and writer (again and forever).

i loved it until i got tired of managing people and things and i recognized my skills were beginning to fade: it took me longer to not finish things, and it was even harder to focus on one thing.

That inability to focus on one thing has been exacerbated with retirement. You see, when you aren’t on a time clock, you don’t have a real job, and you can do pretty much anything you want when you want, focusing can become even more of an issue.

That’s where my father was different. He had many projects, many jobs, many tasks all the way up to just shy of ninety-nine. But he finished them.

Still, it was my father that led to someone naming this terrible disease i contracted from him and exacerbated by my life choices (not many regretted, i should add).

My mother, the medical scholar, came up with the term for the disease. She, of course, didn’t name it “wihas” (pronounced WĪ·HAZ′). i turned it into an acronym. She named it after seventy-five plus years of observing my father.

Estelle Jewell frequently said Jimmy Jewell was like a “Worm In Hot Ashes.”

i was looking for something to make a little bit of extra cash, like a full-time, high-paying job, just to keep Maureen from feeling stressed about finances.

During a discussion with my close friend, Steve Frailey, he told me they were looking for a safety guy. He described the work as walking the Pacific Tugboat old creosote wood pier (one of the few left on the bay) numerous times a day, checking the pier, the workers, the boats, and other equipment for safety, to ride the boats for safety checks at least once a week, to conduct training in San Diego and at the Long Beach facility at least once a week. i thought “Hmm, these are all things i would love to do, bring back memories, and i could visit my friend Alan Hicks (who was the Marad Director of the Southern California Gateway), a geographic bachelor living in Long Beach.

Well, it wasn’t for a king’s ransom, and i never did quite all of the things i should have, but i did improve the safety, environmental compliance, and provided support in other ways. i think i helped the company, which was my goal.

i gave it up three years ago. Decided my skills weren’t quite what they used to be, and i also realized i didn’t have the drive anymore to manage relationships in a work status. So i stepped aside. An extremely capable, professional, and much younger Shawn Quigley took my place. Good move all around.

But occasionally, i miss it. Like this morning. i was screwing off, procrastinating, when some old posts popped up on Facebook. Memories came back.

Because of the nature of the job and commuter traffic, i usually arrived at the pier between 0530 and 0600. It was my favorite part of the day. i would walk the pier around first light and enjoy the sights, sounds, and aroma of the bay waking up. If lucky, i would embark on a boat for one of those safety rides. i posted these photos to try and capture my pleasure of the experiences. They didn’t fully capture my feelings, but i think these will give you and idea:

Yep, miss it, just like i missed my ships at sea.

My caring and beautiful daughter Sarah, the younger of my two caring and beautiful daughters, did an artistic rendering for a small sign. She was giving it to a friend who had been her friend in a time of need and now going through some significant problems of his own.

She told me the saying came from a song made by a punk rock band. Since i don’t know any punk rock bands, although i have heard a couple have band names include “sister,” and i can’t recall ever hearing a punk rock song for more than a nano-second before i switched the radio dial, i liked the lyrics on the sign. It read:

“Fight to Live; Live to Fight.”

i decided it should be modified (for me) just a bit:

“Love to Live; Live to Love (and if you have to fight, fight judiciously and fiercely).”

But that’s just my take. i still like the original.

Sarah, if you have a photo of your artwork, i would like for you to share on my link to this post on Facebook.