Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1022
Jane's first lost tooth and she's still sick, Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter, Greenhouse stonework done, work stress.
Good morning! Wassup. Hello. Hi. Howdy. Hola. Happy Friday. Just back from Walmart and Lowe’s, a chain founded in NC. Not to be confused with Lowe’s, a chain founded in NC, which I will be going to later. Walmart radio was playing Whitney’s “And I Will Always Love You.” There were several employees in masks, really more than usual. Kinda weird. They did not have any speed squares or paint scrapers — but a ton of tile scrapers. Never know what you’re gonna get. They were out of organic bananas. The special needs guy who gathers carts had a lady friend helping him. She was not in uniform. I don’t know if she was just a friend hanging out or doesn’t wear her uniform and mgmt just thinks “whatever.” A man was buying a giant can of varnish.
Jane is still sick. She is improving. She’s 99.6°F today. Probably should have sent her. But she didn’t want to go. Whole sickness she’s been saying how much she misses school and now that we would have let her go, she didn’t want to. Kids, man.
She lost her first tooth — two teeth — last night. Two tiny, little lower front teeth, small as grains of rice. She was traumatized. We tried to make it seem like a happy affair, cheering and smiling, but she was not having it. She’s hip to the sitch. She is losing body parts. Rightfully should be traumatic.
Our girl is so amazingly stubborn and confident it is absolutely bonkers. She knows what she wants and will not be dissuaded. “I want what I want, all of the time,” she very reasonably states. I should probably just get it over with and start reading Boyd Rice and Anton LaVey as her bedtime stories. Girl could really bond with “do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” But, then, she does believe in kindness, when she’s in the right mood. And she says please and thank you. I cannot get the golden rule into that girl’s head. Empathy is there, but it’s subconscious, emotional, and only when the pain of another is acute, visceral, raw. She does not understand it academically or theoretically. Inertia? Sure. What fiber does, what rogue planets are, gravity and entropy? Sure. The golden rule? Forget it.
Greenhouse stonework is done, and it looks awesome. I am very excited. I have a half-dumptruck load of gravel left. I had the crew, the poor crew, move it into two pallet-made hoppers I built on the ugly side of the house. Now I have a ton of gravel and I am very, very excited. Also have a fair amount of pavers left, so I might use them somewhere else. Who knows.
We now turn our thoughts to getting the thing built. I can’t do it this weekend sadly. We are so close. We are so close.
Why a stone floor in a greenhouse, you ask. This is a good question. I have thought about this so much. But in the end, having a coherent, complete unit will, I think, make things much more versatile in the future. Originally I thought about only paving where the birdies beds weren’t, so that the plants could theoretically grow through the bed and into the ground. but it quickly became apparent that that wasn’t gong to work, that the gravel needed to be there, that the soil was kinda garbage underneath it all. Plus I realized that this little house could be an awesome solarium, pavilion, winter sun room (wait that’s a solarium)… something else for me, if I ever give up gardening, or for the next owners, if they are not gardeners.
Plus it looks awesome. And it was at cost.
Finally finished my book about the scrap and recycling industry, Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter and it was really great. It is more than ten years old, however, and I can’t help but wonder how much the scrap industry has changed in the intervening decade. But I suspect the broad contours of the industry are the same: things ebb and flow, economies rise and fall, but in the end, it costs basically nothing to send a container to Asia from the US, because there are so many going back empty. And they are doing the manufacturing of the world, and we waste a ton of shit. Metal gets almost infinitely recycled, glass not much but it doesn’t really matter, plastic is the bane of all existence and will kill us all. Reducing and reusing are exponentially more environmentally friendly than recycling. We are very very good at recycling every last scrap of cars — and we’re good at it in America. E-waste, not so much. Ewaste is a problem, a big problem, but not as big as plastic. Plastic is evil. It should be outlawed. Running a scrap yard seems super fun.
Also get rid of your plastic cutting boards asap. God. I can’t believe I hadn’t realized that before.
All right you know what? I am mildly stressed about my workload today and I would really love it if my day job did not bleed into my weekend, and I have to leave home at 1:30 to go get my vaccine (Pfizer like a plebe) and I have nothing else to write about because work is dominating my mind and I don’t like to write about work too much because the whole point, okay not the whole point, but half the point, of GMHHAY is that we are all vibrant individuals, more than our work life, we contain multitudes.
Moody and quiet mix for you. There is a new American Analog Set song. I don’t know what’s up with this. It is not a song on any of their releases, ever. Is it a precursor to some rarities comp? Is it a new song? Would they… would they tour??? OMG. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Otherwise, mix of old and new. Put some real “hits” on here (for me): Single Gun Theory, Rain Tree Crow, Big Star: lifetime favorites. Just got that Tarnation album on vinyl, she is so great wonder what happened to her. Excited for the new Kevin Drew.
OK have a lovely weekend I hope you spend it doing chores or working in the garden or something you love. xoxo gossip girl.