Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1043
Solo parenting almost complete, chores, Trick Ball, the new log splitter rules, greenhouse progress, Ky Lo Ren's COO.
Hello! Good morning. I totally skipped Friday I am sorry about that. Had Jane, had a ton of errands, it was just… a lot. Truth be told it skipped my mind completely until about 9 PM and by then, well…
Those errands were awesome though. Aside from Jane waking me up at 6:30, we had a great time. She made a list of errands to do and we did them in order. She ate at McDonald’s for, I think, the first time in her life. Big fan. She had an egg and cheese biscuit and a pancake. Not a fan of hash browns, just as well. Then the recycling center, nothing eventful. Then Walmart. I had promised her a LEGO set if she was good today so she was very impatient doing the bulk of our shopping. Then she spent about ten minutes trying to choose a LEGO set. Tyranny of choice, right there in action. Eventually she chose a Friends set of a float plane, which, you know, good move since her great grandpa had a float plane in Wasilla.
Leaving Walmart we saw a matte black Lamborghini Aventador which is not a thing you see in Chatham County, NC, very often.
Then to the pharmacy to pick up all my assorted medications and the teenage goth has really stepped up her shirt game it is starting to demand commentary. First it was an Unknown Pleasures shirt, you know, you can basically ignore that it’s like a Black Flag tattoo or something. Then it was a T-Rex shirt which for all I know coulda been from a Hot Topic or something. But this time it was a Diamanda Galas shirt and, I mean… did you know such things even existed? Whew. And, you know, being a fan and having seen her live, this might be worth commenting on, but I resisted. But the slight of that dude on Bedford who did not acknowledge that we were both wearing Spacemen 3 t-shirts in 2012 looms large, and I vowed to not be one of those people. Also, I mean, I did write a song about being a teenage goth and all.
The rest of Friday morning was spent clearing brush, Dubya style, trying to get all the branches cleared away from the pile the arborist left like three years ago when they cut down some dying trees, so I could get to the logs he left and try out the new log splitter. But Jane was feeling pretty needy and she kept coming out and asking for things like helping her find a specific LEGO piece or helping her go potty — which she does not need help with. So I took a hint and we had lunch and I spent the rest of the day playing “trick ball” with her which is our version of Calvin Ball. Taught her how to do volleyball serves and bumps and sets and she got pretty good at them that was pretty exciting. We worked on her drop kicks and it was simultaneously tedious and the most rewarding thing in the world, as I have said before.
Eventually she got bored with it, did some crafting. Tried to go back outside and split wood but she wouldn’t have it. She let me go to my office, though, so I played a bit of Civ.
For five nights in a row now we have had bed party and dance party and she is not tired of them at all. Loves them to pieces. Bedtimes have generally been great while Emma’s been gone.
Saturday Jane let me split logs so I got out there and tried the new battery-powered log splitter which is satisfyingly analogue feeling. Thing clearly has a flywheel or something inside so the way you activate it is by throwing a lever that feels like a clutch on a car or something. Good clunk sound, very satisfying. Battery got through maybe 20 logs. I have a bigger battery on order, but honestly, by then you’re pretty tired of bending over lifting logs. The thing also needs a cover, because it’s battery powered and you can just leave it in your yard but you want to cover it from the elements. I wrapped it in a garbage bag. I am excited to do more next weekend.
Then more trick ball, Civ, lunch, dinner, oh yeah there was a second Walmart run in there for some reason. Jane learned the difference between I’ll, aisle, and isle. She knew it before but forgot about poor isle.
Oh I also blew the trails and loaded a bunch of logs into the truck.
Saturday night I got her to bed and took an edible and had a glass of wine and watched Star Wars Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker. Well, I haven’t finished it yet. It is just… I duno, man. There is some decent internal coherence if you just take all of its stupid premises at face value but the choices are all so poor. Four screenwriters plus, of course, all the forced studio tie-in shit like setting up this spin off or that. It’s the Skywalker saga but Rey is not a Skywalker that shit makes no sense. The flip flopping between the far superior Last Jedi and this film are just comical: the reforging of Ky Lo Ren’s helmet just seems particularly pathetic for both the character but also the screenwriters. Come on. And the retconning of Rey’s parentage big nope.
There’s a point where Rose should obviously go on the mission with Finn and Poe n shit and she says “Leia has me studying old star destroyers to find weaknesses” and, lol, what? What? 1) Leia obviously already knows a ton about old star destroyers, 2) why Rose she is not some history scholar, 3) so what who cares it can wait a bit, 4) maybe just don’t put the scene in if that’s all its going to be. It’s just so laughably stupid.
I will say, though, being Supreme Leader Ky Lo Ren’s COO would rule. Like that dude does not care at all about his actual empire. I mean, he wants power — it says so right there in the opening crawl — but… it never explains why, he is exhibiting zero interest in actually ruling. If you were his COO you would effectively be ruling the empire. All you’d have to do is make sure that dude has some soldiers and a couple ships and a lot of black fabric so he can run around and cosplay and search for a Sith wayfinder. Meanwhile you could literally make every star system a Democracy with a deal to have them give you, like, 10 soldiers and 0.5% of the planetary GDP (PDP?) and Ky Lo Ren wouldn’t even notice.
That dude wants more and more power (supposedly, the script says so) but he doesn’t use it, has no intention of using it. The sum total of all of the expenditure he wields across all the films is, like, maybe equivalent to our DoD’s budget. You do not need the resources of thousands of star systems to do what he’s doing. He just wants them to leave him alone. As a resourceful COO, it would be easy to broker such a deal: run your planet the way you want, tithe to us a bit, don’t make an interstellar fleet, we’re all square.
Sunday was all greenhouse all day. Oh that’s right that’s why we went to Walmart a second time I bought Jane a bunch of markers and a sketch pad and some stickers you color yourself and some kid scissors and sat her in the dining room of the new house while me and Ricardo and the crew worked on the greenhouse. She got bored just before lunch and came out and made herself useful while I was up on a ladder installing a louvered vent. It was great. Then lunch then she iPadded while we worked some more. We got the louver on, and the fan, but most importantly we got the door assembled, mounted, squared and attached and it took forever but it looks awesome and that was the hardest part by far and the most stressful as we were off manual and integrating it with our pre-existing wall and… whew. Everything worked and fit. It looks awesome.
Then dinner then I had to get that girl’s hair washed it had been almost a week. We had a long standoff and period of negotiation — she’s never in an accommodating mood after iPad — but eventually she agreed upon a shower where I could wash her hair. We got it done. I am a master solo parenter.
Facetime with Emma and Jussi, which was nice. Bed Party, Dancing, Lego, bed.
One more night and Emma returns. And my mom arrives. And her sister. Gonna be a lot. But we are ready.
Synthpop playlist for you. Bleep bleep bloop. I like the new OMD. Never heard of this Grey Factor band they are gret and old. New Jenny Hval album is about vampires can’t go wrong there.
Until tomorrow, fair friend, where I will speak of things that are not personal chores performed, perhaps my horizon will widen to encompass the world outside my acres.