Good morning. Hello. How are you? #362
Cherry blossoms, Kit Kats, awful Senators, Laguardia Airtrain, caring for other humans.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am okay. I am listening to my new Coke bottle green vinyl edition of Casiotone For the Painfully Alone’s stellar album Vs. Children. It’s as good as I remember it. The sun is rising over the pond, ‘tis true, but also, this:
It’ll bloom for about a week, then we have to wait anther year. I love it so much. I don’t think I even really noticed the first year we lived here. The second year, I was like “Oh that is nice. Wait. Where did the flowers go?” By year three I knew it wasn’t going to last long, but I didn’t realize just how quick it would go. By year four, I was waiting expectantly. And this year, well, I’ve probably attached waaaay too much importance to it.
Here beginneth the new life, etc. etc.
Just got back from the grocery store. No more Lemon Crisp Kit Kats. Birthday Kit Kats are gone too. They did not have $2 buckets on sale (I need more buckets). They were out of our organic peanut butter. Luckily, I have been scarred by a global pandemic and supply chain collapse and keep five jars of peanut butter in the house all the time now. I wonder what the current age is of the youngest future “pandemic granny.” You know, like “depression granny.” The one we all make fun of for being so ridiculously penny-pinching and thrifty. I don’t think it’s any shocker to imagine that millions of people have grown to distrust the supply chains, and realize they can collapse at any time, and now hoard far more than they used to. But what was the youngest age that happened to? Probably some 18 year-olds just out of the house, right? So… We will have Pandemic Grannies for the next… 70 years, maybe a bit more? Almost to the next century, then. People will make fun of them like they make fun of Depression Grannies.
Or, I suppose, failures of the supply chains will become so routine we’ll never really recover from it, and we’ll all be Depression Grannies. Yeah, that seems just as possible. Guess time will tell.
I asked my mom how much she paid for for the house on Jack Street, the one I wrote about yesterday, the one that is currently worth $217,000 on Zillow. I had expected she’d say, like twelve dollars, and it would be another example of how easy the boomers had it. It turns out it was “Sixty-something thousand dollars,” she said, to the best of her recollection. As an aside, it was super interesting the way she could remember every single mortgage payment amount (“we refinanced a lot,” she said), but not so much the actual purchase price. So, take it with a grain of salt. But what’s interesting here is that $60,000 in 1976 dollars works out to about $277k in 2021 dollars, which means the house was worth more then and you can buy it for less now. I mean, that neighborhood is more run-down compared to back then, but it’s still a decent neighborhood by Alaska standards. I suspect that it has to do with the oil boom — the pipeline opened in 1977. Still. Kinda surprising. We keep hearing about how easy the boomers had it with their cheap houses, but… I guess not all boomers, amirite?
I had a really rough day yesterday, I’m not gonna lie. Jane only had one giant tantrum, and Emma had to deal with it, but it’s just… she’s like right on the edge all the time. Living your life where every second things might explode into complete abject misery, just because you peeled a banana incorrectly or moved the waffles is stressful. She’s definitely dealing with empathy, and happiness, and one thing that’s gotten better is that I’ve realize that she is MUCH more willing to do things if we can both be very happy and excited doing them, which I realize is super obvious but I have been slacking in that department because she has run me down. It was like repeated superhuman efforts to act very excited about each thing, even while she was being stubborn, refusing to do them, or running off.
And on top of that I am a bit exhausted with caring for my mom, and I am not exactly a natural caregiver and it is very tiring and I have to take another day off tomorrow to drive all the way into Raleigh because that’s where they decided to give us our next referral doctor, even though there are like ten speciliasts in the same discipline ten minutes away at the UNC campus. I asked to be moved over, they said sure, they didn’t do it. So here we are, we have to go to Raleigh and it’s going to suck. It’s like an hour and fifteen away. I’m trying to be good and take care of her but this is very difficult and having someone — anyone — in your house for two months is exhausting. She’s exhausted too, and is starting to pick dates to go home, but I don’t know how we can pick a date when we still haven’t gotten a diagnosis. It’s like a little mini-pandemic. We all want it to be over, and for things to be better, so our minds just play tricks on us and tell us it is going to be over, and better, soon, even though there are significant unknown varia(nts)(bles).
I haven’t really gotten into hopelessness land, mostly I can remain in “this too shall pass” land. And I have not forgotten all the good things in my life: most notably my wife, who is amazing and way more patient than I am both with my mom and Jane. And it’s not even her mom. Mostly I’m just bummed I’m such a crank so often for the people around me. I wish I wasn’t so cranky all the time. I am trying. I am trying.
It is my wife’s birthday in two days. I got her a rug. That she picked out. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice rug, but. yeah. Fail. Some holidays, I am the master of gifts (I nailed Christmas), other times I’m hopeless. I am making a cake, though. That counts for something, right? I should also make one of those paper cards that says something like “when this pandemic is over this card entitles you to a week off alone somewhere” but she already knows that.
We really need a date night, methinks.
Anyway, moving on.
Got my car fixed yesterday. Well, Emma did (noticing a pattern here?) Needed some new tires, a new battery, a new air filter cuz a rodent of some sort had chewed through it. Hadn’t driven it in like eight months. But now it’s fixed. We’ll drive it to Raleigh tomorrow. Should be easier for my mom to get into, since it’s lower. It’s really nice that the car place comes and gets your car and returns it to you. I suspect this service will not continue past the pandemic. God I’m gonna end up missing this BS year, aren’t I? Ugh.
Some dummy-or-jerk Rick Webb in Nevada decided to use my email address for Match dot com, and Match dot com does not seem to bother to actually verify email addresses so suddenly yesterday my main personal email was flooded with matches from a bevvy of middle aged Nevadan women. I hit “unsubscribe” but all that did was remove me from the marketing emails, and I was still getting like 10+ “you have a match” or “you have a message” emails per hour. I feel really bad admitting this, but I went up there, clicked “forgot password,” made a new password, logged in and deleted the account. I am sorry, other Rick Webb, that I screwed up your dating life, I do feel bad about it, but come on. There are literally five other Rick Webbs out there that don’t know their own email address and it’s a bit much. I get a lot of interview notices for trucking jobs. I got a recruiter recruiting me for a junior designer position in the midwest yesterday. I get medical records, prescription receipts, so much other email. Never just went up and deleted the account before, though. That was a new low. I feel bad! Sorry
In all my loathing of abusive daddy Steve Manchin, let’s not forget his willfully ignorant counterpart, the less-popular of the two Arizona Senators, Krysten Sinema, who has opinions about the filibuster she seems to have gotten from the back of a cereal box, yet feels qualified to spout because she thinks there are still moderate republicans in her state. Look, I don’t expect every American to have read Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy, but I expect every Senator to at least have had read the Cliff’s Notes. I increasingly think Schumer should just bring the bill to the floor and call their bluff. Let Manchin and Sinema be the two votes against a hundred thousand jobs. Let’s see how well that goes down in their district. Also her stances are not working. Kelly is easily more popular, all while supporting ending the filibuster. If there’s one thing worse than political calculation when the planet is at stake, it’s doing it badly. Reminder that she’s not even the Arizona senator who’s up for re-election in 2022. She doesn’t have to run again until 2028. Profiles in courage.
Looks like “those assholes” (aka Cuomo) are going to start building the completely idiotic Laguardia Airtrain to Willets Point as soon as this June. It really does burn me up, the pure idiocy of this one. It’s like standing up and proudly saying “America! No we can’t! NIMBYISM RULES!” Really gives one deep pride in their country when we decide to just do the thing no one wants because it’s easier. AOC keeps saying she’s against it, but… I’m not sure how against? I mean, it’s not her problem, really, I guess. It’s her district but this was going on long before she was elected. And it does seem like an odd thing to take a stand about. Plus the Nimbyism is real, and those are also her voters. I don’t blame her for not using her significant national profile to stop it, even though I wish she would, because she’s probably the only one who can, but, yeah. I mean. Yeah.
I was looking at my sad old YouTube stats and they’re fine, you know. I don’t care if only ten people watch my gardening videos, that’s not why I do it. Or this. But what I did find interesting is that there are now 90 views on one of my shredder videos and more than 20 on the other one, making them the two most-viewed videos on my channel since I stupidly threw away my old channel and started fresh. It kind of makes me happy that I could help like more than 100 people solve some edge case shredder problems. That was the whole point. Good deed done, right there.
Let’s do a mix. An industrial dance mix! Yeah, that’s right. Let’s head back to Man Ray circa 1992, baybeee. When my friend Nick was over last weekend we were sitting outside on the porch listening to Darkwave on XM Firstwave, hosted by the Slicing Up Eyeballs guy and he was on a real good Industrial Dance kick, and Nick and I got to talking and both sort of seem to be revisiting this music lately.
For a lotta time in the late Nineties all the way through to the early 2020’s I kinda thought industrial dance was a little embarrassing, and that it was silly that i was ever into it. But I have come round again, and there’s a lot to like in there. Some of it sounds dated, but so what, lots of music we like sounds dated. Some of it sounds awesome. Of course you guys got a ton of it a year or so ago when I was doing the old high school and 90’s mix tapes, but it’s been a while. So bust out those combat boots and stomp.
All right, well, time to go. Jane needs her breakfast, my mom’s PT is coming and I have to give her the new assistive step to replace the one I cleverly ran over with the car. It’s that stressful hour where I have to get Jane fed and back downstairs by 10 AM, because I have a work meeting at 10, and sometimes she doesn’t want to rush, and may throw a fit if I rush her, thus interrupting my mom and PT. 9-10 is probably the most stressful hour of every day, but it’s particularly rough on Wednesdays. Wish me luck.
Hope you’re holding up okay! Let’s get through this! Together! Miss you! Buttons!
Those shredder videos are super sexy!