Good morning. Hello. How are you? #389
Birthday chores, Library puttering, Jane Bedtime, A Nuzzel replacement, Knight Rider historians.
Good morning, there. Hi there. How’s it going for you over there? Everything okay? Happy it’s the weekend? Hrm. I’m doing it again. I often have the urge to start these posts with a bunch of questions about how you are doing, and then start asking increasingly specific questions, using the specificity as an instrument of dada and humor, as well as a means of finding common ground between you and myself. The problem with this is that it requires us to have something in common, and for you to not have a personal situation where the increasingly-specific question does not trigger you in some way. Like I could be all like “survive another night with the kids?” wherein in fact your kid is in the ER right now. Or ask if you called your mom when, well, that may not be possible. It would seem funny to me, as I’m writing it, but it may well not be funny to you. There is a vast diversity in the lives of the people who read this — and that’s just the situations I know about! Risky stuff. I do want to know how you’re doing today, though.
That was, perhaps, the hardest thing about communications yesterday. It was lovely hearing from so many people I hadn’t heard from in a while — thank you all so much for your birthday wishes. I wanted to know more about how some of these people are doing, and in some cases I even asked. But it seems pretty obvious that at this stage of the pandemic, getting asked “how you doing?” or “how you holding up?” is just a burden really. I’m sorry I did it. We all have our pat answers. We’ll never really know how anyone’s doing until we see them one-on-one, face-to-face in a bar. Or if they start an oversharing Substack. Props to my friend who answered “I’m thinking of living on a boat,” though.
Anyway, I had a pretty good birthday. It wasn’t the best birthday, and having a second pandemic birthday is a bit of a bummer, I’m not gonna lie. So was the rain, though we did manage to get our walk in. I talked to my mom, and I talked to my sister, and heard my nephew cooing in the background, so that was nice. Emma bought me some nice presents, including one of those hardcore massagers that seems to have actually made a difference on my Klippel-Fiel-addled, fused neck after a single day, so that is exciting. Oh and a super-cute toddler-sized wheelbarrow for Jane so she can help me garden that we are going to try out today and I am very excited.
Really, though, I did a bunch of chores. I made the tactical decision to sacrifice the birthday day for the birthday weekend. Yes. Birthday weekend. Because I am a child, I still celebrate a birthday weekend. Not fifty yet. Anyway after going the hardware store (bust) and grocery store (bust) before writing to you yesterday, I added to that several other errands - depositing Emma’s SEP check at Charles Schwab (success, though I really should leave that place Charles Schwab is a Republican nightmare, though where am I gonna go that isn’t run by Republican nightmares, the health food store for more of Jane’s brown rice crisps, the collection center and the storage unit. Most excitingly, Emma and I got rid of two terrible, awful, recalcitrant, difficult AF, cheap-ass hoses that we bought when we first moved in here and we were poor and they are just the worst. They still work, though, as does the hose-crank sort of caddy thing, even though I hate those things, and any device that has you leaning down to crank should be banned. Anyway, I’ve been buying nice, new, soft, pliable, lightweight, modern hoses of all of the spigots over the last few months, so we could get rid of these. And I bought a pretty new “hose holder” bowl — seems to be the hip thing to do now with your hose, if the Gardner’s Supply catalog is to believed. I only bought one as a trial run, I am still somewhat skeptical of hose bowls, but it sure looks a lot tidier than the old situation, and no more stooping over to crank (seriously. Who thought that was a good idea?)
Then I started doing a clean-up of the library. If you don’t know about the library I have this fantastic room in the house. It’s the previous owner’s old gun room. It’s got a locked door, and I had a carpender build a hundred of ten shelves in it, along with a secret door behind which to hide all of my CDs. It really is just the most fantastic room. It’s where I keep all (well, most) of my knick knacks, and doohickeys and thingamabobs, 5 1/4” floppy disks, Zip disks, Jaz disks, Cassettes, VHS tapes, Mini DV tapes, CDs, DVDs, as well as a good bit of my archives, and some books and magazines and the like. It’s jut the best room, I love it so much.
Anyway it was getting to be a mess. As new knick knacks get added to the family, I sort of just throw them in there, on the coffee table (which is the old flight case of a deceased friend of mine. Everything in this room has sentimental value.). But then once in a while, I need to do a pretty large re-working in order to fit all the new stuff into the room. So this time, I “compressed” the CDs on the CD shelves. As you may recall, I sell my CDs on my Discogs store ( go buy one!) I’ve sold over a third of my CDs, almost half, actually. Which has been slowly freeing up shelf space in the secret CD room. But in order to actually reclaim that space, I have to methodically slide the CDs over on their shelf, then move some up from the shelf below it, then repeat the process twenty or so times. But in the end, I did that, and I reclaimed about two shelves of CDs. Actually I did it three times because after I did it, I remembered there was this pile of CDs on the top of my shelf — about 30 or so CDs I’m selling for a friend of mine. But they should, really, be alphebetized into the main batch (I keep a list of what was hers elsewhere) so that I can easily find a CD when it’s sold and not look in two places. So I had to re-expand the CDs, fold in the 30 or so new CDs, then re-compress. Man, I felt dumb doing that tedious task twice. But I got it done! And in the end, there are now about 4 new CD shelves free. So I’ve been moving some of the less pretty, less beloved (but still essential) knick knacks of a certain size into the CD room and onto those shelves, instead, freeing up shelves in the main room. For example in the photo above you can see a shelf that’s full of nothing but Jaz, Zip and Floppy Discs. Well, those are all on the CD shelves now, and so that freed up a shelf for Knick Knacks of a Certain Size (Un Certain Neeek, as the French would say) to move to that shelf, freeing up space where they were, etc.
It was a chore, yes, but it was a very soothing chore, which I did whilst listening to Rain Tree Crow and the Underground Lovers, and, honestly, it was probably absolutely the best part of my birthday.
Dinner consisted of Indian food from a new place. It was a winner. We both liked it. Would order from there again. Finally found a good Samosa that can be driven to our house during a pandemic. Only took fourteen months.
It was my night for Bedtime with Jane, and it was mostly a pain. She was very demanding. She made my mom sing her four songs on the phone, which was really cute, but also made it impossible to actually talk to my mom. She used all her well-honed resistance techniques at bedtime, but there was a new, horrible twist. After, like, twenty minutes of arguing and cajoling and whatnot I had finally gotten her to accept her bedtime fate. This is really best in the long run. We could just dump her in bed and bail but then she’ll cry for an hour, and even though it sucks, it’s better to get her to do it willingly, in the long run. But it’s so hard, and it really saps your will to live. Like she can break you down to a point where you just hate yourself, where you hate this life, where every second of it is pure pain and tedium. You can’t imagine a world where you enjoy parenting, where willingly deciding to do this was ever a good idea. Even though a few hours earlier you might have been sitting there staring at the miracle that is your daughter, thinking she’s the greatest thing in your life and you can’t imagine life without her. Well, now you can. And it seems totally better.
So we got through that, and she’s finally going through the motions of her bedtime routine. But this time? Oh my god. She wants you to smile during the whole thing. It’s simultaneously heartbreaking and impossible. Like the little girl is learning empathy, and she knows she’s been a pain, and she’s doing the actions now, but she wants to feel good about it. She wants it to be fun. She doesn’t like the guilt feeling she’s feeling. She doesn’t like the exasperation she can see on your face. Who would? She’s human. But she doesn’t know how to express any of that, so she just repeatedly asks you to smile. And she’s no dummy! She can tell a real smile from a fake one. And you’re trying, you’re trying so hard to get out of that mood and into a good mood. Because the forced, fake smile is not enough. And you do it! But, my god. It was a miracle you could pull it off.
I may have cheated on my alcohol limited consumption and had a tiny wine and shared a beer and a Fernet with Emma. I may have treated myself on my birthday.
The one good thing about Jane Bedtime last night is I got to watch a lot of the Knight Rider Historians. These people are amazing. They recently acquired one of the actual Semi trucks that the Knight Foundation used as a rolling forward base for Michael Knight and the KITT. I was obsessed with this show when I was a kid. And Airwolf. Simon & Simon. The Fall Guy. Actually, there’s a Fall Guy-Knight Rider connection, I learned about from the Knight Rider Historians: the Pontiac Company had a train derailment in 1983 and had to decommission a bunch of cars, and sold them to Paramount for $1 each for use in Knight Rider and Fall Guy, which is why Heather Thomas’ character in Fall Guy drives a Trans Am. The sad thing is there was a stipulation in the agreement that they had to crush the cars when they were done with them, so many of the original KITTs are gone - indeed, not a single version of Super Pursuit Mode Kitt still exists. These guys figured that out. They really are brilliant.
Man I really want a 1983 Trans Am now. Again.
We also finished another season of the Great British Baking Show, yay us, we’re doing about a season (ahem, sorry, series) a week. I was pleased with the winner of this season (five), though once again my favorite was eliminated too soon. Always happens. Very sad. Never once has my favorite won.
There was a famed Manchester night club Haçienda reference in this season, though. That made me very happy. Quality confluence of interests, right there.
Public service announcement: Toby Emmerich and Roland Emmerich are not related.
Actual public service announcement: My friend Benny, one of the founders of Timehop, has whipped up a Nuzzel replacement. For the email, at least. I confess I didn’t use the email before, just the App, but this is a great start. If you are interested in this, you can learn more here.
Today I am going to build my tomato trellis. That should be satisfying. I’ll spray everything down with squirrel repellant as well — it probably all got washed away in the rain — and I might pot a few new things. I got a new whiskey barrel, but I don’t think I have quite enough new dirt to fill it. Maybe a few grow bags, then. I think I’ll also do my first harvesting! I think I have enough lettuce grown for a salad this week, or maybe some lettuce rolls or something. That’ll be nice.
I will check the compost. My hopes are not high.
I might plant a few tomatoes “in the wild” — after some consultation with Emma — to give the squirrels something to live for.
If i get all that done, I might whip up a batch of pine needle mulch.
So, hopefully when we talk again, on Monday, I will have some HOT GARDENING CONTENT for you. I do it all for you.
Here’s a nice moody and quiet mix for you. Only mix I had ready to go today. Will try and get a few more prepped up today. But this is a nice one. I really like that Apartments song that kicked this off. Still add it after 35+ years, the Apartments. And still making albums with some regularity. Very impressive. And I threw on a track from Stuart Adamson’s last band, the Raphaels. Pretty sad one. But the whole album wasn’t too too sad, which was nice. Hopefully he still had some happy moments at the end. Yeah, this is a nice mix. I hope you enjoy it.
Okay! Have a nice weekend! Talk to you guys Monday! Thank you again for all the birthday wishes!