Good morning! Hello there! How’s tricks? Happy Monday. Wow issue number 600 that is totally crazy. This is not something I would have forseen when I first started posting those mix tapes with little stories at the beginning of the pandemic. Back when I was still doing these little archiving chores. Back before I ran out of little archiving chores, and a lot of other chores. Man I sure do a lot of housework these days, since the pandemic. Back thdn I was all stressed out about completing my ad economics book, filled with self loathing because I wasn’t “being productive” in my “art.” Turns out all I needed to do was abandon every book I was working on and just start writing stupid shit on the internet. And now I have a book! There is a poor lesson in there somewhere.
I really should have done something special for this issue but I forgot.
Big news: Good Morning. Hello. How Are You? is now available on Amazon on Kindle and paperback. It’s even on Kindle Unlimited if you are a Prime subscriber, though if I am being honest that is the exact last thing you want to do, re-read this whole thing. You just want to own it, like I’ve said before, so you can point to it when you’re old and your grandchildren ask about the pandemic era, when they are suffering through a new pandemic and we have all forgotten everything as a society. And it is available from me directly in digital (.epub and .pdf) or paperback form. Four different ways to buy the oddly comforting pandemic journal you didn’t know you needed. Get it now before current events sweep away all vestiges of pandemic memories, swept up in trucker convoys and war.
Anyway, great weekend, I am sore. So much yard work and gardening. So many scrapes all over my body. I built the (hopefully) last Birdies Bed, and then when I put it in the hoop house, it bacame obvious that the second-to-last Birdies Bed needed to be rebuilt in a different shape.
Here is a video if you want to see an old man suffer at outdoor chores and watch a lower back degrade in front of your eyes:
So once I did that, I needed to fill them. I casually asked Emma if she had any sticks or logs on the property she didn’t need, and, boy, did I get more than I bargained for. Turned out there was a giant pile of branches and huge logs over by the dock, from when they cut down two rotting trees last fall. I don’t know I never saw this huge pile, it’s right by the compost bin! So, once I saw the pile, I knew the right thing to do was to chip and chop wood from this giant pile and use it in the bottom of my beds. So I hauled over the chipper and the chainsaw and a bunch of other garbage and just grinded away on this giant pile of wood for, like, five hours. I’m like George Dubya over here, clearing brush. My god, it is so much work.
I moved a ton of logs and woodchips, and mulch, and now the two huge new birdies beds are in place and half filled. Next week I will start moving a ton more dirt and getting all seven birdies beds completely topped off with new soil from the giant dirt pile, and let them sit for a week or two before the plants go in them. You’re supposed to let beds “rest” for a bit after you “build” the soil with a bunch of “ammendments.” Did you know this? I did not do this last year I wonder if it matteres.
The seedlings are doing great, almost all of them have sprouted now. Helps that it’s nearly eighty degrees this week, so we leave the garage door open all day and they are very happy. I also planted a bunch of the fruit trees and bushes into pots: two grapes, a blueberry, a raspberry and an apple tree. These things have been being kept in bags in boxes (like they came from the store) for, like, two weeks, and I don’t know how long they can last in those things. There’s at least one more frost day coming, though, so I’m gonna need to cover ‘em all with plastic a few times, but it still seemed the safer route. Also Jane helped ammend soil and learned about perline, crab and lobster shell, blood meal and worm castings. She did not put it together enough to ask where blood meal or crab and lobster shell come from, thank goodness.
My giant hoophouse is ready to wage battle against squirrels and deer. Nothing is going to get in there. It is impenetrable. Go ahead and try, you stupid squirrels. I dare you.
Then, after all that, the next day I decided I needed to prep the new workbench board, now that it’s been acclimated, sanding it and giving a nice coat of tung oil. And then! I reorganized a big chunk of the garage. Seriously. I was a machine of productivity.
Look at those labels! We’re a regular M5 Industries over here.
On top of all of that, we had guests over this weekend for dinner on Saturday. We did it outdoors because our guests are as paranoid as us, which was nice and validating. They have two kids, one a little older than Jane and one a little younger and they all got along great, playing on the playset and exploring and swinging and whatnot, with no major interpersonal problems. They seemed to like each other. Jane seems to be a somewhat socially well-adjusted child, which is always a pleasant surprise to us since, you know, she basically lives under a rock.
We watched Spielberg’s West Side Story last night. It was an incredibly beautiful and well-made film about an annoying musical where everyone but the old (now) lady acts like a complete idiot. I had completely forgotten about the ending, I think I might have watched, like, high-school-musical sanitized versions when I was a kid, where the story ends early. I’ve seen the 1961 film but it was, like, 40 years ago or something. All I really remembered were the songs and the basic plot about Tony and Maria falling in love and being from opposite sides of the tracks. I should have remembered how things ended. Also it is too freakin’ long. And the ending is dumb. Very unrealistic behavior for adding machine repairmen.
Jane is good she is maybe starting to actually poop in the potty occasionally? Maybe? She had two giant tantrums this weekend, though, which was a little exhausting. I think maybe there’s some correllastion with the weekends? When she’s outside running around a lot more? I mean, Emma takes her outside to play every day, but on the weekends I also take her outside for two-three additional hours, and maybe there’s something with that. Emma bought her a very cute two-inch new plush kitty named Butter and we all like Butter very much.
Hrm wheat prices are going through the roof. Time to stock up on flour again. I have been keeping a fair bit in storage since the pandemic. If I’m being honest, I’ve barely stopped hoarding at all. Still keep, like, six jars of peanut butter and a 30-pound bag of rice in the house. Anyway, Ukraine is the second-largest producer of wheat in the world, or something. Buy flour.
It’s so crazy that this war is still going on, that Russia has fucked up so badly, that they haven’t even gotten to the hard part of occupying Kyiv or foisting a fake government onto the people. They are losing the part they’re supposed to be good at, big normal conventional war. And of course they’re losing, but not losing. They seem to be doing well enough in the south, and as every news source under the sun takes immense pleasure in reminding us, they will probably grind it out and prevail eventually. But all of that does not mean they’re winning. And that is just… insane. There is no way this ends well for Putin, for Russia or, really, for anyone. But at the same time, it’s just… going to take so long. This really is so upsetting, watching this happen to the Ukrainians. And so fucking weird to watch people make TikTok musical videos of their time in bomb shelters. What a world, what a world.
You know all this, of course. It feels weird and wrong to live your life. It feels weird and wrong to not be doomscrolling all day. Over the weekend I would dip in and dip out of the news, at meals, at breaks from yardwork. Not too often, 3-4 times a day (ha, god, that sounds like too often, but also not enough). It’s still incredibly frustrating not being able to get a sense of what’s going on. I mean, you get the strong sense that if you wanted to dedicate five, six hours a day, really diving into the social flow, you could start to get a pretty good idea. And you kind of berate yourself for your lack of willingness to spend six hours a day on Twitter. And it’s hard to differentiate between “no news is good news” and “you’re not getting the news.” I guess that convoy’s just gonna sit there forever.
I don’t know. I don’t like wartime. I don’t like pandemic time. I don’t like living under a fascist, despotic president. I just want to live in some chill times. Can we have one month of chill times? What’s it been? Five years? And even then… it wasn’t chill if you were paying attention. The thing about living in a big interconnected world is it. is. never. chill.
Post rock set today, because Holy Fawn. Listened to them basically all weekend. Wait that’s not true I also binged a lot of Sharon Van Etton. That was very satisfying. But for now, post rock, featuring Holy Fawn as well as the other opener from that show last week, Midwive.
Anyway, happy Monday. A dear old friend sent this very uplifiting Tik Tok this morning, so, you know, if you need a Monday pick-me-up, here you are.