Good morning. Hello. How are you? #657
Living is exhausting. Child allergies suck. Ford dealers suck.
Good morning. Hello, there. Greetings from Somerville, MA, in this weird-ass basement I am living in. How are you? I am good. It is very hard to do everything at once in life! I am tired! It is hard to be a parent, and work, and see friends. I did not fully grasp this as I have mostly been working and being a parent and not seeing friends these past years, and, generally speaking, when I am seeing friends, I am either not working or not parenting. But doing all three of them, at the same time, on the same days, is hard! As it turns out, it is also somewhat hard to, on top of that, write a daily email and make a daily playlist. I am somewhat overwhelmed on this vacation, I’m not going to lie.
Yesterday was a whirlwind day of activity, Jane wanted to do it all but she got so tired. She also had a pretty bad allergic reaction, possibly to some sort of flowering tree. One unfortunate thing about the timing of this trip is we all just survived allergy season in North Carolina, only to come here and do the whole thing all over again. Whoopsie. We have been giving her child Claratin, which is a totally depressing concept to begin with, but we forgot it yesterday, so that might have been what was wrong. Or the flowering tree. Who knows. But it made her sad and miserable for several hours. She refuses to remember how to blow her nose, which is frustrating. We gave her a COVID test, which of course was a pain in the ass to convince her to take, but once I got that swab in there and wiggled it around and it took all this mucus out of her nose she was so happy about it. But then she wouldn’t let me do it again, she wouldn’t blow it. Just wiping, and of course her skin was getting raw. Ugh, so stressful. It was Daddy bedtime, Emma was out to dinner with some friends because thee are human friends around here. By actual bedtime, she was in a lot better shape. Either the flowering tree pollen had worn off or the Claratin had kicked in.
Other than that, we had two bouts at the playground, a morning one alone and an evening one with our friends Craig and Jane and their daughter Ada. There was a little girl with a Super Soaker and she almost sprayed me and man I gave her a very stern look I think I probably scared her. We had a walk on the Somerville community path, which is just such a great park feature, and I love how they are slowly adding all sorts of community art and gardens to it through the years. We got burritos in Porter and then went to a different, third playground with Emily and Abby and Ivelise. We went to Emily and Abby’s house and inspected their garden and met their dog teddy and maybe got attacked by a flowering tree.
I mean, at home she spends… maybe an hour a day on her playset? She definitely does it most every days, but it’s only for a little while. Out here, in the real world, with other kids, she could easily spend six, seven hours at a playground if you let her. There is no end to her playground appetite. Her energy is endless. It is madness, utter madness.
After dinner I went to the park and had some friend times in the evening with Sean and Jussi and Abby and eventually just Sean, that was lovely, caught up about a lot of stuff, FRIEND TIMES. But I was out till midnight, up at seven, that is barely sustainable. It is exhausting! And now I have to work today.
And I have a zit on my nose. Luckily I managed to bring my magic zit creme that I still have and get prescribed at fifty years old. Never mind that it is actually made to tread lesions from bacteria and impetigo, it is the only thing that ever worked and now that I think about it, it is kind of amazing I’ve convinced a string of doctors to keep prescribing it for thirty years.
And the city is loud. Everyone’s house is connected to someone else’s house and people are banging around and running loud cars at 7:39 in the morning man I do not remember how I used to manage to sleep in the city I have become such a country bumpkin it really is something.
I am trying to pick out a new car. And I am trying to pick one out that is actually shipping, one of which dealers have actual stock. Like I could walk in and buy it. So this rules out Tesla, aside from the fact that I’m done with Elon Musk he is pissing me off too much to support his company. I’d love to hold out until I get a Lightning, but a) I’m a little nervous it’s too big, because it is too big, b) it is not really shipping, it’s gonna be at least another year, even though I ordered in the first five minutes it was on sale. Also rules out Rivian, and most of the fake EV companies. Really leaves the Mustang Mach-E, Polestar 2, Hyundai Ionic-5, and the Kia thing but I’m not into that one. But they’re all kinda ugly! Cars are so ugly! Why are all cars ugly? It is so frustrating. Maybe it’s me. The Ionic-5 has a cool 80’s sport wagon thing going on that I know some people like but I was never really into. Polestar looks kind of cool but the range is low. Mach-E doesn’t have fast charging. I like it’s frunk though, I am very into frunks right now.
I have been leaning toward the Mach-E but Ford dealers are horrible, just horrible. I found a car I like and the dealer, outside Charlotte, is adding fifteen thousand dollars to the cost of the vehicle, for no reason. Like on top of what it says on the sticker. And I’m like “okay, dude, this is a nice model and pretty rare and I get it, how about five over sticker’ and he’s like “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. How about fifteen thousand dollars over sticker.” It is ridiculous, it is highway robbery, I have no idea how Ford can ever hope to compete with other car makers with this going on. I mean I haven’t gotten that far with Polestar or Hyundai so who knows, but god.
That’s about all I got today, I will keep this short. I haven’t looked at the news in days, I miss Matt Levine, I’m sure I’ll have some witty comments about the goings-on in the world tomorrow. It is crazy that the war is still going on. Crazy. Every day I do my country flashcards, get to Ukraine, and I think “this is crazy.” It is so insane! This world we live in is so insane.
A covers mix for you today. The 20th covers mix, man we have been doing this a long time. Congratulations Kate Bush for having the number one song on Spotify today, thanks to Stranger Things. I personally find it impossible to believe that Stranger Things can still be interesting, how many bad things can happen to a group of kids can we just maybe not keep traumatizing kids in our television shows. But who knows maybe it’s very good and I am missing out.
Like...just make the Mustang look like a damn Mustang!
I’ve been saying for a long time now: why do people insist in making electric cars that look weird?