Good morning. Hello. How are you? #763
RIP Mimi Parker, Hobbit calendars, hangar-cutting FAQ, seed organization, Jane's DST adjustment, leaf vacuuming
Good morning! Hello, there. Here we are on another week, just rolling around back on the calendar, yet another Monday, like some sort of recurring joke. Hobbits have a few days in the middle of their year that do not belong to a specific month or a day of the week. They are loosely “festival” days, and they have a big party for a few days, so that every year, every day of the year is the same day of the week as the year before. On leap years, they add an extra day to the mid-year party. Go ahead and tell me that’s not a better system. Hobbits know what’s up.
The first thing is that I am very sad to say that Mimi Parker from Low has passed away after a very long battle with cancer. This is very sad. We’ve written abotu Mimi’s illness a few times in GMHHAY, so many of you were aware she was sick. But one thing I’ve realized through this is that “cancer” isn’t the automatic death sentence it used to be, which is great. But this means, in my head, when I hear people have cancer, I assume by default they’re going to survive, since indeed the majority of people I know who’ve had cancer have survived. So when it finally takes one, it’s still a shock. It hurt learning this.
Mimi and Alan have been together since they were children, I’m sure he is devestated. They have two kids who are, thankfully, a bit older now but still, how horrible. In the nearly thirty years I’ve been listening to Low, they’ve been a huge part of my life since I first saw them in Boston on tour for their first album. I’ve only met Mimi a couple times through the years, as I generally leave bands along when I go see them, but we have had some encounters through the years through mutual friends. Her voice was amazing, her contribution to this monumental band is irreplaceable. That being said, I profoundly hope that Alan continues with Low, or a Low-like project. He has his side projects, and they are all great (I particularly love Black Eyed Snakes). And I’m sure Alan will never find another collaborator like Mimi, or even a voice as well matched to his. (Hard not to take that as a sign of their perfect pairing. Have two voices ever gone together as well?) But the world needs Low, what Low is, and I hope that continues.
Rest in peace, Mimi.
I was downstairs with Jane in the morning sorting seeds when I learned about Mimi’s passing, and started crying, and boy, Jane still does not like it when Mommy or Daddy cry. I asked her for a hug and she said “no. stop crying. Daddy’s happy.” It was obviously disturbing her so I stopped. I should have maybe used it as some kind of learning opportunity, but I didn’t have the strength. Just defaulted to fake it till you make it.
Anyhow.
Lot of you had opinions about my hanger-cutting operation. Man that was the hottest GMHHAY topic in years. Seems to be a lot of concern that clothes will get snagged on the hangars. This is not a concern because this part of the hangar is already cut, I did not make it any more snaggy, it was already a piece of wire cut by a wirecutter. More to the point, that part of the hangar never even touches my clothes. I only use these hangars for t-shirts, and I put the t-shirt on the hangar by inserting the wide parts of the hangar through the neck hole, so it’ll never touch the hook part.
People also had a lot of opinions about my hangars and how I should be using a different type, such as velvet-covered or something. Long-time GMHHAY readers will know I spent a significant chunk of the pandemic on this project, and I have arrived at these hangars after extensive experimentation. They’re not orginary wire hangars, they are coated in a rubberized material that a) protects from rust if the clothing is wet, b) makes the hangars nice and smooth when you pull a t-shirt off of them, and c) keeps them from getting too tangled up. They’re also very thin, which means you can get a lot of shirts on one rack, and boy, I have a lot of t-shirts. They’re great. Except for this one weird problem of wildly inconsistent hook lengths.
I put away my laundry last night and took a photo for you of a bunch of these hangars next to each other and their hook-ends so that you can see how wide of a variety of lengths we are dealing with here. Of all the hangars in this photo, I cut the three longest back a bit. The rest I left as-is.
Rest of the weekend was good, highly productive. We’ll get to the Elon Twitter drama and the external world tomorrow, but I should admit I spent an inordinate amount of time watching the shitshow unfold. I can’t turn away. I went to the frame store on Friday to get a couple pieces framed. They have a new goth working there, that was pretty exciting. Everyone was wearing masks as well, which is unprecedented. There was an older couple in there, with the man in a wheelchair, and they were wearing masks, so I suspect everyone was doing it for their benefit but still! Even if it was just out of respect to a customer, well, that is pretty swell.
Went to the post office and picked up the passport application forms for Jane and I and I’m sure I’ll get round to filling those out before the end of 2023. You don’t have to have both parents present, but if they’re not present you gotta have some notarized stuff, so it’ll probably be easier to just bring Jane.
Jane and I did a massive seed organization. I bought these plastic photo organizer cases to organize seeds. I spent months and months trying to find some non-plastic solution, but literally every article, every YouTuber, everywhere I did research just said the same thing: use these specific photo organizers. I had purchased three different solutions prior to this in an attempt to minimize plastic, but they were all non-usable for various reasons, mostly sizing. So in the end I gave up and joined the masses. And plastic aside, they’re right. These things are great. Jane and I got out the label maker and labeled each seed container, and then each case. Jane is shockingly adept at peeling the backing off of labels and sticking them in the right place. All that practice with sticker books.
Got some gardening done. Pulled a single luffa off the vine. It is probably too early it’s still green. The internet tells me you need to wait until they’re starting to yellow before pulling them off the vine if you want to make sponges. That’s okay I have plenty more. I am so excited about my luffa sponges I really hope this works. Do you want a luffa sponge? If all goes well I will have a few extra to give away. Man maybe I will become a luffa farmer and sell artisinal luffa sponges on the internet. Calgon (and luffa) take me away.
Also harvested about 20 baby bok choy plants. One out of the 60 or so in the bed was bolting and we can’t have that, so I harvested a bunch, but eventually I decided I had harvested too much Bok Choy as it was. There was exactly not quite enough to bring to the food bank so I figured it didn’t make sense to harvest them all. I would roll the dice and go another week and hope they don’t bolt. So I gave Bok Choy to my mother-in-law and then some more to the neighbor tech-guy-turned-contractor who was rebuilding our dock with a team of workers since it had rotted away. Then I emailed the neighborhood mailing list and offered baby bok choy to anyone who wanted it and got four more takers so int he end I gave about 18 bok choy heads to 6 different people and I still have like 5 heads. Time to make some soup I guess.
Also harvested a single perfect bell red pepper and my god it was gorgeous. And a single red heirloom tomato that was delicious. And about 20 cherry tomatoes. And five or so red peppers. Lettuce isn’t quite ready for picking but the fennel is and the ginger but I left them. The garlic and wheat are growing nicely and have both sprouted and are ready for their overwintered growing. All very exciting. I love my garden. Got a new plan for where to trellis the grapes and I think it’s a lot less fussy and complicated. But it involves running more irrigation, which is a bit of a hassle. Gotta see if the neighborhood contractor can help out.
I also got out the old plug-in electric Black and Decker blower-mulcher-combo and vaccuumed up most of the fallen leaves in the back yard. Every year when I do this and I write about it, people tell me to leave those leaves there and let them mulch the grass because they’re so good for the grass, but no way man. I suck em up, put em in a dedicated compost bin I have to make a special kind of compost, leaf mould compost, that is made entirely by letting shredded leaves sit and rot for a few years and my god it is the greatest compost ever. Why would I waste that black gold on something as lame as grass when I could be using it to grow food. Also it’s good exercise. Do a three-hour little two-step dance all around your yard. It’s fun. Aside from the hour or two afterwards where your hands are vibrating, even through anti-vibration gloves.
Jane adjusted magnificently to Daylight Savings Time or Daylight Standard Time or whatever we’re on now (the former, right?) I set the clock back a half-hour when she wasn’t looking during bedtime. She had a big fit that night about teeth and jammies, and we worked through it. Normally when that happens there is an echo-fit a bit later when she realizes with despair that she has blown most of her evening playtime on having a fit. But this time, through the magic of clock-changing, she could have her fit and eat it too, and got to play for a full hour after the fit. So she went to bed a half hour later than normal. I figured that if she stayed in bed the next morning a half hour later, we’d call it a success, but she happily stayed in bed, and slept, until her normal bed time. So, half-hour later bedtime and a half-hour more of sleep and we were back to normal. Fantastic. Assuming this morning goes well. Which we will go find out after these words. wish me luck.
Today’s mix is a mix made up of every lead vocal Mimi Parker of Low has done across thirteen Low albums, a box set, a couple EPs and a couple compilation albums. Made it on Sunday after Jane and I finished with the seed organization. I may have missed one or two but it is fairly comprehensive. It is in roughly chronological order but I haven’t taken the time to intermingle the box set tracks into their proper place in the chronology. I will hopefully get to that today. I listened to the whole thing yesterday, on shuffle. I reccommend listening to it on shuffle, it makes the whole thing more intense, more startling, more of an emotional roller coaster. Of course it doesn’t do her justice as a collaborator, as a songwriter, as an instrumentalist. But it’s still a monumental body of work.
Take care and talk tomorrow. Thank you come again.
it’s gray and sort of rainy here so the Mimi lead playlist is going to be perfect. Low always reminds me of you.
re: hangers, i missed the hot debate so perhaps this was already covered, but in my mind you were snipping the wire where the twist ends so to see where you actually were trimming the wire was 🤯
How did voting go yesterday?