Good morning. Hello. How are you? #775
I have returned from a chore-doing downward spiral of bliss and oblivion
Good morning! Hello, there. How are you? Have a lovely Thanksgiving holiday? Mine was great, thanks. Five days without writing a GMHHAY. I was scared I’d never want to start again. This was not an entirely misplaced fear. You stop writing, you stop your routine, things can go south pretty quickly. Yesterday I was fairly convinced I needed to drop my career, drop my writing and become a professional person who does one chore, only do get distracted by another chore, pursuing thast one instead, only to get distracted by another chore, pursuing thast one instead, ad infinitum, stuck in a chore-doing downward spiral forever. I cannot describe the joys this holds for me. It is the best. The more minor, mundane, utterly important the chore, the more deeply satisfying it is to abandon it mid-chore for an even less important one. And then! Then! Like three hours in, to slowly finish each chore, working your way back up the chore ladder. It’s more satisfying than killing off four rows in Tetris with one of those long, thin pieces (which I just learned are called tetrominos). The absolute best. Gollum gollum.
Thankgving meal was (mostly) a success. Jane and I did all of the prep on Wednesday together: make the roux, make the herb butter, dry brine the turkey, make the stuffing, make the corn bread. Then she spent Wednesday night at Grammy’s so Thursday morning I could do all my cooking unimpeded, which is a great innovation over the last few years where I solo cooked all of Thanksgiving dinner while watching Jane. It was a walk in the park this year. Of course, my handy Thanksgiving recipe binder and especially my post-turkey-out-of-the-oven flowchart makes the whole thing so easy. Almost mindless. It’s lovely.
That being said, I did have two mistakes this year. My cornbread was undercooked, because I am trying to perfect a moist corn bread that Emma likes, and this year that involved a little vegetable oil, and that confused me on the stick test and it seemed cooked when it was not. I’m not sure how this happened.
And secondly, my beets weren’t very good. I am proud to say that my garden produced some beets, carrots, potatoes, thyme, and rosemary that were all used in Thanksgiving dinner. The beets, I actually successfully grew an entire dinner serving of. The thing is, though… they weren’t very good. I don’t know why. I pulled ‘em out of the oven and tasted em and they were cooked fine and salted fine but just tasted kinda meh. I thought maybe a little longer in the oven would help and all that did was overcook them. Luckily no one in the family eats beets but me so no harm no foul.
Every year, I go to the garage to get some twine off of the roll of twine I keep out at the workbench. Don’t use a lot of twine throughout the year, and we have a few other types of more-synthetic-but-more-durable string. So every year when I need a foot or so of twine to tie the turkey legs together before roasting it, there is plenty of twine still on the roll. It is the giving tree of twine. It is going to last me the rest of my life, the rest of my Thanksgivings, that roll of twine. I am deeply thankful for it.
Everything else was great, though. The turkey, potatoes, gravy, beans, stewed carrots, corn, stuffing, all delicious. A great meal was had by all.
Afterward Emma and Jane and Janet started decorating the tree for Christmas, while I cleaned up the kitchen and then joined them.
Then Emma did bedtime and I watched the extended edition of The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, or at least started it. It’s a holidy tradition to re-watch this trilogy. Fellowship really holds up. Man, even the effects all look solid still. Just a very well done film. Shame about those Hobbit films. I’m about halfway through The Two Towers now, but I think I’ll put the effort on pause until the Christmas holiday since, you know, back to the real world today.
The rest of the weekend was spent mostly with beautiful, wonderful chores. The two most exciting are that I finished the big garage reorganization. Emma had suggested we re-work the garage so that we could fit the Lightning in there should we receive a hurricane warning. This meant moving two giant, overfilled shelves, and then using the back wall only for on-wall storage. It was an undertaking. Took about three weekends. But it is done, and I am very, very happy with the results. Lots of hanging things, lots of new drawers. Really satisfyied my organizational itch:
And then! In my puttering K-hole yesterday I finally got the toilet foot pedal installed, and it is majestic. I made a short video of it and put it on Instagram stories, but honestly, who wants to look at a video of a toilet the whole act just feels sort of unpleasant. So I will spare you any photos here. But man, the thing is just great. Was a bit tricky to install, had to screw it into the toilet seat in just the right spot, the whole thing has to be very carefully aligned to lift the seat enough, but also not so much that it doesn’t come down, but also is firmly screwed into the seat, but also doesn’t bump up against the bowl.
It’s only had less than a day’s use (I installed it yesterday afternoon) and the pedal itself is a 2x2” metal pad that I will definitely need to soften up with, perhaps, a rubber pad or something, but so far I am very excited about this contraption and I think it will solve all my problems (obligitory reminder/caveat before you tell me how lazy I am: I have a congenital spine disease that causes a fused neck and headaches whenever I bend over).
Finished volume 2 of Stephen Morris’ autobiography, Fast Foward: Confessions of a Post Punk Drummer. Stephen Morris is, of course, the drummer of Joy Division and New Order. He’s a pretty good writer, albeit massively self-deprecating. A hugely conflict-avoidant individual, Stephen Morris, but the book is enlightening and interesting. I’m glad he stopped drinking and doing so many drugs. The personal life trials of his daughter’s disease and his wife Gillian’s cancer were harrowing, though it was really weird he never really wrapped up or told us how his daughter is doing now. I want to know if that kid is all right! And the book just sort of stops about ten years ago when Peter Hook left New Order. I guess that’s understandable — it is much, much harder to write a fair (ish) autobiography of more recent events. But that’s the part I’m most interested in. How did this band pick up and keep going? How did they make an actually-pretty-good album in the post-Hooky world?
The other thing that strikes me is just how… childish almost everyone in the book is. Ian is gone, of course, but Hooky, Bernard, Stephen, Rob, Tony they all seem utterly irresponsible and immature. Not so much Gillian and Alan Erasmus (the unsung hero of Factory Records, is my theory). I’ve always been aware of the utter shambolic nature of Factory Records but, god. It did not have to be that way! The Haçienda didn’t lose 18 million pounds (!!) because it took a while to catch on, easily over half that money was lost to bad management. Needless bad management. You can be a legendary club and be well-managed! The two are not mutually exclusive!
I spent many a decade worshipping these people. I modeled more than one company on them. I feel midly mortified about that now. They had no idea — no idea — what they were doing.
The other thing that strikes me about New Order is that it really feels like they have no idea how or why they make good music together. It really must be a curse. Fact is, no solo output by any of them is half as good as New Order. Electronic has its moments, so does The Other Two, but New Order is that perfect artistic mystery: a collaboration greater than the sum of its parts, a collaboration that exists and flourishes even as the humans involved grow to loathe each other. Really is an enigma.
My childhood best friend Frank got in touch with me, asked if I had any interest in meeting him in New York this December. I told him to keep me apprised — he’s not sure of his dates yet. Mentioned it to Emma and she said “you might as well go for a couple of days” (as opposed to my famous one-night-only trips) since she sort of misses her mornings with Jane and the alone time. So.. maybe NYC in December? Anything worth doing? Anyone got a free ticket to LCD or some other show? Drop a line if you’re going to be around.
Of course this then introduces a whole mystery as to how I will get there. I would love to drive but it’s maybe a hassle in a giant electric truck. But I don’t want to drive an ICE car anymore what am I a farmer? Maybe I’ll just suck it up and fly but get this — people still get Covid! All the time! So many of my friends have it right now! It is getting so tedious. I’ve made it this far it’d be so dumb to get it now, but I am also so done with this but also I sort of like my house and can be very good at sticking my head in the sand and pretending I don’t actually want to leave and wow I should see a therapist about this or some shit. Did you read the Three Body Problem books? Do you remember the Wallfacer? I feel like the Wallfacer. Drop your guard for one second and it all comes crashing down. But all you want to do is drop your guard. And keeping your guard up forever is increasingly crazy-making.
I did my annual Thankful list, and it was as silly as ever, because there’s always just so much to be Thankful for. I’m most excited that Jane got into the habit as well. She’s been very into lists lately and she made a thankful list. She is most thankful for:
Yummy Food
Family
Kitties
Toys
Books
Crafting
So, another thing I am thankful for is in this five-day break from GMHHAY I have a good list of topics of things to write about, which is nice. Always less stressful to write a daily email when you’re not flying blind, starting an edition with literally no idea where things are going. Think I’m gonna wait one more day before I dig into that list, though. I also have a nice backlog of photos and Jane photos for sprinkling throughout the editions, also another time-consuming task. Oh man I have so many good photos for you this week.
One thing I did not do, though, is make much of a dent in the playlists, still making those by the seat of my pants.
Justa mix for you today. Lotta stuff I’ve been listening to this week. That fanclubwallet song came on when I was driving the other day and I’d forgotten about them. Catchy tune. The new Smashing Pumpkins is not terrible. I’ve said this before haven’t I? Well, it’s not. Leah Callahan was an old Archenemy Records artist with her bands Turkish Delight and Betwixt and a good friend. She’s put out three records this year, and they are great. Mary Cassidy was the lead singer of a criminally underrated 90’s English band called Lulabox, that had one album and one EP. They were slagged off as sounding derivative to Curve but a) who cares? Curve were awesome, and b) they were more than that. I wish to god that album and single were on the streaming services, but they’re still not (except Youtube of course). She doesn’t seem to have done much else, but she did an album with a soul guitarist named Chris Standring who’s been around forever but about whom I know nothing. Golden Dawn Arkestra are one of the greatest live bands in the world — more bands need an old man wizard with a staff standing in the back of their band not doing much besides magic — but I confess this new record is a bit of a curveball for me.
Talk tomorrow. Hope your holiday was lovely. XOXO Gossip Girl.
Emma
Jane
Janet, Mom and Val, Lucas and Matt
Frrriiiiends
Fantastic GMHHAY readers
Witi slack and Fake slack man you guys have been keeping me sane
Timehoppers
Corn bread
Turkey
Stuffing
Mashed potatoes
Andor
No Man’s Sky
Civilization V
Joe Biden
Plex
YouTube
Wall Control
The midterms not being completely fucked
Gardening
My sweet new truck
Guitar pedals (for Nick) (new song name)
Baking with Jane
Compost
This amazing house
That our neighbors are good people
Jane’s reading skillz
Brown Bear
Hello Kitty
Spiritualized
Pat Benatar
Lionel Ritchie
Our sweet newly rebuilt dock
The Ukrainians
Kryzstof Keislowski
Andor
My Cpap machine
That I get a headache every time I bend over I just love that so much
Grape trellis
Ricardo and Ricardo and crew
Sampson Boar Company
The Pethericks
Perkins Builder Bros
RR Buildings
Hannah Lee Dugan
Isabel Paige
Epic Gardening
Next Level Gardening
Kara Swisher and Elon Musk arguing
The fact that SBF and Elon are both such liars no one knows if FTX owns any of Twitter
Tankless hot water heaters so I can wash dishes forever
Cats cradle
William Gibson
[it goes on like this for like 50 more lines]
Chores are the siblings of errands and I love them too! (my personal trello board has a label that is chore/errand. easily my most used label 😁)