Good morning. Hello. How are you? #856
Optimism today. Trump, of course. Walmart. Important record crate update. Dreams of a Sonic Youth reunion. Awesome Japanese pruners. Cherry Blossoms. Doritos. Spanish Snuggles.
Good morning! Hello there! How are you? Happy Friday? All well? Me? I feel great. Been up for two hours. Got a lot done. In retrospect, maybe writing this thing first thing in the morning is not the best idea for engaging, optimistic content. Please factor this into consideration, future, when judging the literary work that is GMHHAY. I wrote this thing mostly at 7AM and I am not a morning person. Sorry about yestereday’s curmudgeonliness. I’m gonna be much better today, promise. Of course, I haven’t actually looked at my notepad with topic prompts, so who knows. It might be apocolyptic.
Oh right Trump got indicted last night. Man I watched a lotta MSNBC last night not gonna lie. Well, that is not particularly apocolyptic, it may even be considered “good,” though I am not exactly expecting the dude to go to jail over this. But I withold judgement until I read the indictment, which will apparently be unsealed Tuesday. Is it unprofessional to cancel all my departmental one-on-ones to sit and read the Trump indictment all day? Probably, huh? Alas.
I remain optimistic (see?) that Fawni Willis in Atlanta and Jack Smith in DC will also come through with indictments. I’m actually fairly confident in this now. I even think there’s a good chance that there will be a wildcard fourth indictment. Okay, well, I will put my money on three, I will be wrong once here. Don’t mistake this for a single shred of optimism that he will be convicted on any, serve any jail time, or this will interfere with his presidential campaign in any way. I suspect that will continue as the bonkers shitshow it is. There was a headline the other day “Trump instucts advisors to prepare for invasion of Mexico.” Like can you imagine working for someone like that, getting that as an instruction and, like, going for it? Who are these people?
Anyway, optimism. Went to the recycling center it was lovely the dudes were very nice it remains a mystery to me that there are always different people working there, even though I go at the same time every week. Do they have massive turnover? Do they rotate throughout the county? Inquiring minds want to know.
Oh I forgot to tell you I got a free breakfast at McDonald’s. I must have hit it exactly when they were transitioning from one drive-through window to two, so the woman at the window gave me my food and assumed I paid at window one, which was not open yet because it was like 6:50 or so. I stayed there a while waiting for her to realize but she just walked away so early bird gets the worm I guess.
Anyway, Walmart was fine. Nice workers, no new Blu Rays or Walmart Exclusive vinyl, accidentally bought another buttermilk that I don’t need whoops. I stole a pair of household tweezers for my sticky edibles and decided to replace them and wow Walmart has a lot of tweezers but none that are the kind you release to close not the kind you push to close. The cross ones. You know. This kind. The women working the self checkout were very concerned I was moving away because I was buying some packing materials. Sort of weirdly concerned. I mean, I see them every week, but… weird.
All right let’s peek at that old topic list and see if it’s too terrifying for this sunny Friday.
Oh yeah this isn’t terrible at all. I can do this. Mostly. I might skip a few.
A reader out west informs me that in Chilean Spanish, the verb for snuggle is “regalonear,” and a reader in New England informs me that there is a spanish word “acurrucar.” She tells me it is in the RAE. I don’t know what that means. Anyway, I stuck them both into my translation app and it says that “regalonear” means to spoil or to fuss over, so that is kind of close I can see how there may be a snuggly dialetical derivative (can you use “dialectical” in that way? What is the word for “of or pertaining to a dialect?”) The app tells me “acurrucar” means “to snuggle up” and now I am like WTF Apple translation app that seems to be exactly a thing I would want mentioned when I ask you the translation of snuggle.
I am sorry to inform you that the record crates from Lowe’s Hardware are the wrong size, they are too short and look weird next to the other ones. Thank god they were so cheap. Not gonna bother returning them because of shipping hassle — I already recycled the giant box — and carbon impact. I’m sure I’ll find a different use for them in the attic or something. This may seem like a pessimistic piece of news but it’s actually great news because there is now no other excuse to do what I’ve been thinking about for a while and my friend Katherine made explicit the other day: I am going to have to make my own. Which means I get to buy a big saw. Workshop table saw or sliding miter saw. Not sure which, but it is going to be very exciting who doesn’t need more saws in their life. I already have the router for the handles. Guess I’ll need a pin nailer gun too oh what fun I am so going to make my own record crates.
Been having a geography brain fart for about a week about the south-to-north order of the baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. I swear to god I have known the order of these three countries since I was like 12 or something but suddenly this week, while playing my map game, I keep swapping Latvia and Lithuania and assuming Latvia is the southernmost of the three. I do not mess up Estonia, which I credit to my friend Liisa, thank you Liisa. Anyway it’s always weird when you have these brain farts. They’re different from the ones where you can’t remember Stevie Nicks’ name for a few minutes because they last days or even a week or two, but eventually they go away. TODAY IS GOING TO BE THAT DAY. Optimism.
The cherry blossom tree it is great and gorgeous I hope you enjoy this picture of it. I mentioned this already, but do bear in mind that it was trimmed back pretty heavily this year so it doesn’t have the same explosion of size that it’s had in the past, which is kind of sad but I defer to the experts.
Semi-relatedly my seedlings are doing so-so. Only like 50% germination on the peppers, very spotty on the cucumbers. Basil and Tomatoes doing great though. I want to blame my daughter but I don’t think that’s the case. I think it is the spotty weather and inconsistent heat and watering I’ve really been lazy about it, but it’s fine, we will just plant more seeds into the ground. Probably two weekend from now? I don’t want them to freeze and there is always a late frost. Except this year because I am expecting it.
Semi-relatedly look at these amazing Japanes pruners I got. Did they cost an arm and a leg? yes. Are they the greatest thing to hold in your hand? Absolutely. Zero regrets. So good.
I have two more non-pessimistic notes in my topic list and neither is worthy of a full paragraph on their own unless I’m really milking things, but I am going to leave them here for you nonetheless:
I would be totally okay with a Sonic Youth reunion. They can totally sell out, it is totally fine. I would also be totally okay with there being significant amounts of tension in the band, and them barely talking to each other while on stage, well, you know what I mean, I’m sure Lee and Steve would just feel awkward but hopefully they are well-paid for this awkwardness. How would a Sonic Youth tour do, I wonder. Is it too soon? Could they full off a seven-figure festival headlinership? Probably in Europe, I imagine. Anyway, I want this to happen. Just once. Well, one tour. I miss them. I miss them so.
Emma and I were talking about Doritos and she was commenting how I eat pretty healthy these days except for my problem with two extremely weird, intense tasting junk foods; Diet Mountain Dew and Nacho Cheese Doritos. And I told her that I could still remember the exact moment I ate my first Nacho Cheese Dorito. I was standing in the living room of the my friend Mike’s house, sort of in the back of the living room by where the opening goes into the dining room and kitchen. Mike had just handed me one. It was 1983. It was revelatory. I have never been the same since.
Had last night off from Jane, she’s at Grammy’s, but today Emma is going to Raleigh to get her hair done so I have Jane all afternoon and we get to dinner alone together, cuz Emma will be late, so that will be fun. And it’s my shift at bedtime. Dancing hijinks will ensue. Better start picking out some songs.
Justa mix for you today. Starts out with an Ultra Vivid Scene song that’s been stuck in my head for a couple days, another old B52s song from that (now fading) re-obsession, and ends with the magnum opus of Catherine Wheel, since they seem to be heavily signaling they are going to do a reunion. Will it be one-or-two shows? Or a full Ride/Slowdive style runion that eventually makes its way to Cat’s Cradle? God, can you imagine. Haven’t seen them in ages. To see “Black Metallic” live one more time. Anyway, the rest of the mix is new stuff, lotta good stuff. New New Pornographers song is great! And I know I keep saying this, and I don’t want to say it, and you don’t want to hear it, but the new Smashing Pumpkins is really good. Love this new Momma album, very into some of the new Caroline Rose songs, etc etc etc it’s a good mix.
Happy Friday and have a lovely weekend!
Whoops forgot the playlist link today: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/17Udf6vqmnUJmyTPvA2bcR?si=4cf64754b725442f
lol, the RAE is la real academia española, which is the definitive linguistic authority for the spanish-speaking world.
that cherry tree is still gorgeous! (AND i look forward to your crate-making adventures!)