Good morning. Hello. How are you? #884
Achewood, tattoos, dad dreams, road trips, relationship tests, DJDP.
Good morning! Hello there. How are you? Wassup, as the frogs say. I think I said that before. I was reading this interview with my old friend Chris Onstad who is bringing Achewood back via Patreon. He said that one of the reasons he quit after 1,500 issues, and all the blogs (I had forgotten about the blogs, so good) was that he would be working on an issue and he’d realize he had made the same joke before. It’s very very hard to keep writing original stuff after so many issues! I am sympathetic. It especially doesn’t help when your memory is going.
Speaking of memory Emma and I had a recent episode of simultaneous invention, or maybe it was psychic joint invention. In any case, we both realized what we wanted our first tattoos to be: Memento-like reminders on our arms of all the things we want to remember when our memory goes. So we can look at our arms frequently and remember certain things. Of course, the question is what. I do think a bunch of basic politeness and hygeine stuff would be useful: say please and thank you. bathe. get exercise. That sort of thing. Would it be useful to put your spouse and kids names? Unclear. Would having their name even help me from, say, confusing Jane and Val? No idea. Small portraits of them? Now we’re getting too complex.
Being a tattoo noob I don’t know if I just ruined the whole thing by telling people in advance of getting the tattoo. I doubt we’re the first people to have thought of this, though, and like I said, sometimes you’re struggling for content.
Had a long dream about my dad last night. It was sad. I miss him. My parents were living in a very large, urban apartment building in Paris that had concierge service for the elderly. Damn. It was nice, not gonna lie. It had very plush white carpets, though, which really isn’t very Parisian.
Sean is now gone and all our visitors are gone and its no one but us chickens here now. Sean and I made a second trip to a Target — this time in Burlington which, if a town can feel Republican, this one felt Republican. We had the foresight to order the figure for pickup, so they would either tell us that the order was ready or they would tell us they didn’t have the figure before we drove 40 minutes to pick it up. And it all worked! Sean got his special Target-only prototype Mandalorian action figure, and it even had the purple head, which is the one Sean wanted don’t ask me. I’m happy to have helped, though, and it’s a good time spending an hour in a car with Sean. He is a good conversationalist. This is distinct from spending, say, 30 hours in a car with him on a tour, to be clear.
You will be happy to know that in the end Emma found four baby birds, reunited them with her mother, and got them all set up in a temporary nest on the ground behind my garden storage shed. And then a day or two later, all the birds were gone, and I am absolutely positive it was not some sort of predator because my cameras would have caught that. And they were almost grown enough to fly when this whole incident happened. So it is a safe assumption that they all flew away. And I will let mama bird rebuild her nest up in the rafters of the porch and not knock it down, accidentally thinking it is a bee hive, from here on out. Unless I forget again. Memory call back, here.
My tennis elbow lingers. Yesterday I stopped by Janet’s to help her get her Mach-E charging again. She had fixed it herself, but she asked about my tennis elbow because she once had it. She asked if I was using the brace at night when I slept. I said I wasn’t. She said that was key, that when she did that, hers went away in a week. And here I am on week five or so. I figured it would be absurdly uncomfortable to wear at night but I decided to suck it up. Turned out it was actually completely fine. So I’ve been wearing this dumb thing for five weeks now, and not wearing it when it matters, and if this tennis elbow goes away in a week now I am going to feel so dumb. But, then, I will be consoled by my tennis elbow going away, so I suspect I will live. Tune in next Wednesday for the exciting (hopefully) conclusion.
I have today off and Emma and I are going to Silver Spring, Maryland today while Janet watches Jane. We are going to see the opening date of the Sisters of Mercy. Sadly my friend Todd will not be in town, as he had to leave town for work yesterday. We are also going to stop at an Ikea what fun. Long debate about whether to take the electric truck or Emma’s and I left the decision to Emma as I went to bed but I think for a number of reasons we’ll probably take hers. Mine’s not fully charged. I might have to do some work tomorrow. Emma is still scared to drive the truck, though I maintain that rural highways are the best place to get a feel for it with some nice easy driving.
Pretty excited about the show. Have no idea what to expect, really, even though I’ve seen them before a few times. Well, I do have one idea about what to expect: lots and lots and lots of fog. I will be sad if they don’t have an absolute shit ton of fog.
Also had a meeting with my partners at the pool contracting business. That was fun. Seems there is some possibility of me getting some lumber milled for the shiplap ceiling in the attic that I am going to try to remodel. That would be great. Those three dudes speak in a contracting lingo I do not know yet. I am learning a lot of new acronyms. Ricardo gave me a prep manual on getting your contractor’s license. That’ll be fun.
Here is a relationship test I came up with: Imagine I asked you the percentage of the time when there was a disagreement or misunderstanding, how often in the end it turned out that you were right vs your spouse? Is it 50-50? Is it 60-40 with you being right more often? Okay, now put that number aside. Next let’s ask your partner the same thing. What would they say? Would they say 50-50 as well? Or 40-60 with you being right more often? Or would there be disagreement and they would say it’s 60-40 in their favor?
Now take those two numbers and do some math on them. And the closer the two numbers are to agreement — regardless of whether one person is actually right more often — the healtheir the relationship. It’s not about each party being right the exact same amount of time. It’s about each party agreeing, in theory, about the split.
Daddy Jane Dance Party last night. It was a pretty short one, due to some logistics around getting Sean to the airport. Jane expressed some mild disappointment at it being short today and that was nice. We did Haim, Cannons, Robyn, Goldrapp, Madonna. I wonder what I will dance like the next time I have to go to an actual dance club. Has DDJP permanently effected my dancing? I suspect it has.
Moody and quiet today. Sorry I forgot the link yesterday. A man can only do so much, you know? Anyway, today is all new stuff. So much good music. I just keep listening to more and more new stuff and it’s hard to find time to give albums a second listening. Excited for this road trip to listen to older stuff that’ll be nice.
I will almost certainly be missing tomorrow’s edition. Never say never, but… it’ll be tight. In hindsight maybe I should have saved the fiction dumb for Thursday, but I think Tuesday is gonna be fiction day because that’s my craziest day at work and I need the brain space.
So, I will see you Friday. Probably.
i had a dream about my dad last night, too. those dreams are bittersweet. i love “visiting” with him in that way, but i always wake missing him. this morning i had my favorite sidekick, brüno the dog, to usher me through my grief. loving someone/something else helps ♥️
your dad dream sounds tough—sending a hug to you . boy howdy, am i not looking forward to that life stage.
i *neeeeed* to go dancing with you at man ray.
enjoy your road trip! xo