Good morning! Hello there! Happy Monday! I do not particularly like Mondays, but I do like that it is an easy GMHHAY, because I get to tell you about all the things I did on the weekend. I get to reminisce about those lovely days of doing chores, untethered from my computer. Man, I used to love being tethered to my computer. Infinite possibilities in that little box. And I still don’t mind it, being a writer and all. But it’s good to get away from it too.
‘Twas a lovely weekend, got a lot done. Picked out a greenhouse. Haven’t pulled the trigger on the order yet, but I think I will do that today. The greenhouse people have a sale going on, plus a deal on top of that on a unit that is exactly what I want from a buyer that backed out. Works out to about half of what I had budgeted, which is really nice. I don’t have the land prepped yet, so it may arrive before I’m ready, but, you know. Don’t want to miss the deal. I am very excited.
And it’s none too soon because on my gardening shift this weekend, I discovered that squirrels (presumably) had ripped open completely the hoophouse netting and the whole thing was an open door. I was pretty sure some tomatoes were going missing, but now I know why. My god, those squirrels are devious. They will probably find a way to get into the greenhouse too in the end, huh. Well. Let em try. Let em try. Look. I don’t want to turn into Bill Murray in Caddyshack here. Live and let live, I say. But there are limits, Mr. Squirrel. You crossed a line.
Met up with the Neurodiversity Affirming Pediatric Speech Therapist and she is in on the office rental, which is very exciting. She brought her husband and kids over, they were all swell. Two boys, three and seven. Lotta energy. I got the insurance all set on the place, it was a bit of a challenge, no one would insure the office as a commercial space and the home as a vacation home. They’d do it if we lived in the home, they’d do it if the tenant rented the whole place, but they did not like the fact that the house is just a guest house. So I had to swap out the policy and get a commercial policy for the whole place, which, honestly, is probably the right thing. She wanted to let the kids occasionally run around and we got a hill and a pond and whatnot, so best to play it safe.
She’s moving in the first of August but I told her she could start bringing stuff over the 25th. I was using the space as my storage unit, and my garlic and wheat drying area, so I had to get all my stuff out of there. She’s only renting two rooms (plus the bathroom) of the office, leaving one room, a large closet, and a stair landing for me and I managed to get all of my stuff into that area. It’s essentially unusable as an office at the moment, but I do have a plan for a good storage area in the attic once that is done so it’s only temporary. Also got a new lock installed for her.
Anyway, very excited to have her here. Very excited to help someone out who is doing some good, and giving all these kids a lovely place to learn. Some real Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters vibes.
Next week’s project is to run some Cat6 cable from the server closet, upstairs, down through the crawlspace and into the office so I can get her her own dedicated wifi. I bought the cable and router just didn’t have quite enough time to set it up.
Finally got around to putting together my new Miter Saw and its stand, that was fun. The stand is awesome, super durable and I love it, but it had some problem with the cable release to lower the stand. So I started looking on Youtube and this one home improvement YouTuber had made a real cause out of the quirks of this stand. He loved it but was having the same problems I was. He’s made three videos on the subject! Anyway, in the last video he tells his viewers about a solution that one of his viewers left in the comments. So he named the solution after the viewer, Gary. “The Gary Maneuver.” It involved unhooking both cables and swapping them to the opposite latches so that the cable unlatching the stand to lower it is in the higher position, thus pulls further. I tried a few other fixes first, no go, so then I attempted The Gary Maneuver and it worked just great. Stand raises and lowers perfectly now. Thank you, mysterious Gary of the Internet, who helped me with my Dewalt DWX726 rolling miter saw stand.
Other tasks this weekend: Moved my tiger tapestry over to the new house to put on the wall behind the tiger statue I got at the estate sale. Tigers! Installed the last of the new smart locks on the new house — for the crawlspace. Took out the compost. Made the waffles. Refilled my pills. Bought the groceries. Assembled the sweet new table Emma bought for our house, and moved the one we were using in the dining nook over to the new house to be its dining nook table. Changed the air filter in the bedroom air filter woo hoo boy that was exciting. Chores chores chores! Chores!
I feel like I am forgetting some big task, but it’s not crossed off on my to do list, which only serves to reinforce the rule: if you did a big task that’s not on your to do list, once its done, write it down and then immediately cross it off, so you can have that satisfaction.
At some point this weekend I sucked it up and got on my knees for two seconds on a wood floor to do some chore, and my god, it hurt so bad. What the fuck is up with knees? I used to be able to, you know, sit up on my knees with no problem. Jane does it without a thought. But now? I might be tougher in a lot of ways, but put me on my knees for two seconds on a hard surface and I will want to die. It’s ridiculous. They still hurt. Fucking knees.
Maybe this is why all this kings of old made people get on their knees. Cuz those old-timey people were getting old in there, like, 20s and 30s, so getting on your knees back then, at that age, hurt like it hurts me now.
Oh and I won diamond league again in Duolingo, and I did it without even trying. In your face, Space Coyote. Now I gotta deal with those insufferable “tournament” people again, who, you know, really care. Whole family’s still cranking away at Duolingo. Jane has slowed down but she keeps up. Slow progression as she gets to more complex stuff. It’s interesting watching her learn, it’s a different approach than mine. She listens to the stories over and over, really absorbs them. Notices the new words they use in the stories, even if they haven’t taught those words to us yet. I don’t even notice those words, certainly don’t retain them. I have to hear a word ten, twenty times before I absorb it. But she absorbs a word instantly. Not always, but sometimes. Who knows why some words click and others don’t. Learning is mysterious.
Also we hit a milestone where Jane taught Emma and I something we didn’t know: that the three main magnetic elements were Iron, Cobalt and Nickel. I guessed Iron, Tin and Lead. Only got one right. She is very into the elements again. Wait did I tell you about the awesome thing where I defined “matter” for her, and once she got it she ran around pointing at everything saying “matter!” Oh yeah, that was the best. “Matter! Matter! Matter! But love is not matter love is part of the spiritual world.” We also touched a bit on photos, particle wave theory and the Large Hadron Collider, because child physics education seems to be a bit wonky at the moment, they still teach them that protons, neutrons and electrons are the smallest building blocks of matter, and then promptly start teaching them about quarks and neutrinos which… are smaller building blocks of matter. She was reasonably confused so I had to sort of explain the history of their discovery which inevitably lead to particle accelerators.
She sort of lost interest there.
Elements. That’s her jam.
Had Friday and Sunday off from Jane so we only had one Daddy Jane Dance Party. It was a pretty good one. The Cure live at Glastonbury 2023 with “Burn,” Carly Rae Jepson, Charlie XCX, Taylor live on Graham Norton, St. Vincent and Samia. Can’t complain.
OH and this guy I subscribe to who lives in Liverpool went to the Sheffield Pulp Shows and posted a bunch of videos from them, including one of a brand new song. And I was the very first view on it. Pretty excited about that. Still one has 1.2k views. And it’s very well shot! If you’re a Pulp fan, check out the new song: “Hymn of the North.”
Art camp made Jane sick and so on Friday she had to skip it, so I drove to art camp to pick up her art. It started pouring while I was inside waiting for the teens to go find her art. After I got the art I stood under the overhang at the entrance for a while and thought I could wait the rain out, but I am too impatient that was never going to happen, so I made a run for it the 20 yards or so to the parking garage. Got completely soaked and just as I was maybe one or two steps from the parking garage I slipped and fell on some very smooth tile flooring and unintentionally did the splits. Gave me a pretty big bruise on my knee, not exactly on the same place as the bruise from kneeling on a hard floor, but about two inches to the right. Lovely. Did really loosen up my hamstring, though. My left let now feels much more limber than my right.
Anyway, Jane’s art output the week of art camp was arguably less than the amount of art that she makes on any other week. So this art camp thing was kinda a bust. And now she’s sick. Well, I don’t know about this morning but she’s been sick for three days now. Which means we’re all so looking forward to kindergarten it really is something that we all just endure our kids getting sick constantly and them getting us sick and it just goes on for, what? Ten years. I am not a fan of this idea.
So now we’re back to considering just skipping the whole thing.
Gah.
Justa mix for you, mostly new. Couple recent (ish), last couple years jams to fill it out. Lotta songs that start slow and then pick up. Hard to mix. Plus one completely-out-of-place song production-wise. See if you can spot it.
All right talk tomorrow!