Good morning. Hello. How are you? #928
We bought a Greenhouse, I got stuff done, Jane danced, school sickness
Good morning. Hello. How are you? All well? How are your hands? Not too arthritic? Is that Australian creme helping them at all? No, mine neither. “Empty bowl guarantee” huh. Okay. Sure.
I bought a greenhouse last night. My god, it was so much money. I mean, it was a great deal — it was almost 50% off of list price. Someone had placed an order for it, and then not bought it, so it was just sitting there taking up room in their warehouse, there was already a sale, etc. etc. But still. It was so much money. I am mildly freaking out. What if I don’t like it. What if this gardening thing turns out to be a fad. I mean, sure, I’ve been doing it for like five, six years now, but what if, what if. Well, I guess the answer to that is that if it turns out to be a fad, there will be a really fucking cool looking solarium next to the new house. I can live with that. It is going to be awesome.
It is also going to be huge and a giant pain to take delivery of. I have to take delivery of it to my main house, three pallets, and then I have to slowly, one by one, somehow get them to the other house, because it’s coming LTL liftgate delivery on an 18 wheeler, which means that they are not going to be able to take it up the driveway.
Also I’m totally not ready for it, I haven’t cleared the brush yet, where it goes, or gotten it graded flat, or put the pad down, or built the supporting wall, all of which I still need to do. And get the permit. And draw the drawings. Man I have a lot to do.
And then once it’s there, I have to start dismantling the hoop house, somehow, or more to the point, somehow dismantling the Birdies beds that are in the hoop house and getting them over to the new house. And moving the dirt. I have to move a ton of dirt. This is going to be absurd. I should really rent some sort of tool to move all this dirt, but I hate the idea of using gas tools I just hate it so much it is so dumb it bothers me to an irrational degree except its not irrational the planet is dying, etc. etc. So I guess I’ll just manually shovel, mm, imagonnasay 3 cubic yards of dirt. And that’s if don’t move the other five birdies beds, which I am torn about. I kind of want to, but I also kind of don’t.
Oh man, it is all happening.
I also okayed the HVAC upgrade/installation/ductwork at the other house to get the attic included in the HVAC envelope, get all the duct work. pushed to the eaves so I can finish the attic.
Oh man it’s all happening.
And I signed and paid the first deposit on the roof a week or so ago, so that’s happening too.
Scary! Money! Scary!
Yesterday was one of those days where you have the time to do your work, a finite amount of work, an amount of work that can be done in the time in which you have to do it, and all that you need is the energy to do the work. I am happy to say that I succeeded, I got everything done, but it was by no means an easy feat. It was a constant battle. A lesser me would have given up. After lunch I came back to my office and rather than sitting back down at my desk I went right over to the comfy chair and I sat in it and curled up and started looking at Threads, my preferred Twitter replacement, and thought to myself “you know, I think I did enough today. I could just stop and take a little nap here.” Reader, I had not, in fact, done enough for the day. I had done maybe one of the four tasks that I needed to do.
But I rallied. Rally, I did. I got up from that chair, sat back down at my computer and did two more things that were on my work to-do list.
If I am being honest, I did one more thing, then thought to myself “okay, that is enough. That is a plausibly honest day of work. You don’t need to do anymore.” And then I proceeded to fart around on the internet for, mm, I’ma gonna say thirty minutes or so, before The Guilt kicked in and said “No, Rick. You need to finish this shit today. You have calls all day tomorrow, and just enough calls Wednesday to make it useless as a day to get anything else done. You have Friday off. It is now or never.”
“But I don’t waaanaaa” I said to myself.
“Too friggin bad.” I said to myself.
And I mustered every ounce of energy like I was running a marathon or doing something actually difficult and I got. That. Shit. Done.
I am unreasonably proud for having gotten a normal, reasonable amount of work done in a single day. You don’t know how hard it was.
Yes I do realize I have absolutely no reason to be proud of myself, this shit was table stakes. But that’s what’s so impressive! I could have let it slide! No one would have come for me, nothing would have broken! It just would have slowed us down a little bit. Which means the consequences for being lazy were so low it made it almost impossible to resist.
I want a medal. Medals as a service. You press a button on your phone when you did something heroic in your own little corner of the world and a medal arrives. I am Gen X but I want to be coddled, dammit.
So a ton of you wrote me yesterday about my concerns about Jane being sick when she goes to school. I gotta say! It was not encouraging! “It gets better after a few years” was about the most reassuring thing someone told me. Years! Most people were like “yeah that sucked, being sick all the time for years and years.” Then of course people are like “well, you know, once she builds up her immunity it gets better.” But, I mean, *I* went to public school! I got sick all the time! Then I was out there in the world traveling and cavorting with you dirty, dirty dogs for, like, thirty years, getting sick on the reg. But Jane goes to one freakin summer camp and gets me sick immediately. This “immunity build up” thing is clearly a lie! It is not going to help her in her adult years! Lies!
A few years ago I read this book by that Michel Houllebecq guy. Not gonna link apparently he’s problematic but anyway I figured I should know about him and I read a single book by him, I picked his sci fi book because sci fi and it was… actually kind of awesome. Humanity had schism’d into two types of humans: those who live and work out in the air and in the world and were now sort of back-to-their-roots kind of primitives and those who stayed in their houses at their computers and they were in these Feudal estate-type bubbles scattered throughout the planet and never left their bubbles to go see other people they all just excited in their conditioned bubbles.
I think about that book a lot. A lot.
Daddy Jane Dance Party last night, we were running a little late because I got sucked into a Youtube video about Polaris Razers. So we had an all-request DDJP where Jane picked all the music. She picked the Linda Lindas, Taylor, Katy (California Gurls again), Blackpink and Robyn.
Not terrible!
Man I love that girl. Parenting. What a freakin trip. She’s five and Emma and I are already freaking out about college. Never leave us, Jane.
Got a psych playlist for you. Sure, 30 minutes of it are taken up by two songs, but that’s just psych for you, innit? I made it a bit longer in compensation. All new stuff. Freak out! Very into this Horze band I know nothing about them.
Talk tomorrow!