Goos morning! Hello there, friend, how’s tricks? Good weekend? Get some chores done? I do hope so. I do hope so. I got some chores done. Not as many as normal, because we had some friends visiting! Always a lovely time. My friends Nick, Meghan and Henry came to visit from Wilmington one last time before school starts for Henry next week. ‘Twas a lovely time. They stayed in the new house. We ate the aforementioned Spicy Pineapple Jalapeño Doritos and they were by far the most disgusting special-flavor snack any of us have ever have. BUT I also discovered these new Dinamita Chili Lemon Taquito Doritos and my god they are delicious. You win some, you lose some. I’m sure the ecological ramifications are catastrophic (don’t tell me) but one of the only fun things about this late-period doom-capitalism is limited edition flavors.
Nick helped me un-crate the greenhouse and lay the foundation out on the ground so we can get an exact size and placement. Feeling good about where it’s going. He also helped me pick out an amp for those speakers I bought last that estate sale ages ago. They’ve been sitting in my office over there with no amp for them for a while now. Excited to finally get that sorted.
And of course this is not to say I didn’t get any chores done. The friends visit was to get a bunch of visits into their favorites in the region before school starts, so they were out and about a fair amount and I took that time to plant my seedlings for the fall. Planted some box choy, broccoli, cauliflower, some more fall tomatoes, and a bunch of snow peas. Got my seed starting setup all set up over at the new house.
Also finally got all the smoke detectors swapped out at the main house — a project I’ve been working on for like a month, I swear to god. So much ladder climbing in no shoes, ouch. I could write a thesis now about how First Alert supposedly has a universal mounting bracket but the combination smoke detector/carmon monoxide detector ones don’t quite fit in the mount and that is very, very annoying. I may have swore once or twice.
Sunday after they left I basically spent the whole afternoon dealing with network stuff at the new house. These Asus routers are being finicky, and two of them fell off the mesh network. A ton of devices were trying to connect to the routers not on the network, which was, of course, rendering them inoperable. So I got one of them back on the network, disconnected the outdoor one for the back yard, which I could not figure out what was happening with. Then I got the HomePod minis back on the network. THEN I got the Rinnai hot water heater on the network, so I can turn the recycling on and off from my phone, which is very convenient. Then I got the new Trans thermostat hooked up to the network, so I can control and monitor the HVAC system from my phone, which is also very convenient. Don the electrician came back and we got the outlet on the front porch installed, so now there’s a speaker out there so I can listen to music properly when I am gardening, which is very, very exciting.
I also used Liquid Plumbr or however you spell it on the shower in my bathroom and it worked! Haven’t tried that stuff in over a decade I had bad luck with it before but this time it worked and I chalk up the difference to actually reading the directions.
My finger is fucked. Jane and I were doing a fake tug-of-war on a rag and something snapped or clicked or popped or something, and the two finders on my left hand that hurt suddenly hurt a lot, lot, lot more and now, three days later, they still hurt that much. I am not happy about this. It is bad. I can’t use them at all. I was really hoping to make it to October, when my physical is scheduled, to deal with my messed up hand and nine-months-old tennis elbow, but I think I may have to schedule an appointment in the interim.
My insurance exam is this Friday and I am feeling good about that, though. Which means they will probably reject me.
Jane’s new principal called and read an email into my phone, apparently while driving in a car or something. There was insanely loud background noise, sounded like a turbofan next to her head. At one point I think I heard an animal wail in the background it was really weird. I was frantically taking notes without realizing she had also sent this email, verbatim, to my inbox and I did not need to do this at all. These people really want you to, like, quit your job and dedicate your life to this school. There is an assessment for Jane tomorrow, then there’s a Zoom to answer questions, then there’s an open house and my god we have lives here, this is already too much. All you parents who have already gone through this are chuckling and that’s fine but I do not like it one bit nosiree.
Two more weeks from today.
On Saturday evening I told Jane that once school started she was going to be a big girl and that on the weekend she could get up whenever she wanted and go potty and get dressed herself and come find me and asked if she wanted to do a practice run the next morning. She said yes. And sure enough, Sunday morning, 8:30, she came down the stairs to the basement where I was watching a video about flooring. It was great! She climbed onto the sofa next to me and got under the blanket and snuggled. I figure this is a win win because even if she gets up before me on the weekend, she will just find me in bed and come in and snuggle and that has never happened so I am just fine with that. Also I am tired of cajoling her to go potty and get dressed in the morning, so any days I can avoid that are winning ones.
I’m less worried this week about the waking her up two and a half hours early for school. I think we will adapt pretty well. Fingers crossed. I’ll probably start easing her into it the weekend before. I guess. I don’t know. Kindergarten is dumb school is dumb. School was dumb when I was a kid and its still dumb now nothing has changed dumb dumb dumb.
Daddy Jane Dance Party was great this weekend, we were accompanied by Nick and Meghan and Henry on Friday and Saturday night so that was really fun and Jane just loved it and on Sunday night she said “why are there no people dancing with us today.” We got some good weird songs in this weekend, she finally let me play some Sinéad, we got some Transmission Vamp in, a different Samia song, Jennie from Blackpink’s new solo son, “Solo,” Careless Whisper, Tom Waits (hahaha she did not like that one bit).
Moody and quiet playlist today. Mostly old, but some exciting new stuff. New Tricky, new Blake Mills, new Crime and the City Solution! That is exciting.
We are almost done with this Neubauten journey. I think I have 3-4 albums left. If all goes well, I can finish today. I am ready to listen to something else. Apologies if you’ve sent me something to listen to and I have not gotten to it yet. Soon!
Until tomorrow!