Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1455
Property tax, Waffle House, Attic work, Mom plans, Pillpack update, Jane loving OMD
Good morning, happy Monday no sorry Mondays can go screw. God I hate getting up this early. At least next week I have off from this misery. I mean, not from work or anything, just from waking up at 6:21 in the morning. For the birds, I tell ya.
Thank you for all your kind words about my mom. Lots of people dropping a line, that was nice. That is nice. Looks like the service will be in June. I will go up there in about three weeks to help my sister deal with things. Which means I don’t have to miss Jane’s spring break, which is nice. Which means Boston next week. Which means all in all way too much time away from home, but I will manage. We were planning on going to Alaska in June anyway, whole family, so that is “convenient.”
It ebbs and flows, this awareness, this sadness about my mom. So many different emotions at different times. It is easier when I am alone, which is sorta counterproductive. Telling Jane was no fun, but she did great. I learned later Emma coached her through it, but I am thankful. Picture perfect, everything you ever envisioned when you have to tell your child some awful news. Sympathy and hugs, even if she has already forgotten about it.
This, of course, is one of the paradoxes of loss like this: everyone else forgets about it far quicker than you ever will.
Oh Pillpack update: I called them to cancel the pills since, well, obviously we’re not gonna need them anymore. Recall my complaint previously that Amazon makes you call on a telephone to cancel Pillpack. The woman was very nice. Had lived in Palmer, AK for a while. And of course it’s very hard to do your retention efforts when the person on the phone says “no she’s dead she’s not going to need pills anymore.” I was on such a high after that I figured I’d go ahead and call AT&T, who also makes you use a telephone to cancel your internet service. Same thing: no, I don’t need it, my mom died, she lived in that house, she’s not going to be turning it back on. This was barely true, but spiritually true enough. Also worked like a charm. You could hear the dude starting his retention speeches and realizing naw, that one isn’t gonna work. Gotta use this more often.
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Kinda an abrupt subject change there, forgive me. In my defense I changed the traditional exclamation point at the end of that Slack pull quote to a more somber period. I did not, however, change the first one. We gotta move on.
We are listening to some band called Water From Your Eyes this morning. Everyone’s Crushed is the name of the album. I was exposed to this band by accidentally listening to a remix album of this album, not realizing it was a remix album. It had one or two moments of brilliance on it so I figured I should listen to the original. I like it, it is unique and kinda interesting, but it is also a bit.. I dunno. It does not flow super well. Bit too herky jerky for my taste as a whole album mayhaps.
Just got our property tax reappraisal and my god. Chore House is fine, barely budgets, just a smidge lower than what we bought it for, so fair play. But our main house? Sixty percent increase? In five years? That is insane. I do not need this in my life. We are gonna end up being one of those families priced out because of property tax. I feel like I need to fight it just to, like, keep em on their toes. I do not think this place is worth that much. It’s $200k over the Zestimate for crying out loud. It is nearly 3x what we bought it for ten years ago and I know it’s been a doozy of a decade but come on.
Property Tax is a bit of a tricky one for me because I fuckin love paying taxes and love government services, but property tax does not care how rich you are or how much money you make. When I make a ton of money in a year I don’t mind paying tax because I made a ton of money that year. But this Property Tax bill is basically the floor, going forward, for the rest of my life. And I do not want to keep making a ton of money my whole life I want to stop working at some point. And this is my home come on. How can a county price you out of your home. N.B. we are not being priced out of our home at this time. But boy I can see a future where that happens at this rate.
Here let’s just whip up a little calculator.
Yeah I dunno about you, but $50k a year (adjusted for inflation!) at traditional retirement, and $160k a year in my final years seems a bit insane for property tax. Especially since the felonious duo are planning on gutting Social Security. Planning on, lol. It is happening right now.
Splendid.
Good weekend, got a lot done in the attic. Major milestone, actually. Well, a minor one. I got the little nook where my control center is/was refloored. So I can put everything back into the nook. This is more of an emotional milestone, I suppose. In terms of re-flooring the entire existing floor, I am maybe 60% done? And in terms of the whole floor, maybe 40%? But the part of the floor that doesn’t need the old flooring torn up will go much faster. Still, though. May of the pieces were small but I got a record ten pieces of flooring down this weekend. Yay me.
Got a little gardening done, nothing much. Watered the seedlings, they seem to be doing well but probably need to be watered more than once a week. Did some tweaking to the drip irrigation system it was a little off. Refreshed another bed with fresh soil. I am out of shredded cardboard mulch so that process will be beginning again that is kind of exciting I find shredding cardboard very Zen.
This weekend Jane discovered she really likes OMD. Like we went through The Best of OMD, the seminal compilation album that played a big part of my 11th grade, and she already knew eight different songs on the album. She is very excited about OMD. I told her they still tour. Hopefully we can all go see OMD I haven’t seen them in maybe 12 years and they were so good. That would be lovely.
Also Emma caught her singing along to Sisters of Mercy and we saw her singing along to “Pictures of You” by the Cure this weekend, so that was pretty heartwarming.
And we introduced Jane to Waffle House this weekend and my god she loves it so much. She is very excited about a restaurant dedicated to waffles. And they gave her a hat and she loves it. Emma and I used to go there a ton pre-Jane and pre-pandemic, when we first moved here. But then we discovered other restaurants and the novelty wore off and since pandemic we’d not been there. Place was exactly the same, very reassuring. Except for the $0.50 egg surcharge and the 20% to go order surcharge and like four other surcharges. Probably need a Waffle House inflation index to go with the Waffle House storm index. Trump take Egg and all that.
Got an ambient playlist for you. Listening to the new Clair Rousay/More Eaze album right now and it is sparse and beautiful as ever. Added the recent Laudadio banger “A prayer for those who die online” that unfortunately keeps coming up in mine and Nick’s life. Nick’s ambient career really taking off it is pretty crazy. New Seefeel is pretty solid. I checked in with Lustmord recently after a decade or so, boy he does a lot of soundtrack work, even touched on the mainstream for a moment there with the First Reformed soundtrack my god that film was so good. Didn’t realize it was him that had done the soundtrack, or forgot.
Okay let’s go out there and have a week.
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.