Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1558
The return of school refusal. Nine Inch Nails live, drilling a giant hole in the side of my house.
Hi hi hi. Foul mood this morning. Jane came down for school, had the slightest of coughs and, reader, I made a fatal error: “you feeling all right?,” I asked. “Or do you need to stay home.”
She was feeling just fine. But she sensed an opportunity and she seized it. However she has slightly enough morality to not actually lie about it and say she was feeling sick. However, suddenly she didn’t want to go to school.
And it remained that way all the way to school, all through the drop-off line, where she refused to go inside. Then I had to navigate the absolute garbage traffic to go around and get into the problem-solvers area so I did not hold up the entire line, and park and then carry her all the way to the front door.
And I confess I may have yelled a lot about this, because it is Monday and Mondays stress me out and they are my busiest morning and my entire schedule was thrown out of whack and I knew she was doing all of this for no reason.
But she’s so goddamn stubborn she stuck with it. So we sat at the front door of the school. Kids would go by and say “hi Jane” and she wouldn’t answer. She never answers people when they say hi it is always such a bummer we need to work on that.
Eventually a nice teacher came over and handed her phone with a cool app on it that has a timer and an egg and you watch the timer go down and then the egg cracks a little bit more and more until it cracks completely when the time ends and an animal pops out.
And it was a kitty and that cheered her up. A bit.
But then the teacher walked her inside and away she went.
A much better human being than me. One who knows how to relates to kids.
So now I feel like a failure of a parent on Monday morning woo woo love it. I can still feel the lingering adrenaline of my anger coursing through me and I wish I could squirt it out like a fifteen-year-old boy can with… other distractions.
Love the smell of self-loathing first thing in the morning.
Excellent weekend otherwise, though. Jane and I had some lovely times and talks and got along great until this morning oh god I am such a bad parent put it out of my head.
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What are we listening to this morning? The “To Investigate” playlist. It just played “Snowball” by Patti Smith. Horses outtake. Good tune, but probably correct to not put it on Horses. Now we are listening to a new Martin Carr single, “Who I Am Today.”
In my 2021 GMHHAY, I did a long passage about the Boo Radleys reuniting without Martin Carr and how I met him once at an American Analog Set show at Club Deville in Austin (RIP) in 1999 and how I couldn’t really blame the Boo Radleys for re-uniting without Martin, etc. etc. And I just edited that passage on Friday, when I finished up the copy-and-rag edit on vol 2 of GMHHAY. So that is exciting.
Now it just needs a foreword — any volunteers? I like to have the forewords come from the readers.
Emma and I went to see Nine Inch Nails on Friday night. It was very good. It could have been three songs longer: Two songs from The Fragile, which he played none, and two more from Pretty Hate Machine, which he played one. I did however see the Fragile and Pretty Hate Machine tours because I am an old fart, so I guess it’s fine. I’d never seen him do “I’m Afraid of Americans,” so that was cool. I liked that he had the rock band and had the electronica band and did two different types of sets from different parts of the arena. He did not do that super-cool moving song from the Bones and All soundtrack or anything from Watchmen but I guess that is to be expected. He did not play “Sin” or “Down in it.”
There was a ten-year-old girl there with her parents and she sat there in pink noise-cancelling headphones looking at her iPad the whole time.
I chose to wear a Pailhead shirt, seemed the right level of obscure and relevant. I got two compliments from other old dudes so, you know. I am kind of a big deal.
It was $422 for the tickets, $40 for parking (though the parking attendent said he’d take $20 cash so I am gonna start carrying cash again). Emma’s Diet Pepsi was something like $10, my double gin and tonic was $44 with tip, and it was $100 for the babysitter. I don’t know if that is a good price for the babysitter, they never tell me how much to pay them it is really weird. So this works out to $616, or $308 each. These were not particularly great seats. The show was 97 minutes long.
We each paid $3.17 a minute to see Nine Inch Nails. I wonder what percentage of that Trent got.
Other than that, chores chores, chores. Saturday I started with laying sheetrock on the floor in the section I am trying to get the full floating floor built so I can re-route HVAC. Went great. I got a good system for doing the custom cuts, got a big section done fast, felt proud of myself.
But then I got to the back corner of the house and after several weeks of thinking about it, I knew that the correct thing to do was to pull up the work I had already done and drill a hole in the house to allow for ingress of the fiber from the main house at the correct place. I only have a fixed length of fiber, and I need it to go to a specific place in the attic, and the side of the house from which it enters has a lot of complications so there’s really only one place it can go. I was really hoping I could do it about four feet to the left where I had not yet laid Safe N Sound, OSB, and rigid foam, but I knew it wasn’t going to work. I had to pull stuff up.
And I didn’t know exactly where I would be drilling, where the hole would come out on the exterior of the house. But for all my measuring, I could never really know until I just went for it. And this terrible uncertainty has been ruling me for weeks and causing me to procrastinate and I needed to just get over it.
So I went for it.
Except I needed a longer drill bit, so I had to go get it. Then that drill bit wasn’t long enough, so I had to go get another one. Then I drilled. And I made it through!
And it was not in the right spot.
But it was close! Only needed to move about six inches to the north.
So I drilled another hole.
And I made it!
So then I converted to the 2 1/2” hole saw bit and drilled a bigger hole.
Except I needed a drill bit extender, in a different size than the one I had, so I had to go to the hardware store again. $100 in drill bits yay. Will I ever use them again? Sure! Sure!
And then I drilled the 2 1/2 “ hole. Success!
Then I crammed a piece of 2” PVC conduit through the hole. And then I Lexel’d the hole so water wouldn’t get in. Then I added all the fittings to run the conduit up to floor level. Then I added a punch of pull string.
Then I cut the rigid foam already on the floor so I could lay the wire conduit on the floor, so the rigid foam would then cover it, so the floor would then cover it, so the conduit would be under the floor but not penetrating the bottom layer of OSB. I know, it’s complicated. Probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. But it worked!
I’m not done, because I have to let the Lexel dry, then I have to add spray foam to the exterior wall where I cut away a bunch to drill my hole. Then I have to re-add the Safe N Sound, re-add the OSB, re-add the rigid foam.
And then I gotta deal with the outside: I gotta cut the PVC back, add a junction box, repair the tear-out the hole saw did on the house trim and now-obsolete-but-still-pretty attic vent grill.
But I can’t do any of that until I buy or rent a giant ladder. Which I need anyway for a project at the other house. But they cost a fortune. So I might stall on that. Can’t actually move the fiber to this new conduit until I get the attic dust-free enough to move some IT equipment up there.
I should also Lexel the outside wall side of the penetration.
And Then I can continue on my way with the laying of two layers of sheetrock.
Type-X sheetrock, too. The extra-heavy stuff. Unpleasant work.
But I am proud of what I accomplished. This has been a giant unknown in my head for weeks and it is, well, not done, but no longer an unknown.
Man I wonder if Jane is having a terrible day at school and I am just the worst. Nah, she’s probably fine, now, right? We have definitely entered an age where she remembers our arguments, remembers “mean” things I’ve done to her. Harder and harder to reset. We will have to have a talk about it. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. But, you know, get in to these spirals: like why shouldn’t this kid know how angry she is making people? Does she think people are going to just put up with her her whole life? She needs to know. Etc. etc. Even though she already knows, she would never do any of this in front of a non-parent. She does this in front of her parents because she’s able to. Emma’s on a kick that it’s all protein-related. Some pediatrician says kids need more protein. Maybe I need to start making eggs again.
Spiral spiral spiral away we go.
Byeee.
Justa mix for you today, most of the hot new stuff that is tearing up the charts, amirite? New Suede is way better than it has any right to be, even though, as my friend Jes pointed out, that their last one was also really good. Man just really firing on all cylinders, Suede. Would love to see them again, an old band where you’re psyched to hear the new stuff is a rarity. Slowdive, Suede now… Hrm who else will have to think about that. Love the new Anamanaguchi. Not 100% sure about the new Florence yet but this one was co-written with Mitski, that is interesting. The last Saint Etienne album ever is out now and I am sad about it.
Okay well hopefully we we shake this mood off. I have like five fucking meetings today grr.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.