Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1568
Smooth shopping carts, dichotomous living, Wiccan Phase Springs Eternal, studio build work, the phrase "die in a fire," do we need all these gas stations?
Hi hi boy howdy hello good morning what it is, what it is. Just back from dropping Jane off at school and the grocery store. The one where the repair guy was fixing the carts last week. Boy, those shopping carts ran smooth. Very rewarding. I suspect Harris Teeter is owned by a Republican, but boy do those carts run smooth. No shaoxing wine, though. I don’t know why I was even hoping they might have it. You know, the “International” section at grocery stores is getting more and more elaborate. But not with actual foundational ingredients, I guess. Just sauces. Grocery stores are like 30% sauces.
What a weekend, what a weekend. Real exercise in dichotomy. Real illustration of where this country is at. On the one hand, it was a lovely weekend of parenting and chores and home improvement, just a lovely time. On the other, absolute insanity, chaos, crime everywhere, a fever dream of fascism and cronyism. Just absolutely insane. And you would be absolutely forgiven having lived your weekend solely in the first realm! You might not even know that the president accidentally sent a DM publicly to his Attorney General exposing, with absolute certainty, a criminal conspiracy. And why would you? It’s not like it’s on the cover of any newspapers — I just checked. Though props to the USA Today for having real news on the cover and not a certain wannabe Nuremberg rally.
An then we have the absolute insanity of the H1B crisis, where, oh, I don’t know, a hundred thousand people’s lives were suddenly thrown into absolute chaos, clogging airports around the world, causing companies big and small to have weekend emergency meetings. Just absolute chaos everywhere, all to be undone when the Keystone Cronies changed their minds again, sort of, on Sunday. Even now literally no one knows what’s going on. And if you were not ill-advisedly online over the weekend or directly effected, you would have no idea.
This is no way to live.
It is exhausting living in two worlds like this. And you would be insane to not question why you bother even visiting the second world. Why not just withdrawal into the first.
And, you know, I don’t really have a good answer to that! We have to take care of our mental health and family first.
But for me, what I can spare after that. Well… I care, I guess. I feel compelled.
Shit man I am going to end up in a gulag.
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We are listening this morning to Wiccan Phase Springs Eternal, a band I originally listened to because of their name, of course, of course, how could you not check out a band named Wiccan Phase Springs Eternal. I regret to inform you that Wiccan Phase Springs Eternal is not a group of lady witches, but rather a solo dude with a very nice baritone. He used to make kinda glitchy electronica emo, but this new album is country. Mew album is called Mossy Oak Shadow, very poetic name. I like it. I do not particularly understand any of this. But I continue to explore his career. He might be the new Shamir, all over the map stylistically. I hope this guy makes 1-2 albums a year for the next 20 years and I listen to them all. A new modern-day Guided By Voices. With the name Wiccan Phase Springs Eternal.
So. My weekend. CHOORRRREEEESS. Worked on the Attic, mostly. It was hard. I was tired. Very tired. I am still kinda tired, but I have accepted I am in some phase where I need nine full hours of sleep and as of last night I have just started doing that rather than pouting and insisting I can get away with seven or eight. So I feel better now. But all weekend? Exhausted. Emma kept telling me I could take a day off from studio work, do a self-care day, a do-nothing day. But I refused. Because the studio is the sort of project, and in a phase, where if I skip even one weekend the whole thing will be in peril, I will end up skipping every weekend. Plus in October, I have two, maybe three weekends where I won’t be able to do any work on it, so I gotta get in what I can when I can. So I did.
And it sucked, but boy I felt good afterwards.
Got all the foam on the floor done in the NW corner, then the first layer of sheetrock, and caulked that, and got about half the second floor layer of sheetrock done in that area. I am focused on that area because I need the HVAC company to re-route a bunch of ducts so I can build walls, and it will take a while to schedule them, so I want that section ready for them as soon as possible. I am almost there. I mean, I still have half a layer of sheetrock and two layers of OSB, but… I dunno. It felt like progress!
I will say, though, the driveway and garage at Chore House are absolutely covered in what look to be dead worms? Like thousands of dead, dried out things that I don’t know what they are, all over the driveway, and a few in the garage. I asked Emma, she thinks they’re worms too. But there are so many of them, and I never see a living one? It is very confusing. Maybe they are… parts of trees? Or something? It is creepy! We don’t have these at our house.
What does this look like to you?
There are four gas stations near us. And, right now, three of the four of them are under major construction. Like two of them have been completely torn down and they are rebuilding them from the ground up. And the third one they have completely dug the tanks out of the ground. I do not know what is up with this. We are down to a single BP. BUT the weird thing is… it seems fine? Like it’s not like the BP has lines or anything, it seems to have the same number of customers that it has always had. Maybe we never needed four gas stations?
Also I am driving an ICE car right now, a rental, and for a full week I absolutely forgot that you are supposed to look at the gas gauge and keep an eye on it and get gas when it goes to zero. This is just not a thing in my life anymore. And it is so annoying! This is not a thing we should be doing! Giant hassle.
AND — I mean, any of you who drive ICE cars know this but I always forget — there is that whole thing where there are those rules now about car engines stopping running when you are stopped at lights and shit like that. I keep forgetting about this. It stresses me out. Why is the car always stopping! I only learned about this this summer when I was in Alaska and borrowed my sister’s newish Subaru. Emma’s car is old enough that it does not do it. But, man. That is annoying shit. Trump should issue an executive order like his one on shower faucets. Shit he probably already has. Didn’t he, like, completely get rid of the emissions credit system that was making Tesla $11bil a year? Did I imagine that? Shit that might be fake news.
Fact check: mostly true! Though not $11bil a year, $11bil cumulatively, $1 billion a year.
So, when Emma and I were at Cat’s Cradle the other day for the Bonny Light Horseman show, we were chatting before hand, and I was ranting about a certain Democratic Senator and I said they could “die in a fire.” And Emma stopped me and said that was so cruel and she would hate to die in a fire and it took me a moment but I was like “wait, that’s a common figure of speech, mostly a metaphor, have you never heard this figure of speech?” And she had not.
And I asked a couple friends and they said yeah, that’s a thing, they say it all the time.
But then I thought, hrm, you know what, I think I might just have this turn of phrase in my head because of that friend group, picked it up from them.
So, I am asking you: is this a term of speech that you have heard? Do you use it? Or is this niche/regional?
Jane and I had maybe the best car morning ever today. She has a hand wound that requires gauze and tape to keep the bandage on and it fell off at night. So in the car:
We got our wordle in 3
We put her bandage on
Did one of our best daily car drawing projects ever
Had our longest and best and most enthusiastic car hug ever
So, you know. Pretty good morning. A+. No complaints. Here’s hoping it extends to my entire overly scheduled Monday.
I do not have a playlist for you today so I am just going to give you this one great song that has been in my head all weekend for no reason:
So good. Here’s to Monday. Let’s get through this without too much emotional damage, shall we? We can do it. We can do it.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.