Good morning good morning oh man Monday oh shit oh shit oh but wait a minute I only have three workdays this week that is cool oh but wait a minute did I take Wednesday off in my infinite wisdom? Let’s check. I did not. Welp. That was dumb. Oh but wait a minute, I have one day off left. SCORE. Let me just request that day off. Now let me just go approve that day off since, you know, I am the vacation approver. Twisted vacation approver.

Excellent weekend boy weekends are the best. Had a great time doing CHORES. Indoor chores, outdoor chores, studio chores, so many great chores. And PLAYGROUNDS. Wait did I do one or two playgrounds? Oh right. One playground. And KID MARTIAL ARTS oh my god that was so freakin cute. Little Brownies and Daisies doing karate kicks. The best. Actually the teacher was telling this story to the kids about how, late in life, she started martial arts. And she was in her car outside the martial arts place, scared to go in, but wanting a new sort of life. It was meant to just be a store to reassure the kids, but… I dunno, man. It had a certain pathos to it. I felt for her.

Stuck with me.

And it was real fun doing big cheers for every kid who broke a board. A+ no complaints. Good wholesome fun.

Took Jane to Bojangles with the wife Saturday before Brownie Martial Arts and we ran into Jane’s Bojangles friend, great little girl with a cool dad we mostly just see at Bojangles. It is crazy how her and Jane have this instant, magnetic bond. Or maybe that girl is just really good at that and is going to be a politician or the next Caroline Everson (deep cut) or something. It was good Emma got to see their hilarious Bojangles antics, as the kids did the robot dance around the restaurant and called themselves BoogieBots. Me and the other dad sort of try and corrall them to only, say, 25% of the restaurant, but we are pretty lax about it.

In other important fast food news, we went to McDonald’s on Saturday morning (what can I say, man. Jane’s been on a roll with good behavior and rewards are flying fast and free) and they were playing a Doobie Brothers song and I said:

“why does this place always have Michael McDonald on the muzak when we’re here seriously we’ve heard him solo, with the Doobie Brothers, and Steely Dan.”

And my eight-year-old daughter said “Well, it is McDonald’s,” and, reader, that had never occurred to me. Impressive.

Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!

We are listening to a new reissue of the Jad Fair Yo La Tengo album which is borderline terrible but has been on my wish list for, oh, eight years or so in my never-ending quest to obtain every Yo La Tengo record, only issued on vinyl in a small run once in 1998, never seen a single copy come up for sale. So I am happy to have this reissue even if, well, not the best.

Reissued on CD in 2001 in Brazil, though. Would love to know the story behind that.

Anyway, to complete my Yo La Tengo vinyl collection I still need: Ride the Tiger (still never re-issued on vinyl since 1996), May I sing with Me (not since ‘92), Adventureland soundtrack (‘09), and that’s it. Then there are the three never released on vinyl: The Chris Stamey collaboration, Is Murdering the Classics, and They Shoot, We Score. Someday, someday.

But let us move on we all know what you’re here for CHORES. Let’s get to it. Oh wait but first Walmart, Friday AM, with the Wife. We are confirmed about Walmart no longer carrying my organic butter, they took the price sign down off the shelf and everything. BUT the Teet carries it now, and I also found it at the local co-op grocery, so we are good there. Also we were compensated by this loss by Walmart finally carrying Turkey Chomps again. Not the amazing, discontinued pepperoni-flavored Turkey Chomps, the “plain” ones in the yellow bag, the ones a lot of people dislike and really aren’t as good. But they will serve. Pepperoni-flavored Turkey Chomps we miss you so much. Still no Sabrina Christmas album. They moved my face wash to a different section very confusing but the Walmart app saved me.

We also did some shopping for a food bank donation (for the Martial Arts class) and for our friends hiding in their house from ICE. We got a little bit more info on that and… whole thing is a mess. But it is, hopefully, slowly being unraveled. The new Georgia lawyer seems optimistic and competent. We got to play with their little baby and Jane loved it and it was all super cute.

For the chores, I resigned myself that I had two more full days of outdoor chores to do to get those giant piles of mulch and gravel spread. I desperately wanted to get back to the studio but a) you can’t leave a chore half-done and b) I had been ignoring the outdoors of Chore house for so many weeks things really were getting out of hand. So Friday afternoon I spread another couple yards of gravel and it was a total pain in the ass. About 30 wheelbarrow loads of gravel, probably 200 pounds each. I figured out how to shovel without fucking up your back but it’s so weird and unnatural I would keep forgetting.

When I finished the gravel I shoveled a load of mulch and it was so light I literally lifted the pitchfork and the mulch went flying in the air and landed on my head.

Saturday Emma joined me for chores at Chore House outside and oh man it was the best. Emma thinks I am weird. We are doing separate chores. We barely talk. But we’re both doing chores together and I dunno man, I love it so much. PARTNER CHORES. It is the best.

Emma is rebuilding this drainage creek that has been completely consumed by dirt and debris. She is taking each rock out of the creek, scooping all the dirt out, laying down new landscape fabric and completely rebuilding the drainage creek. It is a monumental process, one I’ve known for years needs to be done, but I was never going to get around to it. I AM SO THANKFUL.

I finished cleaning that area I got half done last week, to the east of the house where I keep all my junk. I got the rest of the mulch spread. I cleaned out all the raised beds of frozen tomato vines. I painted the fence post topper for the walkway to the Neurodivergent-Affirming Pediatric Speech Therapists, but I just remembered I forgot to actually, you know, glue it onto the fence post whoops. Anyway everything looks great and now I can forget about the outside of Chore House until spring. Yay.

OH. Important news: a while back, longtime readers may remember I set up this whole giant outdoor shelving area for those black bins with yellow lids to store assorted stuff. And I label them by using the best outdoor tape - the 3M Yellow Outdoor Surface Waterproof Masking Tape that stuff rules. BUT I have always had a problem with Sharpie ink failing in the sun. So I had the presence of mind to do an experiment a year or two ago when I labeled those bins: I used all the different Sharpie types: Pro, Extreme and Industrial, and labeled which label I used which Sharpie type.

Wasn’t even close. Sharpie Industrial won hands down. They are hard to find — you probably gotta order them online, but they blow Extreme and Pro away.

The more you know.

Then on Sunday I finally got to work on the studio again and it was so great I love it so much. Still working on the subfloor in the vocal booth/server room area but I am so close to being done. So close. One more day. Then I can tape where the new walls go and I can finally call the HVAC people to star re-routing ducts. That will be a huge milestone.

Then I have a bunch more floor in a place no one can see that I probably don’t even need to do, but I am a completist and the only way you can ever make something soundproof is by not half-assing and closing all the gaps, so, like I have said before, I am letting my neurosis drive the pace. No shortcuts.

Man I am so happy working on studio construction. I put on my 10,000+ song playlist of all my favorites, let it go on random for hours, don’t skip a single song, every song’s a banger, it’s just the best.

Emma and I went to the recycling center three times this weekend, dumping the debris from last week’s outdoor cleaning, this week’s outdoor cleaning, and our normal weekly run.

On one run, I got bitten by a chigger hiding in rotting wood.

On another run, after we had cleaned out our fridge of all the junk, bagged it up, and taken it there, the bag leaked and as I was throwing it in the dumpster I got covered in trash water.

And this was right before we went to see our friends, so the whole time Jane was playing with the cute baby, I just had to sort of stand in the corner of their nice house because I was covered in trash water.

TRASH WATER.

Jane won an award at the science fair this week, and got the best behavior award in class? Not sure if that is a weekly or daily thing. Also at dinner these days she makes us play “behavior class” where I am the teacher and she and Emma are students learning about good behavior. It is… well, it is a welcome development, let’s just put it that way. She still can’t always connect it to, you know, reality. But I think that’s okay.

The knowledge is the important part.

Got a modern synthpop playlist for you this morning. All new stuff, I think? New Robyn! Very exciting. it is.. fine. New Faint! I like it. New Ladytron! Not bad. Everythign is god nothing is… amazing? Am I too picky? Though I do really love this Ashes and Diamonds. And the other day when I was on my massage bed face down having an existential freakout, this Depeche Mode Memento Mori outtake came on and I was like “holy shit what is this awesome new synthpop band that sounds like Depeche Mode?” And it turned out to be Depeche Mode. And… man. When you are listening to a random, middling, Depeche Mode track but you don’t know it’s Depeche Mode? You think it’s amazing. I hold them to a higher standard. It’s not fair. This is a great track.

Righty-o. Until tomorrow, friends.