Good morning good morning hello hi how are you? Happy Monday, lol. We all love our jobs, right? Up and at ‘em.

Just back from dropping Jane off — mostly uneventful, some drama with some missing shoes, no major conversations. Then grocery store. Nick recommended Coconut Aminos in my continuing quest for lower sodium Asian foods, so there is $13 down the drain. But the good news is six packs of Zevia were on sale for $4.99, even cheaper than Amazon’s Subscribe-n-Save price. I bought ‘em out. Very exciting. It’s been months. Going to be going every day. May even trying and make use of those mythical rain checks I’ve been hearing about since childhood. All their shallots were elongated and penile. Also why does no grocery store in the world keep shallots with the onions? I will never understand this.

I would like to clarify that Tricky’s “Evolution Revolution Love” featuring Ed Kowalczyk is not, in fact, actually my favorite Tricky Song. But it’s definitely in the top five. “Black Steel” came on this morning, that one’s up there too. Solid tune.

Pour one out for Texan Olivia Rodrigo fans. She is skipping the state entirely on her upcoming tour, which is just bonkers. Is it political? She did not say. I mean, I wouldn’t blame her. But still. For a while, everyone was holding out hope that there was no Texan date because she was going to headline ACL. But this week the ACL lineup was announced, and no Olivia. Instead they get Charli and Lorde and The XX. Maybe Charli and Lorde will do their version of “Guess.” That would be rad. Has that ever happened? Oh my god my head hurts.

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We are listening to Zbignew Preisner and Lisa Gerrard. Zbignew was Keislowski’s composer, Lisa is from Dead Can Dance, of course. They did two albums together, Melodies of my Youth and Diaries of Hope. I just bought them both recently. I am listening to the first one. It is awesome. Current track sounds like a prototype to Preisner’s “Song for the Unification of Europe” from the Three Colors: Blue soundtrack. Is it really from his youth? Has this tune been rattling around in his head his entire life?

Man, when I was a kid the unification of Europe was such an inspirational tale. Feels like they really shit the bed on that one. Alas.

ANYHOW. The weekend! Chores! Woo! Shit yeah! Chores unleashed! It ruled! Friday Emma let me sleep in and — oh yeah I wrote that. After I left you I did Walmart. Nothing major to report. Can’t find the Johnson and Johnson head-to-toe baby wash it was missing. Emma came with me. Fridge filters are expensive holy fuck they are expensive.

Then I went to Lowe’s hardware to get some supplies, then to Chore House where I spent the day working on a tomato trellis: two 4×4’s mounted in the ground with helical ground screws, 1” holes drilled in each of them, an iron pipe spanning the 12’ between them. Painted the thing. Now I can trellis my tomatoes. It looks awesome. It is on a slight hill and I spent an incredible amount of effort making sure the tops of the posts were level and the trellis bar was level. I even put those little caps on the top of the posts so the rain would not slowly decay them. Did I take a picture of it? I hope I took a picture of it. I am very proud of it. Dammit. I did not take a picture of it. Well, I will get you one. It is lovely.

Sure, the squirrels will eat all the tomatoes but whatever. I have a plan to combat that with shade cloth that I may or may not get around to. This is really a proof-of-concept year for a new tomato bed and spot.

After that I did a porch repair on the main house that Emma had been asking me to do for a while. Took a lot of logistical planning because the ladder and my tools are at Chore House. And my god those porch joists were so freakin warped. AND whomever built the porch built the thing 15 on center and not 16 on center, so, you know, chaos. Oh and somehow their 2×10’s were ½ shorter than the ones I bought for this project very weird. But after three trips back to the miter saw to adjust things, I got the thing all braced up. Very proud of myself.

Those were my two chore goals for Friday and I got them done so I deserve a treat.

Nick and Meghan and Henry showed up Friday evening and we spent time chatting with them and getting them settled into Chore House Friday evening, I love it when they come visit. It is a lovely time.

And Saturday Nick and Henry offered to help me with chores at Chore House so that ruled. Thanks to Nick’s superior understanding of the world of propane, and after a futile half-hour trip to the hardware store, we finally got the propane torch working, and Henry burned weeds in gravel and cracks and it was all very satisfying. Burn weeds, burn. We also got the new footbridge for the path between the houses covered in Thompson’s Water Seal, and Henry chopped down a giant bush that had been annoying me.

I really shoulda taken pictures of all this it was all very fun. CHORES WITH FRIENDS. Very fun.

Emma and Jane went off to Girl Scout camp Friday morning after breakfast. Place sounds insane, it is like some giant thing, maybe a hundred acres, full-time caretaker. Has game lands and cabins and camp sites and archery and slingshot ranges and all sorts of things. Emma just loves camping, but she did all right. Jane had a gay old time. They got home Sunday morning in time for us all to go to lunch before Nick and Meghan and Henry headed back to Wilmington.

Thus on Saturday night I was alone with the guests and we all went to see Iron & Wine at the Haw River Ballroom, which is just a lovely place to see a show. We got there early and managed to snag four of the maybe 40 chairs total in the place. Never seen a show there seated before but if there was going to be one, this was it. Lovely and melodic and his drummer is amazing and they did not play any of the “hits” from my personal head canon and so in the car on the way home we listened to songs he did not play. So then I had “Flightless Bird” in my head all day Sunday, even though he didn’t play it. That happens a lot, huh? You see a band and the song of theirs you get stuck in your head afterwards is one they did not play.

In the evenings I watched movies, and I got a lot of movie watching done since I didn’t have much parenting to do. I re-watched 2010 The Year we Make Contact and reader, that film is way better than you remember. It is a work of art. I mean people ignore it because Kubrick and 2001 but yeah man. The director of 2010 didn’t do a lot of films because he was also a CBS news anchor and a poet and a painter and an artist in a million ways. He did the screenplay, was the director, and the cinematographer of this film. It has a strong visual viewpoint and understaded, gorgeous VFX. It is one of Helen Mirren’s first performances and I barely even recognized her.

It’s always very exciting when a film is better on re-watch than you remember. I cannot say the same for Ken Russell’s Gothic. It was still a good time. I will never say no to Julian Sands naked on a rooftop trying to get himself electrocuted or a woman with eyes for nipples. Gabriel Byrne is very very good, Natasha Richardson is more luminous now than when I was very into this movie in high school. And Wormtail is in it, which I could not have known in High School. Thomas Dolby’s soundtrack is bombastic AF and sorta doesn’t work, but apparently that is exactly what Russell wanted out of Dolby. The film has a Fellini bent to it, without the infrastructure of Cinecittà and the Italian film industry. I respect what Russell was going for, and props to him for keeping it short, but it is, sadly, still a bit cheesy.

Last night I finished up the new Naked Gun, which I have been watching over, like, I don’t know, five evenings. Just what the doctor ordered, exactly as dumb and funny as the old ones. Props straight up. So many dumb gags. Ponzi-Scheme Arena is a great name. Well done. I hope there are more. So dumb. So dumb.

Big news, Jane has taken the deal about saying “I’m Bored” and me not singing and it seems like it’s a lot harder for me than her. She just… magically stopped. WTF. And now I can’t sing around her, which suuuuuucks. I mean, it is probably worth it, this deal. I will get through it. And my god is it nice to have a kid who doesn’t keep saying how bored she is.

But still. My heart. It needs to SING.

Man I do not have a playlist even close to being done. And I don’t feel like making one on the fly. And the car’s music choices this morning, well. Aside from that Tricky tune, I take umbrage to them. The car tried to play frickin Merzbow for Jane, for crying out loud. And I haven’t watched any live shit on YouTube in days. Hrm. Oh but you know what I did listen to this weekend that was awesome? That vinyl copy of Goldfrapp’s Seventh Tree I treated myself to on my birthday. Two killer singles on that: A&E, and this one, which also has an awesome video. Enjoy.

All right then let’s have a lovely week. Talk tomorrow. Peace. Love.