Good morning, hello, hi, howdy, how are you? Happy Monday, oh joy. I knew it was going to be a tough sell maintaining my good weekend mood into Monday as it was, but this has not been the greatest of Monday starts, despite my getting 30 minutes more sleep. Because Jane had to go to the dentist. For another checkup.

Had a dream that Trump just “fired” Ketanji Brown Jackson and that did not do wonders for my emotional health. Also had a dream that I had to walk from the Swisshotel in Downtown Boston (is it even still there?) all the way back to Allston in nothing but my childhood yellow blankie wrapped around me. Didn’t love that, no siree.

Jane slept in 30 minutes. Emma had turned off her alarm because of the dentist visit. She almost never sleeps past 7. But today she slept till 7:30. Went to bed early too. This happened yesterday too. She is finally catching up on her sleep. That is good.

We slept in because we were going to check on the healing of her dental repair from her major front teeth shattering incident at the Lowe’s Hardware a few months back. We’ve been to several of these. They’ve all gone well. In and out, 10 minutes.

This one started out that way, the X-Rays were fine. But then the doc noticed two large abscesses (wow did NOT know that spelling) above her front teeth, and it turn out she needs a root canal. Fuckin fuck fuck. He swears it’ll be quick and painless with an easy recovery. But fuckin fuck fuck this is all my fault we never should’ve been doing trick jumps on the concrete floor of Lowe’s Hardware fuckin fuck fuck.

Dropped her off at school, listening to “Finest Drops” by Wire along the way: “it’s a good song but it’s a boy singer. Maybe if a woman covered it,” she critiqued. Fair enough.

Driving home through the perfect creepy suburb between me and the school, the Tindersticks’ “No More Affairs” comes on. An song absolutely incongruous to the world around me. I drive through the neighborhood looking at all the Gen Z jogging moms. Imagine affairs being on any of these people’s minds. Imagine having an affair in the suburbs. I mean, I am aware of the bestseller lists, I’m aware people read about affairs in the suburbs, read, in the suburbs, about affairs that people, in the suburbs, are having, but… hahaha. I think of the women in my past, the affairs I’ve had… would any of them live in a suburb like this, ever? I suppose some of them do, now. Though mostly they have stayed in cities even into their 50’s. Is it a generational thing? Does Gen Z not do affairs? Maybe they’d like this Tindersticks song. Is it geographically self-selecting? People prone to romantic adventurism adventure to cities? Well, yes, I suppose so.

Let’s not even talk about poly. Imagine a polycule in Briar Chapel. I wonder if there is even a single one. There must be, there must be.

These thoughts drifted away as the music shifted to Low’s “Walk into the Sea,” and, well, it kinda broke me, as it always does. I had not listened to The Great Destroyer in years. Even though it might be the greatest album of all time. Too emotionally fraught. To perfect.

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We are listening to The Great Destroyer by Low this morning. Easily one of the ten greatest albums of all time imagine making an album this fucking good and trailblazing as your seventh album what the hell that is amazing. We’re currently on track 4, “Silver Rider.” Imagine writing a song and having it be covered by the lead singer of Led Zeppelin. That must have been nuts for them.

I once won an ebay auction that was for the original artwork on The Great Destroyer cover. It was cheap, like $300. Unfortunately, the artist, who I think was Zak? The Low bassist at the time? Unfortunately he elected to not sell. Didn’t meet the reserve, if I recall correctly.

I think about that eBay auction a lot.

And I miss Mimi a lot.

We had an excellent weekend of chores, though. Eh, that is only half-true. It was all low-voltage work: audio, video, ethernet. I did no manly-man construction. Well, I mounted a pair of speakers on the front porch they look quite handsome if I do say so myself. Mostly it was wiring up amplifiers and Unifi streamers.

I spent an entire day decoding the obsolete, proprietary Bose shit in the living room. Total pain in the ass. Still haven’t figured out the speakers to the Clinic of the Neurodivergent-Affirming Pediatric Speech Therapist and Occupational Therapist. There were three speaker patch bays that matched exactly the three speakers in their clinic. Except I couldn’t make them work under any circumstnaces. In the clinic, each speaker had a wall dial, which meant that perhaps they were using the LCV protocol in one of the speaker bays, and the old-ass Bose “extra room” amp had an LCV port, but even trying that, I couldn’t make it all work. I don’t need the speakers in the clinic to work, obviously, though it would be a nice perk for them if I could get them working. But it drives me crazy I couldn’t sort it. It’s now or never. And the speakers are in the ceiling in the basement, aka the floor on the first floor, which means there’s zero chance I accidentally cut their cables or something while doing my attic floor remodelling. I am very sad at my failure in this endeavor, even though it is entirely peripheral to this actual attic remodeling process.

The good news is there was already a CAT6 port in the TV cabinet. It took forever to get it hooked up, it wasn’t any of the ports in the punch-patch bay in the SMC. It was a random-ass solo port on some AV card in there. But I figured it out eventually with my handy Klein network signal tester yay me I felt like a real AV guy.

I also figured out how to get Cat6 out to the patio, which is a thing I have been stressing about for quite some time. In both of these cases, I was half-convinced I would have to pull up some of the already-completed seven-layer soundproof floor, but no, no I do not. I left a method for accessing it. Yay me.

Mostly I was just slow to get to my chores this weekend. I slept in both days, which was lovely. Jane and I took our time at breakfast. On Sunday I took her to the playground and watched her play while I hung out with a bunch of my non-affair-having Gen Z parent friends with whom I have very little in common but still enjoy their company, mainly because the one thing we do have in common is our political bent, at least. Also we talked about home improvement. Everyone in the suburbs loves talking about home improvement in the suburbs.

Jane kept me company the whole time on Saturday while I was doing AV hookup work it was super pleasant. No major fits this weekend. Is that true? No, wait, that’s not true at all. Friday night was rough. But it’s been pretty good since then. She is trying, she is trying.

Fuckin root canal. Fuckin fuck fuck.

Just found this really very good 4k live video of Low doing “When I go Deaf” from 2013 at First Avenue and my god oh my god it is so good how have I never seen this before I am going to go cry now.

I will be better tomorrow you just watch. And you will too. We all will be. Tomorrow will be a better day.