Great. It’s light at 6:30 in the morning now. Except the problem is mostly that it’s not useful light. I can’t in good conscience fire up the equipment and get some yard work done. You know, the way I could 5 days ago when I had that hour of light in the evenings when I got home from work. Being able to use it for something constructive is what makes daylight worthwhile.
“Oh,” they say, “but it will be light outside when you wake up and it’s more in line with natural sleep cycles.” That’s spoken like someone who has for sure never woken up at 4:30 a day in their lives. The only way it’s going to be light when I wake up is if we start keeping time with Bermuda.
Even if that wasn’t the case, being light when I wake up or while I drive to work is an utter and complete “so what?” Since I sit in a room without windows three days a week anyway, it could be pitch black all day long and not significantly improve or detract from the day at all. Resuming Standard Time, however, is effectively stealing a useful hour of evening light and appending it to the morning doesn’t improve my life in any way. In fact, it makes it worse.
It boggles my mind that people want to maintain Standard Time all year long. I’m going to need a serious explanation of why darkness at 5PM is advantageous in any way beyond coddling layabouts who want to stay in bed half the morning. If they ever accomplish it, the neighbors are going to have to get really understanding about crack of dawn grass cutting and leaf blowing on Saturday mornings.
You’ll never convince me that Standard Time is anything other than an abomination.
Category Archives: Life
Peace but not quiet…
I’m going to spend an obscene amount of time this weekend shuffling fallen leaves from one bit of the property to another. We’re still in the part of the season when trying to keep up is a fool’s errand, but moving leaves is one of my very favorite lost causes.
After the week that was, a lot of hours of droning power equipment and wandering around the yard is probably just what the doctor ordered. For a brief time between when I have everything sorted and a strong breeze knocks the next batch of leaves down, it’ll look like I really got some work done. That’s generally more than I can say for anything I do from Monday through Friday. At best that stuff might have an illusion of accomplishment, but it’s even more ephemeral than a leaf-free yard in the late fall.
After that, I have no definitive plans to speak of for the next two days. Books, coffee, tea, gin, cat, dog, tortoise, and a few well-cooked meals. That’s ample enough leisure for my tastes. Sure, I’m probably still high maintenance, but mostly in the way I think even simplicity should be well done. The thing I desire most out of these two days is pace… given the amount of leaf blowing that needs done, quiet is obviously out of the question.
Another chicken dream…
I had chicken for dinner last night. As happens more often than not under these circumstances, my subconscious treated me to yet another of what I’ve fondly come to think of as “chicken dream.”
This one featured a very vivid sequence in which I was driving the Jeep along the edge of a park or maybe a town square. It was tree lined and bucolic and filled with protestors wearing red shirts. As I passed, rolling slowly, they began spilling over into the street. One of the red shirts, armed, and now standing in the middle of the street leveled a rifle (hunting, not assault). I have a stark recollection of staring down the open barrel – its bore looking like an ever-widening maw – and then instinctively popping the clutch and knocking the unknown rifleman out of the way.
Rather than fleeing as would probably have been advisable in a real-world mob scene, dream me pulled to the curb on the next block, locked the Jeep, and checked into a hotel. The next morning the protestors were gone, but so was the Jeep. The entire square looked pristine and as if no one had even the audacity to walk on the grass the day before.
I was getting decidedly surly looks from townspeople who were gathering in small groups of two or three people, whispering as I passed. After scouring the surrounding streets for the Jeep, my dream self gave up, commenting “Well, I guess I just live here now.”
And that’s where I jolted awake in the very early hours of Tuesday morning. My inner self was more than happy to go along with the crowds, running down an armed bandit, and choosing to stick around overnight for no apparent reason – but even in a dream state it couldn’t get past the idea that I’d voluntarily live in “downtown” anywhere.
I’ve said it before, but I really do need to stop having chicken for dinner. It truly makes for some of the dumbest dreams.
Communicating intent…
Halloween is fine as holidays go. It generally lacks the feasting that’s kind of the hallmark of my favorite holidays, but stacking three of those in a row over sequential months is probably overkill. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with Halloween, but gods do I loathe the celebrants who can’t seem to abide by the rules of the road.
I don’t like people coming to the door at the best of times. Jorah absolutely loses his shit when the doorbell rings, or a car door slams, or he hears voices he can’t identify. The same set of inputs send the cat fleeing to the deepest corners of house to burrow in. George, to his credit, is happily indifferent. Still, that leaves three out of four residents of this house who just don’t want to deal with it.
I do all the things you’re supposed to do when you’re not participating – cut off the porch light, the driveway lights, and even the landscape lighting. Still they came. Two years ago, I even extinguished the itty-bitty light in the doorbell. They still came. Last year I went so far as pulling all the blinds and reduced the interior light to the bare minimum needed to keep reading. Still they came.
Today I made sure all of the above was done before dark and even added blackout curtains to the side light windows next to the front door in an effort to block out any ambient light that might make its way to the front of the house. By 7 o’clock this evening it will be pitch goddamned black in my front yard. The house is going to look like a hole in the woods. There’s not a thing about it that’ll look inviting. Still, I expect, they’ll come… and stand in the dark utterly confused when there’s no doorbell to ring. Short of posting sentries at the end of the driveway, I don’t know how else to convey my intent.
Simply wanting to be left alone in peace in your own home shouldn’t require this level of effort. A thinking person could have picked up on the signs when I turned the porch light off… so I suspect what we really have is at least some number of people wandering around feeling awfully entitled to other people’s time and attention. Basically, behaving the same way they do the other 364 days of the year.
In conclusion, if you wouldn’t encourage your darling children to take candy from a stranger in a van, you probably shouldn’t encourage them to visit my blacked-out house.
Ponder, dwell, and worry…
This week has been a lot and I’m tired. Not so much physically as mentally. I’ve expended too much mental energy on stuff that I have no control over and in my estimation that’s almost always a mistake. Being, by nature, someone who ponders, dwells, and flat out worries, it’s an easy enough trap to fall into.
Between ongoing Russian fuckery, the UK having a crisis of confidence, the steady drumbeat of the US midterm elections approaching, and various other bits and bobs, the world is a busy place filled with any number of things that could literally or figuratively maim, mutilate, or kill a guy. Each and every one of those topics is an area worthy of the big thinkers of our time. Even they, in their collective wisdom, probably couldn’t arrive at a collective resolution. I don’t tend to believe in unsolvable problems, but I absolutely believe in problems that can’t be solved until everyone involved wants to solve them. We’re nowhere near that point on so very many issues of great import – and so, completely unbidden, my mind tends to dwell.
This weekend, I’m going to treat this problem the best way I know how – by dramatically reducing my consumption of content from the electronic and print media for a couple of days. I won’t bother to proclaim a news blackout because I’ve never been successful at making one of those stick. I can, however, make intentional choices about what sites I visit and links I follow.
Add in a healthy dab of physical exhaustion from jumping into the fall yard work and that’ll be just about what the doctor ordered to even out the keel. By Monday I should be ready to dive back in and, if nothing else, look at the same old issues with an at least partially rested frontal lobe.
Global wealth, exceptionalism, and mediocrity…
According to an article in The Guardian, in 2021 the number of millionaires in the United States increased by 2.5 million, bringing the total of millionaires in the US to 24.5 million. Put another way, approximately 7% of the people living in this country have a net worth of at least one million dollars. That number is so high compared to historical levels that according to the article “the number of millionaires was becoming so large that it was becoming ‘an increasingly irrelevant measure of wealth.’”
In my mind, having 39% of the world’s millionaires knocking around the country is a good news story. It speaks to the unprecedented level of wealth creation the American economy and global trade have fostered. We’re creating wealth in greater amounts and more quickly than ever before in history and it’s a testament to what’s still possible with brains, effort, and a bit of luck.
The Guardian, of course, takes pains to point out that the largess of the global economy hasn’t been fairly distributed. As if anything in the world has ever been distributed fairly. Natural resources aren’t sprinkled evenly across the world. Intellect isn’t awarded equally at birth. Gnashing your teeth over issues of equity is, of course, the trendy take, but it’s not how the universe works.
Personally, I’m far happier knowing it’s possible to be exceptional, somewhere towards the right end of the bell curve, than knowing for a certainty that we can all look forward to an equal share of mediocrity.
An utterly cotton headed loss for words…
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been far better at expressing myself in writing than in words spoken aloud. Something about the slowing down and crafting the words on the page versus simply opening my mouth and letting them fall out as unorganized or partial thoughts, I suppose.
Even though writing is supposed to be my strong suit, it’s all a dry well tonight. I’m lucky to string together a coherent thought about not being able to put more than half a dozen words together without my eyes crossing and my brain going into vapor lock.
I’m going to go mix a very tall gin and tonic, get a night’s sleep, and expect the cotton in my head to be a bit less dense tomorrow and the day after that and the one after that. Before long, I’ll be back to full throated raging against annoyances, wry observations, and occasional bad takes on current events. For now, I’m just going to let coming down from forgoing a lot of sleep and mainlining a single story for the last eleven days take as long as it takes.
I know a lot of people keep saying they wish they weren’t living in such interesting times… but I wouldn’t miss it for the world, even if it does occasionally leave me bleary eyed and nonsensical.
The last project of 2022 (probably)…
I started 2022 with a long list of projects that needed doing. Some were minor and I managed to knock them off one by one as the months crept past. Others – some electrical work, replacing the well filters, the gut and redo on my bathroom, and maintenance on the exterior trim work – were all things I opted to farm out to more competent hands.
The painters, at long last, were here yesterday. It wasn’t a particularly big project, but it involved a level of detailed effort and agility atop a ladder that I’m decidedly not able to deliver. Still, it was badly in need of doing. All the front windows needed recalked, the steel lentils above each window and the garage doors needed to be scraped, primed, and repainted, a deeply weathered wooden door frame needed a bit of patching and a fresh coat of paint, and lastly the iron pipe that keeps the generator fueled was beginning to wear through its original battleship gray.
I’m working from the assumption that all of those bits, except for the last one, probably haven’t been looked after since the house was built in 2000. The previous owners gave it good bones, but as they aged, it was obvious basic maintenance was let go. I’m told that’s something that tends to happen with older home owners. God preserve me from living through such a fate.
I’ve slowly worked through taking the multitude of deferred maintenance problems in hand. It was an impressively long list that included fixing the entire drainage scheme for the back yard, bricking up an undrained window well, replacing the furnace, clearing the shrubbery that at one time grew in the gutters, and a whole host of other smaller efforts. It’s taken the better part of eight years, but I’m pretty much done with the things that were on my original list.
Aside from keeping up with the preventative maintenance now that it’s caught up, there’s the large and growing list of new projects that I want to take on. The air conditioning condenser unit is 22 years old. The carpet in the master bedroom and sunroom is warn and approaching tatty. The kitchen could use a bit of a refresh. Before long the roof will reach the end of its service life. Those are just the known projects. Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns are always lurking out there waiting to spring a surprise bit of home repair on me when they’re least expected or wanted.
I haven’t formally decided what’s next. If I can keep the air conditioner blowing through one more season, I’d like to take on some worrisome limbs that overhang the house and trees that have grown a bit too close. That’s probably the top of my wish list for 2023. Well, that, or really getting someone in here who can diagnose why my gutters suck and giving me a plan to fix them once and for all.
As it turns out, the vast array of projects as a homeowner never actually ends, you just decide at some point to take a break. That’s absolutely where I am now.
It’s one or the other…
The last month or so has felt like a street fight between dragging the bathroom renovation across the finish line, attempting to schedule some other service appointments, keeping up with a few medical appointments for me and the critters, and generally trying to keep the household running. It feels a bit like we hit a breakthrough this week. Even if there wasn’t much that ended up in the “done” pile, there was forward motion on a wide front
September is still shaping up to be a hectic couple of weeks with various home repairs, doctor’s appointments, long deferred training classes, occasionally putting in a full day of work, and taking care of everything else that needs doing week in and week out. It’s busy, but for the first time in a month or two everything doesn’t feel like a bloody fistfight for every inch of progress.
There’s a very small number of activities for which I’ll claim any special skill. Whatever I manage to get done, I’ll generally attribute more to dogged determination than raw talent. Having said that, I’m cautiously optimistic that September is ushering in a season where I’ll start seeing the payoff for a couple of months of repeatedly flinging myself against the same brick walls.
It’s either that or every damned thing is about to fly uncontrollably off the rails. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.
That was predictable…
Back at the beginning of the Great Plague many animal shelters and rescues couldn’t meet the demand of people wanting to bring a dog, cart, or other small animal into their homes. That’s a great problem to have if you’re in the business of trying to get animals off the street or out of hoarding situations. Even as it was happening, I imagined what the inevitable downstream consequences would look like. Based on a couple of online reports I’ve read, we have now arrived “downstream.”
The animals adopted en mass over the last few years are now being abandoned to shelters at growing rate. It was perfectly predictable if you operate from the assumption that human beings are the literal worst. Sure, people will want to blame going back to their in-person jobs and not having time. Others will blame inflation. Others will dream up whatever excuse allows them to sleep better at night after abandoning a creature that was entirely dependent on them for food, shelter, and protection.
Look, no one knows better than I do that situations change. Eleven years ago, I was hurtling towards Maryland one day ahead of my belongings with two dogs in the back seat and no housing locked in because most landlords didn’t want to rent to someone with pets. It was damned stressful, but putting Maggie and Winston out on the side of the road was never going to be an option. If that meant I had to drive further or pay more, that was just the price of doing business.
I’m damned if I’m going to be lectured by anyone about vet bills being expensive. More than once I had to take out a loan to pay for treatment I couldn’t afford out of pocket. Conservatively, I’d estimate I’ve paid out $30,000 in vet bills and medication over the last decade. That’s before even figuring in the day-to-day costs like food, toys, and treats. I didn’t always pay the bill with a song in my heart, but I found a way to get it done even if that mean sacrificing other things I wanted or needed.
I struggle mightily to think of a situation where I’d hand over one of these animals or where I wouldn’t go without or change my living situation if that’s what it took to make sure I was able to look after them. Hell, if I drop dead tomorrow there are provisions in place to make sure Jorah, Hershel, and George can live out their days in comfort and get whatever care they need for the rest of their natural lives. That’s the unspoken compact I made with them when I brought them home.
If you’re the kind of person who would just dump them off on the local shelter or rescue, hope someone else will do the hard work for you, and then wash your hands of the whole sorry state of affairs, well then Jesus… I don’t even want to know you.
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