This is a political cartoon. Apparently I have to explain. I'll get back to it.
The Smart Rat
- as told to me by some facilitator at a seminar back in 1994. I'm pretty sure this is one version of many but this is what I heard (mine) and don't bother arguing. I give it to you for context.
The facilitator asks the people sitting in rows and columns of chairs, about six inches below the podium, which are smarter? People or Rats? Rats or People?
We're arrogant for so many reasons and in a short amount of time, the people sitting in the rows and columns of chairs agree vehemently that People are smarter for sure. What sort of question is that anyway? There is some grumbling from the way back corner about trick questions, a thud, and then silence.
Consensus is all.
Having obtained an answer, the facilitator tells the story:
There are 4 Tubes in a box.
At the end of one of the Tubes, there is a big, fat, honking piece of cheese.
In every other Tube there is nothing.
Bupkis.
There is ONE very Hongry Rat.
One, just 1. Very Hangry Rat.
A Motivated Rat.
It is very funny to watch the facilitator run up and down the imaginary tubes carrying his mic and mic cord and narrating the entire time. This facilitator tells a good story.
Here's how it goes (but not with the bullet numbers called out):
The rat runs down Tube #1.
At the end he stops, he stiffs, he wiggles his whiskers
Not a crumble
Wasting no time, the rat turns abruptly and runs back the way he came.
Tube #1 is already forgotten (except the memory that it is cheese-less)
He does not trip over the mic cord. To this day I remain impressed.
The rat runs down tube #2. CHHHEEEEEEESSSSEEEE!
Monsieur Ratty has successfully completed his mission and settles down to eat for a week.
Note: Monsieur Ratty does not pick up the cheese and run to the top of the Tube.
Monsieur Ratty just eats the damn cheese. End of Monsieur Ratty's story. Mostly.
Monsieur Ratty left a note on Tube #1. Probably not a Ratarian act; most likely just to remind himself on the way back out, but not particularly worried that some other rat will read the note, rush on to Tube #2, knock him off his chair, and proceed to the cheese. His Cheese. Monsieur Ratty's Cheese.
Hard to say.
The facilitator asks for a female volunteer. Today the facilitator would just ask for a volunteer. Hopefully. But in 1994 we still made some pretty harsh assumptions. Knee-jerk, but harsh.
A beautiful brown skinned woman from the third or fourth row, center column stands up. The facilitator beckons her forward, leads her to Tube #3, guides her to the end of Tube #3 and pronounces her 'Cheese'.
Um. Yeah, I'll leave that alone. For now. It was 1994.
The facilitator has become the Man (it's a metaphor, let it go) and continues the story (but not with the bulleted numbers called out):
There are 4 Tubes in a box.
At the end of one of the Tubes stands The Perfect Woman.
In every other Tube there is nothing.
Bupkis.
There is ONE Very Lonely, Lonely Man.
The ONE Very Lonely Man is a bunch of other biological things, but we don't get a list. We already know, being People.
A Motivated Man.
It is very funny to watch the facilitator run up and down the imaginary tubes carrying his mic and mic cord and narrating the entire time. This facilitator tells a hilarious story. A story we can all relate to. We are all (mostly, maybe not the still silenced voice from the back corner) laughing about personal experience, things we have seen other people do, not us. We would not.
Here's how it goes (but not with the bullet numbers called out):
The Man runs to the end of Tube #1
He stops, puffs up his chest, sniffs, flexes his forearms and calls out (back up the tube):
Is anyone in this well lit echoing chamber? Anyone?
Not a crumble
He sits down at the end of Tube #1 and weeps
Eventually he leaves Tube #1, but not without a last look, just in case
He leaves a sixteen page love letter fixed firmly at the entry. The letter is to the missing woman, his broken heart, and a warning to all other men
In the man's memory, Tube #1 had a woman and then he did not. He continues his search
He does not trip over the mic cord. To this day I remain impressed.
The Man strolls to the end of Tube #2. He whistles
The Man sits down and has a beer. He waits. He bides his time
Eventually he sobers himself up and leaves Tube #2
The Man does not leave a note, not even to himself
FINALLY! The Man and the Woman are united at the end of Tube #3
They are The Perfect Man and The Perfect Woman and they are very happy
They sit down and...
The Man gets up and announces his departure...
I'm going out for a pack of smokes and some milk? Want anything else?
We watch the Man run over to Tube #4, just in case there's something better over there. Nope
He ambles back to Tube #2 in case he missed something, or she was maybe in the ladies room at the time. Nope
He RUNS back to Tube #1 because maybe she came back! His letter is still pinned at the opening. He runs to the end of Tube #1 anyway
Now the Man is lost. He remembers another Tube, a Tube with The Perfect Woman. He starts running in circles at the end of Tube #1, chasing his tail and weeping.
From the way back corner of the room, someone is laughing. Hard. Because this is REALLY funny unless you take yourself way too seriously. Thud. What the fuck?! Thud. THUD. Thud. Silence.
The Perfect Woman stands up and calls out to The Man. Over here! I'm over here!
The Man looks up, scratches behind his ear, and lets out a deep sigh
The Perfect Woman leaves Tube #3 and walks down to Tube #1. She calls out
Nothing. He's composing another letter to leave with the first.
The Perfect Woman leaves the box and returns to her seat. Fuck 'im, then
The facilitator stands up and returns to the podium. He is silent. We are silent. The voice from the way back corner yells:
Voice: We are NOT the Smart Rats, are we?
Facilitator: We are not the Smart Rats. Not smart at all.
Which leads into a lengthy discussion about this metaphor and us, personally.
I'm thinking about the food chain lately. Monsieur is whomever ends up at the top of the food chain. The other one? Le Mouchard. The rest of us, I suppose.
At least that's the way we believe it to be.
This was sorta fun but I decided not to label the players. We wouldn't get a consensus anyway.
Voice from the way back corner: Cough.
Here is one of my favorite Monsieur Simon songs. I think of it as his 'later work' but since this CD was in my hands a few months before Elizabeth was born, that would make it twenty years old. That's his later work - yah?
Pigs, Sheep and Wolves - Paul Simon - released in October, 2000 on You're The One
Let's get him! Let's get that wolf! Let's get him let's get him lets get him! KILL that wolf!
There is a damn long playlist below. Isn't it better if I just give you this? Don't worry. It's kinda short. 00:01:01, I believe.
I paid $3.99 for a month of unlimited use. You get what you don't pay for most of the time, but it did the trick. Therefore, be gentle, please, with my editing results. Ack.
This whole thing started because I reset my alarm before bed last night.
I did this because I was tired of being yelled at by Jessy Wilson and Kallie North. I appreciate a STRONG Female Anthem as much as the next woman but the Muddy Magnolia's American Woman (not to be confused with any other such titled songs) (in any way whatsoever), scared the shit out of me every damn morning. Near heart failure before noon isn't recommended.
I love that I can scroll through the music on my phone and pick up anything I've got out there. I love that you get the entire song if you want it (just don't touch the screen or it's all over). I am not amused at my nearly complete lack of self-preservation.
Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key - Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Avenue, 1998 - "...ain't nobody that can sing like me, ain't nobody that can sing like me..."
Still pretty damn passionate for first thing in the morning, at full volume, and approximately eight inches from my right ear. BUT, it is in the minor key (who knew?!) which makes it mostly singable by me, even first thing in the morning (because nobody is listening).
You can take a massive shot of adrenaline an awful long way.
"way over yonder in the minor key, way over yonder in the minor key... ain't nobody that can sing like me..."
It's still in my head but I've shut up now. Mostly. Note: If you click that link you can listen to Mermaid Avenue in its entirety, uninterrupted. I recommend California Stars with a full bodied red, on a deck overlooking the dunes just about anywhere without enough ambient light to kill off the stars. I heard a man, once, who knew the three major chords required to sing just about anything, belt California Stars out well enough I wanted to throw money at him. He was three decks over and protected by the posse most likely called Family. He had at LEAST four of them harmonizing halfway through.
And that was it. I wept. I wanted to beg for more. The unspoken law of residential beach privacy being what it is, this would only have been permitted in the early morning and only if I showed up with coffee. It was after midnight. I wept.
So what's it all about, Alfie?
It's about Elizabeth's playlist, the one we made for her 18th birthday. The one she listens to on Spotify, completely out of order because this is the way of the world now; we no longer understand the purpose of the thing called mixtape. There was brief period of time when you could not give music in playlist format. The technology wasn't there yet. We abandoned our CD players and burners, turned to iTunes and Amazon and just before the jump to Spotify, we figured it out. It's not perfect, but it's viable.
Instructions:
Make a playlist (I'm not going to tell you how to come up with a mixtape sort of playlist; you either have it or you do not)
Put the songs and or recordings in the order in which they should be heard.
If you can make it work, the MAC does have a process for adding brief gaps and something resembling a very brief fade in fade out but nothing like what we lost when we let analog slip away, ghost like.
Make sure you actually OWN the rights to play and move about these songs. You no longer have the right to handle the music the way you once did. Not even if you purchase an actual CD.
Make sure every single recording is actually present on your drive.
Copy all of the playlist recordings into a new folder which can be called whatever the hell you want because nothing's going to read it anyway.
Make a FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THINGS HOLY: READ. ME. FIRST. file in as generic a format as possible (I actually use microsoft these days)
Put the titles, in order, of the playlist at the top of the read me and then in big letters
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRANSFERRING A PLAYLIST - do not try this at home
INSTRUCTIONS:
Insert this itty bitty thumb drive into your USB or USB C (I like the thumb drives with both options) port.
Wait for your computer to acknowledge and read the contents of the drive.
Copy the contents of this entire folder (including the folder which is the folder you created to capture the music and stuff) into your music directory.
Open iTunes.
Add a Playlist, call it THIS
Add each song to the play list (if you must, add instructions required to help iTunes see this stuff)
Rearrange the order and make sure you don't have any random settings applied to actual folders
Put the drive in a safe place (after properly removing it)
Put your cursor on the first song and play
Don't fuck with this. It's in that order for a reason
If there is another file on the drive with more information, like the artist, song length, and / or person associated with such song, make sure it's accessible
Sometimes there isn't a damn thing you can do to drag the Spotify junkie back to something that might not be random for a perfectly good reason.
Sometimes there are recordings on those lists that will never be found in the random ether or 'free music'.
Sometimes there are recordings on those lists that will never be found anywhere other than the thumb drive and the drive on which the recording was made.
Someday soon, I expect, she's going to ask me if, by any chance, I know where her thumb drive is and I'm going to hand her a spare and say, it's right here, love.
I sent her the link to the video I made this morning because I wanted her to know that her face was all over the interwebs (nobody is going to find this thing, but still) but not her name or even mine and was she ok with that?
"This is so thoughtful, thank you❤️ I actually repeat this poem in my head often when I’m stressed or worried, and it’s better to hear it from you."
Indeed, she is. Sometimes it's better just to send a link. Maybe.
Probably published this end of 2018 which is when she turned 18 but for my own self, here it is again. In an Excel screen shot. I'm so sorry.
Someday when I'm motivated enough to chop up the tracks, I'll take these down to sound bites, small enough to merge them into something manageable and then I'll make her another. Kinda curious about whether or not youtube will notice the copyright infringements if I pull it together real tight.
If we have been reduced to the consumption of soundbites in the third decade of the twenty-first century, a conglomeration (unholy or otherwise if you look closely at that list - heh) might have relevant impact.
Electronic paper dolls. That's what this was; an exercise in the deep reach for those childhood skills we've all but forgotten we have. This is circa 1998 and I DO have the uniform right even if the pants are on backwards. You couldn't tell, right? You couldn't tell. Florkow. It looks like we have TAS butt.
TAS is a person. Clearing that up.
The turtleneck is Gap, circa end of the last century.
The belt: Same
The TAS pants? Also, Gap, circa end of last century.
The shoes are absolutely correct except they are Coach and we couldn't afford Coach to save our collective lives and we hadn't quite stumbled into Joan & David.
Computer bags: beat to hell Targus.
The logos: The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
OK, not really. The color is wrong and the swoosh is wrong but other than that the logo on the left is the logo we know. There was another before it but since that logo AND name are before our time, it doesn't register.
The fruit loops are dead-on accurate including the fall from grace; having been made to walk the plank on one of Mr. Ellison's boats, they tumble into space bouncing off bits of cosmic detritus before sinking slowly beneath still water.
Mr. Ellison is becalmed. Sacrifices must be made or we all die in the doldrums; any of us happen to be stuck there. Generally, doldrum sacrifices require the dismembering of at least half the crew before the albatross flies low on the horizon, indicating fire and rain. No, sorry, winds and rain.
Once, beginning in 1999, any acolyte worth their skin had those fruit loops permanently tattooed on their asses. At the pool on Wednesday, which is always the last day of the user conference, these temporary tattoos presented, one by one, as if communion wafers. We asked for more than one. We asked for handfuls, for the entire bag, for whatever we could have, fully intending to cover every inch of exposed skin before boarding the New York bound, big tin can with wings. I have been drooled on, from the middle seat, by no less than one not so sober yet man every single time. Even as a customer at the very last conference (the one where Mr. Ellison called all the grey shirts (uniform of the year) into a big room), even sitting NEXT TO MY HUSBAND, I was drooled upon. Copiously. These things also happen to Elizabeth leading me to believe we have some odd pheromone passed generation to generation which screams:
DROOL ON ME, MOTHERFUCKER! DROOL ON ME RIGHT NOW AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS IN THE NEXT FIFTEEN SECONDS! Trust me. You'll like it.
Who doesn't like a slap upside the head in the middle of a self-inflicted coma?
On Sunday nights we mingle at the pool with our customers. Some of us drink, eat, and flee.
On Monday mornings we try not to vomit between our feet during the sixteen hour keynote speech.
On Monday afternoon, we present to not yet bleary customers on subjects we may or may not know anything about. It's a good way to learn a new product on the fly, I am one of the walking evidences.
On Monday nights we go to Islands of Adventure (or a park like it) and ride the rollercoasters over and over again until our necks have snapped back enough times to scare the shit out of the ride operator. Then we drink beer and afterward someone is found naked in the fountain. Or nearly naked. I was not naked. Florkow will have to speak for herself.
On Tuesday, we rinse and repeat Monday afternoon with the exception of the required lunching with people we hope will forget our faces because Tuesday night is coming.
On Tuesday nights we drink and sing until we fall down. Preferably in the appropriate beds with the appropriate people. That came out wrong.
Those of us who have presentations scheduled for Wednesday mornings pray that they are early enough to provide a dark, empty room with the A/C blasting in anticipation of fifty or one hundred plus hot bodies. We pray for this dark room in which we will lie our screaming heads on the cool, cool carpeting and try to remember if we showered prior to leaving a room.
Sometimes the room is jam packed. We are adrenaline junkies and so we survive the onslaught of angry customers asking, WHY?! Just WHY?! was this product released sans QA (clearly). I am fortunate. My voice is gone, I have a stuffed snake around my neck, and I've never even heard of Auto Pilot (well, I have; I'm just not entirely sure what it's meant to do). This is not like with the budgeting software where I can conveniently trip over the mess of cables between me and the front row of students, thus taking out the entire environment leaving me fifteen minutes to read the next chapter in the manual. In the ladies room. That's the best place, trust me.
This should explain the Wednesday afternoon return flights. Isn't it like this everywhere? Probably not. Those days are over.
Last night I caught up with Florkow, at least a bit. There's a lot to catch up on after five years without a significant conversation. This is ok, this has always been ok. We know about the big events because they hit the book of scary faces, but not always, and you won't always catch it in your feed. Some things are not posted on the book of faces because they are too personal, too intimate, and too unfucking believably painful to post. I meant to ask about one of those last night but I was distracted about other things and also, I wasn't ready to cry for three days. Now I'm ready.
It's funny, or it isn't, how all the bottled up shit we feel starts to leak when we talk or chat with that one person who has, over the years, picked us up and at least got us sitting upright in a chair. That one person, regardless of the time gap that we would, and often need to, trust with our lives.
My theory about this, at least one of them, is you have to have ridden across the desert with a body, at least once, to understand where they stand. You have to believe in at least enough like things, to share a broad enough point of view, such that you can pretty much say anything and either find agreement or at least not direct conflict. There is a safety in a thing like that and when we have it, we know. At least we should now. I have another theory as well. It goes with the extrovert = many friends and the introvert = very few, but very close friends. I don't know how you can trust an honest to gods extrovert, but that's just me and also, it is a horrible judgement.
I've been putting a calendar together for me and Elizabeth because we have killed the whiteboard and we really need more than 35 days at a time. I'm little late but I'll get it done. I'm still sorting through photographs, correcting images, cropping to fit.
There's a photograph I took from his daughter. It is her favorite and also mine. I'm trying to figure out if I should remove the caption or leave it. I guess it depends on what I want to remember, exactly. I was looking at it this morning and that crying I really wasn't ready to do started doing. It's not so much that he's gone, although it is, it's that his passing was like a door slammed hard on the Southpark Years. The Southpark Years when we all lived in the Castle and we didn't know better than to do anything but trust.
Time being a social construct (and everything Einstein's got to say as well), we are still standing at the barn door, open wide for all the world to see. The High Performance Ponies still have shit eating grins, and Sparky is still walking around with a button, a needle, and some thread, asking if anyone will sew the button back on his pants for him. The wuzband of TAS is still dropping quarters on the floor to see if I'll bend over to pick them up (just that one time, you ASS). We still walk through the tunnel in lockstep and look for beer at any given opportunity. You have done something to Mr. Dugdale. I'm not asking, but he still doesn't look right.
And Tony Carey's boys are still alive. Because time hasn't slipped.
It's been twelve years. I have not forgotten the sound of his voice any more than I'd ever forget yours.
I love you, Florkow. And it's going to be OK.
Love to Pirate, should I locate some edibles? Dad swears by 'em although S may be ready to haul his sorry self to the Pine Barrens.
What do you think? The caption stays or the caption goes?
Florkow, CeilingKow, WallKow, anyway you like it. Do you remember who gave you that name? I can see his face...
I swear, this sounds like Norah Jones but Norah wasn't born yet.
"And good that someone's going to look at those washing machines finally"
Yeah, I thought the music worked. I'll tell you about the washing machine later. It sounds like a skill saw going through a steel pipe at the moment.
That's how they fixed it?
No. It was just RM down there to see if anything happened when he hit the GO button.
Didn't you tell him? Didn't Kyle tell him?
I did, yes. Except he thinks he was talking to you. Anyway, it doesn't really matter, we're just going to have to let the belt snap on its own. Listen, tell me what you thought about the post other than you liked my cute little play list at the bottom.
OK. Hang on.
{twenty minutes later, pretty sure she wrote this offline first}
"I think that it is one of the only insightful and honest reviews I’ve read that targets our responsibilities and actions taken (or lack thereof) towards the e-waste problem. It would have been a decent source to have used in my paper had I done personal interviews. It’s going to be a helpful post for any of your readers that want to change anything about their lifestyle choices in order to become more conscious consumers. I think that could be a good chunk of your audience"
She thinks you all are responsible consumers. Of course she does.
On the other hand, her research is often exhaustive. How can Video Killed the Radio Star be "...one of the only insightful and honest reviews I've read that targets our responsibilities and actions taken (or lack thereof)..."?
I've dropped everything into an Excel spreadsheet and inserted as a photo: every crisis, panic, crash, or panic on this list which occurred on these hallowed grounds beginning in 1791. Commentary to follow.
I was having one hell of a time getting some of the date formatting to resolve when I realized that Microsoft doesn't recognize anything prior to the twentieth century. Can't say I blame it. In any event, I wanted to be able to see the days on which these crashes or splats occurred. I seem to find this relevant.
I had to manually look up and insert The Great Depression. I can't tell why it isn't on this list as it's certainly referenced. What I do know is that different sites reference, define, and date it differently. That's probably worth closer inspection but I expect it's a rabbit hole.
I also note that several significant recessions are missing. Why do I know? Because I was there. Also because I had to memorize the poverty line from the early twentieth century to the mid-eighties in both micro and macro economics (mull a bit on that).
The panics at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries are interesting and also make sense. However, keeping The Tulip Meltdown in February of 1637 in mind, speculative bubbles and the big old splats which invariably follow the peak, we can see the first truly relevant documentation of socio-econmic divides: The Haves and the Have Nots.
What? You thought we always knew? Let them eat cake and all that? Of course we knew, we just hadn't looked at it from an economic cause and effect.
More Bold Words:
Bold Words Preamble:
I checked (two sources, but OK). I fall into the top 5% of you all know what in the US. On the other hand, I am technically indigent (I owe more than I own). If I did an equity check every equation out there would blow up because there is no bracket for earners in the top 5% that lost everything. There were A LOT of us. No surprise, but I'm still in the top 5% which is upsetting on many levels but let's stick to the point.
Oh, wait. Those of us in the top 5% income bracket are also, generally, in the 30-45% tax bracket, un or underinsured, and carrying significant debt for one reason or another (mine's not credit card debt but it might as well be).
Yowza.
More Bold Words Narrative:
I want my MTV.... (Get your money for nothing and your chicks for free...)
We all want a piece of the pie and we're mad as hell that they have it and we don't. We blame sub-prime lending on BigBanks and White Men on Wall Street but we didn't have to buy those houses. Alan Greenspan was a GOD on the alter of capitalism at which we worshiped. We want to know where the hell our sub-prime interest rates went; dispersed into the mist. We want them back, those sub-prime loans, those zero percent interest rates, and those tremendous clearance sales (we still got those for the same reason we ever had them).
Hell, some of us want day trading back. And I never did have the opportunity to short a stock, by the way, and the truth is I really wanted to. I wanted to see if I had the power to spin a company on its nose just by fucking with its imaginary value.
Monopoly, right?
Raise your hands:
When did the United States absolve itself from the Gold Standard and what did that cause?
For the record, I don't think any country uses the Gold Standard to measure its currency and it appears that England started this debacle in 1931, followed closely by the US in 1933. We did not complete abandon the Gold Standard until 1971. I'm not sure I follow, but that's OK.
The Gold Standard was used to determine the current value of paper money. An agreed upon price of an ounce of gold drove the value of the dollar. The country could use its own standard, or align itself with other economies. For example, if an entity determines that an ounce of gold is worth $100 then the value of the associated dollar would be worth 1/100 of an ounce of gold. The purpose of the Gold Standard was to back legal tender with something of actual value (don't start me, we're just going to have to accept the definition of actual value for now - could be a tulip bulb, right?).
This is sort of like your checkbook, should you actually still have one (I do). The paper check is a promise to pay; the check has no value at all. The bank on which the paper is written, agrees to pay the bearer the amount indicated on the paper, assuming the account in question holds the requested value. Following this? Paper for paper...
The reasons, causes, and almost immediate effects of letting go of the Gold Standard would cost me at least 8,000 words to cover. In summary, when we let go of the Gold Standard, we lost our footing. If the treasury can only print and allow to remain in circulation the amount of money equal to the current value of gold, then the economy is ostensibly or somewhat stable by virtue of the gold sitting in Fort Knox.
That is a gross over-simplification but it will have to do. Feel free to research the shit out of this; it's a bit eye opening.
When we went to Fiat Money, we lost the ability to control inflation or deflation by traditional means and the world went haywire. Fiat Money? In the US, the dollar means what I say it means.
Shit! No! Bad Bad Bad!
Mr. Greenspan! Tear down that wall! That's not right, is it? Might as well be.
I WANT MY MTV! ("Get your money for nothing and your chicks for free...")
Go to college (because, idiot, just because)
Buy a house
Get married
Have a herd of children, or just the recommended daily allowance of 2.3
Buy an automobile
Buy a REALLY BIG automobile, hell, have four! They're nearly free
Look at your neighbors to the left, the right, and directly across the street. Do you have as much or more? If not, go get more, you're not winning. Seriously, that IS a thing
Send your children to a better college (because, idiot, just because)
.........
In this house we say: We do not accumulate debt for undergraduate study with the assumption that by the time you've completed three of your four years you'll have picked a field of study that will be worth the debt incurred during post graduate work.
That's not even good enough. It's just a buffer for the first four years.
The Boldest of Bold Words:
The BigBanks and the White Men on Wall Street did not do this to us, or at least without our consent. We did this. Brace yourself:
They work for us and we pay them a shit ton to do so.
Ah, gawd that stings, don't it?
End of Big Bold Words (the offensive-est ones, anyway)
When I was thirteen, probably, and probably apropos of nothing whatsoever, I told my maternal grandparents that I wanted to be an Evil Capitalist when I grew up.
There are two definitions for the word Nonplussed. They appear to be exact opposites but I don't really think that's true:
Traditional definition: (of a person) surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react
Informal definition: (of a person) not disconcerted; unperturbed
My grandparents were nonplussed and asked exactly what I meant by Evil Capitalist.
Uhhhh... not exactly sure but definitely sure I want to be one.
Do you know what Capitalism is?
Oh! Yes, I have that one. Capitalism is how we make a lot of money. It doesn't actually matter how we make a lot of money, it only matters that we make it.
Why is Capitalism Evil?
Sigh. I just think it is.
But why?
I don't know, I just have this feeling that it can't possibly be good.
OK.
(whew! off the hook)
When I was six or seven, in the car on the way home from our first family vacation ever (upwardly mobile, those two people were), when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, without hesitation I said:
Uh, well, either a lawyer or a playboy bunny.
Discussion from the front seat ensued. I sat back and thought about it. It took a lot of years to realized that I had already decided I could trade on my sexuality AND/OR do something really cool.
From the front seat:
She's going to be a litigating attorney.
....mumble mumble mumble... not sure which is actually worse.
When my life went to hell (pick a year), I shifted from actually *wanting* to be something to pure survival.
All I want is a small family in a small house with a white picket fence and a nice little yard. I just want to be safe. If I want more than that, there's no way I can be safe.
As I got older, with significantly more responsibility I could feel it getting away from me. At one point, five mouths to feed including my own. Five mouths to feed and entry into an upper echelon that left my soul with third degree burns. More money, more money, more money just to survive in the only world I understood and all by myself.
How does that happen? The all by myself business? Take the gender away. Men do this every day. Is the terror forever and for always and is it there for everyone? Don't know.
I do notice that as a non-landowner (landowner being subjective), without equity in anything other than a very dubious collection of 401k's (uhhhh, check that crash and burn history lately?), and the clear expectation that 1964 babies will be the first to stand empty handed at the Social Security Dole, I'm not quite as panicked as I've been most of my life. I'm panicked about other things but those things were always there; they just had to wait at the back of the line.
I don't think so hard about what I purchase in terms of cash as I do about what will happen to it. That doesn't mean I don't think about cash, I sure as shit do. That just means that if I thought too hard, I'd never buy anything again which has a negative trickle down effect in my own household as well as in the supply and demand economy.
Is that even a thing anymore?
I'll wrap this up with a few of my favorites, leaving 1929 out of it entirely. It's going to have to be in another Excel screenshot because it has to be in a table to read well at all. You're most likely going to have to open the screenshot to read it.
I neglected to mention that one of the reasons the Left Left Left banged into the Right Right Right is that the Right swung just as damn hard. But it's always somebody else's fault. I just cannot tell for sure, if the Right stands for less or for more government (just pick one and apply across the board, kay?). I can't tell for sure if the Left can even hear itself. Admittedly, they don't actually vote.
Also - all politicians are corrupt inasmuch as We the People define corruption. I do notice, however, that the Right is INFLAMED over Hilary and Bill and earlier over just Bill but the response to #45 is blink blink at best. Do you actually WANT your pussy grabbed? I realize that falls into the same basket as female control (I got a list that grows every day) but don't you think it's a bit obvious? Or doesn't it matter anymore?
I try really hard to avoid social media and television broadcast news; however, somebody said something the other day about starting a war? Huh? Wha?
It's hard to be a centrist these days. Makes it damned near impossible to talk to anyone.
But an anthropologist has to be a centrist. I just realized that. So the class was Global Health and Culture, otherwise referenced as Glahb.
Turn this ALL THE WAY UP. Turn the next up even further. And sing it baby, sing it at the top of your lungs.
These are for Elizabeth, born nine months exactly before the war that's made Vietnam look like a tea party. For the war that's still going strong, showing no sign of closure. We would have to give up far too much to let that happen but I'm afraid the bill is already overdue.
The definition of e-waste can be found here, in an article released by The Atlantic in 2016: E-waste: The Global Cost of Discarded Electronics. The iPhone 7 had just been released. The definition of Planned Obsolescence can be found in the first two paragraphs (unless you're actually subscribed which I am not) of a 2009 article released in 2009 by The Economist: Planned Obsolescence - Idea. I include this second link to illustrate how long this concept has been around (a hellava lot longer than 2009) and also to take the heat off Apple for a moment. Apple is taking a serious beating right now. Whatever. They're as good a scapegoat as any and given our sudden (YES, it really is sudden) focus on planned obsolescence and e-waste (one results in the other, right?), well, somebody needed to go under the bus. Might as well be Apple.
The thing is, Planned Obsolescence is getting mighty bold. Why? Because we want shit. That's always been the reason. We want shit and these days we want more than ever. Also, if we can't actually see it, e-waste does not exist.
e-waste has always been right there on the sidewalk, peeps. It was recently brought to my attention by Mux Elizabeth, who's final paper for Global something or other (third kid, no photographs, pick your own classes) was about e-waste. I haven't been permitted to peruse said paper but I was presented with a well thought out and communicated, if not somewhat heated, overview.
I'm going to embroider and frame this eventually:
Use it up Wear it out Make it do Or do without
Which is probably immediately followed by: waste not want not but yeah, ok. It's not my intent to be preachy, you can do that all by yourselves (or not).
Before the paper was written we had to replace our iPhone 7s because, well, they freaking died, man! Dead as doornails. I even got a warning on mine. Briefly, flashed across the screen just before it died forever:
WARNING! THIS DEVICE IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE! DROP AND ROLL! ASSUME THE POSITION!
OK, I made that up. Most of it. The words 'warning' and 'permanently' and 'shutdown' were prevalent but we hear what we hear. It was my intention to make that thing go five years or until technology itself made it obsolete and unusable. I still want my damn analog Motorola StarTAC back. It could send 140 character text messages and store phone numbers, thus removing the library of important phone numbers from my head. Forever. But I miss it. It had an antenna (which was replaceable for when you broke it off), it had a spare battery which should be charging on your desk at all times and then immediately swapped out with the dead thing when the dead thing died. The battery was utterly accessible. It snapped right off the back. Easy Peasy. There was even a big fat battery for those who cared to have a big fat phone with a big fat life (four hours pretty sure).
There was nothing wrong with my StarTAC when I traded it in. There was nothing wrong, with the exception of it being analog. Sigh.
Back on the iPhone. I made it last until the 11 was released. Almost three years. When I brought my 7 in to trade I asked where it would go. I traded my 6 and it was re-furbed and resold. Nope. This one goes in the scrap heap.
But what about parts? Spare parts? Can't it be dismantled and repurposed? Nope. So where will it go? ..... ..... ..... Gotcha. Well, that's sad as shit. Thanks for the XR anyway.
Sometime in December, 2019: The 32 inch Vizio I purchased just about exactly one year ago to that date finally told me:
Fuck off, Bitch. I'm done.
To be fair, the warning signs had been there since day one, but never enough to be able to return the damn thing. Later on it informed us with a big red exclamation point, that it could not find the interwebs.
You lie, you bastard, you lie!
About sixty seconds later the home page came up. Periodically it had to be rebooted. One reboots a Smart anything but simply unplugging it, letting it cycle down and then bringing it back. I should clarify, you do this when not even the manual on off switch works.
The final warning escapes me just now but it was as clear as the iPhone 7: Ma'am, I really cannot do this anymore. Something something can't resolve something unintelligible. Nothing I did to it changed a damn thing. It was past the warrantee but quite honestly, I didn't want another. The previous Vizio lived for seven years and would probably still be living except I'm pretty sure it was tossed in the container with everything else I left behind. I don't like to talk about it.
So here's a thing. You'll have to read this VERY carefully. I note this because I also noted that without fail, every single person with whom I discussed my conundrum missed the BIG ASS DECISION WHICH CHANGED EVERYTHING IN THIS HOUSE. The thing I had to solve for.
Even when I said: Listen, I need to tell you this right up front or we're going to get ninety percent through a conversation and I'm going to stop and say, wait, you missed the key point and then you're going to look very startled and tell me I'm crazy. Even the web searches.
Solve for:
There will never be another television in my house. Never. Absolutely never.
There hasn't been a cable box in my home for six years (at least not in use). There will never be another.
I have an HP 25f 1080p which is quite enough. I looked for a 27 or 29 that would give us a little more screen without blowing my face off when I'm working but let's face it, the screen is 11 feet from our eyeballs. At best. Also, ultra wides are a stupid use of space (personal issues)
I have a bluetooth keyboard and a universally tethered mouse.
I have a Fios router
I have a Fios modem
All things being equal, this wireless configuration is as good as any.
I have two MACs which have two problems.
I don't want to overuse them and they often leave the house
The do not have ethernet ports so don't even go there
Not only am I not going to replace my monitor, but even if I did, I would not purchase a monitor with sound. It sucks
Finally: Solve for this: I want to stream into my home to my monitor without use of any of our current smart devices. Because they also leave and break.
I was offered every streaming device known to man starting with an Apple TV and ending with multiple ROKU stick thingies. I almost got it with one of the ROKUs (although, probably not really) when we realized that the Aux output was only for headphones, not for speakers. Please don't ask me to get into those gory details.
I only want one black hole in my house. A black hole being defined as a monitor of any sort. There will never be another television. I do, however, want to retain the right to binge shit to death periodically.
In the end, it was really easy. I don't recall when the lightbulb went on but it was way after the dude at Best Buy told me I couldn't stream AND have should out of an iPad.
Stop right there. Joking. Right? Stream to the monitor with an HDMI or HDMI adapter and then blow sound to a bluetooth speaker.
It can only go one way. In or out. Unless you're using a headset.
REALLY?!!!!
It's OK, I REALLY!!!! Had no intention of spending that sort of money on a television replacement.
I'm going to figure this out.
I'm sure you will. All you have to do is google...
Look of death. (do you think I haven't been doing that?!)
The lightbulb.
My kid watches shit through his chromebook. For those of you unfamiliar with chromebooks, they aren't nifty little computers. Well, they are, but they are not meant to do anything other than work in the cloud. Therefore, minimum storage, minimum processing speed (enough), and not a lot of RAM. Why? You're not working much on the client side.
Chromebooks are special. They behave differently. There are things they will do and things that will make them roll over and play dead. For example, do not establish three bluetooth connections (live) on my Chromebook. The signals are shattered, best I can describe what happens) like the melting ice on a lake in February. OK. It has a USB port. It has HDMI. It has interwebs. It IS THE Interwebs.
It will do anything within its power to give you what you want. As long as it involves The Interwebs and or the cloud.
I think I paid $119 for the Lenovo 2nd Gen 100e. You can pay a whole lot more for a Chromebook and that one had just dropped at least 50%. I paid $20 for the Logi 10W speakers and immediately returned them. Ack. Can't recommend it. They weren't bluetooth speakers (which has nothing to do with why they sounded like cat hack) but they did plug directly into the Chromebook. They were also enormous. When did this happen?!
I replaced them with this thing that is about eight inches long and three inches in diameter. It tells you when it needs to recharge. It's a Sony SRS XB22 which can be had for $59.99 or $99.99 depending on who's asking, I suppose. I selected the door on the left with the $19.99 refund (which still means $59.99).
For $180 I have a Chromebook that streams, but not much more, and a REALLY FREAKING AWESOME BLUETOOTH SPEAKER WITH A 100 FOOT RANGE (you can't go more than 25 feet from the source in this house). That's just about exactly what it would cost me to replace the damn Vizio, although if I downgraded it would be less.
But that's not the point, is it? The point is e-waste.
I'm banking on the speaker and the Chromebook living more than a year, but here's the thing. Even if they do only make it to the day after the manufacturers warrantee, they're a shit ton smaller than what's sitting in what we call the hallway of shame waiting for the correct recycling day.
True story:
I ordered an Epson printer from Amazon. The deal with the printer is you have to go directly to Epson for support if there's a problem. I'm really and truly OK with that. Epson has pretty good support. The reason I selected this particular printer was because it holds its ink in reservoirs. This is significantly less e-waste in the long run. The printer printed exactly 7 pages and then turned belly up.
There's something in my paper feed, it told me.
No, there is not.
Well, maybe I feel something in my throat then.
No, you do not have a paper jam.
I'm sorry. Yes I do. Or something.
I followed all of the trouble shooting advice to be found in the manual and on the interwebs. I went so far as a factory reset.
I called Epson.
Very nice man.
A replacement will arrive in three to five business days.
OK, great. Where would you like me to send this one?
Oh, we don't want that back, it's defective.
True story. It, also, sits in the hallway of shame.
Next True Story:
I bought a refurbished Janome maybe five or six years ago. About eight months ago, when I changed the bobbin the needle hit metal. I took it to our local sewing shop and they sent it out (dammit). Four weeks later it reappeared with a bill for $135.
What happened?
It was out of alignment.
Why?
Sometimes that happens.
I changed the bobbin about a month ago. Come to think of it, I changed the bobbin that came back in the machine. The needle hit metal.
Fuck my life.
Online search: how do I fix this shit?
I took the machine apart. Literally, piece by piece because unlike all the older machines you can no longer just open the damn thing up and have a look. In most cases, you can't even clean it properly and it must be cleaned.
Cost of machine refurbished: $260
Cost of first repair: $135
Anticipated minimum cost of second repair: $135
Um. No. Just no. I can see this now. $135 every time I change a bobbin.
Brother Sewing Machine from Amazon. $100 plus or minus. I was scared shitless to buy it. I refused to remove the box from the house until I'd beat the crap out of it. It's OK. I really do not want that control panel because I know perfectly well that when it goes (and it will) the damn thing will be trash.
Truth.
In my little basement there are:
a brand new gas furnace (because the fifty year old furnace died last winter)
a washer
a dryer
a dehumidifier
a huge mofo basket of Elizabeth's clothing in unknown condition
The Frigidaire washer and dryer, both front loading look older than dirt. They work. At least they did work. When the furnace was replaced last year, the washer was moved (water, electricity, who knows). It was not put back in place. I tried really hard to get it back in place. I failed. It still worked. Eventually it started 'walking'. For any of you unfamiliar with a 'walking' washer, it's what happens when a front load washer is so out of balance (who knew?! right?!) it literally jumps six to eight inches in the direction of the problem. It sounds like the world is ending. It gets worse.
I finally gave up. I can't have this. Someone in this house is going to have heart failure one of these days and it's going to be on my head. I got out my spare furniture sliders, the big ones, and all by myself (Elizabeth is in Florida) lifted with two hands and inserted with one foot under all four corners. I really should have gotten myself a block of wood and by trial and error, raised and lowered the balancing feet until I got it right. I slide the damn thing forward on top (exactly) of the unpainted square of concrete.
I loaded one sheet, one pillow case, and one duvet sans comforter and pressed GO!
Nice!
Thirty minutes later the air raid siren went off in the basement. Worst thing I've ever heard. It literally hurt my ears. I stood in front of this thing waiting for it to explode. I moved back to the stairs. I don't know how to unlock a front load during a spin cycle or I would have. I imagine unplugging it would have done the trick but I didn't. I just waited for the wailing to stop.
I went upstairs.
Some time later, not too much, it hit the last spin cycle and MOTHER OF GOD!!! I went downstairs and waited for the damn thing to blow itself to pieces. I had to cover my ears.
That's a belt, I'm thinking at the time. That thing is NOT out of balance. That's a belt and it's going to break.
While I was upstairs, Kyle called and left a message. I haven't looked at it yet but I did call him right back.
Sorry, Kyle, I missed your call. I was downstairs waiting for the washer to explode.
It took some time to make Kyle understand that this was a real thing, not just the alarm going off. It doesn't even sound like the alarm.
Kyle, this is a really old machine, if they tell you it's going to cost more than $200 to fix it, don't do it.
I'll talk to my father.
OK.
This morning I woke up and wondered how long it was going to be before I called Kyle back and said:
Cough.
I hear the repairman down there just now. I really meant to get the sliders of shame out first but what the hell. That wasn't making the machine shriek.
I really do hope it can be fixed. I hope it can be fixed and that the machine will just keep on going.
I hope this because right now there is a dead sewing machine, dead television, and dead printer full of ink that can't be drained sitting in the hallway of shame. It's getting kind of crowded.
1979 - Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star - did it all start with MTV? Maybe the next, from 1985 is more appropriate.
Money For Nothing - Dire Straits - Release Date: June, 1985 followed by:
Black Monday - Release Date: October 19, 1987 - 'The worst stock market crash in the history of Wall Street'
I don't remember who told me first. Did I say it? I know my mother in law emphatically agreed. She would; she was still 'loving me dearly' and wishing I'd just never happened. Forgive her. I did.
I create my own chaos the way some people create calm and order. I don't know who those people are, but I'd sure like to meet them. Maybe just one.
More than one of those would be too much.
My brother creates the illusion of calm and order with the brute force of our shared Ancestral Calvin Ethos. Was it left in a box on the steps of his trailer, or did it spring forth like Pegasus from Medusa's neck? Pegasus is eventually transformed, by Zeus, into the constellation some of us can actually locate today (I am not one of those people).
His brother Chrysaor sprang in tandem from their mother's neck, but it was Pegasus that flew to the stars. Of Chrysaor we know very little. He carried a Golden Sword. Assumably he used it now and then but was otherwise unremarkable, at least in the telling.
These two mythic creatures must have gone to separate surrogate mothers, raised in the fraternal conflict created entirely by different experiences of same or similar events. This is what I think, anyway.
My mother in law's word was 'drama', not 'chaos'. That word has been used enough times in my life to seriously piss me off.
This is how it goes, you know:
One person calls you an ass, well, it's feedback (yay or even nay, sometimes it is just a reflected thing)
Two people call you an ass and it starts to get uncomfortable
Three people call you and ass and you buy a saddle
Just buy the damn saddle and be done with it. If the experience is ass, then that is the truth and reality, reflected back at you.
However, assuming you're an ass, well then why?
My mother in law experienced drama, I experienced chaos. I'm not even sure I could have identified the thing called 'drama' while I was dancing with the Tasmanian Devil but I'm quite certain that dance knocked a lot of shit off a lot of shelves. There it is. The drama, but I don't see it or even experience it until Taz has settled down for the night and I see the results.
This dance with the devil, the struggle for survival, is everything.
I am reliably asked, upon mentioning my three marriages (let's just get this shit out of the way, right?):
What happened?!
What a question. I'm never sure if a person is asking for the abbreviated version of The Life and Times of Lizzie Borden, or if the person seriously cannot imagine how and why a person could have married AND divorced three times in a twenty-five year period.
I am always offended. Always.
I almost never communicate the offense. I do my best to spit out the stock answer of the year. It changes and refines itself as I get further away from the last but the three bullets have always been the same:
I was very young and we did our very best
I needed a spouse, he agreed. It wasn't the best idea ever but he's a tremendous father and we both wanted this baby very much
I have no idea what happened. In all seriousness, no one saw it coming and no one has come up with a decent explanation. I think of it as : WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!
I do this to avoid the standard responses. People don't seem to recognize that the standard responses are eventually going to get them a mean right hook to the jaw. People don't seem to understand that the question: What happened?! is egregious.
The question, if tamped down just a bit, might be:
Are you ok?
The answer, depending on the year and circumstances could be:
Yes, thank you for asking. I'm doing just fine
No, actually, I'm drowning, but thank you for asking
Before moving on, I want to point out what I expect to be obvious. For this, I require answers to the following four questions:
Do you truly believe there is a viable answer to that question?
Who are you that you believe this is any of your business?
Can you possibly imagine how I feel when presented with that question?
Do you give a shit or is this just about looking at your instant judgement and perception of a train wreck? Shame on you!
Ah, yes, and one more thing. The question, who left whom, just blows me the fuck away.
SERIOUSLY?! Did you seriously just dehumanize me enough to think you can throw the social mores of our culture over a cliff and ask a question of that magnitude?
Moral of the above: Unless you can shed your gender, don't let this happen. Men are met with sympathy and possibly the question, out of the same sympathy: Shit man, that must have seriously cost you.
Chaos. Chaos and anger.
In an effort to avoid falling off a four inch ledge into a bottomless cavern, maybe a little more than eighteen months ago, I allowed myself to remain in the room when a man called Adam asked me questions I really did not want to answer.
Allowed is not the operative verb. Every week I had to decide, sometimes as close as the door, if I could do this thing. I don't recall when I stopped forcing trust but it was sometime around the move to Chappaqua.
So that's a year, yes? A lot has happened in this head in a year.
I don't think there is ever a moment of sudden clarity. I don't think there is likely to be complete clarity, although I do believe we see ourselves creeping closer, especially if the creeping closer is intentional.
Over the abyss, tied off to something reliable behind me (I never bothered to look) Adam held the rope across the room. I allowed myself to hang suspended over the vast ocean of darkness. Some days I pulled back and leaned forward over my knees with my arms around my waist. Some days I sat up with my hands placed firmly over my stomach. When I've dragged myself over the everything dressed in the box of nothing, and placed my hands firmly over my stomach, or heart, or even the back of my neck:
What do feel? What do you feel right now? What is the physical sensation you're experiencing?
I don't slam the box shut anymore. Sometimes I feel literally nothing or I can't or won't identify it and I know better than to say I don't know, or I'll get back to you later on that. Sometimes I have to say, I don't know, I'm thinking about it, hang on. It took me months to recognize that he recognized my dissociation. I was OUT of the room without a clue. Mostly.
Well screw me sideways! You know what happens when you stay in the room? I can tell you this: closing your eyes shut is not effective.
Here's what happens. Little by little you start connecting dots.
Here is the sort of dot that is a big black SPLAT:
My brother, the organized and calm, has been walking me toward safety since I made that phone call back in September or October of 2018, I guess. It couldn't have been THAT long since the top of my head popped off at which point I spent the day hiding in a conference room so that no one would see me shaking, and from the almost safety of my hotel room, I called my older daughter. You know, the grownup. I'd already sent a message to my younger daughter, you know, the seventeen year old raising herself through her senior year, indicating that I was a mess and couldn't talk tonight unless she really needed me.
Later, my older daughter the grownup, agreed to check in with my younger daughter, the not so grownup. So there was that.
On the phone with Lucia, I hyperventilated into the phone, the lid of the lead box having temporarily blown the fuck off and I said the words THOU SHALT NOT SAY when shit happens AT HOME, not with a stranger in which case we go to the police right away and it STILL fucks you up but no so much, not nearly so much as those words THOU SHALT NOT SAY.
She's still mad at me.
I've spoken those words to exactly four people:
Lucia. Long before I was ready to say those words but the way she handled the information clarified some things - as in, why do families allow this shit to happen? Ask Lucia. She'll tell you why she wishes it away. She threw her mom under the bus for the need to preserve her idea of another family member. Fuck you, Lucia. In all seriousness. Fuck you.
My doctor. Adam. It took a long time to get those words out and I had to dance around that box very carefully. I did not scream. I was afraid I might. If I screamed, it would have been a blood curdling howl that went on and on and on.
My Dad, and for this I am heartily sorry. In a late night/early morning state of mutual vulnerability when he was smoking and I was consuming chewables, I told him. I don't remember why but I saw the look on his face and closed the door as fast as I could. He looked shattered. We have moved well beyond the point where it is OK to share the burden of the past. He is mine now, not I his. I told S what I'd done in the morning. She didn't look any happier about it than I felt.
Elizabeth. No shit. I really did. Why? Because she asked. She asked politely and consistently. Elizabeth is an Anthropologist. She wants to understand the human condition; how we got here, why we are, how we choose, what is wrong, what is not wrong, and what should be triaged immediately. Also, I neglected to mention a rape that happened at the end of 1981 simply because I forgot, OK. I'm SORRY. She was fifteen by the time it slipped out of my mouth in casual conversation. I think she's still irritated but no longer believes I willfully held it from her.
Elizabeth said, eventually:
So, Mom, you were this thing called Food Insecure, do you what that is?
Yes, I do, and I think you're right. Sometimes your parents flat out forget to feed you on weekends and sometimes what hits your plate on week nights is terrifying. This happens to everyone, right?
No. It does not.
Oh.
Mom. You really can't see yourself and neither can Mike or Lucia. Mike and Lucia are pissed. Mike says he's pissed because you turned out to be breakable after all and Lucia refuses to remember the day you made her look at your bank account when she whined about rice and beans again. Mom. Do you feel invisible?
Yes. I know I'm not but I feel that way.
Mom. You kind of are. Some people see you, but most people don't. Most people see who they need or want you to be, or they see who you are not.
That kind of sucks.
It doesn't have to be that way but you do have to keep working with Adam and it's not going to be over tomorrow.
I know.
************************************************
The first punchline:
Jack: Alecto. You do know you tend to amplify things, right?
Me: (um, ok, he must be talking about the chaos?) Yes, I understand.
Jack: Sometimes you make things a lot harder than they really have to be (he was out of patience and I was a couple weeks late with what was already a couple months late)
Me: I understand, Jack. I'm sorry. I'll have that done by tomorrow night no matter what.
Jack: You have to be able to show you can manage deliverables, right?
Me: (oh, Dude, the things you cannot hear) This is true.
Jack: So listen, I realize I've been coaching you but I really shouldn't be doing that. Do you think I could speak with Adam if you miss this deadline and maybe he could shed some light on how I need to be with you?
Me: Of course. I'm completely transparent with you.
Jack: I know you are.
******************************************
You do know that my feelings, thoughts, and beliefs ran around the house, came back in, and then tore down all the drapes, right? All kinds of shit came up and I'll just leave that there.
In the end, here is where I landed:
Adam is going to ask me how I feel about that and I'm going to have to tell him
Adam is going to ask me why I can't tell Jack all by myself
I am going to have to tell Adam, again, that I don't know how to say things so that he can hear and understand them
Adam is going to tell me I'm being perfectly clear
I'm going to have to go back to Jack and make myself perfectly clear at which point I will most assuredly fall apart. With any luck that will be after the phone call
As an aside, my brother does this thing: I will be speaking, or someone will be speaking, there will be a group conversation where more than two people are contributing and my brother will cut in and say he has no idea what I'm talking about. The last time he did this, he looked around at the other people, grinned, and said: Right? She does this all the time.
He's actually not being a dick. He's frustrated because he really can't understand me. Doesn't really matter why just now.
This is what I need to tell him in a way that he not only hears, but can see the what and the why that came out of this:
I do not create the amplification. The amplification is already there.
Everything I hear, breathe, taste, witness, feel is already amplified. Everything. My world is a tin can in a wind tunnel. I can't hear myself think sometimes. So, yes, I swing harder, or risk further, or get madder, or cry harder, or walk out on a four inch ledge
BECAUSE I AM AMPLIFIED, MORE THAN THE SPEAKERS CAN TOLERATE, EVERY WAKING MOMENT OF MY LIFE.
************************************************
The second punchline:
Because I was shattered at 8 and everything after just got louder and louder.
And then the accumulation of a 47 years. Every choice I make is informed by the need to survive and before that, the need to keep my children alive.
So listen, don't ask me stupid questions. A stupid question would be: what happened? Unless, of course, I fell down and broke something which is not the same at all.
The next time someone asks: What happened? when presented with the three truncated marriage information, the answer is going to be something like:
Why would that be any of your business?
Actually. I don't even need to share it. I don't need to share any of it. I just need to keep sorting through chaos of what came out of the lead lined box and connecting one dot after another.
I saved this for last. You wouldn't have heard a thing I'd written if I presented the amplification up front.
This post has NOT been edited in any way which means it may be just a little bit hard to read - but I got STUFF to handle at the moment. Yay.
Jules - thanks for the heads up. I know why you didn't know and it surely was not intentional. So bear with me and we'll get to the bottom of this. <3
See this? This is a snapshot of five posts from October 26 - November 15. There is a great gap between On Walking and The Jersey Hotbox, but after that they come fast and furious. Odd behavior on my part, but nothing to get too excited about.
It's the post in the middle with the yellow checkmark to the right. You would never know it was there because you aren't looking at the list of posts, which, by the way goes from today (at this moment) all the way back to January 3, 2007. There aren't quite two thousand posts, but I'm coming up on that particular milestone which doesn't mean anything to anyone other than me.
A very high percentage of what was published between January of 2007 and sometime in 2016 or 17 (I think) is no longer published. I went back, year by year, and unpublished about 75% of my posts. I was getting creeped out every time my statistics told me the blog was being mined.
Mining a blog is the reading from post one through post current, an entire published history. People do this for a number of reasons; I am guilty of the same. Mostly I think it's the ability to follow the continuity of someone's life through a significant period of time; enough time to see significant deltas.
I'm OK with that. If I wasn't OK with that, this would not be a public blog and / or the posts would be one hell of a lot less personal and you'd probably read very little about real people.
What I'm not OK with is having somebody read that MUCH of my life. The HOLY SHIT moment was when I realized a new reader could start from just after Elizabeth turned six, Lucia was fifteen, and Mike, at twenty was within six months of being ejected from the house.
One reader told me another reader referred to my life as a train wreck:
that's a shitty thing to repeat to anyone
the communication was manipulative as hell
the communication was out of context - I never asked the other reader what how she meant it, would you want to know that sort of statement had been repeated? didn't think so
my response is still, to this day (this was back in May, 2011) was: Blink. Blink.
My response is still: Blink. Blink.
VALUABLE INFORMATION:
EVERYONE'S Life is a Train Wreck of one sort or another. The question isn't how much or how bad. The question is:
HOW HONEST ARE YOU WITH *YOURSELF* AND OTHERS?
That question can't ever be fully answered because most of us aren't sitting in stasis.
Jack: Alecto, you are aware that you've made some poor choices in your life?
Alecto: Yup.
Hard stop.
Now, everybody sit in from of Jack and answer the same question. When you answer the question, don't, under any circumstances, defend your answer or compare your life and results to anything or anyone. Just you, and you alone within the construct of your life.
Helpful: That is indeed one hell of a mind fuck.
Bigger mind fuck:
When you're done doing what you think might be an honest assessment, turn around and look at every judgement you've ever made about anyone. Did you have a right? Probably not, but we can't really help it. What we can do is be conscious.
That is the Centrist speaking. It's hard to be that person these days. I'm working on it though; there are a couple of us paying one hell of a price for me not being able to get myself back to the middle.
That said, there are some things I don't want posted. I just delete most of them before they're even finished. The post in the middle, titled 'Doing the Math' was published and I should not under any circumstances have clicked that green Publish button to the right of the edit window. But I did. I published it at 5:42 PM and by the next morning realized it was a very, very bad idea. I took it down by putting it back in the Draft state and then composed and posted 'To ease your pain and suffering...' which was a tongue and cheek apology to anyone who actually read the damn thing before I took it down.
I think it stays posted in a reader so there's that, but I can at least get it out of the search engine.
In publishing 'Doing the Math' I was out of compliance with the binding arbitration agreement I'd probably fedexed (having seriously weighed some options) back to my most recent employer earlier in the day.
MOTHER FUCKER! SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT TAKE IT DOWN TAKE IT DOWN TAKE IT DOWN.
I took it down.
I did this seriously ridiculous thing. I was sending an email back to payroll and human resources.
All four of my Yahoo email accounts are linked. My mouse happened to have settled on the Alectos Ophelia account which is kept for this blog alone. Oh, and also a secondary Facebook account I use when I don't want to be found by more than a handful of people.
Alecto's Ophelia, despite the slow down in published posts in the last few years, still comes right up to the top in most web searches. Dammit.
Here is what I can say between now and the next two months (I think, got to check again):
My last day in Data Warehouse Land was technically November 4. The last day I actually did more than boot up my computer was November 1 (Friday/Monday). It is now December 13 and I am at the end of week six.
Five things:
It has taken me longer to recover from this job than any other unmitigated disaster (there were really only two, but Christ on a Bike!)
At 55 my mother had had ENOUGH OF THIS EFFING SHIT and exited, Stage Left. She never retired, she just up and quit and financially, she could do that. Five years later my father had had ENOUGH OF THIS EFFING SHIT, and exited Stage Right. I might be off by two years on that because he may have waited for the magic number of the epoch, which was 62. Either way, they were both at the end of their ropes for very good reason. If you climb mountains at a 45 degree pitch without letup for long enough, you will one day hit the wall that says: No. Fucking. Way.
At 55, I have had ENOUGH OF THIS EFFING SHIT. There is no Stage Left exit for me; at least not right now. Poor choices and all that. I suppose I could, but life would be seriously uncomfortable and I might end up living in a box pretty quick. One alternative would be to marry well without regard to anything other than financial well-being. Lots of women do it; far more than I really want to imagine. For me, it would be a one way ticket to hell and a highway overpass. Yeah, nope
At 55 I have a solid reputation and the supporting network to back it up. It's the sort of thing you spend your entire professional career building and you either do a good job or a shitty job. I did a good job and not through any direct intention, that's for sure. I have three very marketable skills:
the ability to parse and disseminate new information very quickly (thank you, Florkow, for teaching me to go out and do it with only blood, sweat, tears, and trust that the lightbulb would turn on fast and until that point, no one would actually notice)
transferable skills, the belief that those skills are transferable, the ability to convince people that those skills are transferable to what is wanted and needed in the moment, and the brute force ability to make it so. Mostly
I get shit done
This one is really important. That piece of paper I signed, the last page of a binding arbitration agreement between me and Data Warehouse Land's legal department bought me some time. It really helps to document shit. Seriously. Do not be a victim if it can possibly be avoided
I've been using that time to remain prone, face down, on the living room carpet. I vacuumed it first. Necessary. The ability and willingness to be still, to breathe, to clear the noise and chaos from the marrow of blasted bones is the reason I'm currently upright and clear.
When I left the BigBank, I jumped out of an inferno right into a campfire. Not too terrible, but I was already on fire when I landed at the - what the hell did I call that company? - ThePoisonGasAndExplosivesPlace and that's just not a good combination.
When I fell off that particular ledge, in FLAMES, the Job Ninja introduced me to Chris who snapped me up like a Scooby Snack and dropped me right in the center of one of the largest global corporations (Forbes top...). In February, 2016, they were in the middle of the top 20. Two really bright people dropped me in a pit surrounded by war rooms and watched me wander around for three weeks (doing shit, I get things done with or without direction) and then told me I was a Release Manager. Or I could be a Development Director; my choice. I nearly drowned learning the Release Management (my choice) job but the feedback was tremendous. When that contract was over, the same man put me at another corporation that ranked just one or two lower than the first; still firmly in the middle of the top 20.
Mother of God. THAT was amazing and remained so until I made a poor choice and left for Data Warehouse Land in November, 2018.
I'm pretty sure they weren't on the list at all before they were acquired. The holding company, based in Japan, is near to the bottom at just under 400.
Life lifes, we look, we choose, even when we think we have not made a choice: you all know this: we have made a choice.
Last thing before I run out of here:
I haven't actually been face down on the floor for six weeks. Chris knows what's going on; several others like Chris (can't hold a candle to him) know what's going on so I have had to interact, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, and look at jobs that I could take if I were to jump from the fire, and made the decision, with Chris, that we need to find something that is not fire.
Chris is about to shake me like a rag doll in the teeth of a Jack Russel.
I'm ready.
Advice: If you are currently active in the job market, employed or looking to be employed, either clean up your CV (Curriculum Vitae, translated to Course of Life) or write one if you haven't done so. I don't care if it's three pages or three hundred pages but it needs to drop No Thing, no accomplishment, no developed skill from who and what you are. Resumes are built from a CV based on how you want to market yourself today. I have five separate resumes highlighting five very different skill sets.
Chris: So. What do you want to do now?
Me: I'm not sure. What do you suppose the market wants that I could learn?
Chris: A ton of shit, but I have an idea.
Me: Uh...
Chris: I call every CIO I know, slam your bulleted CV in front of them and say: You Want Her. What would you like her to do?
Me: Jeeze. That sounds awesome.
Chris: OK. First of the year, budge surplus is wide open, that's when we do the mass marketing of you.
Me: And until then?
Chris: Until then we just keep doing what we're doing because what if it's right there right now?
Me: GO GO GO GO GO GO GO!!!
Chris: Plus, I want you placed before my daughter shows up in February. I need the commission.
Me: I love you, Chris. Please be nicer to your wife or I'll beat you.
Chris: ...yeah, ok, I'll stop calling her Big Momma.
A dozen white, subjectively large eggs sitting on the counter praying for shelf space made themselves just a little bit smaller. A dozen Humpty Dumpty faces tilted 45 degrees upward presenting twelve uniformly distinct, but all the same, ingratiating smiles.
Nope. Sorry. I started with three dozen (Why?! Just, Why?!), used five for the Saturday Friday Feast Day (the day is as fluid as it needs to be), seven for the mostly acceptable White Cake which left 24 subjectively large eggs attempting to take shelf space by any means necessary. Except they're eggs. Good luck with all that.
The refrigerator is subjectively large, the dishwasher is subjectively large, but the 8.5 square feet of counter space hold up a sign:
No room at the inn. Try recycling to the left or the way station calling itself the top of the trash bin. Just not here. Kthxbai.
The kitchen table is really a desk from the turn of the last century. It's serviceable, it fits the space, but it has no time for slackers. The transformation, gussied up by the Millennial coined verb 're-purpose', spilled a stain of cranky into the 130 year old dry rustic wood. Nobody said ANYTHING about the indignities of kitchen service. It does not accept groceries; leftover eggs are no more than homeless groceries.
I wasn't feeling omelettey. Elizabeth was out roaming and the cat hasn't been home in three days, although I can hear him jingling now and then. He's not much inclined to come in out of the rain, let alone eat eggs in place of hot, wet, crunchies.
Strictly speaking, the refrigerator should have more than enough room. The turkey is gone, the leftovers are gone, and all of the stuff that goes into making Friday Feast what it is, and has been since 2015 (the year I canceled Thanksgiving but didn't quite get away with it). All gone. The refrigerator should be 75% empty.
Almost inconceivably it is full of beer. The beer collection has been building since March or April or maybe even a little earlier. My family arrives armed. Mike brings beer and wine, Elizabeth's dad brings beer and wine, Lucia's husband shows up with Lucia. Everyone drinks wine and somehow a 750 ml bottle of tequila made itself at home on my pantry shelves.
The table is happy to spend time with Lunazul, gender unbiased.
Today, there are 49 bottles of beer in the refrigerator, the product of multiple visits, the clear belief that their mother/ex-wife and/or sister/daughter and her friends consume enough beer to make a dent.
There is one particular IPA which is quite good in beef stew. We don't eat much beef stew and I am afraid to remove beer from cold storage and also, to kill it by way of significant temperature change is nearly as sacrilegious as leaving it unfinished on the bar in the first place. The bar is where the beer lives. I drink two or three IPAs a year and like them very much but two or three will not resolve the shelf space.
The Humpty Dumpty clan, in its moulded pulp bus, roll forward in their seats, tuck their heads between their knees, and prepare to die.
I google Food52 and then Angel food Cake. I am sick of Humpty sniveling and throwing out food is almost as bad as killing perfectly good beer. I need to speak with my father, the last remaining Pope of Beer, about this.
Full disclosure: The title is not 'Pope of Beer', the title is 'Pope Puff' but nobody coming up outside the military or a civilian drop zone, circa before 1975, has a clue and it's just too damn hard to explain. So it's The Pope of Beer. Work with me.
Angel food cake recipes are terrifying in their differences and approaches, beginning with the required temperature: Room Temperature versus Straight from the Refrigerator. Sugar versus Fine Sugar. Cake Flour versus Regular Bleached Flour. Cream of Tartar at 1/8th teaspoon per egg white or none at all.
I am admittedly old school in most of my baking approaches. I selected the recipe for which I was missing three of the key ingredients. Given the chemistry behind a cake of this magnitude, I believe these three ingredients are necessary:
Super fine sugar - notconfectioners sugar, notgranulated, goes in your coffee sugar, and certainly not simple syrup (that's as bad as melting butter in the microwave to make up for it being hard as a rock)
Cake flour - no no no no, not the stuff you keep in your canister!
Cream of tartar - say YESto the egg stabilizer!
I'm a masochist. Not news.
I also have the interwebs at my finger tips although the Joy of Cooking, 1964 edition, probably would have given me the same information if I'd been willing to risk a few more pages on the floor.
What to do when you don't have:
Super fine sugar can be achieved by grinding it to dust in a food processor and maybe even a blender. It takes a long time. Don't be impatient.
Cake flour is achieved by removing two tablespoons of flour from a carefully measured cup and replacing with two tablespoons of cornstarch. No shit! Sift the hell out of it though. As an aside, did you know that baking powder can be made with baking soda, cream of tartar, and cornstarch? I didn't have to do that.
Cream of tartar requires firm resolve, a great deal of trust in multiple websites (one or two of which need to be chemistry sites), and the willingness to lose your entire batch of eggs. Cream of tartar is a stabilizer which really is necessary if you're going to make something with that many whipped egg whites. Lemon juice is also a stabilizer.
GAH!
Pretty straight forward: the ratio, cream of tartar:lemon juice is 1:2.
1/8th of a teaspoon cream of tartar for each egg = 1.5 teaspoons for a dozen egg whites. Alternatively, 3 teaspoons of lemon juice or white vinegar. I am more afraid of white vinegar and I needed to scrape every last bit of yellow off a large lemon anyway.
So that's the story of the pulp mobile full of medium size eggs (I know perfectly well what a large egg looks like and you are NOT fooling me). That and one other thing: I really didn't give a damn about the final product; I entered the zen of baking (which requires not being attached to your results) and I'd like to tell you what was going on in that kitchen but I only have the outcome which appears to be
Wonder Bread
Why? It's the squish that stays squished when I squish it. I'm willing to bet if I'd thought to roll it into those disgusting compact balls we used to make and then pop into our mouths I would have had a slightly sugary and also lemony compact little ball.
I'm not really sure what the consistency of Angel food cake should be, having only ever consumed the supermarket variety which comes wrapped in clear cellophane. I know this wasn't it because the supermarket version is generally like eating a Twinkie without the toxic (still my favorite, dammit) filling. The cake had nothing in common with a Twinkie. But look at it! Look at the grain on that thing and the way it stays pinched! The texture is amazing and that's how I knew it was not mass produced non-food product white bread.
It is also how I came to fully understand the difference between cake flour and any other kind of flour and truly recognized the significance of sugar ground nearly to powder. I already got it about the stabilizer but I'm not ever likely to be lazy about it again.
Here is a fun thing that scared me until it was over:
The idea of inverting a baked good for several hours is generally enough to make me weep. Would you invert a soufflé right out of the oven with at least an inch between the to of the baking dish and the top of the soufflé? I would hope not. The heavy stuff at the bottom would fall right through that delicate crust.
There is no heaviness in Angel food cake.
It made excellent dinner, breakfast, and lunch. Don't cover it with anything. Please. Leave it bare and miraculous.
Edit 12-10-19 - because apparently I must: DIY = Do It Yourself. DYI = Do Yourself In
I googled 'Shrinky dink disasters and this is what I got. I wasn't really looking for a disaster (although that would have been fun too) but I needed something that didn't look like perfect plastic against a white background. The truth, you know? I was looking for the truth. I think this works. I'm happier with genuine creativity than the 'you'll color in the lines or I'll lock you in a closet' kits.
Didn't you ever feel like you'd be locked in the closet for an epic fail out of a KIT?! Not by my mother or father or babysitter, by the box itself. OK, maybe you didn't but I never did like kits. Except paint by number kits. I liked those a lot. Also, please consider the ramifications, THOSE KITS USED OIL PAINT! And there was carpet involved. I still like to paint on the floor
Holy crap. One of the benefits of being raised like a wild animal in a state of benign neglect was we could do pretty much whatever we felt like doing in terms of wreaking havoc within and also without the house. I don't really think my brother did anything particularly egregious. It's entirely possible that he watched his big sister and kept a very long checklist of things not to do:
Maybe don't teach yourself to sew with Mom's sewing machine, fabric, gold handled scissors, and dress patterns (to be fair, she was the one to sit me down in front of the thing; I just don't think she expected a nine year old to go full throttle after a fifteen minute lesson)
Don't cut your own hair. Seriously. Don't do this
Don't cut anyone else's hair. Even if they ask. You'll be hated for at least a decade
Don't ride your bike barefoot in the woods. Everyone knows that's asking to lose a foot (I HAVE BOTH MY FEET, JACK!!!)
Don't fall out of trees or at least not on a regular basis or at least not on your head every time
Don't swallow pins (see #1). Don't even PRETEND to swallow pins
Don't touch the stove (See?! I told you it was still hot even though the coils weren't red anymore, but did you listen to me? No! Your entire seven year old hand stuck to the burner AND it was still my fault) (probably accurate)
Don't cook things without permission (see #7)
Don't bake things that just pop into your head after school unless you can leave literally no trace by 6 PM
Don't get into the leftover barn paint in the barn you're not supposed to be in. Ever.
Don't roll in fiberglass insulation in your brand new winter coat. Even if its pink and pretty, it will still make you bleed and ruin your coat
A small sampling, and all before I was twelve. It got more interesting at twelve, terrifying by the time I was fifteen, and you really don't want to know about seventeen, which is when I had a good talking to myself.
DYI. Before the acronym ever raised its terrifying head, I had that shit handled.
Here is how a nine year old 'has that shit handled'. The nine year old is not particularly attached to the results. See #2 above. See fourth grade school picture. Not really. I'll just say its someone else anyway.
The terrible truth: I never outgrew this shit.
I got this handled.
Except for when Portnoy was 'helping', which is when I got nervous and decided I was helpless, never mind the horribly incompetent part. In retrospect, Portnoy wanted things to be perfect and I just didn't care as long as it worked. Measure twice, cut once, right? I'm far more likely to get it right by not measuring at all. Consider: The Zen of the Circular Saw. My father got one look at the chicken coop I made out of the top of a wooden swing set and went dead white. He was mortified that anyone with even an ounce of his genes would be able to build something quite so, um, cattywampus.
But it works, Daddy!
I can't look.
OK, don't look.
Don't worry, I won't.
I don't recall if it was that visit or the one prior that he confiscated my chainsaw. Either way, doesn't much matter, I'd developed a love affair with the Makita Circular Saw with the Blade that can cut through a QUARTER INCH PIPE!!! I regret having never found a quarter in pipe in need of cutting and probably using the Makita's predecessor to cut up livestock fencing may not have been the best idea of the year, but nothing died.
I think the word I like lately is 'Intrepid'. Intrepid is a much better word than 'Reckless', or 'Batshit Crazy', which is reserved for my both of my Ratters, dead or alive.
Mostly I am intrepid. Sometimes I have an irrational fear of things that really shouldn't be that difficult. Like ironing drapes.
Do you remember the television commercials for the Shrinky Dink window insulation? I do. I remember watching that woman using a blow dryer to magically stick clear plastic to a window. I suppose in the photograph on the right she could conceivably be blowing direct heat on the window frame which could conceivably be stuck to the frame with double sided tape.
Conceivably.
I'm going to back up a little bit; stick with me.
There's this thing called WEATHER PROOFING YOUR HOME. OK, I get that. If you feel a draft somewhere, hang some drapes. If that doesn't work, just don't go in that room until spring. If that doesn't work, put on more clothes. And a hat. And socks. And your boots. Maybe your coat too, if it's that bad. If it's REALLY bad, then do something about it, like get a piece of plywood and hammer it over the hole. I don't know, just brute force it. A leak, however, has to be dealt with ASAP and not by sending the kids to the roof with a golf umbrella every time it rains.
This is an old house. Really old. It's an old house that has been maintained well enough to keep the bones strong and hopeful for another hundred years. It's a house that had a lovely tile floor and little bitty kitchen installed. It's a house where some jackass had carpeting installed over fifty percent of the perfectly beautiful 250 year old floors. NOT the owners.
As an aside, she put the carpeting in because she could do it at cost. That's wholesale and the installation was free. One or two of her brothers, I think. I didn't think much of that until I tried to pull up a corner to have a look at the condition of what was underneath. I had a terrible, terrible feeling they might have put sub flooring down ON TOP of the original floors.
I've pulled up carpeting from exactly three small bedrooms. That's not a lot of experience but I learned more each time I ripped, rolled, and pried out those pointy things. I know the best places to start peeling it up. I know what comes last. I know that no matter where I actually start (even if it's not the best place), I CAN get that mofo off the floor.
It took four tries between the stairs, the lower landing, the upper landing and the section where my room begins. That bad boy was installed with at least one pair of magic hands. I have never seen a wall to wall carpet installation that good. It's clean as shit at every single break.
I'm still taking it up.
But the drafts! You might gasp. The drafts! The natural insulation! And the drafts!
Yeah, I thought that too right up until I realized the heat from downstairs was required to rise and heat the upstairs. What the hell, woman? Did you sleep with a space heater?
Now, I like my bedroom to be in the 58 to 60F range so it took me a while to notice. Elizabeth likes her bedroom to be in the 75 to 80F range (not happening). It took me a while to notice just how bad it could get and until I stepped into Elizabeth's bedroom last January or February, I realized she was living in the freezer.
Doesn't everybody have a walk-in freezer upstairs?
Elizabeth's little 8.9 by 12.4 room has two entire windows! (and a gigantic closet, but I'm not going to think about that right now)
These are really old windows. I mean, they aren't 250 year old windows but do they really have to be 250 years old to be drafty as shit? It's entirely possible that they could be. I did a little research. As this is the only truly old dwelling in which I've dwelled(?), I really didn't understand them at all. Not really.
They are double hung sash windows where the top half is a little smaller than the bottom. They use a cord and pulley system for opening and closing. My double hung sash windows were called cottage windows, by nature of the size differential. They are meant to have shutters and I'm sure, if you've ever been up close and personal with one of these things, you understand those shutters are about protection. From all sorts of things.
I have three of these things in my living space and one in the kitchen. I also have a bay window in the kitchen but that's just fine. I have two very old doors. One is in the kitchen and this is the one we use 99% of the time. There is a half inch gap between the door and the floor. I am grateful as hell for the storm door. The second door is actually the front door but it leads to a side porch and we don't spend much time on the porch.
I have three windows in my room, one in the hallway, one in the bathroom, and two in Elizabeth's room.
THAT'S ELEVEN GIANT LEAKS IN MY HOUSE!
The furnace was replaced last year and I still can't get the living space up to 65F which means the walk-in freezer is at 52F and my room at an almost reasonable 55. We have space heaters but you know, here's the thing (and maybe you do know):
These days almost all space heaters run at 1500 watts. 1500 watts pull 12.5 AMPs. Older breakers can handle a max of 15 AMPs before they blow. Most homes have a plethora of breakers compared to what the cottage has. New homes have 20 AMP breakers and I've even heard about 30, although I'm not sure what they're used for at the moment. For reference, a blow drier can blow a fuse.
Thou Shalt Not Run the A/C upstairs if the A/C is Running Downstairs because that and that and those outlets pull from the same breaker. Thou Shalt Not Plug in and Turn on ANYTHING without doing the math from watts to amps and then checking every other outlet pulling from that same breaker. We're getting good at this. We keep a flashlight at the top of the basement stairs because when the kitchen goes out, so does the master bedroom. The kitchen in on top of the basement so you know that light's gone too.
I can live with all of this. We don't power much anyway but I do like a warmish room and I don't particularly care for tornadoes in the primary living space. Cold tornadoes. We are our very own weather zone in this 12 by 16 foot room; a 192 square foot weather generator. I am also quite certain that we're more than capable of creating a Super Cell (read about tornadoes) if the North wind is blowing through two front windows toward the escape hatch of the third window on the other side WHILE we are creating enough steam in the kitchen to set off the fire alarm at the bottom of the stairs.
Enough, already! It's wet in here too!
This is what I did before I was willing to play with plastic:
Pull down all the roller shades when the sun goes down
Roll up and packing tape (see? everybody needs it) towels and place them in front of both exterior doors
Hang quilts over all three living space windows (that was last winter)
Install drapes on two of the six upstairs windows (don't really want to discuss that disaster, there's a reason for the cafe pole hardware leftover from ten tenants ago)
Install insulated blackout drapes downstairs this year (working on Elizabeth's room now)
Install a double sided door snake in the kitchen. Damn, that was effective!
Place a 1500 watt space heater downstairs on the only outlet that can handle it, put the space heater on a 25 foot orange extension cord and alternate warming each floor until bedtime
Not good enough. DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN I DON'T WANT TO DO THAT DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN.
I walked to Chappaqua Hardware on Sunday and had a talk with my friend. He handed me the big box, sighed, and said, of all the things I've sold you in the last year, even the 3/8th bit and those rings you decided were pulley material, this is the only sale that has me a little concerned.
Why.....?
Well....
SHANE! I'm cold!
OK, I'm afraid you're going to suffocate yourself?
How? This isn't going to air proof the entire cottage! If there was risk of suffocation they wouldn't even exist.
Oh, I know.
Then what?
I can't quite see it yet but there's something in my gut telling me you're going to end up wrapped in it like a spider's dinner.
What?!
Yeah. I see it now. You're going to get frustrated with the double sided tape because you can't get the paper off and you're going to get the plastic halfway on the window and start blow drying it anyway and then you're going to fall off the chair you're standing on even though I sold you a perfectly good step stool, and with the blow dryer still in your hand you're going to seal yourself right up. Air tight.
You think?
Yes, I think.
Can I have it anyway?
Call me in two days and tell me you're still alive.
OK.
So I learned some things. I've covered the five most egregious leakers in the cottage, the two in Elizabeth's room and the three in the 192 square foot tornado zone.
Here is what I can share with you today:
Read the instructions. All. Of. Them.
Do this in full daylight
If you really have to do it at night, do it in a room FULL OF LIGHT THAT CAN BE DIRECTED AT THE WINDOW
When the instructions instruct you to WASH AND DRY ALL THE SURFACES the tape will touch, that is not a guideline. It is not a suggestion. THAT IS REQUIRED
If you have to resort to packing tape to make the plastic stick to the windowsill, tear it down and start over again.
If the plastic is totally full of folds and wrinkles no matter how much tape you used, tear it down and start over. Your daughter will think she has mice in her room when the wind gets in and makes that thing rattle
If you get the sticky tape in your hair, thusly covering the sticky tape in hair, do not use those inches of sticky tape. Throw them out or do something crafty later
When choosing where to place the tape, consider whether or not you're actually covering the drafts.
When you have successfully taped the window in the correct places, tear off the paper and do something else for ten minutes. The ten minute waiting period is not a guideline or suggestion
When you begin to apply the plastic, get on a STEP STOOL NOT THE CHAIR and begin from the top. Don't do anything until you have that top in place and have run your fingers over the tape once or twice
When you apply the sides of the plastic to the windows, do this a little bit at a time, alternating sides as you go. Think about the way we screw or bolt something in place. We never put the hardware in tight as can be without balancing the others or it flat out won't fit and you'll just have the one screw. Same rule of the universe applies to plastic on sticky tape
When it is time to blow dry your plastic to the tape, keep in mind that you are bonding the tape to the wood (or whatever) as well as the plastic. You don't need to put the blow dryer half an inch from the wood to get it to stick
When you've been heating the plastic from an inch away and you smell smoke, turn the thing off and figure out what you've just lit on fire
Do not blow dry the plastic across the window just because you think that's what you saw the lady do on television once. Just don't
I should have put this first, in case you don't read all the instructions before you begin: Measure at least once, cut once. OR, make sure the plastic is going to be long enough to reach the sill or you're going to have to get out your duct tape
Also, should have gone first: Before you buy, do your math. Before you buy, measure your windows. The package on the left is very clear. It contains four 62 x 42 inch panels. It has 72 feet of double-sided tape. The box cost somewhere between $7 and $8. The box on the right is one solid sheet, which appeals to me because my windows are not all the same size and some of them are downright odd. However, even though the box tells us that the plastic inside will cover five windows, it is sort of lying. It's a soft lie because it doesn't come right out and tell you that it can only make 4.66 62 x 42 inch panels. It has 84 feet of tape. I sure do hope that's true. Here's the kicker, the box on the right cost $19.99
To be fair, Shane sold me the box for $19.99 and to be fair, that was the most economical price in the store and to be fair, supporting your local merchant is likely to cost a shit ton more than supporting the Home Depot back in your home state. Just pay attention and make an informed choice.
Shane also called here yesterday to make sure I was still breathing.
I haven't decided if that's a good witch or a bad witch...
But nobody's going to call me from Home Depot.
This is one of the places where Shane and I like to sit on the floor and think about all the things we could make or even just do. If we ever get around to drilling holes in small rocks, you'll be the first to know (this was NOT my idea).
The truth about perfect pie crust: Again, overrated
The truth about cookbooks: No one's reading them anymore; although some of them look good on the coffee table
The truth about homemade bread: Pointless. You will be the only one eating it for a multitude of reasons, none of which are good
The truth about bread machines, especially the really expensive bread machines: They produce square rocks. Not a good use of money or kitchen space no matter how much of either you have
The truth about food blogs: Damn useful things.
The truth about an electric power drill and a good bit set: EVERYBODY, with one or two exceptions, needs one. It should be kept in the kitchen pantry (mine actually lives in the kitchen under the island for easy access) along with 25, 50, and 100 foot screamin' orange extension cords, the eleven hammers you've undoubtably collected, sixteen tape measures, 2 wire stripers at a minimum (5 is optimal), multiple ziplock bags full of everything the hardware store sells in the screw, nail, and washer section, and as much packing tape as you can reasonably store. Also, multiple sticky things, not just duct tape
The truth about changing a tire: It should be included in your driving test. This test begins with you locating your spare tire
The truth about coffee: it's a life source, actually
The truth about salted butter: just get over it and use less salt than you would otherwise
The truth about egg whites: Whipping them into a perfect froth is a serious art form; however, totally useless, see truth #1
The truth about funerals: Everyone should have access to appropriate funeral dress
The truth about unemployment: You write a 5,000+ word blog post for your daughter about The White Cake and how to wrangle the damn thing and you un-post it immediately because she meh's it without looking.
This post is much better. Later I'll republish The Truth About White Cake with 1500 words or less and most of the pictures. Because if you need more than 1500 words, please pick up a 1964 edition of The Joy of Cooking and learn your kitchen chemistry.
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