Transplanting a Seattleite

A. really needed to wash her hair yesterday, and I commented that showering on Saturday would remove one of her Sunday tasks. I reminded her again in the evening. Around midnight — my hard stop for her, no more phones, and no more noise because I need my sleep — she said she wouldn’t be able to sleep without showering.

!!!

So I marched her through the shower in record time, and then she took forever to even start brushing her teeth. She was trying to get her hair dry with a towel. That only works with several towels. *sigh* So I got her hair dried with a really nice hair dryer that we normally never use (this is why we shower earlier!) and she finally got to bed, but by then, I was pretty awake and it took a while to settle down enough to sleep.

Around 9:20, she comes into my room and wakes me up. It has not been 8 hours since I fell asleep. I napped a bit longer, got up, got her breakfast, got me breakfast, go ready for an 11 am walk (which was fortunately canceled) and then tried to get her through the checkin process for tomorrow’s annual in the morning before school. But she wanted to read all the disclosures. No obvious way to download them or link to them — which honestly, is probably illegal? — so I screenshotted them but I don’t normally bulk screenshot files so it took me a while, and I couldn’t remember how to get the little thumbnail to go away immediately so I was waiting for it and at that point the 11 am walk was looming and I was hungry and she was sloooooowly eating and I started losing my shit.

Walk got canceled, I figured out how to swoosh the thumbnail, I got the various disclosures screenshotted and sent to her phone (which I also took away from her), and then I explained to her in some detail how I was feeling about things. I had been yelling, but by this point, I had managed to convert it into a job for me. I said, basically, you know my one rule is let me sleep. I said, you may have it in your head that you want me to prove that I truly love you, even more than my sleep. You are going to be wrong. We’ve talked about what methamphetamine does to humans, but what it really does is it stops them sleeping and the bad things that happen thereafter are what humans do when they have not gotten sleep. Violence. Violation. Not caring about relationships. All the horrific stuff that the Japanese army did to China mid-century. Etc. I told her, you may have it in your head that I should prove that I truly love you, and sleep when you are not around, so that I am always available to you, which is something I gladly did when you and your brother were babies, but I am not doing that now because you are a full ass adult. Not a legal adult, but an adult. If you don’t let me sleep, I — and your dad, if you don’t let him sleep — will leave you here in the house and go sleep somewhere where you do not have access to us. I also reminded her that I went No Contact (before that was a meme) with my mother (sometime around 2002 +/-) and refused to see her again (she died in 2017, IIRC). I told her I am not threatening, but this is who I am and what I am capable of, when someone is actively harming me. And then I sent her upstairs to brush her teeth, do her hair and put on clothes to leave the house, which is something I long ago stopped requiring her to do on weekends except when we are on vacation.

I think I’m going to send her out with R. to get some groceries. We also need to pick up the advent beer box. And I need to get a walk at some point.

I think one of the reasons I find this all so incredibly infuriating is, in true teenager style, she has zero interest in interacting with me during the day (except for the occasional, do you know about infodump, what you don’t know about infodump? How can you not know about infodump? Which I am sympathetic to as a conversational style because I have for sure committed this myself and also please find another overture), doesn’t remember to eat on her own until she has a hangry meltdown, will tend to put off offers of a meal or forget to eat the meal in front of her until meltdown, etc.

I mean, I get it. This is what happens with kids. You get the worst aspects of yourself at some point. And also my mother went down from dementia, and she spent a lot of years not sleeping at night and I see a real connection there that I have no intention of repeating.

I carefully bought my tickets yesterday, and bought nothing at the museum and ate only at home. But I failed at Buy Nothing, because I ordered the enterprise over at the Lego website, and I paid for parking when I went to the MFA. I don’t know if any of the other things I will ultimately be financially responsible count as “me buying something” (family members using family credit card for entertainment and groceries).

We did NOT put a tree up (yet)! Instead, R. and I did Duo and I walked with M. and had a delightful phone chat with K. and then we went to the Rachel Ruysch exhibit at MFA. It was absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend it. She was an amazing artist and this exhibit is a first ever opportunity to see this kind of overview, and then also the exhibit is structured really well, with lots of explanations about the showy flowers and the amazing bugs, work by her sister and their teacher and one of her inspirations. There’s a substantial amount of explanation / depiction of career trajectory and tons of historical context provided as well.

What surprised me most was how broad the effective angle of view is on most of these paintings (broader than many other artists of the time, right from the beginning) and how Ruysch clearly was consciously pushing that angle of view wider over most of her career. After her mid-life reduction in productivity, her return was to a slightly reduced angle of view, but a big jump up in dimensionality / immersiveness. By her last painting, she has a boldly curved line for the bottom edge of the table that now has a corner jutting out towards the viewer instead of being placed straight on the edge. That downward curve straightens out if you move back just a little bit, and the painting clicks into 3 dimensional focus. It’s subtle, remarkable, and utterly unexpected.

The backdrops on the forest floor paintings have some really delicious ambiguity to them. In at least one instance, it is recognizably a painted canvas hanging from somewhere above, as if in a display or on a stage. Are we intended to believe them as the fading background or are we intended to see this as more of the setpiece? How did Ruysch sort her viewers, based on what they saw and how they reacted to it? The discourse of the heavily programmatic paintings done by her instructor (and his generation) had taught everyone to consciously look for theme and setting to ascertain the moral of the painting (often signaled by the title). We don’t read sermons but we do still sometimes read the comedies of manners and occasionally stage the plays of this and related eras in other empires. It is delightful to wonder about all that in a vase of flowers from all over the world, wilting and being crawled on and around by lizards and snakes and beetles and the actual dead bodies of butterflies.

No school for A. Woot! Also, no therapy (not because of us). So R. and I went to dinner at Woods Hill Table. Then I went home and cooked. Weird but fun! I pulled the turkey neck out of the bird and made turkey stock. And I baked some sweet potatoes and one “yame”. I made a couple different stuffings / dressings. I got caught up on laundry including kitchen towels and removing the table cloth from the table we will use for Thanksgiving. I was going to set the table, but in the event, I did not get to it.

Very enjoyable and relaxing day!

MB from book group (surprising number of people in my life with the initials MB) called to chat and explain her recent absences, and that she would be absent again tonight, and to tell me about her travel to Greece and some recent health challenges and also her rug shopping adventure. Fun! I mean, bummer she won’t be at book group, but it’s nice that she isn’t just disappearing on us, and that she wants to continue and would like to get together just to hang out some time in December. We’ll see what we can do.

I finished _Last Light_, and I will note that Louise Nevelson was a strong note to end the book on. I really dislike Edward Hopper’s work, but I was pleased to learn about Josephine Nivinson and I wish it was easier to find her work online. What I have seen online is gorgeous, much better than her more famous husband’s.

Lacayo’s ideas about artists in later life are quite interesting to think about, both from a stay busy / occupational therapy / art therapy / staying connected to a community throughout life perspective but also in terms of how the skills we build over the course of our life may be diminished by the aging process and trying new things that can build on the remaining capacity is a way to find ongoing pleasure. I hope to find more books of this nature in the future.

Also, the many side trail I pursued along the way were rewarding in their own right, and I hope to return to the early / many uses of canvas part of that exploration.

I had a delightful phone call with J.

I cooked the two small squash that have been sitting on the counter possibly since last November. I accidentally caramelized them on the stove. Does not seem to have been a bad thing.

I also spent a bunch of time working through the park ticket process. It was enough to generate a fraud alert, which is fine. I think I would have been more worried if it had not.

We dropped A off at fusion and then went back to CBS exotics to pick out specific slabs. It was fun to see the gantry in operation, altho R. definitely tends to want to be a lot closer to it than the folks there feel is safe. The woman who was helping us does Lego! We had a delightful conversation and she showed me pictures of some of the lego cars she has built. Very fun!!!

We stopped at Fly By Night in Maynard. I’d put it a step down from Circle, but they had some interesting local producers, and it was more solid wood + plywood versus MDF with veneers. Tradeoffs! We only looked at stuff on the main floor (living room) — we didn’t go upstairs (bedrooms).

R made a decision on the green roof railing, so we’re through that. I can at least stop worrying about people climbing on that little patch of roof and then walking over and falling off.

I walked with M.

I texted with C. about window treatments for K and C’s rooms, which was fun.

The payment I mailed last Friday still hasn’t shown up, which is aggravating. We’re giving it till tomorrow, but I’m going to probably just wire the money and have them destroy the check.

I drove out to the house. I made A’s breakfast and lunch before I left, and also my own breakfast and lunch. D. supplied vegan cupcakes from Wild Chestnut which were extremely yummy.

We had an 11 am meeting to wrap up the window treatment discussion. And we had a meeting with N. about the bar countertops.

I stopped at Slattery’s in Fitchburg and had dinner with T. That was fun.

I was a little discouraged to arrive at home to learn that while R. had heated up chicken and rice for A. and handed her blueberries, she hadn’t gotten any vegetables and wanted some. *sigh* I mean, I made the two other meals of the day for her. Why is this hard. Also, honestly, she really ought to be able to get carrots and lettuce out of the fridge for herself.

I walked with M.

I had a delightful zoom with I.

I texted with my sister.

I attended part of family zoom.

I did some laundry.

I went to Trader Joe’s. I went fairly early for me — middle of the day, instead of near closing time — and so it was wicked crowded. Ugh. But I got what I went there for, so we’re pretty set for meals for the next several days including lunches for A. I’ll want to go to Stop and Shop for the Santa Cruz Organics applesauce — I think there is only one or two left. I almost tried the TJ’s applesauce, but SCO is the best and Stop and Shop is right there.

R. took care of a bunch of stuff around the house. My sister is going to theoretically try out the dining arm chairs that we’re thinking of getting for the new house. Fingers crossed nothing arises to result in a reschedule.

I keep thinking this is T-week, but it’s not. One more to go, and then we descend into the chaos of the holidays.

I dropped A. off at school, and then had my Dutch lesson. No lesson next week; they are moving and it will be 100% chaos over there. The following week is T-weekend, but we are tentatively still a go for that. Fun!

I had a lovely phone call with K. She had a great way of thinking about incompatible desires in the context of wanting things but not doing anything towards getting the desired thing / accomplishing the desired thing / wtf. Another lens! Yay!

I walked with M.

The attic room is now complete! The film is on the window and the pulls are on the doors in front of the heat pump. The last of it is done, and the last check handed over. Woot! I showed it to M.

I’ve been out of mayonnaise for a while, but had a ton of lettuce in the house. I had been putting the good balsamic vinegar and olive oil on it, but today I made a dressing with the rice wine vinegar, olive oil, mustard and maple syrup and it was really, really good. 10/10 would do that again even if I had mayo around to make honey mustard dressing with. I had also been having BLTs (until I finished the last tomato) and using horseradish whatever leftover from Priestess’ visit, since it has a bunch of mayo in it. That was also really good, but I’ve been too timid to make a salad dressing out of it. Hmmmm.

I attended the PGHOA annual meeting last night via zoom. Apparently, the new WA state law regulating condominiums requires HOAs to make meetings accessible to more owners. Fuck Yeah, WA state legislators! Nice to see someone has decided to stop requiring us to rip all our finger nails out trying to hold onto the past.

At the PGHOA annual meetings, technically, meetings plural, we went over next year’s budget proposed and accepted by the board. Absent 51% of the (had to be a quorum) folks at the meeting voting down the budget or revising it, this is the budget. When I was young, I used to look at these things pretty hard. Now, less so. It’s good to be young.

JJ is at least younger than I am, and she had some Questions, notably about the phone and the cable / internet lines. And to be fair, they were confusing. She tends towards hostility, but I bought into this thing back in the ‘90s and I’m much more interested in things going the way I want them to vs. getting into an argument about it. So I “clarified” her question, and CD, outgoing and just re-elected board member, told a story. The story went roughly like this.

Last summer, we finally redid the elevator, as current equipment was increasingly difficult to get parts for and was increasingly finicky (4 story building, elevator is original equipment dates from 1979). We did get a good lifetime out of that elevator. That elevator had — as elevators all over this country are required to do — a phone in it in case of emergency. Sometime during the year, possibly during the renovation, it was discovered that the phone no longer worked. A little bit of information here: if the phone doesn’t work, the elevator may not be used until the phone does work. A bit more flavor on that: we’d been paying for elevator inspections that the company we were paying to do the inspections were not doing. For years, maybe? If they had been doing the inspections, they presumably would have caught the phone problem. Since they weren’t, we don’t know when this started. A year or two ago, the board complained to the management company, and they gave us a different manager and she started catching a lot of stuff, which in turn led to us fixing a bunch of stuff. All to the good.

Anyway. The board member in question spent several hours over a period of time attempting to reach someone at the telephone service provider and … couldn’t. They were taking the payments and not providing the contracted service. Are we sensing a theme here?

So I start thinking about this. If the inspector aren’t inspecting, they won’t catch the phone. This is unlikely to be us as the first victims of this failure to provide service. (Who is inspecting the inspectors?) (Probably this is a paperwork production operation, so as long as the paperwork says the work was done, nobody catches it until the customers complain.) The reason our budget lines for phone / intercom / internet / cable are so weird this year is because that’s generally a deflationary item (if yours isn’t, your probably should look into that) and because we replaced the old phone service in the elevator (that wasn’t performing) by rolling it into the internet based system (which everyone should be doing everywhere).

I understand that you might be tempted to say something like, but I want a “real” PSTN copper landline! If you even know those words, which if you are saying this and you know those words, I hope you have already stopped driving in unfamiliar places, after dark and during rain and other bad weather and you should really have a discussion with the folks who love you about under what circumstances you will turn over your keys and when you replace your driver’s license it will be with a state ID card instead of a license. You might remember the olden days, when the copper landline would “work” even when the “power” was “out”. That’s because there was a big ole battery somewhere, which there increasingly isn’t and also if you are still feisty about this go several paragraphs back up and remind yourself of how _the elevator phone wasn’t working for an extended period of time because the provider was no longer providing the service but was still collecting the checks and just fucking ask yourself how much you are being scammed elsewhere in your life for the false promise that you can keep living like it’s the Reagan Era_.

The real question here — and may the goddess love and bless you and all those you love, because no one else is rewarding your patience so I hope you’re getting something out of it — is: How Many Other Elevators Is This Happening To?

Six years ago in a Ma Bell group on FB, someone posted:

“As a tech who worked tall buildings.
We used to get called out because the phone in the elevator didn't work.
Turns out some newish account manager look over the lines and canceled lines that had no activity
Yes my brothers that was the elevator phone!”

So back then, the risk was, oh, this line is never sued, let’s get rid of it. Things have happened since then.

https://dbscomm.net/end-of-service-for-landlines/

“As of August 2, 2022, The FCC no longer requires telecom companies to provide/sell landline service to small or local telephone companies.”

I missed that development, and may return to dig into it more. Further from that source:

“FCC Order 19-72 was lobbied for as the cost of maintaining copper wire infrastructure has increased over the years, and telecom companies have grown to see it as a dead technology. So in August of this year, the large phone companies were no longer required to support copper landline service, known as POTS (plain old telephone service).

While larger telecom providers like Verizon and AT&T are moving on from costly copper wire and investing heavily in fiber optic communications, there is still a strong demand for service in elevators and buildings that are only wired for copper service.

However, some telecoms are holding onto their copper landline business for the time being and raising prices, industry insiders say that copper phone service will cease to exist by 2025. Another good reason to move on from POTS.”

Welp. I guess we rode that train right to the end of the line.

Anyway. I dug into this today in part because I was wondering whether there was any news coverage of this particular issue. What I learned is that the elevator guild knows all about this, and requirements on new elevators are really great in terms of accessibility and generally not having this problem, but buildings with a single, aging elevator are very much disconnected from that community if their inspection service provider isn’t providing.

My efforts to find an online database of elevator inspection permits were not successful for Seattle — the state maintains a database but it does not include Seattle and Spokane. Those cities do their own elevator inspection. New York and Texas both have a long history of periodic media coverage of problems with their elevators and inspection regulations (or lack thereof), but I suspect a fair amount of regulatory energy has been expended on trying to get private elevators to stop killing children, vs. ensuring that the existing regulatory framework isn’t rotting from within. I suppose we’ll keep having problems of increasing severity until there’s a movement for reform. Or maybe it’ll all be fine, because everyone will have to upgrade anyway for non-tragic reasons.