Transplanting a Seattleite

I dropped A. off in the morning and picked her up in the afternoon for therapy. She was somewhat late in the morning and really late in the evening, and for whatever reason, it just hit me wrong today. Possibly because I’d scurried around and stripped and made beds and ran the eufy in the bathroom and just generally did a lot and felt extremely … I don’t know. Like I have been working too hard, for sure, but also the shorts arrived the night before and I couldn’t even convince A. to try them on and it just felt like a lot.

I think it’s really easy to respond to someone taking care of the things around one with criticism and complaint or silence and general unhelpfulness. The longer the caretaking goes on, the more this seems to happen. I know it is not just me, and I know I definitely own part of this, so I finally told A. (and then, to be fair, R., because they are two peas in a pod in this way) that I was doing a whole lot and having to work around their obstruction. I had a clear example with CS of how negotiation on house related stuff could be working (they were not always this easy to deal with, but this past few days they have been clear about what they want, and what they don’t want, and they have been responding in a timely fashion, enabling me to come up with a solid furniture plan for their seating area, and area rugs in both K and C’s rooms) to contrast with what it’s like to try to talk to my own daughter and husband. Everyone is very clear that they definitely are excited to be moving to the new place, and everyone is actually working (except possibly A., who does not have enough stuff to need to be curated anyway) to figure out what is moving and clearing out stuff they do not want to be bringing to the new place, so this is not a motivational problem. R. and A. are really avoidant about a lot of things, so I put on the table the possibility that this isn’t really a choice on their part, that instead this is a much more significant disability than I had realized and they actually aren’t capable of being any other way.

That turned out to be an unpopular frame. I’m not interested in motivating protestations of doing better that go nowhere, however, so I made it very clear what I was considering for dealing with the the house related obstruction (mostly if they say “not now” or “later” it’s going to be interpreted as “I decline to participate in the decision making” unless they schedule on the spot when exactly later is. I preface requests to participate in decision making with “are you interruptible / do you have time to chat” and I’m also careful about time of day/ whether people have eaten / look like they are in a terrible mood etc). R. is really persistently dealing with difficulties visualizing the space and what we need in the space by delaying, so I asked him how many months he wanted to live in a house with rooms unusable because they had no chairs or whatever in them. I also discussed just how long did he think it was going to take to move the art in the house and install it in the new space. Again, just wants to put it off. And I’m like, absolutely we are not doing that, with some reminders of what happened when we moved from NH to MA.

I had A. leave the therapist a message saying we were going to be late (This happened before the conversations with R.) when it was clear we’d be over 15 minutes late, and I did not go in with her. I was really mad, and I felt like me being in the room with her was not helping. She’s comfortable enough with the therapist now, that she wants to talk to her, and if she really wants to do this, now’s the time. And she did!

I got a walk with M.

I had a long phone convo with J. (which if I’m being fair, probably also contributed to where my head was today).

I’m sure happy about how yesterday’s elections went. I mean. Could not have been better. Woot!

Today, the WSJ had an article about AfoL who have devoted chunks of their house to their hobby (often people who started — not restarted, started — during the pandemic). It’s fun, and mostly supportive, hitting the various notes of how the spouse reacts, and leading with an adult woman fan, and how HVAC guys respond to basement lego rooms (What? And then Cool!).

I’ve been asked more than once if I was going to include a lego room in the new house (always no), and a big chunk of recent months has been dismantling and giving away large sets that were scattered around the house. I dismantled and gave away all along, but this was a compressed and somewhat rushed process. No regrets, and I’ve realized I’ve gotten much better at the dismantling process as a result, which is cool in its own way. Looking in the photos of lego rooms and seeing so many kits I’ve owned and given away, I can definitely see that my long history of getting rid of books so I could buy more books turned out to be quite valuable in terms of managing the impact of bricks on my life.

I really like the idea of joy that passes through my life and then goes to someone else. I don’t need to store or curate or memorialize joy. It’s fine that it happens and then goes on to touch someone else.

It’s a really quiet day here on the Day of the Dead. I started taking down Halloween decorations and M. asked what happened to them. Their (the G. family) fridge is not working, so she’s a little distressed. Her parents went to Lowe’s. Hopefully they were successful in finding a replacement. Their first effort was the wrong size.

I decided to just commit to some 4x6 rugs for the future dining room and order them now. I picked out three Oushak, so they aren’t too expensive, and they are each from a different vendor so if one or more doesn’t work out, hopefully at least one will and I can order more of those in a pinch. I hope they all work — they look very cool individually and I think they’ll look very homey together, and less “designed” and more “hey we found these over the years and liked them”. Crucially, if someone spills something horrible and the stain is not fixable, they are not fantastically expensive.

I then moved onto the Music Room, and I think we’re going to use the current dining room rug in there.

I walked with M. It’s a gorgeous day.

ETA: we had dinner at Woods Hill Table with the B.s Fun! I wore the cardigan from Soul and wound up handing it over to M. for I. We also gave them the Keilhouer (probably spelled that wrong) pink office chair for I. Decluttering! Making a Teen Happy! Woot!

I had leftover cauliflower and duck fat potatoes. Mmmmm. Also, coconut sorbet for dessert.

A friend of mine loves reading the FB parents post for his kid’s college, because Parents Do the Darndest Things. Journalists know that there’s a lot of parent interest in launching their offspring in college, and so they publish annual articles on the topic, some of them around “helicopter parenting” a phrase I 100% loathe.

For the record, I’ve never been in my son’s dorm. I see him when he chooses to come visit my house, or when I miss him and invite him to meet me for dinner, which most recently happened on Tuesday. It was prompted in part by the fact I hadn’t seen him for weeks and people were asking me how he was doing. He used the GPS monitoring app to see whether I was on the way and if so where, but I’d screwed up and switched it to my iPad from my phone, so he couldn’t see where I was so he called to ask when I was 2 minutes late and about a third of a mile away. I have rock solid I Am Not a Helicopter Parent credentials. I don’t hate this shit because it hits close to home. Regular readers know that my son applied to college over my preferences (I wanted him to do a super senior year in high school, and he wanted to go drive around in the rain at rush hour and look at colleges from the road shortly after getting his driver’s license. I said absolutely not, and he went upstairs to his room and applied to several colleges online in a fit of pique. One of them accepted him and he attends there and is consistently on the deans list. We are all very proud of him, obviously, if a little confused.)

With that disclaimer, when the usa today version of this article was sent to me this morning, I responded with links to annual coverage of the same author’s book starting around 2015, continuing to the pandemic, etc. And then I saw from last year the coverage of her stepping down from committees in Palo Alto, in the wake of an autostraddle piece.

https://www.autostraddle.com/i-had-an-affair-with-my-college-dean/

And then I spent some time on her wikipedia page (not the author, the former dean with the obnoxious book and relentless annual coverage).

And then I realized the timeline.

So. Dean has a relationship with a student. Bad. Husband knows, doesn’t do anything to stop her from being horribly inappropriate and stays with her. Worse. Shades of MZB, gender flipped. Student eventually tells people (boyfriend, then parents) — talking about this stuff is really important, because that’s how we develop some perspective, and suppressing talking to protect the person who is behaving badly is one of the many bad aspects of these relationships, and mother complains to school. Dean loses job.

THEN dean writes book. THEN dean is annually everywhere telling parents to Back the Fuck Off.

Oh. Really.

How much of the talk about helicopter parenting is part of a larger grooming campaign. How. Much.

I really hate the “helicopter parenting” trope. I just hate it. Yes, parents do need to share decision making with their offspring. No, you do not need to throw the people you love out in the cold in the name of “independence”.

Today, I walked with M.

I did the virtual meeting, which was all virtual, because there’s a bit trench in front of the trailer and there’s spray foam happening in the house. Also, the insurance folks came by and had some things to say. Ooops.

I’m taking apart the lego disney castle. Fun! I wonder how far I’m planning on going with this whole dismantle lego project.

I’m off to have dinner with my son in a little while.

I’ve been listening to Brian Potter’s _Origins of Efficiency_ and it’s really, really great.

Also, I made blondies (yesterday), and used the silicone baking mat and that thing is brilliant.

ETA: I had dinner at Pada Thai with T. It was very quiet and the Rama veg was simple but tasty.

We watched the Disney Lego Frozen “Operation Puffins”, based on I.’s recommendation and it was absolutely wild and lots of fun. Nominally 18 minutes, but some of that is credits. 10/10, would recommend.

I had a delightful zoom with I.

I took A. and me to Moodz for hair. That was fun! R. brought A. home after hers was done so she would be home for her playdate. Which was delayed on both sides, but did happen. Yay!

I did family zoom.

It’s been a nice quiet weekend.

My phone call with K. was abbreviated because she had an unexpected power outage (no bad weather, so extra weird) and needed to report it. It was nice to chat with her for a little bit, tho!

After carefully negotiating a different order of operations for the morning, and racing through tasks on my side so they would work for A., A. just did the usual anyway. *sigh* Good news, tho, I was able to get my ADR at 9 am, so that’s something. Later in the day, I set up a group chat for the 11 participants in this year’s holiday madness with information about which parks which days and which restaurants when and so forth. So far people are sounding very happy.

I had a fun Dutch lesson! Yay!

https://www.homesandgardens.com/solved/sunday-butterfly-method

This is a moderately good decluttering article, which I like mostly because it’s how we do things. Also, there is a completely bonkers quote in it.

“Professional organizer, KonMari® Master Consultant, and founder of Spark Joy and Flow, Rebecca Jo-Rushdy, says, ‘I love the Sunday Butterfly name as I’m neurodivergent, and totally relate to what Lydia has described. My husband recently teased me that it’s not multitasking, it’s rapid switching!’”

Rebecca’s husband is something else again. I don’t know what he thinks multitasking is or isn’t, but that word was invented specifically to describe rapid switching so … If you need another reason to be pissed off at het men in trad relationships, here ya go.

This isn’t some secret, altho I will concede it predates my existence. From the wikipedia entry on Computer multitasking:

“As a result, a computer executes segments of multiple tasks in an interleaved manner, while the tasks share common processing resources such as central processing units (CPUs) and main memory. Multitasking automatically interrupts the running program, saving its state (partial results, memory contents and computer register contents) and loading the saved state of another program and transferring control to it. This "context switch" may be initiated at fixed time intervals (pre-emptive multitasking), or the running program may be coded to signal to the supervisory software when it can be interrupted (cooperative multitasking).

Multitasking does not require parallel execution of multiple tasks at exactly the same time; instead, it allows more than one task to advance over a given period of time.[1] Even on multiprocessor computers, multitasking allows many more tasks to be run than there are CPUs.”

Again, I know no one needs more reasons to be angry at het men in trad relationships, but Rebecca’s husband just gave you another one because they are generous like that. (Having tracked her husband down online, I will also share with you that he spent a bunch of time working at a think tank and now does teaches mindfulness. I bet you are incredibly surprised by all of this.)

M. and I attempted a walk, but it started to sprinkle, then rain in earnest. We returned to my house for a snack and chat, and then tried again and made it up to the top of the hill and back. Yay, us!

I picked A. up and we got to therapy almost on time. Woot! The yellow couch is gone from the waiting room, and we saw the replacement delivered but not set up. Very exciting!

I did some more research on treadmills, and I think I’ve got one picked out for the new house. But I’ve thought that before and thought better of it, so who knows. I also did some research on LED panels for under stone, and found one that will do a full cutout for a sink, so that’s pretty cool.

I had a long phone call with J. It was a little weird at times, because it was difficult to convey to him just how much research I had done on various dining options, and just how poorly the in park options were going to work for us. Also, he confused Plaza Inn and Carnation Cafe. Easy to do! But also, I kept saying, I’m pretty sure you mean Carnation Cafe, and he kept saying he didn’t remember the name, but it wasn’t that one, and then went on to described the baked potato soup (still on the menu) and the location (hasn’t changed) which are both definitely Carnation Cafe. Ironically, that restaurant probably would work really well for all of us. Also, I don’t think he has on any level connected with just how fucking wedged the parks are going to be over Xmas. I don’t think he’s ever been there for Xmas.

He also had some questions about how PreCheck works because he doesn’t use it very often and forgot, and he also had not considered about the implications of older offspring aging out of being able to go through on his PreCheck. We walked through how to get older offspring PreCheck, and I texted that to older offspring later in the day, in hopes that will be more motivating all around. I also made sure everyone had RealID (the kids got their passports to go to Canada, a trip that was supposed to be this past summer but will likely be next summer, and J. has enhanced DL).

I was feeling really weird this morning, like I’d gotten slow and lacking in confidence about making decisions, because it was hard to motivate to make all the dining reservations, and also figure out wtf to do about the bar sink since it’s not in the mass plumbing db. Reddit has beef with that faucet because it’s crazy (true) and expensive (true) and thus only bought by people with no taste (really, reddit? Really?). That plus not being in the approved products database just left me feeling very meh. I found a Rohl I liked, not as well obviously, and proposed that, and then the HVAC / plumbing guy was like, hey, we can do it, and if the inspector catches it was can swap it out for inspection and then swap it back. The faucet has all the characteristics of an approved faucet it just isn’t in the db. Then I felt even weirder, because I was like, I spent hours coming up with an alternate, and for why. And honestly, it’s not even that expensive. The plumbing supplier came right back with a quote and they were doing cost +10% and let me tell you that is much lower than the Amazon price for it (and also the online overstock place).

So I really got some momentum on the idea that I’d lost the ability to make confident decisions, because I mean I’ve planned Disney before, and to California before, and with a dozen folks before. That plus the house decisions shouldn’t be that demoralizing. It took me a few hours to realize, but not DisneyLAND with the full entourage. That’s usually DisneyWorld, and I haven’t been to Cali since February 2020, and I haven’t been there for Xmas for a really long time (probably since the 70s?). I talked about it with R., and he thought the issue was getting things wrong (forgetting to make sure the faucet was in the db back when I first picked it, for example), but I have zero issue with being wrong. I just need to be fast and decisive and right a lot. That’s my magic — my magic is NOT in always right. But talking it out made it clear how ridiculous it was to feel incompetent while doing all this ridiculous shit. It’s fine to beat myself up about taking on this nonsense. It is not fine to beat myself up for how well I’m doing at executing on the nonsense. I am executing just fine.

A. was really slow getting out the door, but it turns out there was a DNS update that borked AWS and so Canvas and a whole lot of the world wasn’t working properly. We were over 15 minutes late to Fusion, and no one cared. There’s a lesson here for me, and let me tell you, this is not helping me instill in A. the value of arriving on time places.

R. went grocery shopping. Because of the aforementioned outage, we couldn’t pull the shopping list up on the alexa app, so he handwrote a shopping list which he then forgot to bring with him. I added mushrooms to it, took a picture, and texted it to him. That worked, anyway.

I read about half of Zoe Schlanger’s _The Light Eaters_ and it’s great and I’m hoping to finish it, altho not in time for book group. Book group was fun, tho.

I made blondies. Apparently I am driving out to the house tomorrow.

The wedding pictures I ordered from R.’s nephew’s wedding (the one A. and I did not attend) arrived and I moved things around to make space for them. I also deployed a bunch of Halloween decorations. This was a great test of Did I Declutter the Halloween Decorations Correctly, and the answer is a resounding yes. I even put out the Ruggable runner.

Also! R. brought a small table downstairs and two microscopes and I posted them both on FBM and they were picked up very quickly.

It’s been a series of beautiful fall days, a lot of meals out, great conversations with a house guest, and other things as well. Nothing bad. But I’ll be catching up a bit today.

ETA:

R. mowed the lawn (I know, weird this late in October?). I did my one mile with M. I also did the big loop with R. Woot! First time in a while.

In addition to catching up on blogging, I also finally downloaded the photos from Charleston SC and uploaded them to Flickr. And then I went to Snapfish and ordered holiday cards. All the things are happening! Lots of good feelings of catching up a little here and there.