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I had delightful phone calls with J., and Priestess and I also had a delightful zoom with I.
I walked with M. I did the long walk while chatting with R.
I looked at my email inbox and saw a 3 digit number starting with a 7 and went, you know, let’s just spend all the energy on making decisions to get rid of stuff. The inbox is now a 3 digit number starting with a 2. So that’s something. Also, I really need to just delight all email from the Zon after reading it. If I need a reminder, I can just go look at my status on the app or website.
I had a long convo with T. about how we could maybe have better conversations. A couple days ago, he wanted to talk about All the Death Certificates and Causes of Death of a lot of fairly close (not immediate, but like, aunts, uncles, first cousins — that type of thing) relatives’ deaths. It was A Lot to have in my brain all at once. Then he asked me a whole bunch of questions about taxes and whether I have ever had to pay a fine, which I honestly have no recollection of ever having to pay a fine. Interest, yes. Mistakes and related underpayments, etc. I don’t _recall_ any fines, altho there could have been small ones related to those things. But trying to review every single time I had to pay interest or Other associated with taxes — while not as stressful as being reminded -again- of the horrible ways so many of my cousins have died — is painful.
So I asked him whether he actually cared about what he was asking about and why, and whether it would mean anything to him anyway, and if maybe he just wanted to talk to me in which case we could come up with a happier topic. He wasn’t prepared to commit one way or the other, so I suggested talking about vacation planning instead, which was basically a Wrong Choice on my part, in terms of “is it happier” because then I got mired in how he only wants to do the trips we planned pre-covid and then were not able to do. One of those trips — the Canada road trip — I don’t intend to ever do as planned, because it was planned to fit into R.’s vacation time and he’s retired so that is no longer a constraint. The other two, I’m reluctant to do until I’m convinced that airlines have their shit together, and specifically I don’t really want to fly to Europe right now. I can drive home from anywhere in the Americas. I can’t drive home from the UK.
Ultimately, we agreed to a plan. We’re going to plan a “trip we can definitely do”: good cancellation policies, heavy preference for hotel vs VRBO, driving, and never going so far away that we can’t get home in a couple days. We’ll get that on the calendar some time this summer, and then after we know what his dates are for Camp Howe (he wants to do CIT, and while he was willing to skip a year, I pointed out that there are age limits, so he really should do that while he can do that), we can take a look at what’s going on around the world / with airlines and figure out what else we can do in addition to that or instead of that.
Then I went and researched a bunch of caves within driving distance and looked for road biking routes within a reasonable distance. The Catskills are looking pretty awesome.
I walked with M. I did the long walk while chatting with R.
I looked at my email inbox and saw a 3 digit number starting with a 7 and went, you know, let’s just spend all the energy on making decisions to get rid of stuff. The inbox is now a 3 digit number starting with a 2. So that’s something. Also, I really need to just delight all email from the Zon after reading it. If I need a reminder, I can just go look at my status on the app or website.
I had a long convo with T. about how we could maybe have better conversations. A couple days ago, he wanted to talk about All the Death Certificates and Causes of Death of a lot of fairly close (not immediate, but like, aunts, uncles, first cousins — that type of thing) relatives’ deaths. It was A Lot to have in my brain all at once. Then he asked me a whole bunch of questions about taxes and whether I have ever had to pay a fine, which I honestly have no recollection of ever having to pay a fine. Interest, yes. Mistakes and related underpayments, etc. I don’t _recall_ any fines, altho there could have been small ones related to those things. But trying to review every single time I had to pay interest or Other associated with taxes — while not as stressful as being reminded -again- of the horrible ways so many of my cousins have died — is painful.
So I asked him whether he actually cared about what he was asking about and why, and whether it would mean anything to him anyway, and if maybe he just wanted to talk to me in which case we could come up with a happier topic. He wasn’t prepared to commit one way or the other, so I suggested talking about vacation planning instead, which was basically a Wrong Choice on my part, in terms of “is it happier” because then I got mired in how he only wants to do the trips we planned pre-covid and then were not able to do. One of those trips — the Canada road trip — I don’t intend to ever do as planned, because it was planned to fit into R.’s vacation time and he’s retired so that is no longer a constraint. The other two, I’m reluctant to do until I’m convinced that airlines have their shit together, and specifically I don’t really want to fly to Europe right now. I can drive home from anywhere in the Americas. I can’t drive home from the UK.
Ultimately, we agreed to a plan. We’re going to plan a “trip we can definitely do”: good cancellation policies, heavy preference for hotel vs VRBO, driving, and never going so far away that we can’t get home in a couple days. We’ll get that on the calendar some time this summer, and then after we know what his dates are for Camp Howe (he wants to do CIT, and while he was willing to skip a year, I pointed out that there are age limits, so he really should do that while he can do that), we can take a look at what’s going on around the world / with airlines and figure out what else we can do in addition to that or instead of that.
Then I went and researched a bunch of caves within driving distance and looked for road biking routes within a reasonable distance. The Catskills are looking pretty awesome.