Transplanting a Seattleite

It was in the morning instead of the evening, so it was a reason to get A. up and out the door. I walked with M. in the afternoon. I had a slightly abbreviated (started 15 minutes late to allow time to get home from therapy) conversation with J. It ended about a half an hour early because we ran out of things to talk about. Because he’s so tired all the time (and yes, I know I’m making excuses for him), he has very limited patience and cognitive capacity for the kinds of conversations I love like, How Does This Thing Work Anyway or How Is Our Society Changing or How Could We Bend the Curve of Our Society in a Better Direction. People like this kind of stuff very occasionally, and they get tired real quick, and aging isn’t helping any of us become more flexible. Priestess is actually getting more capable of it over time, which is an interesting contrast, and A. (both Bay Area A. and my daughter) is also a lot of fun to engage in this kind of thing with.

I’m trying to refocus on getting that kind of stuff written down, either here or elsewhere, rather than inflicting it on people who Just Aren’t That Into It. At first, with J., I was being really careful to make sure he got all the time he needed to talk about whatever he wanted to talk about at the beginning of the conversation. But he was still pretty cranky at intervals and honestly kind of rude. I thought about that for a while, and weighed whether and how to proceed, and I’ve decided to just not, which is more or less the approach I take with my sister as well. It’s working better, altho it is deeply hilarious when there are half-assed efforts made to get me to talk about something. I just deflect. It’s not like they are asking for the kind of thing I want to talk about. I mention whatever is going on in my daily life, and they aren’t necessarily interested in that, either. It does raise a lot of questions in my mind in terms of, what would the ideal conversation be for these conversational “partners”. Presumably they don’t know either?

J. from the builder provided a markup of the cover sheet for the electrical submittal — I had not done that, and it did need to be done. I further marked up what she did, and then it was really hard to get those markups transferred so I wound up taking screenshots. *shudder*

I got a second walk today! First time in a really long time. It was nice, and I’m going to try to do this more often.

The electrician arrived! Yay!

There is a lot of early morning banging. So, there’s that. I’m glad, but A. is miserable, and we still don’t know (but will soon, foreshadowing later in this post) when insulation is happening. Obviously, the electrician doing that work means insulation CAN happen. Which is good! Turns out google nest has discontinued the smoke alarms we use, and the replacements through First Alert (boooooo) are not yet available. R. ordered them without discussion, and we don’t even have a shipping date. Reddit is not encouraging on this topic, either. In the event, we can slap any battery powered ones up there we want to. We could get reseller google nest ones, but a lot of that is old stock.

There are a bunch of Ring, Alexa and other integrated smoke alarms, battery and hardwired. Some of them say things like z-wave. It’s clearly going to take a while to investigate and it’s unclear that any of this is useful in the new house, because it’s going to have sprinklers and a fire panel so it probably has commercial everything anyway. I do need to ask some questions about that, clearly.

A. wanted to wash her hair this morning, so a shower got added to the schedule, and we weren’t exactly ahead of schedule. But we did get her through that process. I didn’t have time to do much more than the minimum on Duo.

Later in the day, we got the insulation install date, so that’s something. Of course, that triggered a bunch of implementation on earlier research, because while the VOCs on this stuff aren’t too bad, they are still not compatible with being in the house while the work is being done, or for a certain amount of time thereafter. We also have to coordinate with getting R. to a hotel near Deerfield for the night before his bike race. Complications!

But it’s all sorted out, including a couple dinner reservations. Tomorrow I’ve got a long day with meetings both before and after the usual OAC / MEPFP and walk arounds. I need to figure out my morning schedule some time before I go to bed tonight.

I walked with M. at 1 pm.

Someone finally came over and picked up the two mini flashlights that take one AAA battery each! Yay! Nice guy. He’s a mechanic for another town’s DPW, and loses them all the time. Might as well lose an old one!

ETA:

The guy who picked up the Hue Bloom lights is struggling to get them to work. He’s partway there, and is being nice about it, so I’m trying to help him out. I don’t really know what to think about any of this, especially since FB Messenger is warning me this might be a scam, but I really don’t think it is.

I dusted my room while chatting on the phone with Priestess. That was lovely.

I also transferred the summer skorts and shorts to the main dresser and moved the longer, warmer pants to the secondary dresser in the closet. I really should pare some of this down, and probably will over the course of the summer.

I got out my old Kokoons, realized that I no longer pack a micro usb in my charging bag, went downstairs to retrieve one (I only use the Kokoons on transatlantics), and actually found the cord that originally went with it. That’s a sign that the volume of cords we have around is manageable, and that we’ve saved the right ones. Love it! I grabbed a spare block while I was there, altho I won’t travel with it. The combo induction charger has a usb-a in in the front and that should work fine. Probably should test it some time soon.

Oooh, and someone just came and picked something up from the bin on the porch. R. keeps turning the porch light off, and I keep having to remind him to leave it on. At the holidays, for deliveries. And lately, for late pickups from the bin.

I walked with M.

I had a delightful zoom with I.

I had a phone call with H. and C. I also saw them both on family zoom.

I had a delightful phone call with Priestess. She was clearing paper off the bar counter and filled two of the recycling bins from the corner. Wow!!!! I think she has motivated me to actually run the shredder. I did a bunch of proxy voting while I was on the phone call with her, and deleted a ton of email. I also figured out a way to set up my phone in the car if I have to do a call in there. It’s not great, but it should work if I want to actually have people see me (not clear if I do!).

A. and I watched a little TikTok.

I’m charging my lighted makeup mirror. I misplaced the cord, but R. tracked it down for me. In the course of repeatedly going through the drawers in the bathroom, I found the restaurant bag hook thingie that I had misplaced.

I mostly finished with the outlets project. I sent the email.

I’ve been talking with C. and H. about the respite option, and shared the list of places. It is not clear whether C. is actually waitlisted anywhere at all, and the opinions she is giving about the various places are NOT based on people she knows, but rather reading reviews online. Which is fine, but she seems to be confusing some of the places, which is of course unhelpful. Also, she’s got this idea that a 3.8 review on a 5 scale is a “D”. Which, no. H. needs to go home on Wednesday to do some things in her life, and I’m hoping that maybe she can do a tour Monday or Tuesday. They are claiming that the rehab place C. is in also does respite; if so, that may wind up being the default if C. is booted from rehab quickly, because I am deeply skeptical of her being able to be in her house without support with laundry and bathing and so forth. I’m trying not to worry too much, but to just assume that things will work out one way or the other. The way C. and H. make decisions is soooo strange to me.

It’s abundantly clear that the staff at the rehab are not taking C.’s assertion of being immunocompromised at all seriously. H. is upset, but it confirms what R. and I had believed all along. I am working hard to not engage when they complain about that or make assertions about how compromised her immune system is.

We had some snow a couple days ago, but enough since that we had the very loud moments where the snow all slides off the panels at the same time. Good time not to be on the deck.

Monday is the beginning of construction and Tuesday is Tax Day, so we have some stuff to do this weekend. I collected all the Disney photo frames (15! Plus 2 more). I had taken a lot down already because they were in the upstairs hallway. I had meant to update the theme park photo wall for a while, and then didn’t because construction was imminent for … more than half a year. R. complains a lot about having to patch walls when I move photos around, so I’ve been thinking a lot about how to keep recent photos on the wall and also not trigger that issue, and the obvious solution is using the Alexa hubs to display photos.

So with that in mind, I’m now aggressively reducing the small photo frame collection. I posted the 15+2 Disney photo frames (sad face, because they are the coolest frames I have ever owned) on FB Marketplace. I wanted to keep a couple of the photos that were in them on the wall in my office, so I swapped for some plain black frames (A. meeting Chewie while waiting to do the lightsaber build, and me and the kids at the holochess table about to ride Smuggler’s Run in Disneyland in 2020).

I’m still thinking about what I will do with that wall after construction is done in a couple months. I don’t like it blank, but I’m thinking maybe a couple big things, instead of a zillion small things.

ETA: I’ve already had someone ask me if I would ship the Disney frames. No thank you. I’m starting to feel like it’s just a terrible idea to try to list frames online at all. I got multiple pings about the Cabbage Case (R.’s) and someone is in theory picking that up tonight. I asked for R. to go through bins of stuff like happy meal equivalent toys, because I really have no tolerance left for him picking through the trash so now I consult actively before putting that sort of thing in the trash. I think there’s a sizable bin still in the basement of that kind of thing. I did pull the still in wrapper My Little Ponys and may list them.

A. got out her vacuum to try to vacuum her room and, as always, it fails to turn on, probably because the battery is dead, but this time I’m going to figure it out and get rid of it if it really won’t work. In the meantime, I vacuumed her room including the closet and the drawer of her daybed. I pulled the Privacy Pop tent and a backpack out of her closet for potential listing. If she can’t decide, they go back into the closet.

But good news, the stuff cluttering up the upstairs hall is gone, except for a bin, a bag in the bin, and a cardboard box with a few items to go to Savers. I’m leaving them there to have a place to collect things on their way elsewhere, and will move them into my office or closet during the week. I listed the TV table and put the stepladder in the laundry closet. Things are looking weirdly empty in there.

I turned on the Pioneer speaker in the living room after R. went up to ride his bike and played Beth Mccarthy’s EP (the old one) for A. while she was eating. When she left, I put on some Beth Mcrae, and am now listening to Hozier. I asked R. if he wanted to keep the speaker or if I should list it and he opted for keeping, which is fine by me.

I should be doing taxes or going over the lighting, but I found the Space Maker Method book by April Scott Tandy, after watching part of one of her YT videos (in the Netherlands!!! Which is why I watched some of it), and I’m thinking I’ll just lie on the couch and read that, because I’ve already got 15 flights today and I’m feeling like resting.

It was raining, so I didn’t get to walk, but did have a visit with M.

A different M. came by for a visit (donation visit). She actually had some really good news to share, so very excited about that.

B. (financial) called to note that my most recent transaction before the last few days happened in retrospect was very brilliant. I had to call him back, tho, because M. was there. We had a nice chat later tho.

I cleared off another bookcase on the 3rd floor as part of construction related decluttering. I drove a box of books over to the donation bins. I took a bath and read the first 40 odd pages of Histories of Leisure.

A couple months ago, I was about to do a lego kit when R. was acting a little weird. That’s when I learned about the insulation work that would be done along with the attic room renovation and that kicked off a massive amount of donation on FB and related decluttering. It’s finally winding down. I’m starting to take art off of walls, and I’m going to move along the magnetic board that is in the upstairs hall so I had to clear that off.

I’m finally back to feeling like I was feeling before I learned we had to do all this additional prep work, hence soaking in the tub and reading a book. It probably won’t last, because I’m sure there are more unpleasant, time consuming surprises in my future. There always are.

I finally noticed that the LG WashCombo is available with the LG SideKick, so I discussed that with R., and modified the Exercise Room slide to reflect that in the laundry closet. I also finally found a reasonable, cheap spinner for the pool bathroom.

I dropped A. off at school.

I squeezed in a walk with M. at 11ish.

I had a phone call with J.

We did the project launch meeting for the attic room renovation.

R. picked up A. and brought her to therapy. I met her there and traded cars with R. I took A. to 110 Grille in Maynard after. I talked to the therapist about ICCD and the whole oddity of T. going to get neuropsych eval testing requested by his psychiatrist, and then someone else at ICCD pushing T. in the direction of getting ADOS testing to establish eligibility for services through DDS. Which we went over as part of T.’s final IEP process and decided not to go forward with DDS. So now I’m very confused as to what is the driving force behind this, as T. disclaims any interest in replacing our support with state support and he doesn’t seem at all unhappy with his current level of independence. *shrug* Weird all around, but whatever. Nice to know that the therapist has lots of respect for ICCD so there’s probably some odd misunderstanding somewhere and we’ll eventually find out and chuckle about it, I guess.

It feels like this has been a very long week already. Oh, and the builder had asked for me to fill out a reference for them as part of a qualify to do government contracts thing, but when I got the form, it is intended for references whose job is 100% complete which obviously ours is not. I got multiple notifications to fill out the form while waiting for clarification, and then everyone agreed, nope, sorry, definitely do not fill out that form. Which is fine!

I ordered another backpack. I do realize I keep saying I’m going to stop buying luggage, and yet here I am. I got the Fjallraven Kanken 17” laptop bag, which is supposedly an underseat bag/personal item. It is a super dark purple / marroon and very lovely. It is incredibly light. People swear it wears easily and I loaded it up for an upcoming con weekend and can confirm that it feels great on. It holds a lot and has zero stretch, so it is not possible to get into a situation where you will be in violation, which is nice. The goal isn’t just con weekend — the goal is to follow my sister’s one-bag lead. It would be soooo nice to have one carry-on roller, one backpack, one tote, and a couple small purses and have that cover A. and me on a two week, multi country trip overseas. I could probably manage getting on and off trains with two rollers, but I’d feel better managing just the one.

It’s super windy, and I’m starting to wonder if yesterday’s bad mood and headache might have been related to the barometric pressure bouncing all over the place. Oh well! I asked R. to keep an eye on me today.

I’ve been thinking about how to avoid putting too many holes through that wall covering we are going to do in the pool room, and while I blogged about a couple ideas yesterday (floor to ceiling, that anchors to ceiling and stands on floor, or wall that limits wall pens to anchor points and stands on floor like a ladder rack), I came up with another one last night: No Drilling Required / Nie Wieder Bohren. They use a special adhesive, but I do not know how that will interact with the surface of the wall covering, and I also have some questions about weight limits (not doing grab bars, so not worried about that at any rate!). I think we need to do a mockup, where we install a sample on a wall, and then install the attachment points and rest a weight of some sort on it and check back in at a week / a month and see if anything has gone horribly wrong. We’ll still need to seal whatever we put on the attachment point, because if moisture gets in there, it can loosen the adhesive, but we at least won’t compromise the wall covering, which is a lot. Fingers crossed; I sent email to the builder.

I took another swing at making peanut butter. For round one, I just food processored some raw peanuts, and it took a while, so I added some oil and that helped but it still tasted really beany. I read a little about how to do this (online, duh) and so I roasted the raw peanuts and then food processored them and that helped a ton. However, still not as dark as I’m used to and still bean-i-er flavored than I’m used to, which points firmly in the direction of More Roasting Needed.

I find this absolutely hilarious, because of how this whole project got started, and the advice I received on FF along the way (from P, so it being hilariously not correct is expected. He’s a dear and he means well, but that doesn’t mean he knows anything about what he’s talking about). We tried the three ingredient cookie when it hit TikTok, and when randos online said you couldn’t use nuts you had to use commercial peanut butter I was like, LOL, no. And then I proceeded to make a ton of variations using the bulk nuts R. always has around for snacking on. Much yumminess ensued and also he started buying unsalted cashews because salted cashews from the bottom of the container resulted in cookies that were too salty even for him (he did eat them!).

Anyway. I never got around to making my own peanut butter, because at that specific point in time (harvest or coming out of pandemic or who knows what supply chain hell) it was hard to get organic valencia peanuts or their equivalent grown in the US. At least, at a reasonable price point! I could get cheaper unsalted valencia peanut butter of equivalent weight from Trader Joe’s. But now! Now I can get reasonable price point peanuts and I bought a big bag so Now Is the Time!

I’m learning, so I’m happy. Also, if there is a trend in my life, it is that Roasted Darker is definitely my preference.

ETA

No walk today, because we kept losing power on and off and we didn’t want to get nailed by something falling down on top of us. I did have a visit with M.

R. went through the paints and I listed the kids’ painting supplies. Then he went through the kids nail polish and tossed the dry ones and I listed that. I’m wondering if FB will bounce it on some kind of hygiene basis, but it seems like nail polish ought to be okay. We’ll see. The paint was immediately spoken for (pickup tomorrow). The guy with the clock wall came to pick up the Kikkerland clock, so that’s gone.

I listed the blue tool kit that I’ve had forever.

I took a plastic bin that freed up (one of the basket style ones) and replaced the lego tub in the closet that is holding hats and scarves. I’m trying to make sure that “holes” that open up around the house don’t start inviting new stuff into them. It’s going well, and it’s easier to see and use the stuff we are keeping, which is always nice.

I am recluttering as I go. I got rid of a ton of crappy scissors as part of the kids craft lots, so I ordered new kitchen shears (ours are terrible; they were a wedding present from someone who has since passed which made me reluctant to replace them but it’s past time) and new utility scissors.

Could have been snow, so we’re all pretty happy here, but I’ll probably be on the treadmill this evening.

I have a dermatologist appointment today. I expect this to be a look at it and tell me what’s next —carry on with original plan or move date of original plan conceivably doing the excision right now. It’d be pretty cool to have it out today, and the NP yesterday predicted that, so we’ll see. I’m indifferent as to date as long as it’s out and I’ve got a couple days to see how it looks before the middle of March because I have other commitments then.

M. visited.

I made blondies and granola — both were gone, as are the waffles, but I did not make any of those.

My face was kinda gross this morning, when I was using the warm compress some stuff came out that was… gross. But better out than in, I guess. Continues to feel slowly better. The antibiotics have for sure kicked in; Bactrim has an immediate and undesirable slowing down of my digestion, altho I found my cal-mag supplement and it’s twice the mag as cal so as you can imagine, I do not normally need it but find it awfully convenient right now.

I had a virtual meeting with E and JB from the architect and builder respectively regarding siding, and we made some changes that resolved some problems. R. (Husband) liked the color option that was variegated, so I swapped the Sterling Grey for the Driftwood, but that forced us to change from Charcoal for the coursing. After some experimentation, we settled on Slate, and the result is a massive overall improvement, so I’m happy about that. We discussed where the base of the turret meets the roof, and how that will be handled, and the j-channel around the groups of windows, and also the corner treatment. The Boral TruExterior on the big windows is going to be black, but for the bottom course on the decks, E. is advocating for a lighter grey to match the Driftwood. Seems fine. The corner treatment will match the j-channel around the windows, and I pushed hard for that to be lighter than the Driftwood, to create a sharper contrast with the black of the actual window trim — it should just disappear that way.

The metal artist reached out to JB, and wants to be compensated for up front design proposals, which, obviously, only fair, yes we will pay for that. Apparently he’s gone from no to super excited, which means that N. (Kitchen) gave good advice: lots of work and a free hand makes an artist happy.

All in all, a pretty good day, which is nice, because I kept waking up last night and having to deal with my face. Disrupted sleep is annoying, altho also, my face is way better today.

ETA: I had a followup with the dermatologist today and got some injections. Apparently, there’s a really good chance that coherent chunk that came out earlier in the day _was_ the cyst. The doc thinks that there won’t be anything to remove once the current infection settles back down. I’ll go back in a month, and if it doesn’t settle down pretty quick I can call and get second injection.

A few hours post-injection, and it’s already way less red, which is exciting.

I used the new “hour” glasses, specifically, the 30 minute glass, to give A. a sense of time passing as she moves through her morning routine. Wow, did this make a huge difference. I have no idea whether this will help over time (har de har har) but for right now, it’s fantastic.

Siena Farms box arrived and I handed the beets off to my neighbors who love beets. Woot! There were a bunch of parsnips in the box so I am quite excited about that.

I also ordered from Nuts.com. I wanted more lentils, and I thought, hey, let’s explore the Artisan, Lentil space. Unexpectedly, nuts.com sells lentils, so I got some red and some black (both organic). A while back, I was experimenting with 3 ingredient cookies and looking for bulk organic valencias. The pricing at that time was basically exactly the same or higher than the Trader Joe’s organic no salt added creamy valencia peanut butter so it seemed somewhat pointless. However, now nuts.com has $25 pounds of organic valencias raw, not in shell for $125, which I think is ever so slightly less than Trader Joe’s pricing for peanut butter. And I do like having the peanuts for stir fries; I also think they make a better cookie than the pre-made peanut butter.

In any event, I now have a lot of peanuts. It’s nuts. LOL. Of course, it’s technically not nuts, but whatever.

I forgot I had a 10 am meeting, but they called and we got through it in 20 minutes, which was nice. It was supposed to be a followup on the blocking meeting from Monday, but we finished up the blocking on Tuesday in person, so we repurposed this meeting to strategize presentation / walk through for the metal artist who is going to visit the site in a couple weeks. I had put together a list and shared it with JB already, but then I said hang on before you put a presentation together, because I want to prioritize this. I also gave some thought to how I wanted a presentation structured and I shared those ideas with JB and E and they were quite stunningly supportive of the plan. Like, I think that’s the most supportive of my thinking that E has ever been. He’s always very willing to do what I want (this is my house after all), but he often does not explicitly endorse it. This time was very different. He’s in a really tough spot, given that N and I are often in disagreement, and while it’s my house, he works for N, so he’s got to be very careful and I do understand that. OTOH, I want to impose some pretty hard control over the initial presentation of the house to the metal artist, and it’s extremely nice to have full support from key people. (I got a phone call in the middle of this and learned that E and N had a heart to heart about the division of responsibilities going forward from this point, and apparently E now has a much freer hand. Wow! Sooooo good.)

The idea I had was to present the highest priority components as existing along a path that starts at the driveway gate, and then goes to the front door, turns right into my side of the house, passes the bar and enters the living room where the balcony on the second floor is visible and the alternate path that goes to door 10, sees the railing around the garage roof deck and the finial on top of the turret and then enters, goes into the music room and to the turret stairs. JB is hyper focused on getting the kitchen finished, so she’s thinking in terms of stainless steel countertops, but those are comparatively low on my priority list from this particular supplier. Art countertops could be very cool, but meh.

Lower priority sections include the pool room, other railings in the house, etc.

I’ve been reading Kylie Scott Stage Dive stories on kindleunlimited. Text Appeal is so completely different from all the ones I’ve read so far that if you told me there were two authors involved, I would believe you.

In any event, today was busy. I walked with M. R. and I went to Firefly in Concord and bought the rainbow glass lamp that we saw a week or so ago. It’s lovely. It’s not as well-made as what we got up in Canada at Ziba, but looking forward to finding a place for it in our home here and in our future home later.

We signed the contract with the remodelers who will be doing the attic room next March. Super excited!

I took A. to Seasons 52 and then got her right back to Fusion for Bingo Night. While she had fun, I went to Kohl’s and tried and failed to find v-neck t-shirts, but did succeed in buying a pleather moto jacket, a purple-pink velvet blazer, a green ribbed shirt (almost but not quite a henley), a satin purple shirt, a black skirt that I need to bring back tomorrow to have them remove the security thingie from. Fun stuff. Between this and the Lane Bryant order, I have things I can mix and match into at least a half dozen different outfits suitable for going out to see a band or whatever. I apparently decided that I needed more wardrobe for this purpose. Should be fun.

I’m working on picking which walls in each room get which color paint and diagramming it out and putting it all on the slide deck. Fun! I’m simplifying some of the color choices (persimmon and badlands are almost identical, so I picked badlands).