Fun with Water Leaks

A few days ago, Laura was vaccuuming and noticed that the carpet behind our shower was soaked. I know that the "solution" starts with pulling up the carpet, cutting away the pad, and putting a fan over it to dry it out. It wasn't a big patch of wetness. I'm guessing 2 feet by 3 feet. We did most of that, but tried to also save the carpet bad, because we're cheapskates. After all, it's not like mold can thrive inside something that's basically plastic. Yesterday, D noticed that water's dripping out of the ceiling. We climbed into the attic and looked around. It seemed like an obvious thing where the roof is leaking from all the recent rain. It probably ties in with damage from the ice storm. And our carpet behind the shower is soaked again. Laura started calling repair companies. It's tough to find anyone to come out to your house on the Sunday morning of a 3 day weekend. I went to brunch. It's great to have a partner who takes care of everything. I should probably feel guilty about how much she does without me. Maybe someday I'll grow up and help her too. In the meantime, she has eye candy. She got a disaster mitigation specialist to show up about the time I got back. I'm guessing that he was still asleep and half drunk when she called. But he showed up. First, he established that the problem isn't our roof. It's yet another pinhole leak from the water heater in our attic. Yes. For some God-awful reason, we have a water heater in our attic. It has leaked twice now. The first time, the plumber told us that the solution is a relief valve because it's under too much pressure. This time, the guy told us we just need to pay to have it moved to ground level where it belongs. He did replace the ruptured line. I'm pretty sure it's the same one that broke last time. He's also sure that there's a completely unrelated hole in our shower line, which is the source of that second leak that only seems to happen when we bathe. And then he set up fans and dehumidifiers. They don't bother me. The constant low drone is a welcome distraction from my tinnitus. It's a fairly pleasant reminder of my days working at Service Master. Mal can't cope. He has enough bathroom issues as a baseline. This adds stress that he can't handle. So Laura took him to her parents'. Laura said that Aish ran out when the guy set up the fans in our bedroom. Extra fans are also blowing everywhere else she normally hides. So she ran right back in and hid under the bed. We've moved their food and water into that bathroom as prep for getting a dog (we want them to have somewhere it can't get). Laura moved those back into the dining room, where we used to feed them. We left the bedroom door open for a long time, so Aish could get out if/when she got hungry or needed to use the litter box. I waited out most of the day, but my office started roasting. So I finally chased her out from under the bed so I could fully shut up that bedroom. She's pretty miserable about the entire situation. She was snuggled up next to me when I woke this morning. She immediately rushed to hide under Mal's bookshelf, which is about 2 inches off the floor. I'm really impressed that she compresses that much. She's very food-motivated, but it took a lot of effort to coax her out to eat this morning. She's up in my lap now. That's a major reason this post is as long as it is: Now that she's comfortable, I don't want to disturb her. But I have things to do.

Honing in on the New Normal

If it is still 2021 when you are reading this, then I apologize. It's not really for you. It's for posterity.

Greetings, reader of the future! I hope we managed to reverse the climate change trend toward hotter, colder, stormier, drought-ier (yes, I saw that word used in a legitimate news article) weather for you guys. 

Hey, speaking of that...

A couple of days ago, the CDC announced that fully vaccinated (against Covid-19) people could refrain from wearing masks even indoors in most situations. Yay! James got his second shot two days ago, so is still a couple of weeks out from maximum immunity, but D and I are both considered "fully" and I look forward to ditching the masks!

I know a lot of people aren't. They want to keep wearing them, either for a while, until some benchmark they've chosen is reached; or seasonally, say to avoid the flu, which was barely a blip on the radar this past year, as we were distanced and masked.

Covid brought a lot of divisions to the forefront, in some really disconcerting ways.

The first is related a bit to masks. There are people, including most of the folks who were in my social circles a decade ago, who believed mask mandates to be compliance drills by the government, the first step onto a slippery slope to-- ??? Wearing burkhas? Never talking to anyone outside of the home? Closing all businesses to force the populace to be dependent on the government for income? To seize all guns? 

Most of the safety measures and protocol and solutions to the pandemic were seen by some as a great government conspiracy. The vaccines supposedly make you sterile. Or have something that inserts a tracker into your body so the government can see where you are at all times (even though you do that voluntarily with your smart phone, so...). Or will kill everyone who got one within the next decade (if this blog goes dark, you'll know why!). 

The initial "lock-downs" -- which weren't, by the way, as essential travel was never prohibited and we could go to the grocery store and get take-out if restaurants chose to stay open -- were seen as an overreach if not intended to destroy our economy, then doing it carelessly anyway.

Not allowing people to go to others' homes at first was seen as some kind of "divide and conquer" mess, I guess. I don't claim to understand the way people think.

A lot of people who felt all public safety measures were some kind of infringement on their personal rights point to inconsistent messaging. Yes, the CDC initially said masks didn't help; then they said that they absolutely DO help and people should wear them. Yes, that is inconsistent. But a couple of things were at play that helped me give grace to the folks in charge: 1) This was a NOVEL coronavirus and not much was known about it. 2) There wasn't enough personal protection equipment for the medical professionals, and they didn't want a run on what there was. This was smart thinking, the way people hoarded toilet paper and pasta and flour. 

It devolved into a political thing: If you were a Democrat, you wore masks and stayed home and lived in "fear." If you were a Republican, you enjoyed your freedom and did whatever the hell you wanted, and that's what this country is about, after all; plus, there's only a small chance you'll die, so why be such a pansy? There are exceptions. I know right-leaning people (and am related to people) who took trying not to catch or spread the virus seriously. And I know left-leaning people who are quite skeptical of the rapidly-developed vaccine and won't get it.

Another thing that the virus laid bare was the economic fault lines in our society, many of which run along racial lines. 

James has a job that he was able to do from home, and his company stable enough to weather the initial decline in business without having to cut salaries, so we were able to continue our lives without much economic instability.

But many jobs couldn't be done from home, like employees of grocers and restaurants, and in the medical profession. So they had some really no-win choices to make: go to work and risk infection, or don't work and don't get paid and probably get fired. Some people didn't have a choice: their employer couldn't afford to pay them and had to let them go. Some people didn't have childcare for their kids who were suddenly not in school, and had to wing it.

The jobs we suddenly glorified have been historically pooh-poohed as jobs that people who don't have a "good education" do, an almost morality tale about the dangers of failing to pursue higher education. Yet we expected these folks to happily show up, deal with people who were angry about mask mandates, put in all of their hours, expose themselves to the exhalations of hundreds of people every day, and often take public transit there and back.

The death rate of people who identify as Latinae was much higher than the death rate of white people. Black folks also died at a higher rate than whites. In addition to jobs, my guess is that things that played into this are: population density in households and neighborhoods, reliance on public transit and carpooling, and lack of access to medical care (from lack of insurance, fear of attracting the attention of authorities/ICE, and a general and understandable skepticism of the medical industry), in addition to living either in urban areas where the healthcare systems were overwhelmed, or in rural areas where there are no longer hospitals.

In addition to the 8 million people who slipped into poverty between May and October 2020, there was a huge toll on healthcare professionals. Some were laid off when hospitals stopped doing elective procedures; others were reassigned to jobs outside of their expertise. Many were run ragged, and had to choose between taking care of patients and seeing their families. I have two friends who rented hotel rooms for weeks at a time so as not to bring home something to their kids and partners.

The stimulus payments lifted fully half of the children in poverty in the US out, so that's pretty exciting. The eviction moratoriums are just ending, so I hope both landlords and tenants are able to pull through this time okay. I understand that it's easy to assume all landlords are rich corporations, but they are not. And many have been financially hit by the fact that their tenants have not had to pay rent, and federal or state help is slow in coming.

In short: deadly disease aside, it's been a mess. It's showed a lot of weaknesses, including in our communities.

Homeschoolers, especially, seem to lean more toward the "masks and gathering limits are an affront to my personal autonomy." I have a friend (who's not a homeschooler, but kind of the same mentality) who moved to another city where they weren't enforcing the statewide mandate, because she wanted her kids to have "a normal childhood."

I can only make decisions for myself and my family, but I think it's okay to teach your kids how to pivot during a trying circumstance, how to pitch in for the health of all, and that sometimes, things just aren't "normal." How can you build resiliency if you never encounter this kind of thing?

Anyway, we're a long way from "normal," but at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel now. I'd really hoped that a global pandemic might lead to more understanding and cooperation, but that just seems not to be super possible, on a large scale. In fact, I might be tempted to be more discouraged if the freeze hadn't happened, and we hadn't had some neighbors step up in a huge way. I think maybe the smaller communities are where the magic happens. And that part is nice.

The Continuing Saga of Money Anxiety

In December 2019, I posted about my "hemorrhaging money" concerns of the day. It's been better since then, but the past few months have been a lot.

First, we had our porches and trim painted early in the year. It wasn't cheap, but it was necessary. 

Then there was the thing with the freeze where everyone had to make preparations and repairs. Fortunately, as far as we know, our only issues were a broken hose bib line (and do-it-myself drywall repairs) and the 500L's windshield. However, we're noticing now that our second-biggest tree in the front yard probably mostly died, as only a few leaves have popped out near the main trunk. The tree was already a hot mess, dropping giant branches every time the wind blew, ever since we lived here. Apparently, that's what chinaberry trees do. But there's a smaller one in the back yard that looks pretty dead-ish, as well. I could cut that one down myself over time; the one in the front yard is going to be expensive to remove. And we might have to pay $100 just to get a building permit to remove it! A DEAD TREE!

--Sidebar: The chinaberry also drops TONS of messy berries all over the yard and roof all seasons of the year. It rained several inches last weekend, and James and I had noticed the time before when it rained that there was water pouring out of the end of one of the gutters. This weekend, I noticed that NONE was coming out of the downspout. We decided to clear it out mid-rain because it was was supposed to continue to storm all weekend. When we work on the gutters, it's my job to clear them out, and James's to hold the ladder so I don't pull a Pappy (as me about this inside joke, if you're not familiar). I reached down and found a big muddy ball of chinaberries damming up the downspout. I pulled them out, and ALL of the water that had filled the entire gutter SHOT OUT of the downspout... slamming right into my ladder anchor, AKA James. We were in the rain anyway, but he got it a lot worse than I did. Not having that problem would be a balm to losing a mature tree from the front yard.--

James has a new hobby and has been buying tools and material for that. This is a good thing! He never had time to pursue an activity with regularity when he had to commute. Like, he could brew a beer or make some cheese every year or two, but he's getting to hone his woodworking skills most days, and that's pretty cool for him.

I bought a bunch of supplies for our future dog. Rudy had to get mouth surgery. Now Aish has some weird scabby things and is going to the vet tomorrow.

Then my camera broke. I decided not to spend too much to replace it because, geez with the spending money. I bought a much less expensive replacement. And the pictures sucked. So I bought a more expensive replacement, only soothing myself that for $300, I get a 5-year no-questions-asked replacement warranty (if I'd had one with my old camera, I could have replaced it at no cost; I had it just over 4 years when I dropped it and it landed at an awkward angle, cracking the housing... but already the LCD screen had stopped working, and there was some lining coming loose in the lens).

We had to add a rider to our homeowners insurance when I realized that our solar panels were not covered by our general policy. Our property taxes are set to go up quite a bit this year because the valuations are so much higher now that the real estate market is bonkers. It's entirely possible that our insurance is going to go up because the cost for construction materials has tripled over the past year. That means our house is likely under-insured and the provider will notice that soon, especially if the mortgage-holder points it out to them.

So.

I decided to try to be more conservative in my spending, and cut back. I informed James of the situation. I've even talked to Mal about it, because he always wants more stuff.

We were all on the same page.

Then D wanted to get a twin bed, downsizing from a queen to have more floor space. I was fortunate to find a frame and box spring on Buy Nothing, but still bought the top mattress and bedding. Last night, D requested a new desk and office chair. D has been using the computer mostly in bed for the past couple of years, and I think this will really help alleviate some neck pain. So, of course, I went out today and got those things.

The frustrating part is that I feel like James makes "enough" money that I shouldn't feel this much uncertainty. But it definitely seems like it's always something, and I wonder what we'd do if James didn't have the job he has now.

I also wonder if my preoccupation has to do with a scarcity mentality left over from genuinely not having enough to make ends meet. Regardless, I hate the feeling that money flies away, out of our control.

I've thought about money a LOT this past year, especially as the pandemic revealed and worsened the financial gaps in our society. We were definitely one of the lucky families who kept up employment and were able to stay in our house. There's no reason for this. There's no moral explanation for why a computer programmer's job is safe during a global outbreak, and a bunch of servers' jobs aren't.

When we had the porch painted, I was talking to some people from church about it, and how it was a maintenance item that ignoring would have lead to the need for more significant interventions down the road, but how guilty I felt spending what we did when some people don't have anywhere to live. Our ministry intern basically said, "The problem is a society where individuals fall through the cracks and can't get help. It's not one person's keeping up their property that means someone else gets evicted, but there's definitely something wrong when you as an individual feel like any money you spend is threatening someone else's safety."

And he's right, but he's also wrong. Money is a zero-sum game. The money I have is necessarily not had by someone else. We try to be generous, and I often struggle with feelings both that we're not doing enough to help other people, and that we really can't do any more without jeopardizing our own ability to live and react to unplanned expenses. 

This week, I've heard several things that make me realize, "Oh, yeah, we are NOT the rich people."

There was a story on Code Switch about a demand sent out by some black Vermonters last year telling their white neighbors to go ahead and start on some reparations by sending money directly to individuals' CashApp accounts (which I completely support, by the way). I loved how the notice was worded. It boiled down to, "You might think you can give $50 and not feel it, but you need to feel it. You should give enough that it impacts your own financial status." I mean, that's what wealth distribution is all about. And some people really took this seriously. One couple immediately gave away $1000 each to four different people. Then they discussed, "What does it look like if we give $20,000? Or $200,000?"

What?! One of them was in a post-graduate program! And they have $200,000 cash AT ALL, much less that they might be able to give away? Okay, no, we're NOT rich.

We couldn't afford a second home, not for vacations and not even for rental investment. Heck, we couldn't even afford another property. In fact, if we had to buy our own home today, we could not!

Oh, then I had a gentleman (the generous guy who gave me the twin box spring and frame) tell me off-handedly, "I've spent quite a bit of time in Asia, and..."

Well, unless James got transferred, we couldn't afford to spend "quite a bit of time" in Asia (though I'd certainly love to!).

A couple who is in a community group to which I belong recently sent out a picture of a trip he and his wife had taken to Botswana where you can book this experience where they set up a bed for you in the middle of the desert so you can star-gaze all night. Like they put a brass bed out there, make it up, put rugs on both sides, and cart you out there. It sounds amazing. I can't imagine how much the whole trip must cost. We're just not at a place to be able to do that, either.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. Basically, I guess, living is expensive, and we're lucky that we can scrape by, and it's not fair that some people can't while others have $150 billion. I heard someone on the radio say that they didn't believe in an all-powerful god because if there were one, it was the worst planner ever: "You get a Tesla, you get a tumor." I feel that, and I don't know what to do about it, and I guess sometimes you just have to sit with the discomfort of it.

Austin prop B

I just ran across this, so it's too late for me to do anything about it. Later today, Austin will have a special election to vote on a thing called "Prop B." It's been about 2 years since the Austin city council rolled back rules about the homeless. Those rolled-back rules criminalized things like camping, panhandling, sitting or lying down on public sidewalks, and sleeping outdoors.

“The only way you go to jail is if you cannot pay the citation,” said Matt Mackowiak, co-founder of the Save Austin Now Pac, the proposition’s chief advocacy group. “If you are going to camp, the police are going to come up to you and they’re going to say, ‘Camping has now been banned in our city. You have to move.’”

I want to use language which Mal has somehow learned is inoffensive. If you can afford to pay that citation, you probably aren't homeless. Odds are, if you're camping out underneath a bridge, you probably didn't have a lot of alternatives.

Mackowiak described Prop B as a last-ditch effort to save Austin from becoming a failed city, and he said he wants to be part of the solution for unhomed residents after his campaign wins.

I'm not sure what the term "a failed city" means. Is this one where poor people have an opportunity to scrape by? Is it one that would be bursting at the seams, if it weren't for all the poor people who are managing to scrape by in tents under overpasses? Maybe he means "a place that used to be the coolest on the planet, but turned completely lame because it's only for rich people." That would fit with Austin's reality. But doesnt fit with his claim that he wants to be part of the solution. I think I'm going to just say that he's a liar who could not care less about the people who are living on the streets. "Unhomed residents" are people. They need your help. More than that, they need your recognition. Simple acknowledgment. The basic recognition that you are another valuable human being who is worthy of love. That isn't hard to do. Allowing people to pitch tents under bridges is even easier. They aren't camping there because it's a great place to live.

Pre-Dawn Walking

I've always enjoyed walking, but in January, started tracking my walks through an app because I'd seen this 500k program where you could get Sesame Street swag... and that ended up being a REALLY expensive program, but I thought it would be cool to see how far I might walk in a whole year.

What happened, though, as the month wore on, was that I found myself slipping into disordered behavior, where if I didn't feel like a walk (say, with an older friend, at a slower pace, and not as far as my regular constitutional) met certain criteria, I'd want to walk more later, just to get it tracked. Or if I gave myself a day off, I felt like that space was a glaring missing tooth in the week.

It wasn't healthy, so I decided to stop tracking and just enjoy walking. Which I do when I'm no being weird about things.

I'd heard about a lady who said that, in order to run in the morning before the onslaught of the day happened, she would wear her running clothes to bed so she could just get up and go. I've never wanted to motivate myself to run, but figured that early morning might be a good time to enjoy the neighborhood without having to excuse myself from the family for an hour or more on a regular basis, and also if I could build the habit up before summer, the future me would thank my present self.

Furthermore, we're getting a dog in August, and sleep is going to be spotty for several weeks or more, so waking myself up when it's still dark is some preparation for that, as well.

After I'd walked one morning and really liked it, I set an alarm on my phone to make sure I'd wake up early enough. That felt too official, though, so I turned it off. I would walk if I woke up early enough, and if I didn't... that would be fine. 

So far, this is working.

I'm tending to wake up naturally at 5:35-6:15 every morning. I guess I've probably always awakened at about that time, but just rolled over and gone back to sleep (which, actually, I've done several times, when it's been raining or I decided to give myself the day off, or knew I was going to walk with someone later in the day).

One thing I notice when I'm out and it's still dark out, is which houses already have lights on inside. It feels so early, that I am sorry for those people who have to get up to get their kids ready for the bus (one of them picks up before sunrise), or to head in to work. Today it hit me: I'm up. Dur. But the difference is that we are fortunate enough to have a lifestyle where we almost never need artificial lighting to start our days. 

James no longer has to commute, so the sun is well up by the time he checks in at "the office." Neither of my kids has ever been in school, much less ridden a school bus. And I can get around in the near-dark pretty well. So we all have the luxury of being awakened gently as light slowly breaks us into the day.

As an aside, we bought these to help see when we're out in the dark. They work very well, and they don't mess with your pupils' dilation, so if you're trying to stargaze (or you just don't want to shine a bright light into a neighbor's window), they're super! Highly recommend.

Here are a few pictures from my morning treks.

"Not a Normal Mom"

Mal came to me last week and said, "I'm glad you're not a normal mom."

Since I'm sure this is true on many levels, I wanted some specification. "What do you mean 'normal'?"

He said, "Like most moms are mean to their kids."

Okay, I got it. It's taken him six and a half years, but he realizes that we don't punish him.

I said, "Most moms aren't being mean to their kids; moms might punish their kids because they think it will help them be better people. Like, if they feel like their kid is using the computer too much, or used it without permission, they might take it away for a while so their kid will think about it more next time."

He said, "Yeah. I'm glad you're not like that."

Now TOTALLY changing the subject... on the Hidden Brain podcast this week, a guess was talking about the "comedy cliff," wherein at about the age of 23, people stop engaging in humor as frequently as they did when they were kids. One way this was determined was by asking survey respondents: "Did you laugh yesterday?" Almost all children answer yes (and most young kids laugh something like 400 times a day, and adults less than 20). Many adults answer no, until the age of 70, when I guess we start loosening up again.

I told James that those adults must not have kids like Mal.

He makes us laugh literally every single day, many times over.

One of the things I miss about our house in Sherman was the giant dining room we didn't use because there was just plenty of room at the bar in the kitchen... I mean, we have room at our bar here, too, but in Sherman, the seats faced each other because of how the bar was shaped. Here, we'd just be awkwardly facing the kitchen, like we did in the apartment.

Anyway, since we don't have a dedicated "homeschool desk," one of our repeated challenges is that Mal likes to get out his blocks and LEGO bricks and play sets on the kitchen table, and he wants to leave them out to play with "tomorrow." And the next day. And the next. And after a while, I just want to sit down to eat without having to shuffle small bits of plastic.

Yesterday was Day Three of Minecraft LEGOs on the table, and I'd told Mal I wanted to move the sets over to the coffee table. When I started, Mal followed me around, bringing the sets back to the table.

Later in the day, James was eating lunch while Mal was in our bedroom closet watching videos. As James and I chatted, I quietly moved things over to the coffee table. I figured that if I could get everything moved over, then Mal would be too overwhelmed to move it back. I was successful, and James and I continued our conversation. About five minutes later, Mal came into the room to show us something, and just said in a dead pan, "You monster."

He cracks me up every day. That's good, because he is also by turns demanding and emotionally exhausting. And his humor and mostly good nature goes a long way in injecting much-needed energy into the environment. 

Half a year of wood-working

Well, maybe 2/3. Or even 3/4. I'm not sure where/when I got a bug about working with wood. The first obvious notes I see in my journal are from August, 2020. The floor to my office had been cluttered up with books for long enough that Laura asked whether I was ever going to do anything about them. That made me decide that I want to. It also made me admit that it might take a while, because I had (and still have) a lot to learn. It's something that's been percolating in my mind since I was a little kid. My dad spent most of his spare time puttering around in our garage, building something.I've done little bits and pieces since then, but most of what he taught me never clicked. Last year was almost a black hole in terms of what I remember about my job. My relationship with Mal has grown exponentially since then, and that's far more important than anything about my career. But I was thinking about this thing that probably happened in February. But it couldn't have happened in Feb 2021. That was during the ice storm. During Feb 2020, I was still flipping over and starting to get used to being on a new team at the day job. So this conversation probably happened back around Feb, 2019. Our group at our day job decided to have its quarterly hype meeting at one office. We were based in another, at the same campus. There's a shuttle that circulates, but it starts at that one, picks up people at ours, cycles through at least a couple of others, and eventually works its way back to that starting point. We were young and arrogant. We wouldn't have waited even if it had been direct. We just decided to walk. We wound up walking our way around several gigantic holes in the ground. In hindsight, this was great fun. Actually, it seemed like good clean fun while we were wandering through all these holes in the ground. While we were working our way through these obstacles, my co-worker talked about his plans to build a new desk. That re-lit a fire inside me. I grew up with a father who was always building things. I spent a lot of my childhood resenting a lot of the details behind the way those things were build. I wasted a lot of emotional anguish over really basic facts. Like the fundamental idea that a rectilinear structure can possibly be strong, when it's easy to shave off edges and add support. Or that it's worth pre-drilling holes for the screws. I like to think that I've learned a lot and grown since then. I think that that conversation may have been a turning point in my life.