deathmtn

From Name of the Rose:

For that night I could sleep in a long and wide niche in the wall of the cell, in which he had had some nice fresh straw prepared.

Then the monks brought us wine, cheese, olives, bread, and excellent raisins, and left us to our refreshment.

I find myself envying this monk who is relishing enjoying in a straw-lined niche and having raisins for dinner.

- Client B work.
- Had a call with about the guy with his speech pathologist and teacher. We're worried about his social communication (especially when were thinking about things this morning), but the speech pathologist seems encouraged by his progress and particularly his attitude. She also thought of more help he could get via his IEP.
- Took the guy to his social class. He resolved a problem there, and I was really proud.
- Got groceries.
- Went to the electronic music group. We talked about jobs and making sure there is time to do the work you actually want to do. Then, I worked on making the intensity ramp up more gradual in my flooding piece. I think I'm getting closer to figuring out how dense things should be at given points with these equations. I'm really glad I have this meeting. These scheduled moments of peaceful thinking are critical at times during multi-day stretches of stress like these.

I felt incredibly tired after parking the car, post-groceries/pre-getting the guy from social class. I was highly tempted to nap in the car but felt it would mess me up. So I got a banana out of the groceries and ate it.

Awkward: It’s easier to go out and buy a new envelope than it is to find out which box I put the envelopes in.

The sad thing is, I have a spreadsheet of what items are in which boxes. But “envelope” is not in the sheet, so I don’t know if we just didn’t write it down or if we threw them away.

The guy endured quite a lot of driving this weekend. And it was often driving to a neighborhood to walk around it, not driving to something he liked. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t melt down. We’re incredibly lucky in that regard.

We went out of town today and are staying out of town until tomorrow night because there's an open house happening at our apartment. This way, we keep the place pristine for the open house. (I have been told, in so many words, that the dark spirits of real estate become angered when they see signs of actual living at a property for sale.) It was also suggested that it will keep us from freaking out about the process.

It helped with that only partially, as I got texts from multiple people about issues with it this morning. Each text freaked me out. This whole apartment selling thing is unfortunately very stressful. Even though we know logically we've done everything we reasonably could, and this part is mostly out of our hands, we can't rationalize ourselves into relaxation because so much is at stake.

One of the goals of selling our place so we can move somewhere else is to live a tiny bit more like a Neko Atsume cat that Katt told me about whose attitude is described on its profile as "Slow Life."

We were thinking just now: who knows what Slow Life (the cat's actual name is something else, but I'm just going to call it Slow Life) really had to go through to end up living her Slow Life? She may have had to withstand through mountains of stress to end up at her current enviable position.

Later in the day, though, we faced different kinds of stress: Katt's phone ran out of charge, and mine got down to 2%, and we were counting on maps apps to get us to various locations in the valley.

But we thought of this and brought an external backup battery!

But to connect the backup battery to the phones, we needed a USB 2 to lightning cable.

That cable was on our packing list, so when we got to our first destination in Amherst, I searched for it. But I couldn't find it.

Meanwhile, our son really needed to go to the bathroom.

So, Katt tried to get my phone to map the way to the place we were going to stay for the night (it was not loading directions for some reason), while I walked the guy around downtown, looking for a place with a bathroom.

Fortunately, we found a coffee shop after few hundred feet, which had a restroom. I tried to buy a baked good, but they were all made in a mixed-use kitchen with tree nuts, which the guy is allergic to.

Still, a barista was happy to give us directions, which were straightforward, even for me. Then, later after we had gone to the kids' bookstore, walked around Florence, and got some pizza, Katt found the cable.

Having these other stresses — bathroom, phone charge, and navigation — actually acted as a kind of relief from the real estate stress.

And by late afternoon, our texts were from our friends showing our cats acclimating to their temporary home. (They're taking our cats in for a few days to get them out of the way of the showings. Cats do not like change, but our friends are seasoned cat fosterers, so things seem to be going as well as they could for the cats.)

It is so remarkable that I am now not stressed for a moment, that I had to write this long post about it!

My friend Jean sent along this video explaining how to get started playing choro. A couple rhythms do a lot of work! Also, I think it’s an interesting watch, even if you’re not into choro, from a “watch something get put together” perspective.

14 pull-ups.

- Dropped off, picked up, dropped off.
- Did some laundry.
- Talked to someone about a backup rental. It's looking bad.
- Client C work. That's looking good.
- Client B work.
- Packed more stuff, put it in the basement.
- Got some episodes of Avatar onto the iPad; packed away the server and the Switch.
- Brought down the furniture that we brought back up after the photos were over.
- Emailed some friends back.

Nature Valley: I said there would be five almond butter biscuits in this box, but there are four. Whoops.

Me: I WILL KILL YOU

Eight-minute run, 14 pull-ups.

- Dropped off, picked up, dropped off.
- Called Mass. Health Connector to follow up on something. Was told something that contradicted what the agent said the last time I called and the time before. Tried to politely ask the agent to try harder; she said never mind; then suggested I fax in something I uploaded. She couldn't explain clearly why that would make a difference, despite their letter to us saying "Online (Recommended). The fastest way to submit proof is to upload them in your online account. Log in at MAhealthconnector.org and add document in the My Documents section of your account."
- Faxed a document. It cost $20!
- Emailed about a backup rental.
- Sold off (tried to give away, was rebuffed) an old sled.
- Picked up supplies at Target.
- Client C work.
- Called, emailed about backup rentals. No one does month-to-month. Katt pointed out that I shouldn't say we're looking for that up front and just try to see the actual contract.
- Client B work.

10-4-4-4-4-12.

It turns out that if you have enough legs, they acquire wave-nature.

- Client C work.
- Client B work.
- Helped Katt strip off the Gorilla Tape I put on some of our window frames, then helped to repaint the paint stripped off by the tape.
- Helped with some condo communication.
- Moved some stuff to the basement.
- Tried to analyze some sale data. Ended up having an email discussing with a realtor instead; realized prices can't be predicted.
- Emailed a friend back.
- Made dinner.

It was kind of a regular day, like from the days of yore! Where "yore" means "packing and staging".

I don't have fully formed thoughts on this, other than the new Pharmacist album is absolutely killer.

Clone bands are weird in that my first instinct is to say, wouldn't it be better if they played something not so close to something that already exists? But the answer here is definitely no, and there actually are a lot of prog elements not in Carcass, particularly in the songs Necromorph and Nursery Aesthetics, so it's not as clone-y as it sounds at first sounds. (But the cloned guitar tone is just so good.)

I guess I have to admit that sales technology is sometimes cool.

36-minute run, 14 pull-ups.

My back is OK again! There’s an yet another extra cost to hurting your back, which is not being able to work off stress.