1995-07-19 Woozle writes to Hilary

Excerpt

Chop-saw: otherwise known as a (power) miter box; device wherein a circular saw is held perpendicular to the horizontal by a springed hinge in such a manner that the saw can be lowered easily into whatever it is you’re trying to cut. There is a backstop against which one usually seats a piece of wood (e.g. a two-by-four), and the angle of the blade with respect to this backstop can also be adjusted ±45° (actually just a little more). I don’t know in what context I brought it up, but it enabled me to do the trim on Mubbie’s second set of shelves properly with 45° cuts on the trim instead of just butting them together like I did on the first set (Mubbie has to have her “pretty trim”).

Spray-painting the chandelier: Mubbie has decided her cheap brass chandelier looks too dingy, so she wants us to take it down so she can spray-paint it black.

(Let me pause here for a moment and give you a small example of Anna-induced frustration. I hurried back home today around 2 p.m. (after doing an hour or so of landfilling & recycling) hoping to be in time to catch the cleaning people (we've hired cleaning people to come in every other week, which is all we can't afford) because I'd forgotten to write their $35 check this morning because of all the distractions, but they had already gone. I called Livia to find out if she'd managed to pay them somehow, and she said they'd said just to leave twice the amount next time, no problem. So I resolved right then to write the check so I wouldn't forget, despite Anna wriggling around and making it difficult to write, and dove into my checkbook only to discover that the check I'd made such a point of getting in the mail on Tuesday so it would (hopefully) arrive on Thursday and not be late (credit card bill) had in fact not managed to make its way into the envelope. Though it might have been possible to write one check while dealing with Anna, finding the bill (to get the address), finding an envelope and writing the address, writing the account number on the check (forgot to do that earlier too) and scribbling an apologetic note were all just out of the question. And anyway, the mail had already come.)

The problem with designating certain times for each of us to have to ourselves is manifold and complex. First, I sorta feel like Livia has 6-8 hours in which to get things done by being at work without any babies to take care of, because I would feel much more satisfied with life if the situation were reversed, i.e. I got to go program for $6/hr for 6-8 hrs/day with no babies. On the other hand, this isn't really at-liberty time for her because she can’t do non-work things that she considers important like laundry and sweeping (I do these things too, but I have different standards about them. Lest you think I mean "lower", I should mention that she tends to sweep dust into convenient piles and then leave them (said piles later generally becoming objects of interest for Anna), and she refuses to allow a "clean laundry" box to make unloading the dryer easier). On the third hand, though I sometimes get time in the morning for doing "my stuff", "my stuff" usually ends up being things like paying bills, doing something for Mubbie, or any one of dozens of unanticipated unplanned-for tasks which nonetheless always seem to need doing right away. So why should she get any spare time when I don’t? And on the gripping hand, under what rock are we going to find this pair of hours for each of us?

I should explain our schedule a bit better. We usually get up between 9 and 10. If we hurry, we have from then until a bit before noon to get something (anything) done. Then it's lunch, and then L goes into work right after lunch. She arrives home (or I pick her up; doesn't matter) anywhere between 6 and 10, though it's usually in the 7-8 range. There is usually an hour or two of scanning to do, then we have to arrange supper, which somehow always takes us past 11 (usually past midnight), which is why we get up so late. Yes, burnt out, absolutely. It was hard enough before, with all these extra tasks to do and not being able to afford my usual entertainment for relaxation (books and records), but now in addition to that I can't even sit down and play guitar or piano to relax -- while Anna's awake, she won't let me divert my attention, and when she's asleep it wakes her up (though, oddly, recorded music helps her get to sleep & stay that way) -- nor can I just sit and think things over while I'm with her; sitting and thinking things over, I've found, is a very powerful tool for eliminating major problems in one's life, and not being able to do it means it's very difficult to eliminate them (thus compounding the problem). Lastly, there are many days when this { frustration at not being able to do anything all day while knowing that it's absolutely vital that I work my butt off and try to get caught up } just builds and builds and I really don't like the person I become (or act like) at the end of the day.

Usually in intolerable situations like this one, I will sit down and think for awhile -- sometimes a few minutes, usually longer -- and decide which parts of it I really need to ditch. My usual habit is not to commit myself to anything I'm not sure I can handle, and (really) just to avoid commitments altogether. But here I've gone and somehow managed to get myself committed directly to at least one huge project (Anna) and sort of implicitly in a dozen others (more about which later), and there isn't really any way I can wriggle out of any of them without disappointing a whole bunch of people including myself.

I'm not sure what I see at the end of the tunnel. I have some confidence that it simply can’t go on like this forever; Anna will become more self-sufficient sooner or later (estimates range from 9 months (Matt's mom) to 2 years (Heather aka JeuneFille)). I worry about that, too; are we stifling her by isolating her so much and allowing her to cling to us? If so, is the cure worse than the disease? Perhaps she'll get over it on her own; she is showing signs of relaxing some, though not enough to actually get anything done yet.

Re walking: I came to the realization of at least one reason why people in this part of the country don't spend much money on things like sidewalks and pedestrian underpasses: it's so bloody hot most of the time, nobody wants to walk further than from the house to the car. Never mind those of us whose car A/C isn't working very well and who'd rather walk 5 min. than sit at a traffic light (with Anna growing ever hotter and unhappier) for that long (or for any length of time at all, actually).

Commitments alluded to earlier:

1. Studio: going well, with several caveats. It's been so hot this week that I've had to move the computer back home, and Lysa & Noel haven't been working because Lysa is out of town. I tentatively promised someone that the control room would be operational by early August, but unless things pick up again that's not going to happen. Lost opportunity for VERY BADLY NEEDED income, unless I can get things moving again, which I don't have time to do so it had really better happen on its own (Noel did stop by and leave a note, but of course I wasn't there and I don’t have time to call her back except maybe when I'm taking care of Anna but of course things like that don't occur to me when she’s distracting me blah blah blah...). Other caveat is we really need the A/C installed, but Mubbie has made it plain she won't pay for it until the other work she paid Dan for is done, specifically the front porch repairs (only a big deal in that it involves CLEANING OFF the front porch which in turn involves finding a place for all the lumber which is there and the best thing for that would be to build a bit shelter which would solve a lot of problems but now we've got this relatively tiny problem evolving into a big huge time-consuming thing which is never going to get done unless I make a supreme effort and spend a lot of money) and putting the new floor joists in, for which I need at least one helper and somebody who understands what actually needs to be done. I also need to be ready to get really filthy because that’s what it's like under the house and there's very little clearance. ...And then of course there are still a ton of other actually essential things which need to be done before we can really open the place for business. Oh, and I'm still not at all sure the money won't run out before we're done. BETTER HURRY.

2 (commitments, remember?). This new project with Chris Cox involving putting things on Internet web pages. The immediate part of this is renting property for the Olympics (I don’t know if you've heard about this, but people are renting their houses for THOUSANDS of dollars A WEEK during the Olympics -- even in Athens), for which he has managed to get at least two brokers interested and a strong tentative possibility that one of them might put in a couple $k to help us get started up (mostly legal fees for becoming a corporation so we can enter into a binding contract with them without endangering our personal finances). I’ll believe it when I see it, but (as with the Dan thing) I'm not going to be the one who prevents it from being possible. I don’t know if I'm being foolish or not; I like the way Chris treats me as a business partner much better than the way Dan did, and I definitely get the impression he's doing some serious footwork and getting results. But we'll see, we'll see... Oh, the other part of it involves putting music and art and band information on the net. Chris has managed to get substantial interest from a lot of bands, some of whom have money, but again nothing concrete yet. It keeps coming down to the fact that we need to have a demo web page to show people (or for them to look at themselves) so they won't think we're just a couple of jerk-offs. Right now we're just a couple of jerk-offs claiming to be setting up web pages. Yeah, okay, we'll call you back next week...

3. Mubbie. By accepting free rent (which we now can't afford to get out of) back when we moved here, we sort of implicitly promised to help her with the yard and the houses and everything. I think.

4. Mubbie. By allowing me to keep my Red House rent check for one more month (this is the 4th time, I think) to be allocated for new windows for the aforementioned RH, I've committed myself to, well, buying new windows for the RH. Which I wasn’t going to do yet because I don’t have time to make the measurements and figure out how it’s all going to work (there's a lot to consider). Here it is nearly the end of July and I should have done it as soon as she refused the rent. I HATE it when that happens. Should I feel guilty, or just doomed? In any case, I can’t afford to insist that she take it, either. Basically we're screwed a dozen ways because we're not making enough money to keep up with expenses.

5. Mubbie. By allowing her to add this badly-needed addition to our house back in 1992 (?), we implicitly agreed to paint it. Still hasn’t happened. The boards (those that need paint, anyway, which fortunately is only the boxing around the roof) are starting to turn soft.

6. Mubbie. By accepting $200 to paint the ENTIRE FREAKING HOUSE because nobody else would do it for a “reasonable” price, I explicitly agreed to paint it. (You’d think I would learn.) There’s just no way I can find the time, and we can’t afford to hire anyone, and we don’t have time to do the phoning anyway.

7. UGA. I’ve got a bunch of projects promised to them “as I can get to them”. They’ve been very understanding so far. What I hate is that while this is one of the few commitments I kind of enjoy working on, I actually don’t get to work on it more than once or twice a week.

8. David Oates is interested in doing radio comedy with me. He did a radio show up in Virginia. This would be an actual creative thing that I could be doing, assuming I could find the time for it. I haven’t had time to listen to all of the tape he gave me of his earlier troupe...

I keep saying to everyone "it’s all a matter of priorities". If you want something done, it had better be at the top of the list. Otherwise it’ll have to wait until I’ve done the other thing first, and the first chance I’ll have for doing that is weekend after next (next weekend is always booked with something). What am I missing? How can I be more effective? How am I being lazy or inflexible? There must be some way in which I need to improve, because I’m sure as hell not getting much done.

It’s now nearly 2 a.m. I was hoping this would relax me, but it’s just making me angry and tense. Chris is coming over to the Red House tomorrow (I mean, today) a little after 8 a.m. I should try to get up early enough to move the computer over and meet him. I’ve got some things to print out. The printer is over there. It’s going to be hot tomorrow. I’m tired. It’s all Anna’s fault, and I hate that I have to think that (well, “all” in the sense of 80% or so of my problems are due to Anna preventing me from having the time to solve them without losing huge amounts of sleep and even then I’m doubtful I’d be terribly effective, mumble mumble). I don’t know if it will change.

Notes

I'm not sure this letter was ever sent.

P.S. to Anna, 2007-01-20

No, it wasn't really all your fault. Not in the sense of being something that you could or should have done differently. I just wasn't meant to be the sole caregiver for a high-attention-needing baby. One could conclude any of several possible things from this, but I'll stop short of speculating on that. I think this explains the situation enough that you can draw your own conclusions. W.