Unfamiliar Familia

Real quick entry before bed here. It's been a weird week.

Just got back from VA visiting mom and Hollywood and her clan for Mother's Day. Driving through their small city, I was seeing things I recognized from the last trip and found myself thinking of that visit as if it were a few months ago. It weren't. It were more like 17-18 months ago. Nuts. Not that it has been so long since I made it down, pandemic and whatnot, but that my brain can gloss over a year and a half of not being around family like it was nothing. I'm genuinely not sure if I'm severely antisocial or just good at going into no-feelings robot mode when required.

It was a good trip. Mom and her guy are doing well. They seem happy, even in spite of his constant explaining at length of random bits of information nobody cares about or asked for. He's an old school mess at times, but he definitely means well. They have a place down between the bay and the river now and we spent most of the visit there. A real simple little place without a lot of room or amenities and they seem to be much happier there than at their main home. There's a lesson about simplicity there somewhere. I brought flowers and the tech they need to get their outside lights smart instead of having to run out and plug/unplug them each day, and we set that up and chatted and ate some special brand of pretzels mom discovered and all was well. She seemed happy.

We also went and watched Hollywood play a full band show at a winery down there. Her baby daddy and their crew of four lil'uns joined shortly. That made it very clear that it had been more than a few months since I saw them last. Berry is a young lady at this point, not a kid. Insightful and always observing with a sarcastic, occasionally sardonic, wit. I definitely relate most to Berry. Nut still has some kid in her, but is not far behind. She walks into a room, sizes up the crowd, and immediately goes into silly performance mode. She beat the rest of the crew into the beach house and was doing a cheeky Love It or Leave It style monologue immediately. Clever, animated, and occasionally a little heavy handed in her desire to be in the spotlight. But very fun.

The little ones are still little, but they're speaking in clear sentences and have personalities and are everywhere at once somehow. On day 1, it was pretty clear neither has much of a memory of me. A little heartbreaking. Both gave me that little kid stare when I was looking away, but would turn and walk the other direction if I looked or addressed them. By the end of today, though, they were both chattering away at me and telling me stories and sharing big ideas and that felt really good. Better than I expected. A slightly less absentee uncle.

Overall, a really good visit. Glad I made it down. Hope to run into the little ones again before too long. And hoping to have Berry and Nut come visit here for a weekend sometime. We had talked about it before the great 2020 Hermitage, but honestly I'm more excited about having them come up now. The extra year and a half has definitely put them another step up in being able to relate like people and not kids, and that makes it all a lot more fun in my book.

Brotherman is MIA this week. We were gonna go play some tennis Tuesday and he bailed for other things he had to get done. No big deal, we figured we'd try on Thursday. Thursday came and went. I tried to check in. Didn't hear back until Saturday morning, where he went down a list of things going wrong this week. Sounded like a rough one. Went into supportive friend mode. Offered to come visit or hang out when I got back today. Didn't hear anything. Called this evening when I got home, and I NEVER call, but just wanted to do an actual check in to see how he's doing. No pick up, still no response. At this point either he's real bad off with things and depressed, or he's just busy and being a shit friend, or he's pissed at me for something and not saying it. All kinda shit options, really. Guess I'll wait and find out sometime this week.

The only reason I consider that he may be pissed at me for something is he's being weird about the YouTube channel undertaking. He says he wants to be as involved as possible, but doesn't actually seem to do anything. I thought maybe he'd want a hand in getting the technical editing side of things figured out, so I offered to come hang for an evening and help with an edit. He was strongly opposed. Oh? Oookay, well here, I'll upload the first draft of episode 3 that I've spent some twelve hours editing so he can give feedback and make suggestions for little editing gags that I can go spend even more hours working on. I waited over 36 hours for feedback and got none. So I did it myself, uploaded it, shared with him that it went live and is the best yet. It's now 4 days later and I STILL haven't heard any feedback. From the person who is supposed to be the other half of this venture.

So. Either he's in a real rough spot, or I've really done something wrong and not realized it. Either way, it's pretty discouraging to spend all that time and effort on an episode you know isn't gonna get much attention and then struggle to even get your channel partner to watch. It may be a bit before episode 4 is done and uploaded.

Work is still insane. Bossman is at the end of his rope, taking his workaholic ways to the extreme even by his own standards. It's a 45 min call minimum each day listening to him be angry about things. He couldn't even look the CEO in the eye on our weekly zoom call because he was trying to hide how angry he is. At this rate, I don't think Bossman is gonna last. Which, honestly, is kind of a long time coming. Nobody else at the company has that same extreme attitude towards the work. He's working 10-12 hour days 7 days a week to try and keep things moving on time and everyone else's attitude is generally “eh well I guess we'll have to tell customers the orders will be delayed”. It's a pretty glaring clash of cultures, one I've been prominently stuck in the middle of for some years now, and it feels like this year might be the tipping point. On one hand, that sucks. I've worked side by side with Bossman for about 15 years now. I've learned a ton from him, and have largely him to thank for my being groomed into supervisor/manager/director material now. On the other hand, it feels like a lot of the tension I work through each day would dissipate. I would no longer be the bridge between the two work cultures. And I'd likely play an even larger role than I already am in the post-Bossman landscape, which would set me up for the experience I need to take even another big step forward with the company or to branch out elsewhere. So, in general, is a mixed emotions thing right now.

Of course, he may calm down and settle in again at the end of this busy season. Who knows at this point.

Mold tests came back clear. Did I mention that last time? So now it's feeling like whatever I got still nagging me is more systemic. Will be trying to find some more tests to run to see if anything can be done about the headaches and ringing in my ears and occasional stiff necks, but I'm starting to come to terms with the idea that this might just be how things are for a long time. Could be worse, I guess. Just one more thing to fight through while I work on myself here.

I think I've drawn a bead on a decent harp this weekend. Guy up by Pittsburgh has a name brand one that the Hippy Hippie recommended to me before she disappeared again. He says he's okay meeting me somewhere in the middle and is ok coming down $100 on his asking price, so that could be a fun addition to the instrument collection. I'd love to learn how to get some songs out of it, but even if that goes belly up it'll still look amazing mounted on the music room wall and backlit. Instruments. My favorite form of wall art. Crazy to think that some people spend as much or more for just framed prints or photos as I do for banjos, cellos, and harps.

Will I try to reach out to Hippy Hippie for harp help if I wind up with this thing? Undecided. The last time she said something it was to apologize for flaking and check in. I got a response to one question, heard about how she was planning to go off her meds, and then she IMMEDIATELY disappeared again.

Oh, and Model came clean about apparently being ENGAGED at the moment, though not sure if she's gonna go through with it. Oh? Well that's cool. But then why lean so hard into asking me for song recordings and pictures and details of the sorts of activities my dominant tendencies might lead to? Her guy apparently saw my name on her phone at some point, and suddenly she's emailing me asking me to message her some exaggerated line and heyyyyy it's been forever since I've seen you how your beennnn…

I told her no. I'm not playing any part in dishonestly or subterfuge to cover up what she was doing, and that I wouldn't be talking to her anymore.

See? This is why I have a hard time trusting anyone or maintaining interpersonal relationships.

I guess, in summation, the friends I was talking to regularly I'm not right now, so it's been a bit of a lonely week. Save the 45 minute daily venting call from Bossman. So it was a well timed trip down to see family. I guess the steady feeling of a group that sees some value in me as a person regardless of what's going on is something I didn't realize I had been missing. But I had.

I really need to seek out a stronger social network of friends and such this year. Not sure where to even begin, and I'm sure I'll make an ass of myself a few times before I get it right, but I'll keep trying. Risk is worth the potential reward.

Oh, and lastly, I reached out to that recommended tattoo artist for the Vally paw prints. Sent out a photo of the prints and her tag with a card for scale so the artist can figure out how much time it'll require. Still don't know what alignment I want or if I should include her heart tag or not, but I'm taking steps to get it done. It feels like I need to be bringing Vally with me when I go places again, and I find myself actively looking down at my arm on occasion and wishing she were there. So it's time. It may not turn out exactly like I'm imagining, I may come up with a better design idea a day or two too late, but that's okay. I can't be so worried about better things later on this one. I just need my pup with me. Perfection be damned.

Another wild work week ahead. May be plus one harp by the end of it. Will definitely be one more workout cycle week further by the end of it. The rest… well…

Here goes.

-M