In which I destroy stuff

We have a dumpster coming next week, and I have never been more excited about anything in my entire life. We are going to be tearing apart or taking down all sorts of shit that has been slightly annoying but not annoying enough to actually deal with during the fifteen years we have lived in this house. This metal post in the back yard has never had a birdhouse on it. You can see the rotten remains of it on the top part of the post on the ground back there, but we never bothered to do the work to tear the thing out because it’s cemented in place. It’s just been sitting there being an eyesore. Well, I cut a couple of chunks off of it today in preparation for either cutting it flush to the ground or digging the cement chunk out next week— I wanted to make sure the blade for my reciprocating saw would actually cut through the thing, and it looks like the answer’s yes.

Meanwhile, the size of modern cars means that my Kia and my wife’s car only somewhat fit in the garage, and these cabinets have been in my way for years. I tore the doors off today and we’ll take the cabinets down tomorrow. To the garbage with you! We’re going to order a standalone cabinet or two from Lowe’s that will use the space better and actually allow me to get out of my car without turning sideways.

There’s a workbench we’ve never used in the basement that’s going to go too, and we’ll finally repaint the bedroom tomorrow and start rearranging in there. We’ve got electricians coming in for new lighting in the basement, too, and we might tear down some paneling down there too just for the hell of it.

Soooooo psyched.

Monthly Reads: March 2026

Book of the Month is the most excellent The Black Hunger, by Nicholas Pullen. This was kind of a bleh month overall, but Slewfoot and Trad Wife were pretty good too.

Continuing the trend

I woke up this morning with my eyes doing their best to leap out of my skull, leading to yet another sick day, meaning that I have one (1) personal day and no sick days left between now and the end of May. Had to cancel the observation and now both people will be in my room on Friday.

I hate this year. Hate it.

Some good news

Today— not that this is a hard bar to exceed— was much better than yesterday.

Honestly, I have no real complaints at all. The cafeteria was calm despite the presence of a lot of the same kids (the one who started all the nonsense in the morning wasn’t at school, and I’m at the point where I’m genuinely hoping his parents transfer him), my classes were at least as functional if not more functional than normal, and I didn’t have to cover a class during my prep. The next few days ought to fly by; I’ve more or less got them planned out and a lot of the stuff we’re doing is autopilot by now.

That said, I’m having a formal observation in the morning— these things always go fine but they’re stressful nonetheless— and I got an email from the district’s head of secondary Math instruction that he wants to observe in my Algebra class on Friday for some reason. It’s not a problem, mind you; my Algebra kids are my angels, but it feels kind of unfair having it two days after my formal.

Seven days of school until Spring Break. We can do this.


On a slightly different note: the new laptop had a system software update today, which did not solve the issues I’ve been having with Gutenberg, but it seems that simply turning Gutenberg off fixes the problem without creating any differences that I can see in how I interact with WordPress. So I’m going to assume that this is Gutenberg’s fault somehow, and that eventually they will update it in the background and I probably won’t even notice when the problem gets fixed. All’s well that ends well, I suppose.

On that project

That slight pinkish hue is how we know that the drywall compound hasn’t finished drying yet; this needs another sanding before it’s ready to paint, but considering how it looked a couple of weeks ago this represents significant improvement. We meant to get this done last weekend but neither of us were feeling well so it got put off to yesterday and today; I capped off that loose wire and stuck it into a box (It meets code now! It’s even straight and flush to the wall!) and we both pitched in on the sanding. Bek did the mudding. Hopefully next weekend we’ll get to throw some furniture around, and then there’s a dumpster coming for the first few days of Spring Break, during which I will have to be restrained from throwing away everything we own. Do we need a dining table? The oven? Come on, let’s just put ’em in the dumpster.

Seriously, we have like half a dozen projects planned for Spring Break (most of them involve destroying stuff, which is exciting!) plus a handful of contractors and other specialists coming out to either take care of other things we’re not smart enough for or give us estimates for them. If we get more than half of the shit we’re thinking about taken care of it’s going to be a very successful Spring Break.

My other project today was … filling a hole in front of the house, which may be a post all on its own. I never realized that it was possible to be bad at filling in a hole, or to fill in a hole incorrectly, but I appear to have done both of those things. One way or another the current phase of the Fill The God Damn Hole project is complete; the only question is whether we need to move to Fill The God Damn Hole, Phase 3: In Which I Learn to Pour Concrete, Because Fuck This.

Oh, fun

My stomach started cramping up immediately after dinner, which was 45 minutes ago, and I’m not going to tell you what I was doing for those 45 minutes, but guess the most unpleasant thing possible and you’re about halfway there. I’m going to take a bunch of medicine and go to bed and hope I don’t have to miss work tomorrow because I have Shit to Do.

On memory lane

My son will be attending the same high school that both my wife and I graduated from, and he had an appointment with his counselor tonight to get his freshman schedule set up. I wasn’t really sure if all three of us needed to go, but we all went anyway, and we spent a little bit of time after the meeting wandering around the building.

My head is still kind of swimming. There has been an immense amount of renovation in the — God — thirty-two years since I graduated, which means that fully half of what I remember literally isn’t there anymore and if it’s still there everything around it is different. There were occasional flashes of “Yes, I remember this hallway” or “Yes, I remember this stairwell,” but nothing seemed to connect to anything else the way I remember any more. I’m not even completely sure I went there any longer.

Also, my son is about to be in high school and I graduated from high school thirty-two years ago, and I’ll be over here, in the corner, crumbling into dust for the rest of the night.

So far in 2026…

The older brother of a kid in my building was murdered by the police.

A former student was shot a couple of miles from school and may be paralyzed for life.

And just yesterday another former student was arrested for murder. Despite being a minor the police are releasing his name all over the fucking place.

Oh, and another younger brother of former students who would have been one of mine in a couple of years got airlifted to a hospital in Indianapolis today for unspecified reasons and is expected to be gone “indefinitely.”

I have a doctor’s appointment in a couple of weeks and she’s going to ask me about my mental health. I’m going to have to lie.