My friend Jean called while I was on my morning walk before I called Dorothy. I had been enjoying the silence. Jean responded to my SOS last night, declaring I was down. I did get to speak to Dorothy last night and had a lovely walk with Darby. My spirits were lifted.
I got some vacuuming done in the far corner of the lanai. I work slowly. It drove Mike nuts. There was always something in progress rather than all settled and in order. I can just ignore the tumult; he couldn't.
As I was procrastinating with the NY Times mini crosswords from September, the phone rang. It was Angel from Lowe's. He said the eight boards Scott had ordered for the underflooring were unusable. They were all damaged. Scott had already told me yesterday that Home Depot was out. Oh, boy. I called the remaining building supply company in town, HPM. They had something like 350 in stock. Ah! There have to be some good ones in the bunch. I hung up and called right back. "How quickly could they be delivered?" I gave my address; by Tuesday or Wednesday.
Scott wasn't available; he was in a stress management class at Hawaii Heart Care. I called there to find out when the class got out. In the meantime, I had texted him all the information I had. He called and said, "Oh, boy." I would have been fretting plenty if I hadn't called HPM and found out we could get some immediately. It would have been another six weeks before there was another shipment from the mainland.
I called Scott are 10:45, knowing he had been out of his class for 15 minutes. He and Yvette were at Lowe's looking for something. We were going to have to cancel the order at Lowe's. Could we get the insulation material Scott wanted at Home Depot, close to our house, or even at HPM? Neither Home Depot nor HPM carried the Rockwool he wanted. The plan was to put in two more layers on top of the insulation he had put in when he redid the ceiling in Yvette's bedroom. I volunteered to do repeated runs to pick up the Rockwool from Lowe's;. I didn't want to pay to have the Rockwool delivered alone since we weren't getting Lowe's subflooring. It costs the same no matter what you order, and I would have to pay for the delivery from HPM.
I heard B. at the side of the house. He was loading Yvette's cardboard recycling to take to the transfer station. I asked him if he could pick up the insulation while he was in town. Scott came home, and he and B. consulted. After speaking with Scott, I called HPM to place the order for 8 tongue-and-grooved ¾" sheets of subflooring. B., overhearing the conversation between Scott and me, said he could pick up the subflooring from HPM as well as the insulation.
The woman at HPM mumbled something at me with a W in it. I asked her, What? She repeated her original mumble. She finally got that she was going to have to speak slowly and clearly, "Will call or delivery?" Ah. Will call. It would take about an hour before they were ready to have it picked up.
B. went ahead to drop off the cardboard. Scott left a bit later, and they met up at HPM. It was just as well this material was not delivered. The problem with Lowe's boards is someone had handled them roughly with a forklift and snapped all the tongues off. That makes the boards unusable. Scott said B. took the lead at HPM. He looked at the stack of boards, "We'll take the top five of this pile, not the rest," etc. Scott said he would have done the same thing. We wouldn't have had that kind of control if the material had been delivered. Even if all the tongues were in A1 condition in the store, they might have been damaged in the loading and unloading process. B. and Scott both had an investment that these boards got home undamaged. All's well that ends well.
Scott thanked me for staying calm. I had a few lapsed moments, but I was okay, ready to take on another disappointment/frustration without taking an emotional nosedive because of Darby, Jean, and Dorothy's support.
While the boys were out doing their thing, I went down to vote. I decided to do it that way because my handwriting was somewhat shaky, and I was afraid my ballot might be rejected. I had called Melissa yesterday to make sure where the in-person voting was at the Civic Center.
There was no line. I had to fill out a green sheet. My signature was accepted. I thanked all the elderly people manning the polls. Precautions were in effect.
I had my mail-in-ballot in my hand. There was a shredder on site. The poll clerk suggested using the paper ballot as a cheat sheet, something I could study before getting in the polling booth. After I voted, I asked what would happen if I didn't shred my mail-in ballot, keeping in mind Trump's cheating claims. She said that the moment I signed in to vote in person, my mail-in ballot was voided. Ah!
I find it interesting that Trump is accusing the Democrats of cheating on voting, but there is no suggestion that the Republicans might do the same thing. I find in-group blindness fascinating when it is not horrifying.
Just before I entered the building after filling out my green sheet, Darby and Patrick came to drop their ballots in the ballot collection box. I thanked Darby for her help yesterday. I also told her that Yvette had texted me. She said she had come around the corner while we were walking last night and nearly hit the three of us, Darby, Elsa, and me. She recommended wearing a reflector or carrying a flashlight.
Darby always refers to Patrick as her minder. It reminds me of Mike. He was always so protective. It verged on annoying but never quite got to that point. The biggest irritation is that he didn't believe I had the right to be as protective of him as he was of me. It was mostly sweet.
Patrick took in the news that Darby needed illumination. I'll bet she will be prepared on our next walk.
I stopped off at Costco next. I had a list. The store was practically empty. I had to stop in the Pharmacy section to get Vit. E and Dove soap. The whole area had been reconfigured. Several rows of shelving had been removed, and four or five new checkout counters stood in their place. It was disorienting.
As I pushed my loaded cart back to my car, I thought, Damn, I didn't buy lemons. Okay, maybe I'm supposed to be off lemonade for a while. The water tastes really good. My cart was heavily loaded, or at least it looked that way with a huge package of toilet paper. A man on the high side of middle age approached and asked if I needed help. He wasn't wearing any badges identifying him as a Costco employee. I think he was just a nice man seeing an old lady pushing a heavy cart up an incline. He helped me load the car. When he was just about done, a young woman across the aisle asked if he could help her load too. It's Hawaii.
When I arrived at the house, the subflooring was leaning against the side of the house under the four-foot overhang. Scott helped me unload the heavy stuff, and I hooked up the car to be charged. I took a look in the room. Scott had gotten up all the old subflooring yesterday, but it was laid down loosely on the cross beams so he could walk across the floor easily. Scott spent the day stuffing the Rockwool between the joists. That alone was a project and a half. He got one of the new boards laid down loosely before he left.
When I walked into the room, he said, you would not believe the difference between this flooring and what they had down. The other stuff was not just thinner; it had been damaged. Scott speculated that the house had been open when they laid the subflooring, and it had rained. Then that flooring had only been tacked down with poor quality nails. Scott is going to secure the flooring first with liquid nails and then with screws. Those boards ain't going nowhere.
Yvette came up to check out the work. I said, "If this doesn't work, you can move out." Scott proposes earplugs. Whatever.
Scott and I spoke briefly about doing the work on the rest of Yvette's ceiling. I will not take up my flooring; the rest of the house is tiled. The plan is to open her ceiling at specific spots so whatever's loose can be secured and blow insulation in. Problem: No one is renting a blowing machine. We don't know why. Lots of other machinery is being rented.
Damon called at the end of the day. I told him about the gift I had sent him. I sent him and everyone in the family water filter bottles designed to filter sewage if necessary. After reading Chapter 3 in Applebaum's Twilight of Democracy, I am resigned to a new Dark Ages with internecine wars raging around us. I think I'm in the best possible situation here in Hawaii.
Damon is still optimistic that we can pull this country out of its current morass. I'm not, especially not after reading Chapter three of Applebaum's book. She exams historical parallels. I stand convinced; it's like trying to stop a tsunami. It's beyond human powers. Something has been set in motion worldwide. It will resolve itself. I doubt I will live to see it. How long did the Dark Ages last? Will our Dark Ages be shorter or longer even? If enough people survive to continue the human race, will there be a resolution at the end of the rainbow? It will just take time.
Damon told me that August had his college interview. He is applying to Occidental in Los Angeles. I think he's a really together boy, well, young man. I'm impressed.
Damon said how he was concerned about his coping with his first year being away. Huh? Damon said his first year at Vassar was challenging for him. I spent two months at a sleep-away camp for seven summers. Going to college was just like going to camp. No problem. Damon had never been away from home. Damon started thinking about all the things they didn't expose August to that would now cause him difficulty. I assured him there was no way to avoid that. I think a parent's responsibility is to prepare your child to solve their own problems. The worst thing a parent can do is make everything perfect for their child, so they have no worries. Worries are just part of life. We all have to find a way to cope. Short of being extremely abusive, I don't think there is anything worse a parent can do than strip a child of their problem-solving ability by assuring them that they will do it all for them.
Mike and I didn't come from the best environments. We were both socially inadequate at best as adolescents. However, we made lives for ourselves, satisfying lives. Oh, yes. Damon is worried about August's social skills. He has spent all this time isolated from his peers. I reminded Damon that he was in good company; all his peers would be delayed.
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Musings:
The book Twilight of Democracy started well. The first section is beautifully written. The second chapter is a tell-all. The author reveals how people she knew as liberals turned around and became right-wingers.
Now, I'm in the third chapter. It supports a theory I already found attractive. People are distressed and scrambling because they are being bombarded with too much information. The world tilted after every communication breakthrough, print, telephone, and now the Internet.
People crave a stable point of view, not one that is open for discussion. Mike argued for Marx's point of view: people fought over land and resources. But once those two are available at a minimal level, the struggle between people is over beliefs, beliefs about daily reality, and religion. Is my concept truer than your concept? And people are prepared to kill and die over this.
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