This story is about my neighbor. Her husband was diagnosed with liver cancer about three years ago, and when his health declined to the point where he was no longer able to do the things around the house that he used to do, she started asking me for help. Now, I don’t mind helping out a neighbor, especially one as friendly as this one is, but I would prefer to help out my neighbors on my terms.

Yesterday was a particularly difficult day for my focus. A lady came by the house to buy something I had listed on Craigslist, and that gave me quite a big hit of dopamine, and I just wanted to sell more shit. There was no one to sell anything to, of course, so the point was moot, but my brain was in sales mode, so trying to sit down and focus on editing was a struggle. Just when I had come down off my sales high and might have had a shot at really finding my groove, my neighbor texted me to ask if I could help her install some motion lights around the outside of her house, and then that’s all I could think about.

She said, “Whenever it’s convenient for you,” but that doesn’t mean anything, does it?. First of all, that’s now on my to-do list. I no longer have an open calendar with no other tasks on it that will require my brain to shift gears from editing to something else. Now, I have something else tugging at my attention. Secondly, it’s never “whenever it’s convenient for you,” is it? They say that, and then the next thing you know, they’re texting and saying, “When do you think you’ll be over?”

So, it’s best just to get it over with as soon as possible. I mean it’s really best to just not form relationships, but second best is to just get needy people’s tasks done as quickly as possible. I texted her yesterday and told her I would come by today. Incredibly, I was able to focus quite a bit better today than yesterday, but it wasn’t for long. By noon, my commitment was nagging at my brain, and I broke down and went over. The job was super simple. I had the lights installed in under ten minutes.

That wasn’t the part I was dreading, though. I knew installing the lights would be easy. The part I was dreading was having to chit-chat afterward. That took about half an hour. Every second of it was painful, but I suppose it’s worth it to maintain neighborhood relations. After all, I have to live with these people, so it’s better to on good terms than to be at war like I was for the first 18 years of this century, but that is yet another story.

The post And Like A Good Neighbor, This Guy Was There appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

I remember lying on the living room floor, talking to the dog, expressing my envy that he didn’t have to go to school and how I wished I could be a dog so I could spend my days at home, too. Kids are fuckin weird, man.

Adults are, too, it would seem. I still don’t want to leave the house, and I especially don’t want to do what other people want me to do. I don’t want to be a dog, though. I did, however, briefly find myself envious of this lizard I saw in my garage this morning. He was just chillin, not moving a muscle. I don’t know if he was tracking a tasty bug, or if he was too cold to move, but he didn’t seem bothered by life the way I am, so he had that going for him.

The post I Wish, I Wish, I Wish I Were A… appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

The music in the dining room was just loud enough to drown out the voices of the people at the other end of our table of seven. We asked the lady who sat us if the music could be turned down, and she said, “Absolutely.” If she actually turned it down, it was a negligible amount.

What is this trend of loud music in restaurants? Is everyone enjoying it? Or am I the odd man out? Do people really like yelling across the table to their dining companions and shouting their orders to their servers?

The post Is America In A Hearing Crisis? appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

This afternoon, I decided to remedy that by wiring the lights to be plugged into an outlet so that they will come on with the rest of the patio lights. The procedure was exceedingly simple and went far smoother than I anticipated.

I used an old variable voltage AC to DC power transformer that I picked up at that free sale last month. The lights previously ran on three AA batteries, which is 4.5 volts. As it happened, one of the settings on the transformer was 4.5 volts, so that was handy.

Besides the voltage settings, the tips on the end of the cord are also interchangeable. One of the tips is a standard 1/8″ TRS plug, and I happened to have a female 1/8″ TRS jack, so I drilled out the cork to accommodate the jack and wired up the lights.

Voila! Now, the lights come on with the rest of the patio lights.

The post Lightning In A Bottle? appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

Still, there’s more room in the garage now, as per the overall scheme, and I have some money in my pocket. I don’t care about the money or the space, though, I just want to sleep.

The post I’m Absolutely Knackered appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

The post We’re Having A Garage Sale! appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

The cashier at Lowe’s started talking before we even got to her register. Bonnie was riding on the cart, and the cashier asked what aisle I found her in. Then, she talked non-stop throughout the entire transaction and continued until we were out the door. She just talked nonsense the whole time about Bonnie being an item for sale in the store. She was riffing, but nothing she said was either funny or interesting.

I don’t make small talk. If I don’t have something to say, I will not engage with you, even to be polite. I realized last night why people like the cashier make me so fucking crazy. It’s because I can’t tune people out. If someone is talking to me, I can’t not pay attention, so when they’re talking gibberish, it becomes extremely taxing, especially when I’m trying to focus on a task.

This morning, I spread the two new bags around the patio, and it was so much easier than the first bag because it was all just powdery and soft. There were no clumps in it at all. Unfortunately, they weren’t enough. I needed a fourth bag, but not a whole bag. So, back we went to the Lowe’s in the next city. We went to the garden section first so Bonnie could get some plants, and then we went to building materials to grab a back of sand topping mix. The cashier said, “We sell plants at this end?” pointing out the irregularity of paying for plants at the building materials register. She scanned them all and was about to complete the transaction when I asked her if she scanned the bag of cement. She hadn’t even noticed it. Pay the fuck attention, I thought. Why the fuck do you think we came all the way down to building materials to buy plants?

After I paid, I held my finger over the POS machine so I could choose to have my receipt emailed to me instead of printed out because I didn’t want a paper receipt. Before I could tap it, though, she bypassed the option on her end and printed my receipt. It happens at every Lowe’s. At self-checkout, it gives you the option of a printer receipt or an email and printed receipt, but there’s no option for leaving the store without a piece of fucking paper. Obviously, I’m in the minority of people who want their receipts emailed because the cashiers automatically print the receipts without asking. Last year, my local grocery store added a prompt to the POS machine asking for donations to some charity. It didn’t take long for the cashiers to start reaching over to tap the skip button because nobody wants to donate to unknown charities when they’re checking out. That, I get. What I don’t get is who the fuck wants paper receipts?

I spread the final bag around and used about 3/4 of it. I’m glad I didn’t use all of it because now I have extra to fill in any place that I missed and make patches if need be. The fire pit remodel is basically done. I still need to make four tables to go on top of the 4 x 4 posts that I mounted the electrical boxes to, but that’s a whole other project.

The post It’s Done! appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

The one bad corner in the bag I bought last night was a bigger pain in the ass to deal with than I thought it would be, so I’m definitely not going back to Lowe’s. The Lowe’s in the next town has some in stock, but I’m worried all of theirs is ruined, too. Maybe the truck got caught in the rain, and that’s why the orange store doesn’t have any. I guess we’ll find out.

The post One Bag Down appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

Every bag in the stack had been wet. I don’t know if the pallet had been left outside in the rain or if the rain snuck into the building, but these were no longer bags of cement, they were blocks. I was able to find a bag that was only hard in one corner, so I bought that one. Hopefully, I won’t need any more. Otherwise, I’ll have to go to the big orange store

The post So, We’re Just Selling Garbage Now, Is That It? appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

I pulled some weeds because that was an easy task to check off of my list, and then I went to charge the car and get something to eat. While I was sitting in my car, eating and thinking about what I could do for another hour, I felt transient. There was nothing at my house that interested me. Everything that interested me was back at the condo. I’ve been in situations like this before, where I’m killing time in another city, waiting for a train or whatever, and I have no connection to the city or anyone or anything in it. I have no place of my own. I’m just a transient. That’s how I felt even though I had a house I could have gone to.

It was an ugly feeling. I started to imagine how actual transient and homeless people must feel daily, and it made me appreciate the stability that I have in my life. I’ve lived in the same house for more than 20 years, and that has been a great advantage both during hard times and good. I’m sure a case could be made for having left this house over the years in search of better opportunities, and perhaps Bonnie and I are both pussies for not taking more risks and being more adventurous, but I think staying put all these years was probably the right move.

One of the benefits of living in the same place for almost half your life is the predictability that comes with the familiarity of your surroundings. I know what the weather will be like any given week throughout the year. I know when I can expect my street to be paved, where to look to see a SpaceX rocket pop up above the horizon, and where the sun will set throughout the year. There’s a comfort in knowing what to expect. Just ask anyone with money in the stock market right now. Another benefit of predictability is that when something unpredictable happens, you notice it right away.

This year, when the yard woke up from its winter nap and the plants, both wanted and unwanted, sprouted, I noticed something unusual. Something has been eating one of the weeds that is prolific around here and the Nasturtium that we planted several years ago because it repels insects. I’ve never seen anything go to town on either one of those plants. It must be something new to my yard, but what could it be? The last time we had a new bug was when those fucking aedes aegyptai mosquitos arrived.

I’ve been at war from April through October for the past five years, but I’ve been on this land five times longer than that, so I know how to defend it, and I’m prepared to do so.

The post The Virtues Of Stability appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.