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antiprocrastination 2
Sunday, January 22 2023
My brother Don called me several times today to report on our mother's (Hoagie's) continued insistence on lying on the floor. Don keeps calling the rescue squad to deal with it, and they keep coming out, even though all they can do is put her into a chair that she then inevitably slips out of. Gretchen and I discussed whether I needed to go to Virginia to deal with this situation and I argued that there was nothing I could do to be helpful. My mother has made it so I have no role in what happens to her (that's something Joy Tarder has signed up for) and I cannot convince her to do anything. I suppose I could assist Don, but he can't do much to help her either. All he can do is call the rescue squad or Joy Tarder. At some point late this afternoon, Joy Tarder finally came out to Creekside, at which point Don decided to go for a walk (with jogged parts) around the block. (As a side note, Don seems to think he's becoming a good runner again and that a ticket out of his situation would be to become a spokesman for some brand of running shoe. Given how little he knows about endorsement deals, and, for that matter, running, it's a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.) When Don got back, he found that neither Joy Tarder nor Hoagie was there. Had Joy taken her to the hospital?
This whole flare up with my mother's condition, which had been grim-but-stable for years, seems to be coming just as I'm finally getting a handle on my career and balancing it with the many things outside it. This often seems to happen, as if I am forever cursed to have something unpleasant to ruminate about.
As I mentioned in the entry yesterday, a lot of my problems seem to come from procrastination. But, as I have realized, procrastination can be used for good, particularly when some forms of procrastination involve doing things that might otherwise be procrastinated. I experienced another example of this today with my new 3D printer. Using that thing is going to require understanding new software and learning how to model things, the kind of self-education it's easy to procrastinate. So instead of doing any of that, I did something I might well have procrastinated for months: building a place for the printer to live. My big Ricoh color laser printer sits on an arm swinging from the laboratory's west pillar (one of two pillars passing through the laboratory space that are holding up the solar deck on the roof), so I figured I could add another such arm to hold the 3D printer. I'd bought the perfect such arm from the Tibetan Center thrift store the other day, and installing it was easy enough. I made it so the two printers (the color laser and the 3D printer) can be stacked on top of each other or either can be brought forward or pushed back against the bookshelf, depending on my needs. In some positions, the 3D printer blocks access to a vise I've attached to that same pillar, but the arm is easily pushed away to restore that access.
Other things I did today included several fire-salvaging forays west of the Farm Road. On one such foray, I brought home a backpack of mostly small dry pieces. On a later one, I used the handtruck to bring back three large pieces from near the bottom of the large fallen red oak (the one I'd thought was a chestnut oak). Since other pieces from that tree have proven to contain a lot of water, I might not bother splitting and putting away those pieces until after the heating season is over.
This evening, I again "bought" the right to drink by painting a tiny image on an old Sapphire credit card.
Today's quick and dirty painting.
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