Woodworking

I spent most of Saturday morning at the scene shop in Inman building a window perch for what one person calls my “imaginary friend.” As in, will I ever stop preparing to adopt a cat and actually adopt one.

The answer, I think, is that I’m using these preparations to acclimatize myself to the idea of pet ownership. Easing myself into it. It’s a big commitment, you know, being solely responsible for another creature’s happiness. And no, I don’t think there’s any useful comparison to be made between this and my failed relationships with other human beings.

John Taylor Gatto’s Weapons of Mass Instruction stands the slogan “No child left behind” on its ear. It’s an affirming read for somebody like me, given to second-guessing my betters. And no, I don’t think there’s any useful comparison to be made between this and my failed relationships with the business community.

Newton’s first law of management states that a bureaucracy will continue in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless compelled to change that state by external forces acted upon it. Such has proven to be the case with our owners’ association manager’s determination to repair an obviously terminal air conditioning unit in one of our commons areas and my campaign to have said unit replaced instead. Three HVAC companies and six attempted repairs after the unit slipped into a watery coma, it’s still on life support. What would happen, I wonder, if the patient were to just … I dunno … disappear one day?

Speaking of failed human relationships …

There’s this guy – Jeffrey Day. He and I used to hang out when I lived in Columbia. Ironically, the very same thing that had drawn me to him, his curmudgeonly outlook on life, later became a problem for me, even though I’m sure that I was every bit as curmudgeonly as he. We hiked together, lunched, hung out. He was somebody I could drop in on unannounced and be left to my own devices while he went about his business. It was quite the bromance.

Years later, I sent Jeffrey a conciliatory email, one of a handful I generated at a time when I was trying to make amends with the world. He never replied. Little wonder.