I’m making fat stacks today first I stayed for 4 hours milking and tarping haylage and then I stayed for 5.5 hours milking and calf chores and going Very Fast while unbuckled in a Polaris ranger. Also Gatorade and my knee brace and the 15 Advil I took are the real heroes of my first week I wouldn’t have made it without them

Dad Letter 030120

1 March, 2020

Dear Dad--

Seems like it’s almost spring now, in the south, although we were still at 6 degrees this morning, and my car was covered with lacy frost. I still love how cold it is here. I have to wear two long-sleeved layers at home to be comfortable (otherwise we burn too much kerosene, which is expensive) and I just find it so much easier to think than when I’m hiding indoors from the heat and the air conditioning is running constantly. Perhaps I wouldn’t be so hard-wired to enjoy cold climates if I’d been raised here, but for now, it’s still fuckin’ magical, and I love it! 

Had a very good job interview this past week at Penquis. It took me until after the interview before I figured out where the name “Penquis” came from. At first, I thought it was an organization founded by some guy named Joe Penquis, but then I typed the names of the three counties that Penquis serves, and figured it out: Penobscot, Piscataquis, and Knox counties. It’s the beginning of PENobscot and the end of PiscataQUIS. When I finally snapped to that, I felt pretty smart. 

The interview went fairly well. We sat at a big conference table and two women tag-teamed me with the usual questions. “What are your strengths?” “What would your last manager say about you?” “Have you ever had any interaction with this kind of social services organization before?” I got to tell them that, yes, since moving to Maine, I’d been enrolled in MaineCare. This gave me an opportunity to impress the shit out of them. I figured they’d be in favor of people using this kind of social service, generally, because they ARE this kind of social service! And this allowed me to say that I wasn’t glad to move to a new state and immediately go on the dole for healthcare, but that it also wasn’t in anybody’s best interest for me to be without medication I need (they nodded a lot) and that it was my strong belief that “need” isn’t weakness, and it isn’t indicative of failure (nods nods nods, hey, this guy can articulate his passionate beliefs, woo-hoo, etc.) and I think they were very impressed by that. They were equally impressed by my other-worldly typing speed, and I think they appreciate the fact that it’s always handy to have one person around who knows what semicolons are for, and where the apostrophe is supposed to go, and how to get the phrasing just right. 

So I may be working for a place called Penquis soon. If I’ve already mentioned that it’s a naughty word with a superfluous “QU” stuck in the middle, it’s also delightfully close to the word “Penguins.” And my job would have a summer break! Since my job would be for the home heating assistance program, my job would evaporate like a snowball in the summertime. They asked if I had any problem with what amounted to summer unemployment, and I said, “It occurs to me that teachers have been doing it forever now, right? I certainly can find something to do, whether a temp job or whatever.” They also mentioned that I’d probably qualify for unemployment during that period. I think that aspect of the job is awesome, and it makes me want the job more!

I should find out whether I got the Penquis job by early this week, so possibly as soon as tomorrow. I could be wrong, but I really think I got it. A small part of me thinks the women who interviewed me liked me so much that they now want to marry me, and bear me many children, and take to their smelling salts whenever I narrow my eyes at them. But it’s also possible that this is a stupid guy-centric way of looking at it, and they weren’t thinking any of the sort. I can’t help the fact that my salt and pepper hair and beard make me look like an irresistible, if meaty, George Clooney. As the rock star once said about his own gorgeous ass, “I don’t claim to understand it. I’m only its servant.”

Here’s a nice thing that’s happened. Ever since we moved here, we’ve been cursed with a very meager supply of hot water. Taking a shower has stopped becoming a thing of relaxing cleansing, and has become a thing of quick, nervous scrubbing before the water goes cold. It sucked! We only had hot water for about four minutes worth of shower time, and that meant you couldn’t wash your hair in the shower, or shave while you shower, because there wasn’t enough time. Being in a cold state, and stepping out of a cold shower into a cold bathroom is just...cold.

But two nights ago, a glorious thing happened: Our water heater burst, and died! Something gave way, and water started gushing out of it, and into the spare bedroom. If we hadn’t been at home, and if we hadn’t been wandering around wondering where the sound of rushing water was coming from, we might not have caught the leak before it did some real damage. As it was, we were able to spring into action: Zach started removing the screws from the little door that covers the space in the spare bedroom wall where you access the water heater. I called the landlord. They said they’d send someone around right away, and could I please try to turn the water off that’s feeding to that heater, so it doesn’t flood the room? With a bit of trial and error, I found the valve to turn off the cold water feeding to the tank and stopped the leaking (making me the hero, obviously.). 

So that sucked. But! They sent a guy around. He examined the water heater. He made a phone call and said, “Yeah, wow, it blew out the whole lower unit,” which sounded serious. Long story short: within a couple of hours, he’d fetched another (used) water heater, and installed it. It looked newer, and clean. It was a Whirlpool. It was full-sized and looked serious. And it works! 

Now, we have what I’d call a normal amount of hot water. Zach has tested this by taking a few long showers, and said he has yet to run out of hot water. This is a serious improvement to our lives. In fact, you now have to use a lot more cold water to balance out the hot water, because the hot water alone is hot enough to melt your face off. But at last, we can shower like normal people again! The only drawback is that the maintenance fellow left the old water heater in the spare bedroom. He said he’d send “the guys” around on Monday with “the trailah,” (cause here, men sound like the Pepperidge Farm cookies spokes-curmudgeon) and they’d haul it away. The spare bedroom is pretty small, so the big, old, filthy water heater that’s sitting in the middle of the room kind of dwarfs everything else. No worries. I have cleaned around the water heater. It’s the cat’s room, anyway, until we get a spare bed. Anyway, hot showers again. Wonder what the poor people are doing, etc. 

A weird weather thing happened! One day last week, we had been forecast a heavy snowstorm, up to 12 inches. As the day of the snow neared, however, the snow chances dropped and dropped, eventually hitting “none.” Needless to say, Zach and I felt tremendously screwed, because we still haven’t had a significant snowstorm yet. But the city of Bangor, and the city of Old Town (where we live), and the city of Orono (across the street from us, containing the big university) all shut down anyway! It was weird! For some of the day, it rained slush. But mostly it was just cold and damp. And everyone shut down! I swear, we went to Dairy Queen for a treat that night (and I can’t believe there’s a Dairy Queen near us in Old Town, Maine, but there is) and the Dairy Queen shut down while we were waiting in line. They still served us, but they stuck a note on the window saying they were closing at 6:00 pm due to weather. There was no weather! By that point it wasn’t even precipitating; it was just cold! 

I think that means I just witnessed a whole city, and its surrounding towns, rebelling en masse against the lack of a snow day that they felt like they got cheated out of! I think the schools, municipal offices, and other businesses all thought they’d get a day off work, because of unsafe driving conditions. Then, when the driving conditions turned out to be just fine, they collectively said, “Fuck you, sunshine,” and closed up shop anyway. It’s weird being in line at Dairy Queen and all the outside lights go off, and everyone inside is running around frantically because they’re excited that they’re going home early. They literally asked me, “Do you want lids?” To which I said, “...I’m sorry, do I want what?” They wanted to know if we wanted lids on our Blizzards (our frozen milkshake things). Since it seemed she wanted very badly for me to not require a lid, I told her, “Nah, we’re fine without lids.” And we were. Perhaps it would have taken too long for her to obtain a lid. Obviously, working in food service requires lots of high-pressure decision making. 

I’ll sign off now, but you’ll probably see the bluebonnets soon! All my love to you both!