Coffee Ramble 3 - Witan

As with every summer now, and probably going forward, we're in the middle of a heat-wave.  Multiple days of 30C and up weather without any wind or rain (Though we finally had a storm this morning).  Lawns here are all dying, the trees are shedding leaves to conserve themselves, etc.

I've been able to keep working, though not in ideal conditions.  I picked up a portable tablet to use in the basement of the old Addam's Family house I live in, which would be ideal as it's normally cold down there, but the sheer amount of STUFF I'm still packing up to have hauled away has choked all space but a small corridor flanked by precariously creaking boxes.  

Every surface, every nook is just packed with things my father once worked on, or had collected.  He was a 'fixer'.  The man was an electrical engineer, an engineer in general, engine repair as well as a HAM operator, someone who made his own boards and boxes filled with lights.  I swear, some of it could capture ghosts.  He may have been a real-life parallel to Egon Spengler.

I've been working early mornings, and late nights now to help avoid the heat until I can find a company brave enough to haul away what has to be at least four flatbed-loads of electronics and random bits of engine and tools.  I've managed so far though I've found that it's starting to wear on me more and more.  My hope is that the heat-wave can calm down a little in the next week or two so the house isn't turned into the worlds slowest crematorium.

Over the last while I've been trying to find my 'spark' again for personal projects.  I won't moo about why, but I've had a hard time reaching into the grab-bag of nonsense that is my world to pull something interesting out that wants to say hello.  I've been trying to read other fiction than Fantasy, even watching shows that have nothing to do with it.  Ancient tube-flickering, descan-lined shows like M*A*S*H or Taxi, just to try and reset the cracked bells in my brain.

I've even been getting into Pathfinder 2e, or at least, have a bucket-head and small lizard who've been running around trying to solve mysteries while everything tries to kill them.  Something to try and lean my wayward psyche back into a world I'm starting to spiral away from lately.

I remember being warned that Pathfinder 2e was 'too mathy'.  That it was too much crunch and too rules-heavy compared to the fading darling that is D&D 5e.  My brain tends to work on some asinine level that actually clicks a lot with PF 2e though.  I find it more straight forward, quicker and less obtuse than the equally rules-choked, unwieldy kitchen-sink that D&D has become (Seriously, I remember new people to games bouncing off the system hard.. Its not 'rules light' by any means).  

I've even been tempted to get into Diablo 4 as I heard the story was pretty good.  But I saw the $90 price tag (Because Canada) and damn near threw a fully cooked turkey at a passing car.  Thank you, Blizzard, but no.  Bobbert Klottic will simply have to have one less penny to his yearly gorging bonus.

I've been trying to destress with a bit of success in other ways, however.  I've managed to get my BP down to a level that I might have to talk with the doctor about halving the medication I take as it's actually 'low' and nosing towards 'too low'.  I've been trying to be aware of surroundings when walking, and take time to just do 5 min. of meditation and self-aware-breathing as well.  

It also helps that I'm not eating bags of Takis and watching a loved one slowly fade away.  Surprising how that can do some gruesome stuff to the hemoglobin subway running through my meat scaffold.

I've also started down the path to minimalism.  Not in an extremist way.  I'm not throwing out my floorboards and haven't put the cats out with tiny-suitcases, little hats and a note that says "Good luck!"  But as I grew up in an environment that my mother kept clean and 'homey' it was still an environment that had a lot of 'stuff' everywhere.  Every shelf had all sorts of things set upon them.  

When my mother died in 95', I was getting ready to head off into the world on my own, and my father was getting ready to retire.  Her passing was hard on both of us, and plans got pushed back.  We both kind of gave up for about a decade.  And slowly the stuff built up.  I remained, and worked, and bought more stuff to set upon the shelves.  While we weren't hoarders by even a marginal sense of the word, we accumulated things, and neither of us wanted to make the place much of a home.  Her passing made it feel like less of one.

Damn, I miss you, mom.

So now I'm looking to have neat storage ideas.  I'm looking into interior design videos and books for ideas to create very homey places.  I plan on moving at a near point down the road, as the house is closing in on 75 years old, and the yard is too much for just me, and I want to make a living space that's tidy, aesthetically pleasing, and feels like somewhere I can just curl in and hide and eat spicy soup while watching some absurd thing on the laptop.

Most of all, I want neat.  No engine parts on the kitchen table, thank you.  Heavens bless my father, but the man would leave things he was in the middle of fixing everywhere, and saved every.  Single.  Screw.  Hundreds of those old black plastic film-containers filled with thousands and thousands of screws.

I guess last in the wall of nonsense that is these Coffee-talks, I'm going to be catching up on both patron sketches and maybe taking on an extra commission each month to get through the list.  I'm going at a fair pace now it would seem, and I can generally keep my own projects going (when I can find the spark to) by dedicating Monday and Friday to them.  The weekends are missed as I work those too, but I'd likely not be doing anything productive anyway.

I'm off to soak pinto beans.  I hope you all have a good week!

-T.J.