Traeger Crisis

I used to think that this was my town

What a stupid thing to think

I hear you're fighting off a breakdown

I myself am on the brink

I used to want to be a real man

I don't know what that even means

Now I just want you in my arms again

And we can search each other's dreams

I know you're tired

And you ain't sleeping well

Uninspired

And likely mad as hell

But wherever you are

I hope the high road leads you home again

-Jason Isbell

As usual, this morning it feels like Isbell is talking to me, about me.

Up at 3:18, right around the usual time these days. The conventional wisdom says to get out of bed, go find a physical book, a chair, and a lamp, and read until whatever demon prodded you awake gets bored and moves on. When we're here in Corning the family room has no reading lamp, so I end up curled under a blanket on the couch with Dean and Slane, scrolling through social media or whatever on my phone.

One of the sites that shows up in my algorithmically curated feed featured, at around 4, the Billboard Top 50 Songs of 1970, each with a snippet of a music video that lasts a few seconds before moving on to the next on the list. How many could I remember? I turned six that year. I managed 42 out of 50, humming along in my head with the Jackson 5 and Three Dog Night.

Not healthy.

I dozed off for a spell, but then at 5:18 Slane slinked into the bedroom with P to start singing, and I sprung off the couch to chase him away and, at that point, crawl back into bed for the forty minutes or so before the alarm went off.

This latest crisis in our household has to do with the smoker up in Canandaigua. It's one of the few things that gives me any real pleasure in life, and Peg loves the smell when it wakes up with a puff of smoke in preparation to cook the perfect ribs or brisket.

Well, it turns out that puff of smoke wasn't beloved by our MAGA neighbors upstairs. We can't stand each other, and they saw their opportunity. Despite the fact that the president of the condo association board actually showed us his electric grill out on his patio, it turns out electric grills and smokers are verboten there, and yesterday we received a curt letter from the property manager informing us of this fact and giving us ten days to remove the beloved old Traeger.

I'm not sure why this sent me into orbit, but it certainly did. I let my anger subside a little before responding that we'd comply, but others have electric grills in the building and ten days to remove the behemoth smoker is completely unrealistic. I also told him we were tired of looking at the hole in our wall because they can't get their act together fixing the chimney, or at the crumbling edge of our patio that fell off last year, and because we were now going to sell the unit they needed to get finished with those projects or we'd need to have words with their lawyer.

I was serious about selling the unit, although this morning another hit the market, adding to a glut of available units there that make this feel like 2008. Even if we can't sell it, whatever happiness we felt on that cliffside is gone now, and but for Peg's plants I doubt we'd go back up there for the balance of the summer. She has the place in the City now, and maybe that will be a more rewarding destination.

There's trouble here in the Schoolhouse, as well. The steps are crumbling, with the textured coating someone slathered over already spalling concrete all starting to collectively give up. Everyone can see that. A guest has already fallen out there a few weeks ago. And yet, most of these folks are on a fixed income and good-naturedly resisting any effort to address the problem that may cost money. One even suggested sticking indoor-outdoor carpet over the decay. Brilliant.

Oh, and there's no reserve fund here. For a building constructed in 1907. Because a few years ago they just decided they didn't really need it. Un. Flipping. Believable.

One can feel the romance ending between us and here. Our circle of friends is tiny after all these years, and I rarely leave the building. The food is almost uniformly awful. And maybe above all else, we've learned or re-learned that I'm too much of an asshole to live in a building with other people who don't have to put up with my BS because they're related to me. Or more accurately, I just don't want to share walls and ceiling with strangers with whom I share neither blood nor culture.

"L'enfer, c'est les autres". Tell it, Jean Paul.

But I will miss the views and the countryside, when this chapter eventually ends.

Time for a deposition in a few minutes, with an annoying thirty-something lawyer on the other side whose web biography informs that she was the president of her law school's Federalist Society chapter. I love my job.