Nose to the grindstone 2025

[Drunk Monk]

Now that Greg's asleep, let's talk about me. 

I'm at my mom's house where we're having a lot of work done. She did well with the market last year and we're putting it into the house = repaving the front driveway and walkway and stripping and repainting th interior. The repaving is nearly done - they;re just hopung to find a stone to match a leftover hole in the front wall stonework. The painters have tarped the floors and furniture, patched the walls, and laid down primer. The house is a mess. It's very weird being here tonight. But I must let the painters in early tomorrow. 

The fumes. For a moment, I thought I was in N'Orleans for Fat Tuesday with armloads of eco-friendly beads to toss at exhibitionists. But no. Fumes. My old room is the same as it was in high school, only buried under several decades more of swords, books, T-shirts, robes, percoset, crap.  It's not being painted, left in it's ridiculous glory, half 70s wood panel walls, have dark blue painted walls (I wanted black but my folks said no, and dark blue was our compromise. And red carpet. That hides the blood stains. It's the last bastion of my childhood home. I have an iaido test on Thursday and I meant to bring my bokken & saya tonight (I have this super lightweight one I got from Tiger Claw that's super safe. But it's at home. I only have one katana here, my sharpened ninja katana, so a ran my katas very slowly twice each. There are 7 seated kata and 8 standing kata. Nothing like fumes and sharp swords. Reminded me of the good old daze at AFS. Mmmmm fumes.