I’m quite desperate for some long period of extreme quiet.
Yesterday, an outing to our fave beach, “quite empty for a Sunday,” I thought until a reggae soundsystem crew showed up with 5 awnings, multiple barbecues, flats of beer and significant speakers… I mean, party on but… Then some wannabe tough city kids showed up on the other side of us wearing those air cooled vests and spraying on mosquito repellent, sunscreen, chain-smoking mild sevens and then turned on a boom box with some crap music and then started arguing amongst themselves / nbd
Floated in saltywater, played ukulele, practiced meditation to ignore all the surrounding sounds. Across street is a great quirky café so I ate Oden and ice coffee and laughed / rolled wyes with the owner about the “Rastas” using their toilets but not buying any food or drink ~
This is all going on while we vacated house for our second round of fumigation for some persistent pest problems that I won’t go into detail except it includes so much vacuuming and laundry and decamping to a hotel before and last night, parent’s house~
I did my usual “triple stack” futon but the dear in-laws stay up till 11 and then back up at 7 remarking with shock and awe at *every single thing* on the loud television. Yes I’m a sensitive soul… Kind of a conflict to the elegant tatami room where I attempted to sleep~
Solar Power Digression
This morning back across to our house to get things opened up in time for the solar panel installation crew to finally show up (contracts were signed/stamped in February but been an assortment of delays due to various permitting/authorizations
1) Truck fulla solar panels (made in Japan)
2) Roofs where solar panels will go (not on blue roof or frontside of tile roof, but will go on the grey roof and the 2nd floor roof if that makes sense – the house has ideal East/West exposure (which makes for a hot house but guess good for this project)
3) Another awsum #keitruck in action laden with gear
So above me – while I am folding yet another basket of laundry waiting to go to Seitai treatment – the crew are up above my head drilling, stomping and attaching bits. Bless dear hearts working in this heat (2 days installation for panels then should light up around Sept 7)~
{when I’ve talked about the solar panel project when we signed contract back in February after meeting with four different suppliers, getting various different options amongst multiple visits (each with tea/coffee/polite, chitchat)…. We ended up with Made in Japan solar panels, with 25 year warranty, sufficient to power our house (the cottage), the parents house, and the two outbuildings – plus a battery system (with 15 year warranty) sufficient to power the house in the event of outages (and hey, it’s Japan, there’s always a natural disaster) plus, sell power back to the grid however that works.
I don’t recall how many kilowatts and all the technical specifications because there was so many numbers so many options and it all happened so long ago but eventually, I’ll give you that information if I can figure it out. Very important to us was the quality of the installation as the cottage isn’t particularly well built and the panels are going on a few different roof types, including the ceramic tiles on the backside of the naya tool shed.
Note: In some jurisdictions in Japan, there are grants, eco-loans, other subsidy programs, but in our case, no-go, so we paid cash with the aim of being self-sufficient, minimizing, carbon footprint, and planning long-term. With thanks to the “missing uncle and his empty dilapidated house” situation.
So I’m grousing for no reason except that my head is so inflamed from the air pressure and the stupid illness #MECFS and we’ve been in this crazy cycle for the last few weeks while also getting out of the house weigh more than usual by my standards~
Good news is, we’ve hit up the van Gogh exhibit, some chaotic interactive dinosaur thing, an odd traveling aquarium installation, two hot springs, a hotel with swimming pool and communal bath, three visits to the beach, a festival at a church, etc Plus, my favorite thing of going to quirky café/coffee shops.
Friday is a visit to the University hospital for another big day of iv & meds. I’m so grateful for medical care, solar panels, in-laws yet I’m so exhausted and dealing with absurd level of pain
Addendum:
Amongst my foggy half sleep, keep thinking about a few people who recently passed away far too early and somehow realizing I can draw a string between their 3 seemingly disparate lives. These are not the “famous people” rather those with whom I had a tenuous connection~
So yesterday at the beach, while thinking about how to respond in some meaningful way to the emotions, I wrote a song with 4 solid linking verses, a clumsy bridge and a chorus which needs another chord.
Huge Barefoot Hamilton
Maybe I’ll work on it /notebooks are filled with scribbles to transcribe xo
