Podcasts I've Listened To and Liked Lately: Postmodern Fiction, Plot Summaries, and Serial Documentaries

 

OMG that llama puzzle. I was sooo excited when I found it at the thrift store, because Will is visiting Peru this summer and also loves llamas.

But see how the llamas are assembled, and the edges, and then there's just... empty space? Yeah, those spaces are green. Just green. Green in subtle different shades, sure, but mostly just green. This is the WORST puzzle. We all absolutely loathe it. After this, I am putting a temporary ban on puzzles that are over 300 pieces until I can forget the misery of literally holding every single puzzle piece to every single empty spot because that is the absolute only way to find its match.

BUT sitting together at that table, putting together a puzzle or working crosswords or coloring, is what Will and I do while listening to Welcome to Night Vale, our collective favorite podcast:

I am a HUGE fan of serialized horror podcasts, and I have several favorites that I've listened to the entire run of:

Here are the ones that I've also introduced to the kids, and that we listen to together:

You've got to start each of these from the first episode, and they're very bingeable, because there's always a story arc and an overarching mystery and often details that don't seem relevant but turn out to BE, in fact, relevant! Seriously, I think the kids and I listened to, like, eight Magnus Archives in a row on that long drive home from Michigan last month. My favorite favorites are all postmodern fiction pieces that incorporate elements of pseudo-science/pseudo-history or paranoid fiction that incorporates that same kind of pseudo-knowledge of the world.

So that's what I've been listening to when I really want to LISTEN to something. I also have a whole genre of podcasts that I listen to at times when I want to listen to something, but I don't want to expend absolutely any intellectual labor on the listening. This is usually while I'm gardening or walking, times when I might want to get lost in my thoughts for a few minutes and then zone back in without feeling like I've got to rewind. For those times, I really like a few podcasts in which the hosts talk through the plot of movies or a book series, with commentary OF COURSE. Every now and then I'll try a new one, but these are the ones that I'm devoutly faithful to:

Here are a couple more where I like the hosts a lot, but I pick and choose only the episodes that interest me:

Two recent episodes of Celebrity Memoir Book Club that I really liked are the one on the Jamie Spears memoir and the one on the Naya Rivera memoir. Those are good examples of their podcast, because they HATED the Jamie Spears memoir (for lots of very good reasons!) and loved the Naya River memoir (for lots of very good reasons!). 

This is the only one that the kids like, too, if I pick a good episode:

We listened to the Hereditary episode all together on a road trip one time, and we were basically all freaking out simultaneously. It's so good!

Y'all know how I'm obsessed with people dying or going missing in national parks? I LOVE this podcast:

I love what a deep dive the hosts go into in every episode. Sometimes, information is discovered about a missing person or their remains are found, and the hosts will do an update episode. 

When I'm doing handwork, sewing or crafting orders for my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, I like to listen to something a little more engaging. I really like long-form serial documentaries, although I feel like I must be super picky about them, because good ones are so hard to find! Here are my favorites:

I just realized that Stolen has a new season out, which is awesome, because I loved their first season, The Search for Jermaine. Now I've got something to listen to when I sew the car play mat that I've been thinking about making for my niece's upcoming birthday!

See the Light that Shines from a True, True Friend

2017

This is a eulogy for Gracie, my kid's beloved cat. 

Gracie came to us in 2010, as part of a litter of foster kittens that I volunteered us to raise for the local animal shelter until they weighed enough to be adoptable. I volunteered us for that role because Will, who had just turned six, had also just broken her leg, of all things, and I figured that a month or so of tiny kittens would be an entertaining and distracting way to spend her time in a cast.

Here's Gracie and her human soulmate on the day that they met:

2010

I don't even have words for the bond between those two, right from the beginning. Gracie chose my kid to be her person, and my kid chose Gracie to be her cat, and from that moment on, they were each the most important thing in each other's lives. 

2011

For years, Gracie was my kid's living stuffed animal, her real-life imaginary friend. She was invited to all her tea parties, carried everywhere in a doll-sized ring sling or in her arms, spoken to like a best friend who carried her own half of the conversation. 

2013

Once, her kid and I took Gracie to the vet for a sick visit, and it was ridiculous because even feeling like crap, Gracie was ALL OVER that office. She was on the vet's shoulders, under the sink, in the trash--he opened a high cabinet at one point and Gracie leapt up INTO the cabinet and started rifling through the stuff, knocking things over, just completely unafraid. The vet said, "I always know when a cat belongs to a little girl, because they're so well socialized."

2014

Gracie was like that because she knew there was never anything to be afraid of. Her kid was always right there to talk to her like a person, and if her kid was anywhere on the property, then Gracie knew where she was and was likely right there with her.

2015

For her entire life, Gracie was her kid's shadow. She walked beside her every day, and slept beside her every night. She vastly preferred being an indoor cat, but when her kid went outdoors, so did Gracie.

2016

 When her kid hiked in our woods, so did Gracie, following right beside her on the path until she decided that she was done walking and asked her kid to carry her. For her entire childhood, from the ages of 4 to 16, most of her kid's memories are wrapped in the presence and unconditional love of Gracie.

2017

As her kid became older and started spending less time playing ponies and more time reading, drawing, and writing, it became a running joke that Gracie never let her get any work done. She was always wanting to be on her lap--and not just over her lap, but draped over her arms, or sprawled across her chest with her face against her kid's face, purring so loudly you could hear her from the next room. 

2018

Her kid tolerated this exactly as indulgently as Gracie had tolerated being a living stuffed animal for years, and they stayed inseparable, a greying grey tabby spending her days and nights lounging on a teenager who carried her everywhere she went and held her on her lap while she did everything from online school to art projects to trying to eat lunch.

2019

Gracie was possibly the gentlest soul I've ever encountered--certainly the gentlest cat I've ever known. Spots leaves dead mice at the back door and must be banished inside when rabbits are foolish enough to nest nearby, and Jones never learned not to bite and scratch when he roughhouses with a human's arm, but I've never known Gracie to choose violence. 

2020

She never put a claw out other than to hang on, I never heard her hiss, I knew better than to rely on her for assistance for any mouse infestation, and her strongest protest at any sort of perceived mistreatment was a meow. 

2021

All Gracie ever wanted in order to be perfectly content was to be with her kid. Her kid wanted the same thing, and so I think Gracie lived the happiest life that a cat could attain.

2022

We thought Gracie had a respiratory infection, this month. Jones had one last summer, and sneezed and looked pitiful for a few days, then we took him to the vet, got him some antibiotics, and he bounced right back. So when Gracie started sneezing and looking pitiful for a few days, we took her to the vet. The local vets aren't super equipped for much more than well checks and dental cleanings and prescribing antibiotics, but they did tell me that there was definitely something much more wrong with Gracie than just a respiratory infection, so I essentially came home from that visit, handed her off to Matt, and he drove her up to a vet hospital in Indianapolis. That's where they diagnosed Gracie's respiratory infection, and also her kidney failure.

Gracie and her kid had another week together, after that. We doted on her and kept her comfortable while we grieved her and watched her fade, and then one morning her kid and I agreed that Gracie no longer looked as comfortable as we wanted her to be, so Matt called every vet in two counties to find her a same-day euthanasia appointment. 

Taking Gracie to be euthanized is one of the worst things that I've ever had to do, but also... I don't know, also healing, maybe? Or, cathartic? Where I come from, my family euthanized every one of my pets in secret. I was literally the kid who was told that my elderly dog had gone to live on a farm, and a few years later, that my sick cat had been put to sleep while I was at school that day. And I don't know if it's related or not, but I have a LOT of anxiety about the well-being of the family pets. I can't handle the stress of keeping short-lived pets like fish and hamsters, and I am extremely concerned that our cats, dog, and chickens are safe and happy. Like, half of every vacation is spent internally fretting about their welfare, since they're where I can't see them.

So although having my kid's best friend and childhood companion euthanized was absolutely awful, it honestly did comfort me to hold her head in my hands as she slipped away. I looked into her face and told her that she was okay and reassured myself that she wasn't scared, and she wasn't in pain, and then she was gone. 

And now, we just go on with a Gracie-sized hole in our family. It's weird to look at my kid and not see her draped in grey tabby, and it hurts to see all the places in her day where she grieves the absence of her beloved pet. I swear, every time a cat dies, I wonder to myself why on earth I go to the trouble of loving a pet, when I already know how agonizing it will end up. Why did I subject a child of mine to this much pain? Why did I let her love Gracie so hard? Why did I not warn her to guard her heart even a little?

I think you can only love a pet that way one time. You get one pet, that first pet that makes itself absolutely yours, that you love unabashedly, with a heart that does not know the grief you will inevitably feel. All your pets after that one, you love them just as well, but your heart knows how it will hurt one day with your love of them, and so it's different. 

So, here's to Snowball. Here's to Gracie. Here's to friends who love us with everything they are, and we who love them back just the same.

Smithville News, Just as Riveting Now as it Was 114 Years Ago

 

I went WAAAAY down a rabbit trail last week.

I'm pretty sure this thing I have where I get obsessed with a hobby or a research interest is a positive coping technique for undiagnosed anxiety and/or a negative coping technique for undiagnosed ADD, but regardless, there I was last week, stressed out and anxious, overstimulated and overwhelmed, with the sudden desire to research the history of my property. 

I know the old general store on my land is at least 83 years old, as I have a photo that's dated 1939, showing the general store in business, the owners' bedroom visible through an open door behind the wood-burning stove. It's labeled with the names of the owners, and their surname matches that of the family we bought the house from, so the property was in their family from at least then until they sold it to us.

I'm curious, though, about how old that general store actually is, and how old our house is, and when our land was first cleared for farming, and if it was recorded anywhere who, specifically, the land was originally stolen from, and why it wasn't turned into a quarry like the land just a mile north or the land just a mile east or the land just a few miles south. 

So at some point during a really rough week last week, I was sitting in front of my computer trying to get some work done, and that curiosity all of a sudden became a burning desire. I Googled, and found this website about how to research your historic home, then bypassed all their other useful advice to zone straight in on the "look through historic newspapers" bit. 

So I Googled THAT, and found a run of a very tiny, VERY local newspaper that ran from 1908 to 1914 and served a very small radius of population in this exact area. 

Like, a VERY small radius. We're talking *maybe* five miles in any direction. Little areas that are now just a couple of minutes away by car are referred to in this newspaper as being entirely different towns, and the actual city that I live just south of is referred to as a place you take the train to, and if you want to send your kids to high school they have to board there and only come back on the weekends to visit the "home folks."

It's a miracle that a small newspaper like this even survived to be scanned and preserved, because it's always the unimportant-seeming ephemera like this that's lost. Nobody thinks to preserve it, it's great for starting a fire, it's printed on cheap paper that deteriorates quickly, etc., and most of the time, you'll never know it even existed.

But somebody saved many of these papers--not even close to a complete run, alas, but many of them--and they're scanned into my state's digital archives for me to look at...

...and grow completely obsessed with.

I have never in my life read such a gossipy rag! From what I can tell, the editor just let anyone submit whatever they wanted as news, so along with the occasional murder or theft or buggy accident, every week you get a full accounting of who visited whom and who threw a party and who went shopping in the city and how everyone's crops are doing. And if you thought that today's digital social media inspires FOMO, how would you feel if an acquaintance's recent party was in the newspaper, with a full account of every single person who attended, the entire menu, and who was asked to sing and did so reluctantly and charmed everyone with their beautiful singing voice and organ playing?

And then the next week, you got it all again!

People even subtweeted at each other, right in the pages of the newspaper!

So I started reading this newspaper, and felt like I had fallen into a period novel. Every week all the people were up to something new, and there was gossip and scandal and elopements and fights. And, like, if you lived here in 1908, no part of you was safe. Can you imagine if you went to a party, and at the party you were literally voted "Ugliest Boy?" And then it was IN THE NEWSPAPER that you went to a party and were the ugliest boy there?!?

I horrified Syd by showing her the article at the end of the school year (which was April 16, I'm assuming because after that date everyone needed to go plant corn), which gave the full name of all the eighth-grade graduates of the local schools, as well as EVERY SINGLE KID'S GPA. Including the kid who only earned a 76, poor thing!

Everyone more or less had to get used to me saying, "So, you want to hear the news of 1908?", and then telling them about some local scandal or crime. There were, for instance, a lot of elopements:

There was another one where a 38-year-old guy ran off with a 16-year-old girl. They hired a buggy and fled from the city down to the little town five or so miles south of me, where they'd hoped to catch the train down to Louisville, Kentucky. But the girl's dad had wired every train station around and then gotten on his own horse, and he actually managed to catch them at the Harrodsburg depot. But when the couple saw him, they ran off into the woods and didn't come back out again until the next day. The dad then dragged his daughter back home with him, but she told the reporter that she'd run away again as soon as she could.

They'd also put it into the paper whenever someone left their spouse, including this chance encounter of a spouse who probably thought he'd gotten clean away:

Also in the newspaper was plenty of good advice, stuff like gentleman shouldn't spit on the sidewalks, and ladies should try to dress up a little more and iron their ribbons when going to town, and how to talk on the telephone:

But there were also plenty of actual crimes. Syd and I reckon that there was a serial killer running around 1908-1909 Smithville. Over about 18 months, I saw THREE reports of men found lying on the train tracks, decapitated. One guy wasn't immediately identified, so they took him to the mortuary and invited the public to come look at him to see if anyone could identify him. He was eventually identified as a guy from Alabama, and although he was found on the train tracks, the coroner said that it looked like someone had tried to decapitate him with a pocketknife, but stopped at his spine and left him on the tracks for the train wheels to finish the job. The murder was blamed on "Italians," and left at that.

Two more times, then, in 18 months, there was a report of somebody found decapitated on the train tracks, but each of those times, the report said that they'd probably been walking home at night intoxicated. One guy, it said, looked like he had lain down to go to sleep on the train tracks, which... okay? And the other guy, it said, looked like he'd fallen and hit his head on the tracks. 

You know what I think, though? I think that a serial killer was murdering people and then leaving them on the train tracks to get decapitated by the train. Because how likely is it that THREE people would just happen to land on the train tracks just exactly the right way to get decapitated in this one small area in 18 months?

And then there was the time that people went to the Christian church one morning and found a dead dog on the pulpit, its head on the Bible and a handwritten note next to it that read, "I'm trying to get to dog heaven." A couple of weeks later, the paper said that a guy had accused his son of putting the dead dog in church and his son had shot at him and then ran away.

And THEN there was the time that they were having an ice cream social at the Mt. Ebal Church and some young men rolled up in their buggy. One of them, the Sipes boy (the newspaper then paused for a long reminiscence about the time that the Sipes boy's mother had died in the middle of winter and his father had piggybacked the boy to a neighboring farm in a snowstorm and gotten frostbite on his feet), took out a revolver and started shooting at the sky. This scared the horses, so one guy told the Sipes boy to put his revolver back in his pocket, and the Sipes boy shot him three times point blank.

The newspaper ran regular reports on the guy's eventual full recovery, and the Sipes boy's continued stay in the county jail. 

Okay, and THEN there is the whole saga of the Angora cat. There was an article in the paper about how Harold Allen lost his Angora cat, and was offering the unheard-of sum of $25 as a reward for her recovery. I don't even know how someone would even have gotten an Angora cat into the backwoods of Indiana back then, but I guess the train did run everywhere. So we don't hear anything else for a few months, and then one day there's an article in the newspaper about how Dillon Deckard caught a long-haired white cat the other day, and he thought about skinning it but decided instead that he was going to keep it.

I was all, "HEY! That's Harold Allen's cat!!!!" But, you know, I'm the only one over here binging two years of Smithville News in a weekend. For everyone else, several months have passed. Mary Travers turned down her teaching post so she wouldn't leave her father without a housekeeper. Charlie Delgar grew a pumpkinvine up his apple tree and now it's dangling giant pumpkins down like apples. Judah Harden had to shoot his dog after it savaged the postman. Bloomington took down the hitch rack outside the courthouse and all the farmers are big mad about it and say they'll just mail order from Indianapolis if Bloomington doesn't give them anywhere to tie up their horses. So maybe Harold's cat is just old news, and Dillon Deckard can keep her.

But don't worry--people did remember Harold's cat.

This was basically all I talked about all weekend, so much so that Syd and I now talk about them as if they're real--and on Tiktok:

"She's a 10, but she earned the lowest grade in her class."

"She's a 6."

"He's a 9, but he found Harold's Angora cat and he's keeping it."

"He's a 2."

"She's a 4, but she turned down a teaching job so she could stay home and 'be the housekeeper' for her father."

"I think she's still a 4?"

"He's a 10, but he put a dead dog in the church and then shot at his father."

"He's a -1."

But in all of Smithville, for all of the two years' worth of weekly gossip news that I read, this news was what made me feel the most feels:

To be honest, I was pretty offended on Grandma Woodward's account. Like, the nerve of calling some old woman pathetic when all she's doing is minding her own business sitting on her porch?

A few months later, though, the newspaper reported that she'd died, and then it called her a "good woman who was always doing good deeds for others." Awww! And then the NEXT week's newspaper had about twenty different notices of all the people who'd traveled to her funeral at Mt. Ebal church, including one guy who'd closed down his entire school for the day so he could attend. 

It was Grandma Woodward, then, who inspired me to my next great idea and the next step in my great obsession.

This, Friends, is Mt. Ebal church, about five miles from my house as the crow flies:

It is now an Airbnb, and was the source of its own run of news in the currently gossipy local newspaper of today. I guess it had been unsold for a VERY long time before the current owners bought it, and people were accustomed to parking in its lot when they visited the cemetery across the street, and also for funerals. But the new owners were not allowing this anymore, and people were so mad that they held a bunch of public meetings to try to get the owners to let them keep parking there. The restaurant a block down the street even said that people were welcome to park in their lot and walk over, but nope, people were all, "I can't walk a block! I can only walk across the street!"

We parked at the back of the cemetery, and walked around looking for Susan Woodward and my other newspaper friends. 

I found lots of familiar names:

It was Syd who found my prize for me:

You'll be pleased to know that not only was Grandma Woodward much beloved in life, but in death she had PRIME placement front and center in the cemetery. Check out how close she is to the church!

I haven't quite worked up the nerve to mention to the rest of the family that I also now very much need to visit the Clear Creek Christian Cemetery, Knights of Pythias Cemetery (which is also in the middle of a field now, sooo...), and several now abandoned limestone quarries...

What I've Read and Liked Lately: Murderbots, Social Workers, Goblins, Ancillaries, and Claire

My July TBR stack might be a little overlarge, oops.

 Most of my recent favorite books have been part of a series, and I love nothing better. My favorite way to read is to find a super-long and complete series of books that I can dive into for the foreseeable future (see: Master and Commander).

My second-favorite way to read is smack-middle in an ongoing super-long series of books, re-reading the entire run every time a new book comes out, because otherwise, what if I miss a reference or an inside joke or I don't completely remember every minor character's backstory?

See: Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone.

I love living in the Outlander world, although I'm a little picky about whom I associate with there. I skim the Lord John Grey, Willie, and Roger and Brianna stuff so hard that I sometimes have to go back and re-read them when I realize that I've actually missed a plot point. Like, all I'm truly interested in is following Jamie and Claire around as they live their lives. I don't even care if anything exciting happens to them--I'd happily read 900 pages of them puttering around their homestead day after day after day.

And... that might be what I did here? I loved this book, couldn't put it down, even dutifully ran my eyes over the doings of my less-preferred characters--I even finally got interested in Brianna and Roger!--but later, when a friend asked me what it was about, I was all, "Uh... Claire gets a beehive, and she does doctor stuff. Jamie's doing something political, I think? Their house sounds awesome." I didn't notice the absence of plot, and I didn't miss it, not when there were too many other things to be preoccupied with, like what will Claire make for dinner, and does the floor need sweeping, and what's the gossip with the neighbors, and what's going on in the garden. It's a very cozy book, and one I could happily pick up anytime, at any page, and read again.

Alas that the Montague Siblings books will remain a trilogy, not a forever-long, unwieldy series. But the Goblin got his own book!

I haven't loved any of the other two books in this trilogy as much as I love The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, but I do love continuing the ride. I love how the author can write so realistically about young people while incorporating fantastical, magical elements and high adventure. It makes living in that fantastical, magical world feel absolutely real, because if you're going to have madcap adventures with a gang of adventurers, then yes, realistically at least one of you absolutely has terrible anxiety.

Discovering a brand new-to-me series and getting to start it from the beginning is just as exciting as reading a new installment of an already beloved series. Will handed me the first book of the Murderbot series--

--and I related to Murderbot SO HARD.

Murderbot is all, "I'd rather ride in the cargo hold and watch TV than sit with you humans and connect emotionally. Also, I am putting forth absolute minimum effort at my job."

Same, Murderbot. Same.

The book gives off a lot of Bucky Barnes fanfic vibes, which is not a bad thing. The story of how a person who's not treated like a person claims and then negotiates autonomy is compelling, and invites conversation about what it even means to be autonomous, or have personhood.

Even better if you get to explore space and fight a lot!

So, what I just said could also be the plot of this other book series that Will gave me and that I absolutely love, but I promise that they're very different! The Ancillary series plays a lot more with gender and language, making it clear how artificial and arbitrary each is, and even halfway through the third book I'm still guessing about what "biological" sex some of the main characters are:

But all this philosophical stuff is also in there with some excellent sci-fi, all "this is how the spaceships think" and "this is how the space station works" and "here's a really sophisticated gun that the entire plot hinges on." AND there's world-building, with a colonizer race with a fleshed-out worldview and religion, and colony races also with fleshed-out worldviews and religions, and other sentient creatures that give hints of the same but are also beyond the scope of our characters' ability to comprehend.

Just, there's a lot going on. Read these if you like books where there's a lot going on.

Not to be outdone by her sister, Syd recommended T.J. Klune to me, specifically The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door:

I connected with both of these books probably more than the kids did, because the protagonists of each are middle-aged, bumbling fools, which is what I feel like most of the time. I like the fantasy elements and world-building of The House in the Cerulean Sea better, and the way that the main character develops over the course of the book is so sweet and wholesome, AND the literal son of Satan is one of the most wholesome characters--okay, I just requested it from the library again, along with all of TJ Klune's other books.

I need to get back in the habit of pairing my escapist fiction with some non-fiction reads, because I think my brain might be starting to deteriorate. Does that start to happen when you're 46, or do you think I got an undiagnosed case of COVID sometime and now I have brain fog?

Okay, off to work a crossword puzzle and then read some non-fiction!

My Flowers Bring All the Bees to My Yard

 

Y'all, this might be my least incompetent gardening year yet!

I mean, not because I'm increasing in skill or anything, but more because every year I'm figuring out even more plants that can thrive in my garden in spite of me.

May brings flowers to my homestead lilac, which does not like me to do anything but clear the honeysuckle vines off it every spring:

This lilac is one of the oldest growing things on our property that was intentionally planted (see also: persimmon trees), and every now and then it inspires me to take a break from doing anything productive to instead deep dive into figuring out how to figure out the history of this property. I'm currently working my way through scans of a tiny, gossipy little local newspaper circa 1908 to see if I can find mention of the place or its owners, and annoying everyone around me by reading baffling tidbits:

If you can find a gossipy little newspaper over a hundred years old from your area, I highly recommend it. It is surprisingly engrossing to read about some guy's watermelon harvest, or the ladies' picnic, or the big snake somebody found, or the buggy accident in which all lives were lost.

The deck plants are staying classy, as always, with the addition of the toilet that used to be in the kids' bathroom:

But the real champions of the garden are the perennials that I ignore.

Look at my milkweed!

This is Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed, the last remnant of Will's old butterfly garden. It's so aggressive that it pops up even in my raised flower beds, and I just plant around it because I'm a pushover for anything nice that wants to live here. The milkweed blooms in June, and the bees LOVE it:

June also brings flowers to the comfrey, and they are also beloved by the bees:

In July, the oregano flowers--

--and so does the lavender:

Late August will bring flowers to our perennial sunflower, and by September I'll have monarch babies to tend to. My plan is to try to bring this year's babies in as eggs--last year, I brought them in as teeny cats, and didn't know until they all died in their pupal stage that every single one had been parasitized by tachinid flies. It was a monumental tragedy, and one that I'd prefer to never repeat again.

Every summer I think about how, during our first summer in this house, the kids and I did a unit study on bees. As part of that, we wanted to find bees and try to identify them, and... couldn't. There were no bees that we could find on our property, no bees for the entire summer. Our property then was all mown lawn, invasive multiflora rose, evergreen shrubs, and invasive rose of Sharon--nothing that a bee would exactly want to visit. Will's the one who brought the bees the next year with her butterfly garden, and since then, even if I can't get a veggie to grow, at least I always have plenty of flowers for the bees.

Maybe next year I should drop the veggies altogether and just go full-on Monarch Waystation.