Day: December 22, 2004

Sidney Redlitch… that name ring a bell? How about Collignon? He’s da guy who gets his apartment turned upside down by Amelie? The cat in Monty Python (‘he’s on the mend’)? Madmartigan from Willow when the fairy dust hits him? That feeling you get when somebody clearly enunciated one thing, but your nervous system forced you to hear something else? When the universe completely shuts down, restarts, and comes back as a man in blackface singing “Mammy?”

My charisma machine is in the shop, so I’ll have to do some thinking for a change. Sigh. I’m so unused to it. That is what scares the wee-hoo outta me about going back to school. Think? Or “that kind of think” again? I have been constructing a nest for my brain for what feels like a thousand years (some days) and the idea of forcing myself out of it causes me no end of grief.

And when I am not thinking about that, I’m thinking about my shoes. I am really emotionally attached to my shoes and I want to wear them everywhere, whether or not they are appropriate to the occasion, and really I should be wearing other shoes. But I am telling you, at my age, a comfortable pair of shoes is worth diamonds and rubies and all that carborundaceous gaudery that you’re supposed to want more than a decent pair of shoes because it’s inherently more “valuable”. I could be dead tomorrow – I want a comfortable pair of shoes today. Dadgum it. There’s a lot of other things I want today too, and with any luck I’ll get them.

Distributed hugs, TTR and biscotti at the office, with Samantha and Katie in tow, and then stepped into Loughell Mall long enough to realize I could feed two teenaged girls or get the Starcrud card tanked up again, and realized that people come before things so put food into the children, not that it was really food, and went home where I listened to Keith blether on most entertainingly about the game engine in the new Lord of the Rings game.

Now the dreaded Buffy has returned to my screen so we’re in Out of Mind Out of Sight right now. Knee high black boots and a pink on pink floral skirt and a white v neck tee? Okay, I’m confused. Now she’s entirely clad in black leather. That’s more the heck like it. And Angel just showed up, and he is smouldering as always. This sentence deleted but I will mime it on demand, in person.

What amazing bloody bone structure. Too bad he is too old to play my all time favourite hero, Francis Crawford of Lymond. Mwa ha ha. What a lad!

Okay, enough with the spooky coincidences. Saw a great blue heron coming down Cariboo before I went in to work. Yeah, means nothing to YOU. Then I get home and watch Born Yesterday with Paul and Keith (Keith got it from the library for us) and realize that on the DVD are theatrical trailers, and one of the trailers is for Bell Book and Candle, which means that the same day I get this weird kink to see something by Ernie Kovacs it turns up in my living room. Lawsamercy, I’m scared to think what I could imagine if I really put my back into it.

Actually, I know what I’m imagining right now, and it’s simply wonderful. Hope you’re all having as great a time as I.

Off to some ADD Self Help thingee downtown, to be arm candy for Paul I imagine (insert derisive snorts in THIS slot, and derisive laughs HERE please).

If I could say anything I liked to you / it would be about how you have brought / possibility into my life. Vistas / and unimaginable stretches of massed ideas. / A guided tour of the numinous / flashed from your eyes / not reflected / like burning cities seen across water. /

A tool forged and quenched, forged / and quenched. Some heat required / some exchange of blood and muscle / for the offering. /

As I bring my best to the temple / so I implore you, bring your best.

So we may be hallowed / So we may be blessed / Be fed and be the meal / may your bones feed your grandchildren.

I supPOSE if I don’t have anything to say, I shouldn’t attempt to say it. I mean, I can write a thousand words on damned near any subject without actually working too hard, so maybe I should just pick a topic, any topic, and stick with it.

How about a year end wrap up?

Let’s see. Almost a year has gone by during which I haven’t got enough sleep. You will note that my most common Topic is enough sleep, or not enough sleep. And that’s because thanks to my spouse’s mental state and the multitude of joys that is perimenopause, I have not been gettin’ enough shut eye. I’ve tried going to bed earlier, staying up all night, etc., and the dreaded ‘getting enough exercise’ but no dice. I also have RLS, Restless Leg Syndrome, don’t you know, so I kick and jump during the night; and I snore like the creaks of a moving ship, and I thrash, sweat, and grind my teeth like a cute little rock crusher.

You would think that this would be enough to make Paul leap up and say “I am sleeping with a fiend in human form – begone, vile spirit, and trouble me no more!!!” but instead when I ask him what my snores sound like, he says, “I find it oddly comforting.” He sounds sincere and one thing I’ve learned about Paul after 25 very odd years is that he’ll be reticent about his own opinion but he won’t shame himself by lying about it.

It all becomes worthwhile when we (with any luck) wordlessly snuggle the next morning. In the cold grey before dawn, all that skin is like magick armour. Mind you if Paul starts talking the majick disappears pretty fast, as it’s usually a variant on the usual where did we go wrong lament. But in the meantime, I’m not getting enough sleep and my cognitive functioning, always a mixed and variable entity, is completely shot to the place where, in the wonderful words of Rudyard Kipling “the dead crabs go”.

Besides, I really don’t think I’m doing all that bad these days. I’m not nearly as crabby about life but THAT MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE HOT TUB.

Yes, indeed, received the gladsome news that Mike’s hot tub is up, running and able to receive guests; tonight marks the night of the First Annual Post Winter Solstice Soak. Calloo callay, etc. etc. with a yip yip yip arrrooooooo thrown in on the side. Happiness is a friend with a hot tub.

What else happened this year. Well, there was a fair amount of death this year. I guess I’m doing a good job of ignoring anything that doesn’t smite me in the phyz; but I did the eulogy at my grandmother’s funeral and it’s a good thing somebody with some public speaking skills got up there and did something, because the minister blasted through the service as if he was half an hour late for a (deleted… it was funny, but only to me). And I did the Order of Service for Rev Katie’s installation (whip out the Makita! we’re gonna install us a minister!). And I gave a couple of sermons, and work got a whole lot better, and Keith got his green belt, and Paul seems to be finally pulling out of his depression, and we didn’t have to sell the house, and he’s still working for Air Canada, and Katie didn’t go to jail for assaulting that kid, and the next line deleted, and she didn’t get killed or permanently damaged by the car accident, and she’s not drinking and even I’ve reduced my alcohol consumption (why sometimes I go days without drinking a beer, and a lot of the time I’m only having one beer. Tonight is NOT going to be one of those nights. I’ll need beer to fortify myself against seeing certain people naked, and I don’t mean that in a bad way).

I signed up for a comedy course and I have investigated where all the open mikes are in town (my word, but there are a lot of them).

This next paragraph was a self directed diatribe about my weight. I reread it, it bored me, I deleted it.

Now I must do the Laundry that Oozed Across the Bedroom Floor, dejunk enough of this house to get Paul to stand down from the Mental Health Red Alert, buy beer for this evening, sweet talk Paul into buying a phone for Katie, buy a book for my brother, pack off some cookies for Tam Tam, boot Katie’s ass outta bed, cure cancer, formulate and enforce world peace and go dancing with the Dalai Lama. A modest enough plan, and I’ve got hours and hours to do it in.

Pic is something random.