Month: July 2008

Knew it

I am currently typing sideways so I can see the screen due to a migraine, but I’m going to go jump in the tub with some Epsom salts and just take it easy this morning.  I had a feeling that my aura of impending doom was just my brain chemistry and not anything external.

Today I will do laundry and work some more on Buy me a Beer and Happy Feet, which I am grimly determined to learn how to play, despite the fact it has forty bazillion chords and the version I have was kitted out for banjo, not mandolin (hint, hint). I can has F9? Cm? A flat minor 7th?  urgh.  Screen is filling up with a multicoloured flashing rainbow dragon.  Time to go run that bath and think happy, happy thoughts, like maybe Katie or Keith will come over today.

Meadow visits

That’s twice so far today and it isn’t even dinnertime yet.  I am starting to be afraid that the downstairs neighbours are going to abandon the dog, you know, sort of accidentally on purpose, when they move.  Meadow was gazing me adoringly just now as I repeatedly tried to play Bbm.  Any dog who can sit through that cacophony while ignoring her master’s whistle is really trying hard to get adopted.  I don’t mind, but I have to wash my hands every time I touch her – she is not particularly dirty for a dog but Jeff and I are both susceptible to animal dander…. I didn’t want her in the house because she eats the cat food and it’s obvious she gets fed at home.  Meadow may not be the happiest dog in the world but nobody is beating or starving her.  So I sat outside on the deck and communed with her for a while, before she started getting all enthusiastic and trying to play with Giz, who’s having none of that, thanks.  Damned dogs, not even smart enough to snooze on the deck….

Domestic life and creativity

Emily Dickinson would bake biscuits when the poems wouldn’t come.  My creative process is not particularly clear to me; I write more when I’m very happy or very upset – the November before I split up with Paul was a veritable creative ferment – and there are two kinds of songs, easy and hard.  The easy ones come out, chords and lyrics and choon, all in one easy go.  Everything else has something missing; gets shelved; gets worked on; then one night I finish it.  I mostly write songs after dark, but not always.  I quit writing, and singing, almost altogether when I was on Prozac for four months, and the eight months afterwards getting the stuff to clear my system was pretty much a dry hole.  So I guess I have to be a little crazy to write songs.  As for writing on a sheet of paper, the rest of the time, pick a topic and point me at the internet; I can write about pretty much anything that isn’t actually advertising, because my attitude toward advertising is so disrespectful.  Except Blast-Eeze, the Laxative Coughdrops.  I did write a jingle for those, but that’s only because they are an imaginary product.  (There… will be… a brief hi-a-tus…. then… the mentholated… flatus).

Tamara just called and cried off for this afternoon – she’s the videographer I work with.  I’m not in fabulous voice today so I was just as happy about that. We’re re-skedding for next week.  I was supposed to be doing Buy Me a Beer, but some other time I guess. Maybe I could work on something else… or just swither on things.  I think Jeff would like me to clean my room again, but he’s too polite to comment.

Made Jeff french toast and deli bacon for breakfast this morning.  Now that’s creativity.

Got out of bed and out the door rather faster than I wanted to this morning; I heard bloodcurdling screams coming from the alleyway and learned which house it was coming from and banged on the open front door (they had put a waterfall on their front steps, I still can’t figure that part out – why run water down your front steps?).  A button-cute eight year old Asian boy answered and in perfect Canuckistani said, “Hey mom it’s a housewife!”  Didn’t know whether to slap him or burst out laughing.  Anyway, it was just kids screaming, and then their parents yelling at them in some language or other – maybe Vietnamese – but after Brianne Voth, it doesn’t pay to sit on your ass when you hear screaming in this town, so maybe I looked stupid but that would be no stretch, and at least those neighbours know that if something doesn’t look right some nosy cow with a cell phone will turn up and poke around, not always a bad thing.  Note to self – next time tell Jeff you’re leaving the house….

Zow.  That’s the biggest jumping spider I’ve ever seen!  I just had to leap up and grab pictures.

Since I have my afternoon free now I’m going to text Katie and ask her to come over for the movie that Jeff rented for her….

I know it will confirm my reputation for being terminally lazy, but I’m so glad I got the day back.  I’m not burned out, but I’m crisssp around the edges, and this should really help.  Back to bed and maybe do some reading, you know, with a book.

Changes brewing

It takes me about 3 – 6 weeks to get used to a ‘new normal’.  Jeff and I have a pretty good understanding on how the day’s going to go, and who does what.  When I moved into the place up the hill it took about six weeks before I was sleeping properly – and I was still in the same bed, just in a different place.  Now I can see all kinds of change brewing – at work, at home, creatively, and I am swinging wildly between being productive and ‘like a stunned bird in the reeds’ to quote Dunnett for the nine thousandth time, partly because I want the period of adjustment to be over and partly because I feel apprehensive.  What if there’s no new normal? What if every day turns into a struggle?  My normal cheerfulness seems to be leaking away, or maybe I’m working on a migraine.  It’s such a drag when you know you can’t trust your own brain chemistry, and it’s hopeless trusting other people’s.

Well, it’s a good thing people who have been there have written to us out of the past.  Keeping your humanity in extremis is the sign of a good human being.  That’s when I need to be more compassionate, more generous, and more hardworking.  And that’s what I hate about the ‘new normal’ I see coming, because I am one sorry and irritable sack of grudges and that’s no way to be, whether things are going bad or not.

I rented the car today and I’ll be running errands. I bailed on volunteering for the Folk Festival (they only called me two days before – this after I’d sent an email a week ago bowing out – and I did NOT want to work Gate in teh boiling sun).

Katie’s coming back from the grands’ today or tomorrow.  I have a few ideas.

Keith was here last night.  Most of the time I don’t mind being close to the bathroom, but not when my only son is heaving about $30 worth of Bushmills into the john.  That’s SIPPING whiskey, not PUKING whiskey.  Sigh.  He wanted to find out where his limit was.  How many times have I lectured the kids about pacing themselves?  Patricia knows what happened the last time I didn’t pace myself – she and her buddy Dave had to haul me home from the Rowing Club.  Sigh.  At Baumfest I paced myself MUCH better, and ate more and drank less.  Gotta have those carbs, lining the gut, before you start.

Made waffles for Jeff, seeing as how I’m home today.

Think I’ll call Tamara at Tenplus.  I haven’t recorded a video professionally in ages, and I want to put something else on youtube.  That or a home made video about making biscotti.  There have been real jackass comments on my vids on youtube lately; Jeff warned me, as he has vids up as well, and he says the moron factor is extreme.

Ack, gotta get up and close the back door to keep the cigarette smoke out.

I need my teeth cleaned, my 2007 taxes filed, a massage, and I somehow doubt it’s all going to happen today.  What’s really going to happen today is errands. And with any luck, fetching Kate from the ferry.  When people you love are in pain, you want to do something practical.  Or pretend it isn’t happening.  That seems to work for me sometimes too.

Fell out of bed

At 1:30 this morning I fell out of bed.  I landed painlessly on the floor (I was rolling over, and I just kept going), and lay there for a second, disoriented and wondering if I’d woken the whole house up.  Given that the dryer was running, I guessed not so much.  Now it’s quarter to three and I really wish I could go back to sleep, but I’ve been lying awake for an hour and decided to get up when a) I cracked my lower back so loud it rang around the room like a gunshot (never done that before) and b) I realized I just wasn’t going to do the usual, which is fall right back asleep again whenever I wake up.  Then the inertnests called, and I found this photographic gem off reddit.

Mailed puppy pics off to Chipper yesterday at lunch.  I met Robof9, Francis, ScaryClown and somebody else from work going out on a nature walk just as I was getting back from the Post Office up the hill.  Came home after an interesting day full of portents of the future and prepared part of supper – Jeff grilled salmon on the bar-b-q, and it was yummy.

20 hours and some thoughts about anger and hair.

It took 20 hours to convert the entire dvd from dvd format to mp4 format. It worked perfectly – but too slow. Anyway, after much agony, I can edit down the puppies and kids video. Part of me wants to kill the audio portion of it, which consists of, in a very boring way, Allegra saying, “Put the puppy down, put him down, put her down, put the puppy down, Keith don’t do that, that’s ignorant, Katie, sit down, put the puppy down, put the puppy down.” But I will avoid the temptation to do that. I can haz patience.

Continue reading 20 hours and some thoughts about anger and hair.

Friends and video

Tammy’s got a chronic ailment.  She’s in research mode because that’s what she does when she gets bad news, but the thing that made me cry after I got off the phone was that her big thing was that it not affect our trip to France.  Her health is so much more important than the trip…

Crashed early again last night.  Saw a guinea pig and a puppy in Brentwood Town Centre Station last night.  I’ve seen more critters there than in most zoos. Bought veggies and made tuna salad for supper – too hot for anything else.  I THINK I MIGHT BE WINNING against the dreaded video editing issue.  It says it’s going to take 1400 minutes to convert the file, but that might just be blowing smoke into my eye.  Anyway, I have 15 hours of family video – at least – to boil down, like I NEEDED another fracking project.  Spoke briefly to Katie last night.  Picked huckleberries and – get this – saskatoon berries yesterday at lunch (me, Trevor, Patricia, ScaryClown and Robof9) as well as grabbing salmonberries on the way by.  Watched the video Patricia took of the raccoons in Stanley Park – cute.  Anyway, let’s see if I can load the damned file once the import into iMovie is done.  1400 minutes?!  Zow. I am beginning to see how Loki might have been spending his time when he first converted the files from tape to VOB!

Huff continuum, Meadow calls, phone calls

I did a massive laundry last weekend, but I didn’t do laundry this weekend, because I was feeling lazy, and because I fell into the Huff continuum.  What a great show!  The scripts and situations are amazing, the acting convincing, and I think I have a crush on Oliver Platt.  I mean Hank Azaria is cool upon cool, but it’s Oliver I enjoy watching the most.  He’s just SO over the top.  When two little (as in very very short, not young) hookers turn up to assist a character (a sitcom star played by Bob Saget, can you picture it?) the expressions that cross his face as he tells them (in effect) “Your client isn’t here, can I help you?” deserve Emmys.

Meadow wandered into the house again only this time she went straight for the bowls.  I have pix, but not high quality ones – and here’s one.  She really really likes Jeff!  I have a great picture of Jeff petting her after absentmindedly putting a waffle in his mouth to free his hands- she’s eyeing the waffle hopefully – but I’m going to email it to Jeff and see if he wants to post it.  I wish nothing to impede the current flow of domestic tranquillity…..

Keith here yesterday; I spoke to Katie on the phone; all’s well with the world, except she’s really angry and doesn’t know what to do about it (this represents an improvement over previous emotional palettes in similar sitches).  Oh, and I spoke to my old friend Liz, not likely previously mentioned in this blog, and she and her brood are doing fine.  She and Andy are alone in the house… the youngest, 17, and as she puts it, in the full flower of his young louthood (she quickly said this was a quote from Lawrence Sanders as I fell about laughing when these words passed her lips) is in Calgary with his older brother and the girlchild is off west as well.  Needless to say she has the back of her hand pressed firmly to her forehead at this family tradegy.  Oh, and I spoke to my ex-mother-in-common-law yesterday and she’s well too.  Just because things have changed doesn’t mean I shouldn’t call her once in a while, and she made my heart burst with pride when she mentioned Keith had phoned her to thank her for the birthday gift.

Isn’t she adorable?  If I could adopt her I would do it in a heartbeat, the cats are practically adjusted to her already.

Waffles on Sunday

As has come to be traditional on Sunday morning, I make up a big pot of coffee and a big batch of waffles. I contemplate the waffle iron, which is close to me in age and still functional, although rather beat up, and I think to myself, do they still make bakelite? Because it’s pretty cool stuff, and quite durable. Kitchen appliances just aren’t made as they used to be, and I wish that would change.

Meadow came upstairs yesterday afternoon; it was good to see her. She was happy to see me, but as soon as she saw Jeff she came over all puppy, twisting around with happiness to see him. Critters sure love Jeff.

It was hot enough in here yesterday that the air conditioner came on – Jeff has it set for 26 degrees.

I am contemplating elective surgery on my face (my eyelids are hanging so low I can hardly see) and elsewhere; details, no.

drfilk was over for dinner (beef stew, diced tomato salad and garlic bread). He and Lady Miss Banjola are rehearsing for Denvention – they have an hour long concert – and also recording with Tony in Seattle in August. w00t!

Jeff has introduced me to the works of Daniel Pinkwater. I particularly liked Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars and Young Adult Novel.

I called my m0m to check up on Katie, but Katie was out running errands with Alex and Darwin. I can’t even be worried about her if she’s at her grandma’s – all I can do is think kindly thoughts, towards everyone involved, and hope for the best. A special shoutout to Paul for being there for Katie

Today will be a lazy/slash/domestic kind of day, and maybe if it stays quiet I’ll try to record something.
I feel mellow and contented, and it’s great to sit in the bright sun in the kitchen.