Month: September 2008

Love and loss

I’d like to light a candle for mOm.  She’s lost a lot of relatives, mostly to cancer, in the last little while.  That and the fall will tend to make you thoughtful, and sad.

Here’s another candle for my cousin Marianne.  I never met her, I only met her brother Rawd, but he was a sweetie, and Marianne was less than ten years older than me when she died.  She was also a really good person…. a mensch.  I’m going to ask mOm for permission to repost her obit.

Here’s one last candle to all those whose love has become loss.

“I’m eating bananas and cream” / Kopper and Katie here for dins

What a scoundrel I am.  I bait Kopper by telling her I’ll cook for her, and then switch and order Swiss Chalet.  We swapped notes on how exhausted we are, watched a little Planet Earth, ate dinner, and then I walked her to the bus.  Once she was at the Brentwood end of the 25 bus, now she’s at the Nanaimo end, but she’s still very close.

Then Katie’s cell phone rang and Katie said, “I’m eating bananas and cream.”  There was a pause, and then she said, a little more distinctly “I’m eating bananas and cream.”  There was a pause, and then she said, annoyed, and slightly louder “I’m eating bananas and cream.” There was long pause, and then she said, “I’m eating bananas and cream.” At this point I am no longer able to concentrate on so much of a syllable of what Kopper is saying, so I yell, “*****!  Tell Daxus to clean the ******* wax out of his ears!”  She said it twice after that.  It was all I could do not to roll around on the ground shrieking with laughter.  The inanity of teenage conversations never ceases to astound.

Transphobia

Quoted from today’s tyee.ca:

 

Ten Signs of Transphobia in Our Culture, by Christopher A. Shelley

 

  1. Denial that the problem exists in the first place. 

     

  2. Inability to distinguish between categories such as queer, gay, lesbian, and trans. 

     

  3. Lack of meaningful discussion in educational and workplace settings. 

     

  4. Anxiety over not being able to tell if a person is male or female. 

     

  5. Crude jokes directed towards trans people or with trans-related content. 

     

  6. Refusal to accept trans people as one’s own teacher, doctor, politician, dentist, etc. 

     

  7. Thinking that being trans is OK but also dismissing the idea of ever dating a transperson. 

     

  8. Reducing trans to being merely and solely a psychiatric category. 

     

  9. Trivialization and media spectacles centred on trans-ness as an object of ‘fascination.’ 

     

  10. Refusing the fundamental claims of transpeople as being genuinely mis-sexed.

 

Book launch for Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing. Event begins at 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 25, at Little Sister’s bookstore, 1238 Davie St., Vancouver. RSVP to awilson@utpress.utoronto.ca.

Photobooth is this incredibly puerile utility on a Mac/food

You just sit there and make goofy faces and take pictures of yourself in a random, blissfully self-centred way, on your MOTHER’S COMPUTER, when you KNOW she blogs!?  Like I never did that.  It’s an unflattering eye, though.

I had a brief and bloody battle with myself, but I owe it to the world to post this picture.  The other five pictures Katie took have seductive beauty and offhand exhaustion, and one of THE WORST CASES of Milton Berle mouth, ever. But you shall never see them, ho ho!

You may perhaps be wondering why the hell I speak in such detail of my meals.  As stated in the raison d’etre of this blog, I write for my mother, and she is continuously wonderstruck and pleased that her abiding distaste, which accompanies her essential competence, for cooking, has not passed to me, and that I actually cook.  Yeah, I get tired every once in a while, but I always climb back on the horse.

This is what I mades for dinner.  Leftover pork roast with sauerkraut.  Oh, life’s hard.  Salad with salt, pepper, half a teaspoon of olive oil, a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, about a heaping tablespoon of finely chopped red onion, one whole Early Girl tomato, organically grown by Paul’s neighbour, and one whole finely chopped red pepper. Damn, it was fine.  And I made homemade gravy and the first yorkshire pudding I’ve made in many a long year.  Damn, that was fine too! Wrong sized pan but I’ll fix it next time…. or double the recipe.  What you can do with eggs, sir, what you can do with them!

Katie finished her homework and watched some NCIS and then left.

I’m feeding Kopper tomorrow.

Katie back

I am feeling underslept, which is odd because it was lights out just after 9 last night.  Katie and I are drinking fresh coffee and contemplating the week ahead.  Katie’s going in early to rearrange her locker.  Let us contemplate the wonder and romance of this amazing factoid.

Keith was here last night and we had an NCIS blowout, yet again.  GRRR.  The episode I was most looking forward to, in which Ziva loses her heart to a guy dying of thallium poisoning, had spooky pause and pixelation problems. After some messing about Jeff got it to play but I was pouty there for a while.  I guess I am now officially spoiled rotten; I was raised to believe that I deserve to live with a tech support god who will instantly solve all of my wiring, small weapons and silicon problems with a cheery “Next time don’t smash all of the buttons in rapid succession and then pitch the remote through the window, m’kay?”  I’m living with Jeff so my delusion continues unabated.  How he puts up with me can be summed up in one simple, heartfelt phrase: “Supper’s ready!”

I drop things a lot too, which gets Jeff twitching.  He has this way of appearing, silently and instantaneously, like a cartoon character, eyes wide, to ask, “What was THAT?” while I recover my scattered kitchen implements from the floor, muttering, “Sorry, sorry,” while he patiently informs me that we have downstairs neighbours.  I’m going to have to learn not to cackle when I’m listening to stuff in the morning on headphones, but I can’t help it, I’m a born cackler.

I fed Keith and Jeff pork roast, sauerkraut and ‘other veg’ last night, and I would have fed Paul but he wanted to go home and nap.  Thank you for taking me shopping!  Thank you Keith for the 10% discount!  Their cats are driving them buggo, especially Zeek!, who is having noise management problems.

There’s lotso fun on the inertnets these days:

Me too, pal, me too. (link removed for safety)

Do you feel like an imposter?

Jeff’s cats have been going nuts, running up and down and crying like little buggers. I suspect earthquakes.

I have a friend who actually talks like this. He doesn’t read this blog, thank heavens.

No kiddums.  I try to have a calm looking blog. Then again…..

GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY Okay, I’m not guilty of all of them, but my preoccupations have made my blogs boring as paste these last few weeks.  I am trying to go for excitement and novelty, and end up eating in front of the tv, which no matter how you dress it up is still catatonia inducing.

Remarkable story about the trek from belief to atheism.

I did practice my mandolin (I can has F major?), and I did sort some papers, and I did a shop, but mostly I sat about staring off into space, thinking despairing thoughts about the musical, or sleeping.  Ah, winter.

Today I am going to go into work a bit early and see if my computer, etc., are where they are supposed to be and functioning.  Moves really do suck and they do narsty things to productivity.  And then our new squid overlords, er, owners as per the regulatory approvals which have recently come in, will come in and change everything again, but that probably won’t be for months.

I light a candle for Dr Filk’s healing – he’s had tooth issues and we all know what a big owie that can be.  I light a candle for the peace of all beings.  And I leave you with this excerpt from Dr. Filk’s last missive:

In other news the fall folk season is under way. Played at the Sooke Folk Music Society last night, and shared the occasion with six Kenyan exchange students who did traditional Kikuyu song-and-dance. The highlight for me was a contemporary trad number honoring the heroes of the Mau Mau uprising, in which the performers mimed machine-gunning the audience!

Ah, Kultur!

Ow ow ow part 435

Get your war on has something to say about making rape victims pay for their own rape kits.  Jeff sent me this.

Speaking as somebody who accompanied a woman for a post rape exam, I say right the **** on.  I personally have never been raped.  That’s luck and smarts, but mostly luck.  (Note – the rape victim commented afterwards that the rape exam was in some ways harsher than the rape.  I was horrified.  Her response was, “I was drunk when I was assaulted, and I was sober for the exam.”)

I think I have to take a walk now….

A death in the family / a dream

Carrie reports that her doggie Mabel has crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  In response, all I could do was forward a copy of a Hallmark card poem that was on a card Lois (Paul’s youngest sister, a woman of uncommon charm, wit and sensitivity) sent me when Bounce died.  If I had any clue who to credit this to, I would, but it’s copyright Hallmark Cards, card S81-4, and I post it because out of all the things you can say to a person whose animal just died, this poem does it the best I know of so far:

They will not go quietly,
the pets who’ve shared our lives.
In subtle ways they let us know
their spirit still survives.
Old habits still can make us
think we hear them at the door
Or step back when we drop
a tasty morsel on the floor
Our feet still go around the place
the food dish used to be,
and, sometimes, coming home at night,
we miss them terribly.
And although time may bring new friends
and a new food dish to fill,
That one place in our hearts
belongs to them….
and always will.

Last night I dreamed I was supposed to meet up with some people, and I trusted somebody else to get my bag.  We got off the train (not the Skytrain, the subway in Toronto) and poof, no bag and everybody looking hangdog.  I said, **** this noise, got back on the next train, figured out where to cross sides so I got on the train I’d just gotten off, and at the end of the car there was a big pile of unattended gym bags, and the first one I opened had my bag in it.  There are a lot of messages in this dream, and on the whole I’m pleased with it.

Up at 4 – it’s now almost six and I’m about to pull cheese scones out of the oven.  The aroma is now well-nigh overpowering.  I put the last of the fresh basil in them.  Sigh.  It’s winter in Vancouver.  The overcast has started, and it won’t lighten up until April.  Time to hunker down and do some healthy baking.  I found a recipe for home made power bars the other week and I should dig it out and start making them.  And as for unhealthy baking, maybe this is the year I commercialize my biscotti?  I’ve had lots of people tell me they’d pay for them.

Scamp

Mr. Music’s dog deserves his own post.  A border terrier, he possesses a very pronounced personality, he’s smarter than most people, and PRETTY.  His coat is such a subtle combination of every colour from cream to dark cloud gray that I could stare at it for hours. When I walked into the apartment (a masterpiece of restrained visual energy, complete with an OMG afghan his mother knitted and some half finished half mannequins which are decorated with everything from decoupage to glued on jewels – one of them has a compartment carved out of her tummy which has a toy violin in it) all I could see were the balls.  There are like a hundred tennis balls in the apartment; Scamp can’t seem to make up his mind which one he likes best.

He still has his puppy dog bed and refuses to sleep in anything else (except when he sleeps on his master’s bed of COURSE) and when he crashed out briefly (border terriers are ENERGETIC creatures) with his head hanging out he was so cute I got all squirmy.

A head full of buzzing noises, a tummy full of yummy

Mr. Music fed me last night, and what a meal… Tuna couscous, home made corn meal muffins (he made me take a couple home to Jeff). home made instant mint chocolate cake, and Corona, and some white wine, and hummus and bread and red pepper for appies.  I went staggering out of there thinking it was a little late to be finding a wheelbarrow and somebody to roll me home.

I sang (for his thumbs up or thumbs down) the first pass of the music that I want to put in the musical.  He approved of most of it, but that was not the upshot….

More FREEEEEAKING HOMEwork.  My task, in between practicing my mandolin so I don’t get all embarrassed next Wednesday when Anne comes back, is to view / listen to one ‘representative’ musical from each decade from the 20’s through the 70’s, and the stage version NOT the filmed version, because even I know that these are separate disciplines and I’m writing for the stage.  I feebly commented that I want to do a musical pastiche with only the most paper thin excuse for a plot, but Mr. Music seems to think I am capable of more than throwing together the millennial version of the King of Jazz; he pointed me at Oklahoma! as being a very close to perfect attempt to meld story with song.    Anyway, I have the list written down somewhere and after I have finished digesting both that wonderful meal and the bolus of simple but time consuming suggestions I will start hacking away at it.

I did tell him I’m expecting this to take at least a year.  I still have to work full time and do laundry.  And now I have to go see every piece of musical theatre in Vancouver over the next year, so I can see what’s happening in contemporary musicals….. sigh.  Who needs spare time?

It’s talk like a pirate day.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

MANY thanks to Mike, who hauled out the massage table last night and put me into that stunned state of mind that accompanies a really long and effective massage.

Katie and Mike were both around for dins last night and I fed them garlic bread, tater tots, lettuce and tomato and onion and sunflower seed salad, and broiled pork chomps and leftover mushrooms and I kinda went nuts at the bakery so we had dessert too.  I bought so much sweet stuff I gave it to Katie to take to Dax.  Katie has a routine now where she does all the homework she gets assigned to do as soon as she gets home on Thursday night, so she can have the weekend to herself without feeling anxious about getting home by six on Sunday to do the work.  She also entertained me and Mike and Jeff with her description of working and learning at hair design school at VCC.  Katie says easily a quarter of the class is ‘spoiled rich bitches who don’t do any work’ and most of the rest don’t have any gumption or ability to work independently.  She took my advice and sized up her colleagues on the first day and sat next to the one with the sweetest face, and now she and Kelly are becoming fast friends and she hangs with a clique of women who really want to be there and are working hard.  If you think hairdressing is easy, try standing for six hours with your arms outstretched…..

There was a skunk in the front yard last night, right at the bottom of the stairs.  Yikes.