Month: October 2008

Everybody, as one!

Allegra, you are bleeding crazy!

I spent most of last evening with Dax, and then went to Suzanne’s.  I didn’t argue with him.  I didn’t give him any money.  And we worked on cover letters and talked.  I also met his dad.

Why the **** would I do that?  Well, I have a number of reasons.  First, I wanted to be very clear with him what my rationale is for going anywhere near him after all the horrible stuff that happened with Katie.  I want him to be working, not in jail.  If he’s working, he can pay rent, help his family, think about getting some money together for school, and have something resembling a life. If he’s in jail, not so much.  Second, I am wanting to shed my reputation as an evil cow; I got to hear some of the stuff Dax said about me second hand, and I kinda want to prove it’s not really true.  One can say, “But if he’s in jail he can’t hurt Katie!” but I would really prefer he was paying taxes.  Third, it’s really hard for me to model forgiveness and getting on with your life if I refuse to do it because it’s hard.  Humans is apes.  It’s easier for the ape to do what it has seen being done.

Tammy said that the biggest difference between poor people and rich people is that poor people don’t get a lot of training or practice in deferring gratification.  There is no next year; there is no tomorrow.

Except, unfortunately, there is.

Five layers (what, like an onion? A really good chocolate cake?)

There’s stuff I don’t talk about with anyone. Some of it is festering; some of it is just the froth and bubble inherent in having a brain; some of it is me stolidly processing events and patterns.  Some is preverbal.  Most isn’t – I try to put everything in words.

There’s stuff that only the people it happened in front of know.  It never gets written down.  It’s ‘Hopi art’ or a coloured sand mandala.

There’s stuff that only goes in a little hardback diary; I make an entry maybe once a month – more often when my love life, such as it mostly isn’t, gets more interesting.  I try to make it as much like Mary Astor’s diary as possible, you know, breathless and candid and o so girly…. although I have no George S Kaufman.  (Darn! he was quite the, uh, provider of exclusive, quality adult entertainment, or so Mary’s diary recounted).

There’s stuff I put in the locked on-line diary at livejournal, mostly stuff that’s bad and I want to remember the date it happened later.  Almost all of my entries are friends only.

Then, there’s this stuff.  There’s an inherent bias towards good news, because, after all, my mom reads this. There’s also a bias to not whine, although I do.  So consider this a virtual whine, because, by golly, I really feel like bitching right now, and what prevents me from doing it is knowing that in a week I’ll have completely forgotten what I was cheesed off about. That has been the overwhelming takeaway for me as a result of keeping an online diary for four years (yup, I started in April 2004 but lost everything prior to August of that year).  As bad as things may be, whining doesn’t help. Good news longs to be shared, and urges to whine should be entertained at a halberd’s distance. I consider whining and recounting ugly facts to be two separate things; it’s the absence of adjectives that denotes serious efforts not to whine. Also, I swear more when I’m whining.  Or ranting, which is whining spun into entertainment, at least as I care to practice it.

I light a candle for folks dealing with allergies; for the lonely; for the sick; for the hopelessly confused and socially awkward.  I light a candle for the unemployed who wish to work.

PS.  The World Series is actually very good baseball.  I was enjoying it immensely when I watched it last night.  It was the first time I actually got an idea of how a superb pitcher plays with the strike zone to mess with batters’ heads.

A special shout out to Mike McG, who opened a phone conversation with, “Hey, wordsmith!” and made my world a better place thereby.

A special shout out to Marc, who answered my email about visiting headquarters in France with a brief and charming email.  The upshot is I am welcome, but nobody is exactly sure WHERE to roll out the welcome mat, as apparently they are moving!  I would post notes about the integration but it might limit my future employment opportunities.

gathering up links and distributing them to the needy

Uke! wakka wakka wakka

Print me up a new liver boys, this one’s no good to me now.

One of the best I quit letters in the history of the English language. (link removed for security reasons)

And now, a surf boarding rat. Or, at least, a rat who is earnestly engaged in the business of NOT drowning.

How do I know chipper’s got a boyfriend ? she’s not sending me links no more!!!  Me happy!  It can’t all be doom and gloom.  Oh, crap, I have about two minutes to shower and power outta here.

Not much doing

Has it been that long?  Rogers sent me a notice today about upgrading my phone because the contract I got with them after Dax tossed Katie’s phone into an intersection is up.  Wow. Time flies when you’re getting a c/l divorce and trying to keep your life on something resembling rails.  What they really want is for me to sign up with them again.  And on that subject, Dax called Katie and she called his PO.  I know I sound like a sap, but he’s not going to hurt her anymore, and I don’t want him to go to jail.  Katie is so blasé ’bout the whole thing that she doesn’t care if I stay in touch with him, which I am doing on facebook.  The family advice (nautilus3 will probably recognize its origin) is “Don’t argue with him and don’t lend him money.”

Over at Planet Bachelor last night; Keith is doing famously although not studying enough in school (grr) and already contemplating the education he wants to get after he gets his trade.  Considering that this is exactly what his maternal grandparents did with their lives, I am sure they are quietly hugging themselves at the moment. Paul is in fine form and fed us dinner.

When I got home, Jackie the downstairs neighbour was out having a smoke. I met Bear, Jason’s cat, learned that THEY TOO want to punt Romeo, the next door neighbour’s dog, into the Delta Quadrant, and THEY TOO have been bitten by the dog.  Yes, we know it’s because the neighbours have a substance resembling moldy guacamole for frontal lobes; it’s not the dog’s fault.  Jackie and I talked for the best part of an hour in a most neighbourly way, straightened out some normal housesharing stuff in a good commonsensical way and then I downloaded with Jeff this am. Happy sigh.  Jeff says, “It just goes to show you how ******* loud the people who lived downstairs before were.”  Amen brother.  They were loud like they were getting paid for it.

News from Elly

NEWS FLASH!!  Doug and I are moving to Toronto as of the new year.  Lotus Land is over for us.  Back to the Big Peach and all of its imperfections, dowdiness, creativity, energy, wealth, intensity, colour, possibilities, people, politics, pollution, noise, music, poetry, intelligence, stupidity, arrogance, humility, joy and really big garbage pails ….and of course, the big draw, my family.

 

Sad face.  But I’m happy for anybody who’s moving closer to children and grandchildren.

France planning

I called Tammy this morning and got updated on the trip planning, also the various stuff that’s going on with her (I light a candle for her health, which is good, but she has knee surgery in prospect and lives in a three story house).  Today I have to scrape the iron oxide offa my French and compose a letter to the hotel in Paris (shown is the view in front of the hotel, which is on Saint Lazare) asking if we can ditch our bags there because Air Canada in its infinite wisdom has rescheduled our flight.

I’m SO inclined to say screw it to the timeshare in Rouen (actually outside of Rouen) and stick with Paris, which has ZERO tourists in November – it’s all business travellers and locals doing Christmas shopping.  However, the call of Juno Beach, which has a Canadian interpretive center there now, and Calvados and Camembert out Normandy way is too much.

More France planning:  Review all the Dunnett references to Paris and Rouen and places between.

More France planning:  No car in Paris – it would be insane – and Tammy has agreed to book a car in Rouen rather than drive from Paris.  It will be a lot more restful to take a train and getting out of the city will be much easier.

More France planning:  I haven’t a thing to wear!  I definitely need an anorak and some mary jane style shoes.  If I didn’t know every women in France was a size 8, I’d plan on buying clothes there; as it is I’d have about as much luck getting clothes that fit in Richmond.

More France planning… internet access?  I wonder what it’s like at the time share.  I will enquire….

True story from a Canadian Call Center

Customer: Hi, I was just wondering if you could tell if cable TV is available at my house. I know it is available in the city, but we are just outside the city limits.

 

CSR: Yes, we have a very expensive and complicated computer program to figure if there is cable TV available at your address. However, if you answer this one question for me, I can predict the answer 99.9 % of the time.

 

Customer: Really, what is the question? 

 

CSR: “Can you see cows from your kitchen window?”

 

Customer: Why, yes I can see cows from my window.

 

CSR: Well sir, you are going to need a satellite system… There is no cable TV available at your address.

Home safe

Got in a brief visit with my Gran and Dr. Filk (who is some filking busy these days, what with recording and travelling) yesterday; listened to Juliana’s new album with my mother; collected a book and two maps of France / Paris; and then got home safe on the ferry.  Jeff came and picked me up.  I had a very relaxing weekend.  Then I got up and tidied my room, as I damned near killed myself getting up in the night to let Eddie in.

To do: read the family history about the bookseller and antiquarian (and friend of Thomas Carlyle) Henry Wake.  Make turkey soup. Email Anne and tell her to rearrange Friday’s lesson as I am going to be at the church gathering Friday night doing registration, or so I surmise. Work on Halloween costume which is work appropriate.  And hack away at the 10 other projects nibbling at my conscience, and consciousness.

Thoughtful

I’m having a Niebuhr kinda weekend – Niebuhr being a forebear name, and also the name of Reinhold Niebuhr, the prominent theologian of the last century.  He’s the dude wot wrote the Serenity prayer.

In its original format, the first part of the prayer goes like this:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Alas, everybody and his dog, including AA, got hold of the prayer.  It has been stuck onto all kinds of consumer goods and started a song by Sinead O’Connor…. her version:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

Niebuhr’s daughter Elisabeth Sifton wrote a book called “The Serenity Prayer” and I URGE anybody who’s interested in social justice to read it.  The dragging down of Germany into Nazism is detailed from a theological perspective, and there were so many times I put the book down and said, “But this is what’s happening in the US right now!” I became quite sad.  The book is amazingly well written.

Here in Victoria…

… birds sing, musicals abound, the weather is gorgeous, and I’m feeling plenty relaxed.

Sad face…. pOp shaved his beard off. His reasons make sense but I’m still pouty.  He expected me not to notice – oh yeah, like I’m not going to notice such a change.  He’s had a beard virtually the entire time I’ve known him.

I’ve been helping mOm upload pix to the family history website, which unfortunately is password protected, so I can’t link you to the Gallery of the Undead, which is what a lot of my rellies look like. We’re mostly industrious and mostly intelligent, but by gar we are an ugly crew.  I’m glad I had kids with Paul and broke up the ugly some.

I just found out I’m descended from Lady Godiva.  Probably most of you are too, but it’s great to think that a character Dunnett wrote about is one of my putative ancestors.  And of course it links in nicely to my casual attitude toward clothing.