Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
I’m going to Livermore on business the first week of November! Spare a thought for me that the Big One doesn’t come through San Francisco during any of that time or I’m going to have a tough time getting home.
I am moving all but about 30K of my investments into cash. I think the economy’s verkockt.
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
I’m goin’ down the garden to eat worms
Long thin slimy ones, short fat fuzzy ones
Ooey gooey, ooey gooey worms
Long thin slimy ones slip down easily
Short fat fuzzy ones don’t
Short fat fuzzy ones stick in your teeth
And the juice goes slurpin’ (slurping noise) down your throat
It astounds me how the happiness I experience from a good night’s sleep can vanish in the drive to work. And it ain’t the work, it’s the drive. Why do people drive when they are functionally asleep?
Well sheeeeeit, that’s no fun for readers, so perhaps I should just recite bare facts.
Spent most of the day Saturday prepping for what turned into a non event. The one person I figured for sure would come got lost and didn’t make it; a couple of other people who promised to come didn’t show, and it was a very thin crowd indeed. Fortunately the mountain of food was consumed in short order by the folks who attended church the following morning.
I had to open at nine and I couldn’t close until one, so it was another long blank church day. I am so tired. Still tired, and work is like a tsunami visible at the horizon, being held in check by the machinations of a government body that isn’t even in Canada. Such are the joys of international commerce in these parlous times.
Came home and Keith was pulling up just as I was and we went to the The Wire-land and stayed there for about four hours as we (Keith Jeff and I) blasted through the last third of the second season. My goodness. What an awesome show. Chris Bauer, who plays Andy Bellefleur the new sheriff of Bon Temps in True Blood, is phenomenal as Frank Sobotka.
Katie called and asked if she could come over and we said sure and then Paul asked if he could come over and we said sure, and we all hung out and Katie and Paul and I went for a walk. Paul and Katie both stayed over. I made Katie chocolate milk with whipped cream. What a weird household I run to be sure. Anyway I got about thirty seconds left on this before I simply must get going.
I’m so stressed out I’ve started smoking again, but if it’s any consolation this is day three of no beer. I imagine I’ll stop smoking again when this deck is done, I always get disgusted and stop. Paul just looks at me and Katie with a worried face – nothing could tempt him to smoke again.
I have nothing to be anxious and depressed about. However, we live in an age of anxiety, and I certainly am feeling my share.
Prayer gives you a moment to stop, to think outside yourself, not wallow in your own dismay – Meshell Ndegeocello
Some years ago I brought her into work. She’s so old that I can’t even find an image of her on Google images…. anyway, she gets given to new employees. The newest one, a cute as a button young firmware engineer, just wandered by my desk and asked, doe eyed, when I wanted my doll back.
I sat up straight and said, “Seven inch posable action figure, PuhLEASE!”
And I then said, “Anytime. When you feel like you’re adequately integrated into the team, bring her on back and I’ll give her to the next new employee!”
This is called, “The Passing of the Lara”.
In family news, Katie is moving in with me and Jeff until she finds a better place to live, Keith startled the living hell out of everybody in earshot last night when he proposed living with his sister, and we had a yummy dinner all four of us at Planet Bachelor.
I’m feeling mighty chipper for how little sleep I got….
In real news for me, which I am confidently aware will be of no conceivable use to even my mother…..
Church meeting kinda interesting. I talked too much, as per Save Us usual. Rev Katie gave us YET another book to read. She must think we’re Unitarians er something.
Yay! Jeff, beautiful Jeff, was up and willing to watch another episode of The Wire. Yip, yip, aroo. Oh, Jimmy, how we love your drunken ways. One of the best drunks ever; Dominic West’s face becomes so rubbery and simian that you pull your face away from the tv, convinced you’ll be smelling the ferocious eyescalding breath on him if you get any closer.
I love how they don’t translate stuff in other languages. You can either keep up or not.
I love my car. I love my car. Ziva is not a vehicle, she is an obsession. Too soon, by rust and accident and use and expense she will be torn from my bosom…. now wait a second. That’s too weird an image…. I plant my ass in the middle of her all the time, to refer to her as being torn from my bosom would mean that she would a) have to get a lot smaller b) lose A LOT of mass c) travel through my body, like ew, while in that state and ….. wait a minute. All I have to do to make that image real is get out of the car, glue (something that won’t damage the finish) my shirt to the car, and have somebody else drive away from me. Then she’d be torn from my bosom, and that would actually kind of make sense, although for the most striking visualization of this idea a cartoon or comic would probably work best. And that way I don’t have to damage the car, always a plus. For the image to work perfectly I’d be left naked with a patch of hair torn off, but a drawing of me, so I can avoid the hassle of you know, like, going through it. You know, like that Despair chica from the Sandman books. That’s how terrible I’m going to feel when she goes. But I can still encompass, with a glowing, merciful joy, what it’s like to sit in her and feel the engine purr into life. To feel the IMMENSE CASCADES of heat that come out of those vents when it’s cold. I’m sure I mentioned earlier how much I like my car.
Keith is looking for work. Katie is working too much.
I blow kisses at Sue Sparlin, Karen Greenland, Carol Becken, and Rev Katie of course.
Parlous times they may be, but I am not alone. I feel a great connectedness, which is only increased when shared.
She’s picking up flour from a local farmer…. neato!
The only thing I can do is breathe, and step forward.
This is an animated gif of a polar bear.
Quhat being Scots dialect for What.
The night before I didn’t contact the volunteers. I was SO anxious and phobic that I literally could not pick up the phone. (Most of the time I’m not affected by anxiety to that extent but making phone calls is really hard for me, and I’m trying to work out why.) I realized that I was a wreck and went to bed. I got up at 4:30 am, picked out and edited the poem I read for the children’s story, printed it, edited the homily a couple of times more for clarity and accuracy and printed it, went through the undifferentiated piles of emails that are the complete mess that is cooperative ministry right now and found to my surprise that I did in fact know who all the volunteers were (amusingly, Paul was supposed to do set up this weekend but he left town… Luc covered him) and they were all sober and reliable people who of course all showed up. So my list of cooperative ministry (the volunteers who bop about the church and make things happen on Sunday morning, from the extremely amazing Sally (aesthetics) to the extremely amazing Laura (coffee) was actually accurate!
I even put in all the announcements that Rev Katie emailed me, AND put in a different graphic for the front cover AND got the order of service printed all by about 7:30. Then I packed everything up, had a shower, and realizing I had a WHOLE HOUR before I had to get to church, so I did the sensible thing and made Jeff waffles for brekky.
Saw Margot crawl into the garden plot and flatten herself to the ground to become ‘invisible’ waiting for the juncos to come back through the quinoa. Sorry kiddo… you ARE NOT invisible.
Went to church under overcast skies – I was the first person there so there’s that great feeling of unlocking all the doors and turning on all the lights
It’s time to play the music
It’s time to light the lights
It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight.
That kind of feeling, and then getting out the mats for the kids to sit on and helping set up the table for the altar and hauling out the podium and consulting with various folks, and watching as Sandy hauled out the enormous cart Tom made for the sound system. (Brief aside – we have hard of hearing folks in the congregation so we have a bunch of wireless headsets for amplification and all that stuff is in the cart, along with the board and the cabling etc etc.) Then the greeter’s table is set up, and then parents come in to set up the kids (the older kids were off at a Catholic mass). And just greeting people…. and then Tom and Peggy and Marnie show up, and music starts happening (12 string, stand up bass and piano). Getting asked, once again, why it is I don’t consider ministry…. what am I supposed to say? God told me not to? I do not have a vocation, peeps! When you get the call it’s unmistakable. The only time I get a call that’s unmistakable it always ends badly, with me yelling “You freaking telemarketers, how did you get this number?!” I’ll tell you why I’m not a minister…. because I read the behavioural standards that I would be expected to adhere to, like not sleeping with parishioners and ceasing to be nude in public on occasion and being somewhat less vivid and colloquial and vehement in my speech. And don’t get me started on the drugs and alcohol stuff, it’s just unconscionable. I’m also, not to put too fine a point on it, making the same amount of money as our current minister, who is 13 years out of school. Ayuh.
Then it all started and it went very well. I made the aside about being asked about which version of the Bible I was using for the verse and answering “Sheesh, Mom, what difference does it make to an atheist?” which got a huge laugh. I have a lot of people to email the homily to.
I remember gazing at the congregation during the meditation and seeing Erin shifting her little one around trying to get her to latch, and passing my eye over all the mothers in the congregation and they (and a few of the men, truth be told) were all grinning. They knew the feeling… after the service I went up to Erin with a mock look of distaste on my face and said, “Baby did NOT get memo about staying quiet during meditation!!!” and all the women clustered ’round her cracked up and chided me, and that’s when I told Erin how many people were smiling with their eyes closed as they heard the baby – I think she was pleased.
Delivering the homily and feeling comfortable enough to wander around the stage instead of staying glued to the podium like I have always done previously, remembering to look up often enough to connect with folks. It was easily the most attentive group evar….
Having all the handouts disappear. Anne in particular liked Carl Sagan’s baloney detection kit; somebody else, can’t remember who, saying that the little List of Cognitive Biases would make for an amazing conversation starter at Thanksgiving dinner.
Bringing strawberry twizzlers for snacks, and helping myself.
Talking, talking, to lots of people afterwards. Giving Carol a lift home in that magical fall sunshine that feels like summer filtered though dreams.
Blowing through the door like a hurricane and frying up the pork and onions for the stuffing, firing up the oven, stuffing the turkey, draping it with four pieces of thick cut bacon, jamming it in the oven, and ignoring it for about four hours. Katie calling to ask me if I’d forgotten anything and then showing up with cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and whipped cream. (She called ahead and offered! I am not a failure as a parent! subtext). I then hauled the bird out once and basted it and put it back in while Katie and I made veg. Falling asleep on the upstairs sofa and awakening to see that Mike and Rozo had arrived, which triggered another round of Holy Crap, Must Feed People.
Final dinner arrangement;
Me Jeff Katie Mike Rozo:
Turkey with pork, onion, apple, brown bread, sage and garlic stuffing; hubbard squash drizzled with maple syrup, black pepper, garlic and allspice, boiled carrots, mashed potatoes, dripping gravy, green salad and dun tot (egg tarts from Anna’s Bakery OMG provided by Mike & Rozo) for dessert.
I came upstairs and both of the cats were on the dining room table. Margot was inspecting the last of the gravy…. Eddie looked hideously guilty and was licking his chops rather inelegantly (his tongue was out an inch) but Katie couldn’t find anything missing. Eddie’s expression made me howl with laughter.
I then bopped over to Planet Bachelor with Katie in tow (didn’t feel like going over there by myself) fed Kira who was most happy to see us, and then came back, watched some tube with the folks, and then announced around nine-thirty that I’d had a most excellent but also most lengthy day and I was going to have to say my goodnights. Katie slept over and now I’m going to get up and make her a breakfast that will be awesome.
And that was my very long, very happy making, most excellently wonderful Turkey Day.
Today I plan to drink beer and wash clothes. There IS nothing else on my to do list that I will do today. Well, actually, if I want to keep things copacetic with Jeff I should clean the kitchen and run the dishwasher. It’s pretty thick in there.
Oh, I lie. After breakfast I have to run to the bank and get some money. I think I may be buying a guitar today.
Heron Woman does it again. I do nothing for days and then explode into non stop action. It is my way.
