Month: February 2011

It’s magic!

As soon as I had a new mic the old one turned up.  Once again, my memory is not as good as it used to be and recent events have proven the operation of my memory to be fitful, truculent and subject to stammering great lashings of wishful interpolation.

I have a funny anecdote from work.  It’s clean, nobody gets hurt, I omit the names.  I am sitting by myself at lunch and the senior HR staffer on site comes and sits down next to me.  She is a warm, funny, intelligent & hardworking woman who is obviously very tolerant.  So I’m thinking this will be an interesting convo (she’s an interesting person), and then my grandboss sits down. Hardworking, degrees in two different fields, hilarious, listens attentively, he is cheerfully resistant to bullshit and cant in all forms and not interested in dispensing any… well, that’s my experience of him.  Other people’s mileage undoubtedly varies.

Next to sit down is the facilities manager, who has a number of buildings to manage, and his son, who has come on board on contract in a completely different department, where I can say from personal experience that he’s doing fairly well in a stressful assignment. In sum I like and respect them all.

The convo drifts over to a building issue; the facilities manager reports that a certain contractor for a certain city is not responding to requests for signoff on a job.  I pipe up with “Well tell him to answer your bloody phone calls or he’ll face the wrath of Allegra.”  I then offer, since I often wake up at. like, 3 in the morning, to drive over to the contractor’s house with my mandolin to serenade him.  We all, with varying degrees of hilarity, agree that this will surely put the fear of swift and awful retribution into him, and head back to our desks.  (The salmon was the best thing I ever ate in the cafeteria, which greatly enhanced what was a convivial meal).

About fifteen minutes later the facilities manager reports (he couldn’t keep a straight face) that even the MENTION of my NAME has triggered a panic in the contractor, who has now agreed to do what he’s s’posedta.  Ohhhh, the wrath of Allegra.  C’est magique, c’est fromidable!  And of course it’s completely coincidental in all possible ways, but of such coincidences are legends born.  (Fromidable by the way IS the correct spelling.  It’s a marketing word taken from a Cheez Whiz jar.  I think it translates as “powerfully cheesy”.)

And now, a brief peruse of the intarwebs for cute animal pics, or possibly ugly animal pics, and a shower, and back to the challenge and joy of paid employment.

Nope, gotta do the order of service first.

Happy sigh for meals with friends

Man when the hell did I get old enough to have a friend for 45 years?  C’est bizarre, ça.

Anyway, Bonnie has a few grey hairs and perhaps her smile lines are a little more chiselled than I remember, but she is STILL BONNIE, the petite and energetic and outdoorsy and powerfully intelligent friend of my childhood who looks at least 15 years younger than her lying ass birth certificate, and she is a happy person to be around.

We watched pictures of John on the laptop and Bonnie brought a photo album which had pictures of her mom and John and various rellies in happier times.  I took some pics but I won’t post them without permission.

The Royal City Thai restaurant is assenkicken.  They must get by on the lunch trade, the joint was deserted the entire time we were there but the food was nothing short of spectacular.  It was $130 with tax and tip for five hungry adults, there was about one meal’s worth of leftovers, and there was alcohol too… gosh the soup was stellar.  Service stellar too.  Attentive without being pestery.  A find, I must say.

Keith and Kate both came AND I AM SO HAPPY about a) Paul suggesting it and b) how happy Bonnie was to see them and vice versa.  Katie got to see the only surviving picture of John on a skateboard.  I said to her afterwards that alone was worth the price of admission.  Who’da thunk it? Gave Katie and Keith rides home.  Jeff’s subpar and didn’t attend but there’s a whole host of gut wrenching bacteria writhing around the GVRD these days; I hope they don’t sink their little pseudopods into him too far.

Ziva is burning lots of oil.  I should check levels before setting out tomorrow, and I’m probably looking at engine work.  Jeebus, I ain’t paid for the last lot yet.  I have to stay alive, I have two dependents, one metal, one furry.

I couldn’t find the god forsaken USB microphone, so I bought another one.  If the original turns up I’ll give it to Paul.  I tried to buy a slide whistle but they didn’t have one. Twelve on order and no slide whistles, what’s this world coming to. I MUST HAVE A SLIDE WHISTLE. It’s impossible to be a living cartoon character without one.

I can hear Miss Margot’s stertorous breathing. I cleaned her eye gunk this morning and she accepted it with good grace (filled 10 saline soaked qtips with her eye gunk).  The second I tried to clean out her ears, World War Kitty was declared and I beat a hasty, but integumentarily intact retreat.

Anyway I have an appt. with Mr. Methocarbamol followed by a long sleep on the complaisant Millie the Mattress.  Tomorrow morning I’m going to fire up the computer, get the order of service done, and pray to the shade of Ada Babbage that the server reboot contemplated yesterday at work will make a proper workday possible.  Also, I have a one on one with my boss (who is really, really awesome, and I’d say that anyway, thanks) tomorrow.  I haven’t exactly told him anything, but I will, tactfully.  Hopefully before the half dozen or so coworkers who read my blog rat me out.  And no, ratting me out is neither polite nor accurate; I’m just shouldering my responsibilities again, and grace and temperance are threatening to bitch slap me if I don’t stand up straight under the load.

Why you should never talk about suicide on your blog

Thanks Jeff for fixing the blog, it was briefly busted this morning. Jeff continues to be awesome.

Bad language, triggery stuff about suicidal feelings (now blessedly slid by), raw emotion and yet more profanity.  At least I’m not complaining about work.  Fair Warning?

FUCKSTICKS.

I just realized I’ll never get a gun licence in this country now.  Derp.  Herpderp.  bwaaaaaaaaaaaah-ding!  Now I know I was really screwed up.  Even if I’d thought about it at the time (and I didn’t) it wouldn’t have changed my mood (people talking to me and the act of forcing myself to say goodbye to things did that).  I lost my connection to others and they plugged me back in again.  I lost my connection to my sense of my place and ‘re-place-ing’ myself helped.  And if I’d had a gun in the house I wouldn’t have used it to kill myself because after watching 79 billion forensics shows I can’t handle splatter and I would not, no matter how screwed up I was, make that much of a mess, whether in this house, or my car, or anyplace else. Gotta be tidy about it *which given how my room looks is richly comic*.  Also, many horrifying mental pictures of surviving a gun suicide attempt. Thank you internet.

I can look back on it and say what the hell happened? What I really want to do is figure out how to prevent it from ever happening again, seeing as how my poor parents were making travel plans to put me on 24 hour watch if things got worse and they really really don’t need the aggro and pOp hates the lower Mainland with a passion that is normally reserved for eggplant, the Justice Minister, anchovies and reality tv.  And I don’t want to take drugs for depression.  I have many reasons, some good, some bad, for that.  I loved Prozac (except for the 20 pound weight gain, the destruction of my sex drive and the complete absence of songwriting or creativity while I was on it, and the eight months it took my sex drive to come back after the four months I took it) and the Wellbutrin made me even crazier than I already am (just ask daughter Katie about that, she’ll give you a profanity laden earful.)

Quhat was going on there?  For three weeks food had no taste; I went all bleak and completely lost my sense of humour; Conflikt forced me to put the smile on but I crashed really hard afterwards (but of course there was some very intense and emotional stuff in there which left me thinking about death a lot, as I always do when I think about John) *and my ex’s girlfriend, who continues to live rent free in my mental attic, which by itself is enough to make the inside of my skull look like an aerial shot of a train derailment crossed with last year’s pricing model*. John died, Unca Dave died, Granny died, Gizmo died.  Bang bang bang bang.

Seems a bit much to quit going to Conflikt just so I won’t be all wooble sadface afterwards; I’ll have to think on it some more.  I love Paul in my own demanding and unrealistic fashion, and I don’t grudge him any happiness he can squeeze from life, and I am after all the one that forced the sale of the house and moved out; but it was to avoid suicide that time that I took all those steps, and I was clearly and obviously saner afterward, so it was the right thing to do and my regrets are of a practical and not emotional nature.   I just want a public acknowledgment and apology from the manipulative and charming sociopath who *this long and interesting description of his activities deleted on the anxious advice of my inner lawyer – and NO it’s not about Paul but it’s directly connected to my marriage auguring in* – and unicorns are gonna slide down rainbows and poop gold bars (clarn!) before that happens.  There you have it…. one of the REAL reasons I was feeling like offing myself and I can’t even fill in the blanks because El Slime-o might come after me for defamation.  (There are two main others, but I’m sitting with them and will talk to the dude about that next Monday). Wa wa, I’m never going to get closure.

Well sheeeeeeeit. I NEVER WILL.  I never, ever, fucking well ever will get closure.   Will I have to write a roman a clef about that terrible situation to be free of it?  Shall I turn my pain to profit?  By the Grand Hyatt Seattle I Sat Down and Wept? Uh, no.  I promised myself I wouldn’t.  Once again my standards for my own behaviour are giggling in corners and braiding nooses while saying “Shuush.  Shoosh now.”

And it ain’t about me any longer.  I have some context, it’s about the people who’d be alternately devastated, I mean absolutely screwed up for months and months, or really angry at my selfishness, or really pleased that I had killed myself.  Yes, there are people who’d be happy if I killed myself, but yannowhut? Fuck all you fucking fuckers, I won’t give you the satisfaction, and I don’t want to hurt the hordes of people who in fine Canadian fashion, jumped out from the brushy roadsides of the internet and said “Let me distract you with this SOUP!  Ya okay now you’re in a headlock let’s talk some sense into you.”  “I will HUG your bad feelings INTO SUBMISSION – with my brain!”  The point being if you tell people how you feel they can do something about it.  I have a little file of all the support messages I got and I will look at them before I do something stupid like that again.  And I know who I’ll talk to first.

In other news, I have finished the homily and fired it off to my mOm.  The homily takes place 20 years in the future.  There’s nothing like a thought experiment to keep the creative juices flowing.

I have to get the order of service to my coordinator, along with her reading.

Oh, and if you object to my swearing, check this out, also this and this.  I’m fighting pain, I’m using a class marker, and I’m being a good feminist.  If you believe any of that you’re being simply delightful, but at least I am trying to make the point that swearing isn’t bad in and of itself and that my swearing IS a marker for pain, desolation, egalitarian musings, anger, agony and childish attention getting, also sometimes it just livens things the fuck up.

Flowers flowers flowers on my desk. Bwa ha ha!

Jeff and mOm and pOp sent me flowers. Oh, the convulsions of jealousy! 

Yeah, doesn’t take much.

ANOTHER two delurkers have emailed me.  This time it’s a bracing and unexpected and heartmelting serious of comments, and I just feel very loved right now.  You never know when people are going to be affected by what you do!  It gets better, etc. etc.  But as human beings keep going through the same series of emotions and trials, it’s necessary to be reminded.  And just in case – I AM SORRY I hurt anybody or caused them to lose sleep.

Because, yanno, sleep’s imPORtant.

Lurkers decloak

the rules keep changing…..

OMFG.  This is disturbing, and yet I found myself laughing anxiously.  Somebody I had NO CLUE follows my blog has emailed me something by way of comment.  I’m paraphrasing massively, but it went like this.  “Next time you’re having problems why don’t you do something useful and strap a bomb to yourself?  I can think of a few handy places to put it, and I’ll even help you with the technical side of things.”  The rest of the email was a charmingly spelled rant about how even insanity is not an excuse for suicide (??!!), it’s for elderly and terminal people neither of which I am and I should be ashamed of myself for talking about suicide publicly.  Oh, yes, I should definitely take your advice and not the advice of people I love, who love me.  Let me just sit with that a moment.

Man, I know a lot of strange people.  The idea of repurposing my private turmoil for a rather expansive (in the gaseous sense) comment on public policy has a certain amount of flair though.  I couldn’t do it, even at the height of my belief that I’d be better off dead…. my rights end where my skin does, and I can’t imagine taking somebody else with me; it’s against everything I still believe.

Anyway, I’ve been lurking in MY OWN blog, which is weird.  Over the years I have had it… have I really been doing this for years and years???? I have said less and less about more and more.  I have been afraid of offending people; afraid of hurting people’s feelings; worrying about what people who already hate me think.  I’ve been afraid of losing my job, making my parents stop loving me, or being the kind of person who gives Unitarianism a bad name.  (I’ve had it pointed out that might not be a bad thing).  I’ve been very very scared.

So I’ll decloak.

I am one opinionated mofette.  ça veut dire mauxfaits.  On va recommencer.  I am going to stop beating myself up and start kicking the verbal snot out of those who more richly deserve it.  I won’t talk about work except to say when things are going well or badly.  I won’t recount personal conversations without the informed consent of the folks involved. I won’t repost emails without permission, this morning notwithstanding and besides it was a paraphrase and further besides he was obviously upset at somebody who isn’t me.  I was just the… lightning rod?  Dude can comment directly on my blog any time he likes… if he doesn’t like, he can take a sex holiday in Enumclaw with my compliments.

Leaving horsefuckery behind…. and yes, I’m against the use of animals for the sexual pleasure of human beings because of this whole ‘informed consent thing’, I’m just being sophomoric and rude…..

Foremost among those I would hear praised, Jeff, Katie, Paul, my parents, Peggy, Tom, Lady Miss B, Sue, Rev Katie, Keith, Chipper and two people who have asked not to be named publicly.  Thank you thank you thank you.  You are wonderful people and I know that you will keep doing what you do, so it’s good to know you are there.

Katie, thank you for telling me that you are and you intend to remain childless by choice.  I was sure I’d never want children when I was fourteen; I wanted kids by the time I was your age.   I think you’re old enough to know what you want.  Keith, haw haw, the joke’s on you.  My dreams of becoming a successful organizm now rest on your creamed-animé-on-tropes-stuffed cranium.  And if I’m never a grandma I’ll be fine; there are enough neurotic white folks in the world already or so I scan it.  One of my other relatives will breed when I’m longing for a baby to spoil.  It’s no biggie.

Back to the real world:

Eddie is wandering up and down the house HOWLING for Jeff.  He cries upstairs, downstairs, and outside (freaked me out, I couldn’t tell where he was; he sounded like he was locked in something).

Yay! Canadian tech for a better world!

Jeff, there’s rice pudding in the fridge.  Maybe you’ve gone off rice pudding but this rice pudding is very superior, and even if you don’t want it I intend to eat every scrap of it before it goes bad; Rozo and Katie already extracted some for their own use at home.

Damn Paul but that was an awesome roast.  I’d forgotten how much I love carrots and onyums done around a roast beast.

Al-Jazeera has been added to our roster of cable stations.  I watched, with amazement, a documentary that didn’t even have a single Arab name attached to it; who knew I’d get a very damning picture of the Latvian forest industry, with lots of lines drawn between the first world’s desire to greenwash everything and the destruction of the last pristine forests in Europa?  Honestly, I want to send an email to the Latvia PM telling him the satellite pictures of the Latvian forests are calling him an asshat and a full bore liar.  Latvian politicians and functionaries are disturbingly smooth voiced and calm, they all seem to speak idiomatic bureaucratese English, and the bigger the lie the calmer they look.  And they are destroying the traditional sustainable forestry operations which are family businesses.  The guy who won the international farmer of the year award was foaming at the mouth showing how all the ‘scientific’ forestry immediately around him – clear cuts all – are causing blow downs on his property and destroying the margins of his sustainable forest.  This is sustainable forestry in Canada.  That’s pretty much what it looks like in Latvia.  Anyway, at the current rate of clear cutting in Latvia- which is going to subsidize DIY homeowners in England, who get to buy wood that has a sustainably harvested sticker on it, sticker purchased by the Latvian forestry ministry from a fucking scam non profit in Britain – they won’t have a forest let alone a forest industry within ten years.  The habitat destruction of rare species is blandly ignored by the politicians because it’s all about employment.  Forestry sustains 40 percent of the Latvian GDP.  They are going to kill their economy.  One wonders, when forestry collapses, what the government will tell their unemployed young men to do.  A social, political and ecological disaster in the making, I’d say.  When the young men of Riga rioted after the economic downturn in 2008, this was the response of the government.  Clear cut Latvia.  Can’t even blame capitalism.  It’s state socialism that is doing the job, ably assisted by the English demand for board feet.

I think of the Ukrainians who froze to death rather than cut down the trees in the parks in Kiev during WWII and I wonder what the hell happened to the Latvians.  Shame.

Deftly borrowing a suggestion from Lady Miss B

Katie force fed me internet puppies until I gave up.  I declare myself, if not sane, then at least not at imminent risk of sucking on the wrong end of a nitrogen hose, slurping back a castor bean smoothie or committing abutment graffitti with my vehicle, my current top three most favoured methods of self slaughter.

Then the minister showed up and said she’d stab me in the eye if I didn’t cheer up.  No, of course she didn’t do that.  I thought of that afterwards. She showed up with hugs, a piece of church birthday cake and the Beacon blankie. Sitting in a quilt that is specifically for Beacon members who are feeling porely is actually quite therapeutic.

Paul has arrived, having traversed the thickets and brambles of me being just completely fucking crazy over the last three days, bearing a standing rib roast, which you’ll have to admit is a very nice way to get me apologize for being irrational.

I’m just going to keep taking painkillers and apologizing, I guess.  It will be my new hobby, popping methocarbamol, averting my gaze and apologizing.

When I phoned my mother to tell her not to quit worrying because that really WOULD be insane, she said many encouraging words and some actively evil ones.   And that is why she is my mother.  Jeff said, “Are you telling me I don’t have to move?” and started giggling.  I was giggling too.  So surreal.  Long car drives suit me, even if they make me hurt. Then he gave me advice on how to fix what was fucked up with the tv.  Then I dug my dad in the ribs about his suggestion to volunteer at a soup kitchen.  That candidly got my poor tethered goat, seeing pOp has always considered volunteering for suckers (this a guy who volunteered for the Air Force and served during the Bay of Pigs) and so I had to take the suggestion as pOp considering me a sucker…. but it was kindly meant.  Overbooked already pOp, and I simply am too much like Sheldon Cooper to do well with really disenfranchised people.  Something about not really having a clue about my own privilege.  As for his further suggestion to get a dog, I already have one insanely demanding creature, I don’t need two, although having a reason to go for a walk is good.  I will use their largesse to buy myself some mental health, in those expensive installments that are only partly paid for by the plan at work.

More goodbyes

Driving around Vancouver in the rain in February – how evocative! How jam packed with pathetic fallacy, derp. I said goodbye to Wreck Beach and the Museum of Anthropology; goodbye to the Botanical Gardens and the Nitobe Gardens. I drove by friends’ houses and dropped off stuff I’ve borrowed; said bye to John’s Jukes and Big Purple and various eating establishments and drinking holes. I said goodbye to the Cambie Bridge and then drove across the Burrard Bridge to say goodbye to it too.

The friend who got me to see the psychologist two Mondays hence called. He tells me I’m not seeing straight, but I remember what somebody said. When you’re smart, it’s easier to see the future, and if it looks like this. Except not so funny.

Daughter Katie will turn up shortly and we’ll eat junk food and kvetch about things.

I lied

I am actively suicidal.  I have all the motive in the world but since I don’t really want to drive Ziva into a bridge abutment, (I was hoping to give her in one piece to Keith) I have to wait until I get the ‘exit bag’ and the nitrogen tank.  I have an appointment with some highly recommended psychologist, but I’ve had shitty, shitty luck getting anybody IRL to provide anything like service.  My ex’s girlfriend managed to get HER psychiatrist to give me a diagnosis – without seeing me, even ! what wondrous psychiatrists they have in the US! – and my ex’s counsellor indicated (without having a therapeutic relationship with me and on the basis of seeing me once) that he figured I was nutty. Anybody who actually sees me comes to the conclusion that I am drearily sane.   Does anybody besides me believe you can be drearily sane AND suicidal?

I am in constant pain, both physical and emotional.  I have nothing to live for, nothing to look forward to, my fear of death has evaporated and work is the worst of it but of course if I want to keep my job for these last few measly weeks until my package arrives I have to stay quiet about it.  My cat will be looked after no matter what I do, and my kids have another parent.   As Robert Ingersoll once remarked, at its worst death can be nothing more than perfect rest.  Ah, perfect rest.  Sounds like a plan.

I’ve been telling people at work that I’m suicidal AND THEY ARE LAUGHING AT ME.  Maybe they won’t find it funny if I choose to depart this life in the parking garage.

Fuck all y’all.  I am out of here; I’m going home to break the news to the kids and Jeff.

The Griffon song is coming along nicely

It’s a backstory song.  Griffons go back to pre-Hellenic times, but where did they come from?  Well, since it’s a lion on the ass end and an eagle on the front end (with tufty lion ears) , but has four feet (claws front, paws back) obviously there’s some seeeerious miscegenation goin’ on.  A lion and an eagle did the wild thang, but why?  How?  and what happened to the baby?  And what did the parents say?  (Hint.  Lions okay with it “My family can never be too big!”  “Huh, never figured I’d have flying grandbabies!  Kewl!”  Eagles, not so much, which considering teen pregnancy eagle mom popped one bigass egg, is no surprise.  “It looks like prey.  Gonna eat it.”  “Throw it out of the nest and let the carrion crows have it!”  “Mom! Dad!  As soon as she’s fledged the lions will take her in, so just leave her alone!”) 

Also, and I have no idea WHY, but I’m working on yet another tune about Lady Godiva.