Month: November 2012

Canvass is done – thankfully

Sue and I can now quit worrying about that and start worrying about other things.  The church community pulled through and all beings may experience happiness.  I still have to survive the budget meeting, but that will be okay.

Yesterday I realized I have been going about this time off thing all wrong.  I wrote out Beacon Birthday (substantially complete, no lyrics).  I went to the spa and got a lemongrass scrub and hot stone massage, which I needed like you would NOT believe.  I went to Sue’s to do church business.  I did a small shop, which Jeff is going to get the benefit of today as I have a nice brekky planned for him.  I did not go singing, but I did record SIX SEPARATE SONGS by singing into my phone.  I’ve had songs in my head for days, and I composed and recorded, on the spot, six songs.  I don’t even know if they were the songs that have been kicking around my head.  But I certainly seem to have no shortage.

Being off work has made it possible.

Margot came and snuggled with me again.  She likes my bed better now that I’ve gone back to using the duvet cover.

And I quit worrying.  Life is short, and the part of life where I’m mobile and get to enjoy myself is vanishing before my eyes.

I also figured out what I am giving for Christmas.  It is good. I think my friends will like it.

Lois!!!!!

We had a superlative meal at Chong Lum Hin last night – blowout amounts of food for seven people and six  beers came to $115.

And of course Lois was there so we had a lovely schmooze.  Kyle, Keith, Kate and Carly joined me Paul and Lois.  Jeff was asleep.  I think he would have enjoyed it.  There was an extremely funny piece of byplay.  The more I hang out with Kyle the better I like him.  He simply doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, and that, my friends, makes a lovely change.

Church was awesome, although (speaking as a semi-pro) Donatella should have pitched her voice lower and slowed down.  She wasn’t being kind to the deaf people in the congregation.  And Lois came so I got to sit around and drink coffee with her afterwards.  Paul took Carol home, blessings on his shiny silver head.  Rob came up to me and scritched me behind my cat ears (I was wearing the anime hat Keith gave me.)

Today I’m off to Sue’s place for ‘the adventures of further churchy business’ and tonight I’m thinking about finding an open stage and singing.

The Beacon Birthday song (or some end of it…) is substantially complete and I am transcribing it.  There’s a bridgy part that I’m not too clear on as far as the melody.  Three other songs are nipping at me to be written down, but I’ve learned to wait until the tunes are fixed to do that.

Time to pop the last of the cookie dough into the oven so Jeff and I can SCHNACK!  MWAH!

And don’t think I’m not angry about what’s happening in the world.  I am.   But I am also loving what is, including this foul and windy weather.

Food glorious food

Jeff took me out for a simply stellar meal last night.  We were able to park really close to the restaurant and it’s a good thing, cause I waddled out of there.

Leonid showers are happening right now, but we can’t see them.

Margot came in and snuggled with me this morning… then I realized her food dish was empty.

 

Look at these sloths

Look at them!

So I am 54 years old today.  I’ve already been up for two hours; I made turkey swossage and eggs and toast and coffee and chocolate chip cookies for brekkie.

Today I will practice musical instruments, clean things and go out and eat in a restaurant.  Also watch some TV.

Tammy’s dad has been sent home from the hospital with terminal cancer.  I am very anxious for Tammy’s mother, who has had a horrible time (there have been other family meshugas which I dasn’t speak of), and anxious obviously for Tammy, because her life was already up around the load line before her dad got sick.

Spent the day with Katie yesterday.  She took home $400 of supplies from Costco yesterday.  Now she owes me money, which I don’t imagine I’ll ever see, but given that I’ve gone over to her place half a dozen times now and there hasn’t been anything but mustard, pickles and mayo in the fridge, making sure they had a decent supply of sugar and rice and burritos seemed like a good thing.  Boyfriend is working and Katie is still enjoying living with him, partly because there aren’t any banned subjects of conversation.  I like him because Katie is either the world’s bestest faker or she’s genuinely happy… except for work.  Working with older people means they die, a lot, and Katie’s getting burnt out on that.

Speaking of old, did I mention my decrepitude?  Fifty-four.  I can hear my parents making sepulchral groans about how that’s nothing.

Talked to Carrie on the phone the other day.  There have been so many earthquakes in Masset that she’s freaking out and wanting to get the hell off the island.  Haida Gwaii is great until you realize you live 35 feet above sea level in a tsunami zone.  She was also VERY VERY unimpressed at how white people in trucks drove past little old Haida ladies on scooters when the Tsunami warning went off.  Yuppers, if you want to see the best and worst of people, hang out in a war/disaster zone.

Everybody have a lovely day!!!

Brendan Nagle sez

And I quote (from fb this am).

Five-hundred more layoffs at Quebecorpse. At what point will a commentator inside the accredited news-media tent call themselves out for the empty shell in which they now toil? Thousands of news-gatherers/fact-verifiers have been flushed from accredited news-media outlets (print and broadcast) across the “free” world, yet those few left inside try to uphold the notion of business as usual. It’s not. It’s brutal. The stuff is either stale or woefully void of information relevant to the man/woman on the street. The people at the helm are scared sh*tless and do all they can to homogenize their stuff so as not to p*ss off what few ad buyers are left. When those main ad buyers are various levels of government and their private-enterprise partners — you get the idea. And now spin tanks like the Fraser Institute are spamming overwrought editors with free sh*t that isn’t journalism as much as it is spin, but is residing in the page placements where journalism belongs. That and social media, with its unverified “facts” and photoshopped pictures to buttress whatever cause, are now considered news. Un. Fkn. Believable. Stay low and keep moving.
(he works in the media biz).

oy – the crazy, it burns

Re a livejournal ‘friend’.

 

WTF?  Okay, so you’ve banned me from commenting, but why?  Either it’s because one of your friends breaks out in pustules at the very mention of my name, or because I said something to offend you personally… and of course I’m being given no opportunity to improve my behaviour.  I can’t help your friend, if that’s what the trigger was; she was craycray outta the gate.  Okay, crazy in this case is a slur…. how about absurdly sensitive, entitled, and broke my brain the day she told me that she’d ‘talked to her psychiatrist and HE diagnosed you as BPD’. Without ever seeing me.  Ya know I’m not driving to Seattle to see a psychiatrist that diagnoses people he hasn’t seen and discusses the results with other patients! woo hoo.

 

I’ve been all kinds of crazy, but I don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for BPD. Seasonal affective disorder, sure; OCD, very likely; ADD, probably; full on depression with suicidal ideation, been there, dun that, got NO urge to get back on that train and likely won’t; migraines (which affect mood), check; rather more narcissism that makes me comfy when I get back into a mode where I can examine it, sure, but hey, I’ve written 250 melodies and you haven’t –  so I get to be ‘all that’ in those things I’ve accomplished.  But all of this is manageable, especially with the form of cognitive behavioural therapy I prefer, the friends I have, the brother I live with and my worldview, which is, depending on the day,

It isn’t about me, unless it’s happening INSIDE ME.

The universe is neutral, people are not.

This too shall pass.

My mother loves me, and she would if I was an axe murderer.  Fortunately she didn’t raise me to be an axe murderer, so she doesn’t have to visit me in jail.

I am a worthwhile person, whose behaviour is sometimes thoughtless and shabby.

Life is a curved line.

You start helpless and peeing yourself and people take care of you.  You end helpless and peeing yourself and people take care of you. If you’re really lucky, you achieve bladder control somewhere in the middle and look after people who are helpless.

Virtually nothing that happens to you happens because you deserved it.  We’re all accidents, we all came to being on a razor edge of improbabilities. Honour the complexity, the scale and heft of your life – in spite of your accidental arrival.

 

Marijwhatnow?

The Seattle PD responds to marijuana legalization. pOp you MUST read this, it is the single funniest statement to the public evar by any PD.  The tone, the tone.

A friend who’s otherwise entirely left wing doesn’t support legal marijuana on facebook.  I disagreed with him, but not by taking issue with one substance.

My response:

 

Legalize everything.

The problem with marijuana legalization is that the state removes a tariff (essentially) and the profit from a wildly lucrative trade.  It is lucrative for those who build prisons and put disproportionate numbers of POC in them, lucrative for bad people with automatic weapons, and lucrative for state sponsored terrorists from foreign climes.

When you pull insane amounts of profit from the hands of bad (mostly) men, their response is not to roll over and play dead, it’s to find something else to profit from.  In this case it would be refined opiates and meth that they would now be trying to extract value from. Or they’ll push human trafficking instead, since the demand by men for teenaged girls seems to be entirely limitless.   I will be fascinated to see if the rates of meth use and reported human trafficking bump up, along with intergang carnage, in the places marijuana has been legalized.  It may be the revenge of unintended consequences all over again.

The Portuguese model of across the board treatment of drugs as a HEALTH issue has been running for 10 years and their HIV rates have plummeted, their societal costs for drug use are minimal, they’ve unclogged the courts and drug use across the board has been reduced especially in young people, and what sane human being doesn’t want to see drug use rates in teenagers fall.  I would be willing to hazard a guess that human trafficking is worse though, although I have no proof of that.

(That’s what I put on facebook – I could have said MUCH MORE).

Various

First, this incredibly cute crosspost from reddit.

Second, church was awesome…. John Hagen played trumpet for Danny Boy and Last Post, and we sang This is My Song as the final hymn and oh yeah the sermon was good.

Third, Keith is over watching Brave with his uncle.

Fourth, I made rotelle and beef and tomato sauce  for supper.  Why, I even ground up parmesan.

Fifth, the pledging for next year is still coming in and I’m starting the breathing thing again.  All will be well.

 

Visited the vampires today en famille

Paul, Katie and I went to give blood today, and then Paul stood us to supper at Gino’s.  The lamb was so succulent it and I am not lying brought tears to my eyes.  Then I thought about my blood pressure today (highest so far to my recollection) and I knew that I would have to abjure such injuriously greasy food.

Sigh.