Month: September 2013

Friends and relatives

I AM SO LUCKY.  Won’t go into teedails, but I am fortunate to have kindly and discerning friends and relatives.

The hat I loaned to Sue won’t be required.  The writer.director of her fringe show bailed at the last moment.  That must be awful.  I told her to keep the hat until she had taken a headshot, as it is marvellous and looks so wonderful on her.

Shoulder wasn’t bad yesterday after physio but today it HURTS LIKE HELL.  Also I am feeling fluish, so I think I am bailing on church today.

Chipper asked me to drive across Canada with her… I am considering it.

what is the meaning of this candy corn on the cob?

We are already halfway through the second season of Hell on Wheels.  It’s filling up the big empty Deadwood part of my heart.  It is not as good as Deadwood, but, ah, she ain’t Rose, if you know what I mean. And Anson Mount has the most superb range of vocalizations I have ever heard out of an actor.  He can convey more with a single grunt…. or stifled laugh… or sigh of regret… it’s quite entertaining.

Today, Mt. Washmore.

 

The damnedest things

Physio was AWESOME.  No needles, this time, just manipulation and exercises.  I don’t see the bone doc until NEXT Friday, so my next physio is the Monday after that.  I am driving again; I am playing mandolin again, but only short hops for driving and only 15 minutes  for practicing.  Physio says I can add a song a day as I get stronger.  I am making 100 percent progress for some kinds of mobility, and less than is good for others… so pretty much a standard recovery for a fat middle aged woman.

I have learned to my startlement and wonder that the US’s only TDCS clinic is 20 MILES from the GAFilk hotel.  I am going to try to book an appointment, as it is one of the few treatments for mental thrumps and emotional hollow heels.  Okay, Read This Article and see why I like the idea.

I have finished Thomas King’s the Inconvenient Indian.  I have a much clearer idea of what a settlers have gotta do if they want to be allies to REAL INDIANS as opposed to Dead or Legal ones (he makes a distinction, a very interesting one, in his book). I am going to follow his lead.  Native people are Indians if you’re using the “what nation/tribe/linguistic grouping/band they are hardly matters, they all got shafted by the settlers and this is now the uneasy general term white and First Nations people use” line of reasoning.  But they are Thomas King (Cherokee) and Buffy Saint Marie (Cree) and Elijah Harper (Red Sucker Lake First Nation) and Tantoo Cardinal (Métis) if you are referring to individuals; for they belong to a lifestream that is rooted in a way of life on this land, their land, that goes back ten millennia, even if the middens and the weirs only go back five millennia.  I am a settler.  Well, I’ve hated ‘white’ as a term for light coloured people for 20 years at least now.  I want to call us the pink people, cause we are.  White is such a bullshit term.  But settler, that I can deal with.  I am three generations removed from it.  It’s part of who I am.  Even so, there’s a picture from my family history that always makes me smile when I think about it. Back in the day, there would be rodeos, and Indians would be invited, because cowboys without Indians are not very exciting. (I know, right?)  There’s a pic of my mother’s father squatting, in a line, with a bunch of other white ranchers.  Behind them, arrayed in panoply, are Indians on horseback.  Makes for a nice change, in terms of optics.  I know it made no difference in daily life.  But it happened.

 

Listing

Today I have been to the physio, replaced the batteries in the label maker, worked some more on both Midnite and Tarot, confirmed my next doc’s appointment, vacuumed and washed the kitchen floor, and beaten out and washed and dried the kitchen rugs.  This represents a rather larger commitment to physical labour than has been the case lately, so I’m preening.

Physio was awesome.  It hurts like hell but I ALWAYS have more mobility when I come out of there, so I am pleased.

I think I’ll get myself another cup of tea and do some paperwork now.

New show!  We started watching Hell on Wheels, which is starting a third season; I’m quite liking Anson Mount as the lead, and the commentaries on racism, capitalism and the role of women are very interesting.  The only thing that pisses me off are the consistent anachronistic items that pop up in dialog.  I’m having to watch that in George’s dialog – he learned English in the 70’s and so his speech should reflect that. I do like Christopher Heyerdahl as a villain though, he’s damned good at it, (he was Hollin and Todd in SGA) and it’s filmed in Alberta, which is nice, and all the people playing Indians are actually native people.

Showing of the shop yesterday will likely come to nothing, but the gent in question was a stunningly tall and gorgeous Russian man in his late twenties, with a very pleasant accent and lovely manners.  So I was not unhappy to show it.

 

 

Lists

I have started making lists again vs. the overwhelm.

Wrote some on both projects this morning.

This made me laugh very very hard.  It’s a combination of the clothing and the locomotion.

Slept at least a  couple of hours in the cpap machine last night.  I don’t remember waking up and tearing it off, but I did.

Today, more laundry.  Really what I should do is get rid, mercilessly, of every piece of clothing that is too tight or ugly or stained, but I get super attached to clothing.

I show the shop again today at noon.  Heavy sigh. At least the last time I went in I got rid of the last of the stuff that was going bad (I hadn’t been able to see it, unfortunately, and this last time I crawled around on my hands and knees until I saw it, removed it, bleaugh).  So it will smell a lot more like a restaurant thankfully.  (Added later… another person wants to see it.)

I think in about two weeks I may be able to handle a tray of cookies, so if I don’t sell it, I will be going back to work.

I forgot my physio appointment yesterday – how, I have no idea.  However I get another on Friday. I am getting stronger, but sometimes things ‘catch’ and it hurts A LOT. There’s a huge divot in my shoulder where all the muscle attachments fell away.  Or whatever, I am not one hundred percent sure about what is going on except I sheared off my greater tuberosity.  I have to check on my next doctor appointment, I sure don’t want to miss that.

I am reading Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian and it’s making me REALLY REALLY MAD about policy toward native people in Canada (and in the US, because like most First Nations people he considers the border a willful chimera, and so deals with both nations).  I mean foaming at the mouth mad.  His metaphor to deal with the constant refrain of  ‘get over it’ is miraculous, and I will be using it whenever I talk about intersectionality and civil rights in future.  He also makes mincemeat of the whole sad and tired trope I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS RACIST STUFF AND I’M NOT RACIST SO QUIT CALLING ME ONE.  It’s certainly not an academic work, but there’s plenty of followup reading.  I had NO FRICKING IDEA that there were first nations film documentarians (including a woman??!!) in the 20’s in the US, whose work of course is so far out in the margins I’ll be lucky to ever see it.  We get Nanook of the North instead.  Tanks Mr. Flaherty.

I am going to – definitely! – read more Will Rogers.

 

 

 

Yesterday….

I got up late … for me … roasted a chicken and made new potato salad.  Then I showed the shop.  Then I went to a church potluck followed by a workshop about leadership, about which I will say no more, except that it kind of brought home to me that I’ve known more about religion since my early twenties than a lot of people, the major takeaway being that the only thing all religions have in common as a precept is ‘don’t gossip’, and then I came home and watched some TV and then Katie came over and removed some more of her stuff to her place and then I went to her place and met her relationship partner SG (who does not own a vehicle or he would have dealt with it) and his two cats Ara and Stig (two mostly black females who are very entertaining and energetic).  He seems a pleasant enough individual, with a lustrous beard.  I was supposed to go to Newton Wave pool with Peggy but the prospect of meeting SG was too much to resist.

So I guess my Labour Day had, you know, labour in it, of diverse kinds.

Today will also be busy, but in different ways.

Keith and Paul dropped over and it was lovely to see them, however briefly, this morning.

Two of the people I’ve known the longest since I got here (a couple in WA state, former coworkers both) have announced wedding plans after 14 years together.  I am so happy.  I’ve been following her posts about him for years now on FB and she has said many times how amazing he is, especially since she has been quite hampered by health issues subsequent to a car accident in which she should have, by the physics, died.  And she’s had a lousy couple of years, what with her brother dying in a car accident leaving young children, and there’s been other stuff.  So I told her “I couldn’t be more pleased about this if it was happening to me!” and I meant it.

I think I need to get another foam mattress; this one is four years old and starting to feel rather lumpish and flat.

Miss Margot had an enormous eye booger the other day, and she started purring when I pulled it out.

I have ONCE AGAIN had to encourage Eddie to stop teasing the dog next door.  I politely asked him to return inside.  Otherwise he sits on the concrete pad when Creamy is on the back balcony and the poor dog barks himself to distraction.

Saw Plunkett & Macleane, and loved it.  I can understand why it got lukewarm reviews, but believe me it has improved since it was released.