Month: June 2015

Went for a walk

Paul called very late in the day, probably around 8, and we went for a walk down at the Quay and saw adult and juvenile bald eagles and harbour seals waiting for a salmon snack because they are having a tiny little run in the mighty Fraser.

Then I picked up some Blue Buck and we consumed a beer apiece on the back deck – it was deliciously cool after a stinking hot day – and while we were sitting there (Paul was planning his next trip to ON which we hope will include Chipper’s campground) a greater brown bat flew over our heads but under the clothesline.  I actually heard the whoosh of its wings as it flew by.  A great end to the day.

I wrote 697 words yesterday, they’ve all gone off to mOm.

Wreck

Mike brought the UV shelter, without which I would have fried to a crisp.  I had a presentiment not to take Otto, so I didn’t.

It was a lovely day, trickily overcast, but lovely.

After the rather exhausting trip up the stairs Mike turned the aircon on in the car and what a relief that was.  It was even hotter on the beach day before yesterday; I can’t imagine Katie hauling Alex in the frame backpack up those stairs, cazart, but she did.  I haven’t even got out of bed yet so I don’t know how bad it is… my back, strangely, doesn’t hurt.  Anyway I didn’t skip leg day yesterday.

Also 300 words before I left.

Rozo has a gorgeous apartment across the street from Pacific Spirit Park.

David H at church passed away on Thursday and the announcement came yesterday afternoon while I was on the beach.  He was an intelligent, kind, highly musical, funny-dry-droll, heart centered man, and my heart aches for his lovely family.  Normally you don’t die of prostate cancer, and it’s just so damned sad.  He had a gift for congregational accompaniment that I likely won’t hear in this life again.

 

Good day

Apart from a bunch of stuff healthwise that I’m not going to talk about because EW GROSS, yesterday was awesome.  I wrote 1200 words, watched a bunch of world class soccer, drank beer and stayed the hell out of the sun.

Today Jeff and I are going to do a schlep, and then I’m going to lie around waiting for Mike to take me to the beach so I can at least get in one Wreck Day this year.  Alex had HIS first Wreck Day yesterday and Katie nearly spavined herself on the stairs but he loved it and no sun burn.  Yay. Hope it’s kiteable, Mike always likes that.

Still no word on when C. (Mike’s buddy) can come home from the US.  She already had a work visa here, Las Migras in this country are underfunded fools.  A buddy has been waiting 3 years to bring his wife from the Phillippines!  Cazart.

The court decisions in the States are blowing up my social media feeds. More work remains.  I’m not going to colourize my facebook picture; I’ve got all the goddamned ribbons, medals, encomia and thank you letters I want from the work I have done for equality and if people don’t know where I stand they don’t care enough to pay attention.  Also, I’m not an American and we’ve been able to marry like that for a decade now.

One of Joni Mitchell’s former squeezes has let slip that the aneurysm has blown out her ability to talk.  I figure if she recovers enough to hold a paint brush she’ll be fine.  She’ll certainly be getting the best care.

Back to making lists and getting dressed.  I am going to have another good day, I can feel it.  Tomorrow, when I’m sore from the stairs, that’s something else.

Moar writing

Eight hundred words yesterday, eight hundred the day before.  Yes I am back which is good.

Didn’t get to see Katie and Alex.  Got the whim whams walking to the bus.  Waited for the bus about ten minutes, almost threw up, so dizzy that I was scared to be out in public, and then back home.  Spent a while in bed and finally felt better around five pm.  I seem to be okay now after a night’s sleep.  I believe it was a migraine – I had migraine signs in the morning – but I’m going to call it an attack of the marthambles and leave it at that.

 

Finally

Six hundred forty-five words yesterday, all praise to moving around and trying to write in a different location.

Sad news, Joe W’s dad died this week.  He was a frequent guest at parties at the old place and part of the Trent/Joe/Mike gang.  It’s very sad and Mike will get me funeral details.

Also, the son of a friend who was in rehab checked himself out by destroying property and making threats, and I feel so sad and sick about it that I’m almost on the ground.  But we must rise, and rise and rise again.

Swimming with Baby Alex tomorrow, plus mamma.  Today I’m thinking about a trip to the New West Farmer’s Market this afternoon.

I made tomatoes and scrambled eggs and toast this morning for brekky.

Now to find something to either write or edit.

Up since midnight

A coyote and a raccoon got into a death match in the alley and woke me up and now I can’t sleep.  Work on the novel having slowed down considerably, I am editing the 50K words or so in a book that I can epublish right away, the book of Homilies.

I can’t find a complete Garbage Day homily oh yeah I have to transcribe it as it’s only in mp3 format.

baby Alex

Oh, he was in SUCH a good mood yesterday, clambering up on me, playing with purse contents, cuddling and smiling his dear little face off.  Katie and I were feeling super low energy and even so she made me a home made beef and cheese burrito that was extremely nommy. We also watched some Dexter.

We hung out, she gave me prints of baby pix that she took to be developed, digital not making for good brag books, and I took slow motion video of him in his bouncy chair.  V. funny.  mOm you should have received a file to that effect.

Did a bit of shopping for veg and what not on the way home.

Watched Brink.  VERY GOOD.  Perfectly cast, with one liners that will make you spittake that smoothie and an extremely timely plot.  And likeable characters.  I know True Detective doesn’t specialize in likeable characters, but we’re kinda meh to iffy on continuing, although we probably will out of curiosity if nothing else.

I wrote maybe 100 words yesterday.  I fired off the edited back end of the first novel to Tammy – she will likely read it after she gets back from Portugal.

Huge coronal mass ejection yesterday and today. I should have checked for aurorae, but I wuz sawing logs.

I hope you all do something creative today.  I need to break something, and I think it’s a habit.

Our habit of exploration makes me happy.

The Girl Who Named Pluto.

 

Justice is what love looks like in public

Here’s another take on the Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Three hundred words yesterday.  I really kinda did take the weekend off.

Yesterday I went to Mike’s AGAIN for lunch and he fed me andouille sausage with red pepper and asiago and the salads we had yesterday.  Then we exchanged body work (for me my back, for him some muscles I can’t pronounce because his martial arts training as a 20something included snap kicks which literally pulled the femoral head out of its normal spot and he’s got pretty much permanent pain 20 years on, plus he had a family meal Saturday and it was a cascade of underslept monkey vs. weasel family meshuggas). Then we napped.  Like adults do when they are two beers drunk, well fed and laying about in the sun. Mike hadn’t slept for an atrocious length of time and he was much refreshed.  Then I got up and rode my bike home (it was around 7 pm) and it was deliciously cool since it was mostly downhill, and then I asked Jeff if he wanted to go to Sunset Beach with us (he was too sleepy) and I grabbed Otto and Mike grabbed his parlour guitar and we traded instrumental and lyrical songs and addressed the bay while the sun went down, and the light made rippling rows of Loch Nessie clones roll up and down the bay. We toasted each other in beer in plastic cups. I thought of John, and how proud of me he would have been for all the song writing I’ve been doing, and how he would have laughed his ass off at the books I’m writing, and mocked me roundly for my many errors and just how jeezly much I miss him.  I will never hear him wheedle me again “Dear sweet, kindly, agreeable sister in common law…” when he wanted a haircut or some assistance wrangling his succession of massive and inconvenient cats.  Then mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds silently arose from the ground and swarmed me and we fled to the exceedingly conveniently parked car, because Mike’s parking-fu is of a calibre to excite the comparison “Magical”.

For a while our only audience was a Canada goose, who booked it when a dog named Jack got too close to him, and a pair of mallards, who sat right at our feet.  I knew they were hoping for schnacks but still it made me feel good, as did watching a pair of herons fly over 4th Avenue. Then other people sat down without crowding us so we had company.   This is the weird bunch of signs from behind where we were sitting.

IMAG0968_BURST002

Going there we went through Richmond, and we didn’t hit a light until we were were on Granville. Going back we went through town and we counted the number of pot dispensaries on either side of Kingsway after Main before Boundary and there were four on his side and three on my side and one hydroponics shop.

Then he took me to Phó Boi and I had a small number 3 and ate ALL of it. An insanely attractive interracial couple was having their first date at the table next to us and Mike and I tried to drown their inanities out with soup slurping, but there’s only so much you can do with the audio when the man next to you is mansplaining how he doesn’t know how to order phó.

Mike was shaking his head as we left.  “Phó for a first date is a terrible idea.”

In the morning yesterday I was in church, Sue came and got me, and John H. was there, first time he’s come since Anita died, and we many of us wept to hear him mourn her, and Debra, who has her earned her bread with us with great skill, asked us to be silent for a while after he spoke.  We gave a cheque for $2700 to a local charity which helps homeless people and I took what were probably not very good pictures of the handoff.  We mourned the deaths in Charleston, and thanked all our volunteers, and broke for the summer recess.

It was a good day.  Today I have no plans but to write.

 

Shut up and witness

I have filked a Mary Chapin Carpenter tune

 

Don’t mean to say that I am an ally, don’t mean to get ahead of where we are
Don’t mean to act a little racist around you, I’m just a little racist in my heart ’cause
It’s been awhile since I felt this feeling that everything in the news gives me
It’s been so long since somebody whispered
Shut up and witness

Didn’t expect to be in this position, didn’t expect to have to rise above
My reputation as a social critic, I’ve been a lazy lady about one love but
Oh the horror and the feelings that the  latest shooting  gives me
It’s been too long since yelled in my good ear
Shut up and witness

The salmon of wisdom

Mike fed me lunch and then we lazed on his balcony until he had to go off to his parents for supper.  It was salmon with fresh dill and garlic, store bought tater salad and a salad of my own concoction, being tomatoes, cucumber, cilantro, feta, green onions and tiny amounts of lemon juice and olive oil.  REALLY GOOD.  I had seconds and thirds of salmon, and spent the afternoon in a state of pleasant repletion, to quote James H. Schmitz.

Today is the last day of church before the summer break.  I won’t be going to the father’s day picnic afterward.  I may go to Wreck – it’s supposed to be another awesome day and I think my symphisis problem has died down to the point I can at least think about it.  Wreck on Solstice / National Aboriginal / Father’s Day is purty awesome.

Forty (ha) words yesterday.  I got a break from the screen, and that was good.

Hey they are potboilers

Why am I so worried?

Yesterday was a day I saw all of my descendents, and how lucky I am to have any at all. Katie is recovering nicely from her trip and Alex was a little trouper (who practically turned himself inside out with smiles when he saw his papa upon his return.)

Alex prefers women, apparently.  He liked Phyllis.  Paul apparently spent a lot of time trying to get his mother to walk.  I can see Keith doing the same thing to me if I’m spared.

Two hundred words yesterday.  I do like Pharos and George.

I’m going to call it.  There is another American Civil War.  Unlike the previous one, it is undeclared… in keeping with current US policy.

 

Moar editing

I’m going to do another pass before I print it out.  It’s a chunk of a tree, after all.

I light a candle for the dead of Charleston, and pray that the Confederate Flag (actually the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, but whatevs you racist fwads) will never fly above a state capital ever again.

Southern historian Gordon Rhea further wrote in 2011 that:

It is no accident that Confederate symbols have been the mainstay of white supremacist organizations, from the Ku Klux Klan to the skinheads. They did not appropriate the Confederate battle flag simply because it was pretty. They picked it because it was the flag of a nation dedicated to their ideals: ‘that the negro is not equal to the white man‘. The Confederate flag, we are told, represents heritage, not hate. But why should we celebrate a heritage grounded in hate, a heritage whose self-avowed reason for existence was the exploitation and debasement of a sizeable segment of its population?

 

347 words yesterday

I finally got the urge to finish the edits and I will be printing and mailing the second half of the manuscript for UPSUN to Diane this week.

Katie and Alex are back in town, safe home after an exhausting but excellent trip. I am supposed to see them tomorrow and get hairs cut.

I helped my friend Sue with voice work auditions yesterday.  To be of loving service to a friend seeking her creative expression is one of the highest privileges of friendship, also it’s Sue so it was fun.  She definitely brings the fun….

Day drinking yesterday!  It improved my mood treeeemendously, thank you Jeff, and god, did I ever walk a lot yesterday – at least 4 k.  (Once to buy cream, once to mail a letter to those fuckwits at the literary agency, once to the pub, and now BLISTERS.) My groinal issue is no worse today than it was before I walked so maybe the exercises are really helping.

When Paul showed up wanting to walk again supperish I said I’d prefer to keep drinking and so he made me his version of a Michelada and it was very very tasty, and then I gave him the last of the spaghetti with meat sauce I made last week and Keith TEXTED me last night to tell me it was yummy, and that’s great because it was a big batch and I was tired of it and afraid it would go bad.

I played Otto on the back deck in the fading daylight.

Then Paul asked me to play this song on my laptop.  About halfway through the song I was weeping (I was listening to the music and never watched the video because there was too much light on on the screen), and I turned to him and said, are you crying, and he said yes.  And we sat there and cried, because even though the words are not about my feelings, I felt the song as a great elegy to all the beautiful things that have died out of my life and the creativity humans bring to keeping the beautiful memories of people and events and the big grand sweep of life where they can see them.  I’m not expecting anybody else to react as we did, but every once in a while Paul and I completely sync up on something, and neither of us can predict or prevent it.  I honour what is and I’m glad it is.

Colin’s dad died yesterday. I light a candle for his journey. Colin is already in Abbotsford and Catherine will be flying out but I imagine she will be too busy and grieving to stop by.

Be kind, my darlings.  Life is frequently short and infrequently sweet.

the nullity, the lack, the absence

So, not a word yesterday.  I won’t repine, I’ll try again today.

Went for a walk at 5 am (wut no cream for coffee??? this is an outrage…)

Feel like doing the Michigan Rag?  I thought you might.

More jazz from a rather unexpected direction.  Thank you Lemming!

Waiting for my peeps to come home (sad face) – no word on when Mike and Paul and Katie and Alex are coming home yet, or maybe they’re home and haven’t called me, which will make me more than sad face.