Hope it’s not too hot today

The poor ac is working pretty hard these days.

Jeff’s indicated a desire to eat less red meat so I’m putting meal plans together. First step, get some veggie burgers into the house; they fix up instantly and go with just about everything.  Second step, wraps, soft tacos and whole wheat muffins plus the innards for same.  I’m looking up recipes!  Crockpot scalloped potatoes yay.  So, breakfast – lunch – dinner as below.

french toast home made soup & toast Crockpot stew
oatmeal taco salad veggie burgers
mexican brekky bowl eggy potato salad leftovers
poached eggs on toast chicken strips & taters onions veggie split pea soup
whole wheat pancakes with choc chips fish and green salad pork chomps & veg
baconandegger veggie burgers veggie tacos
breakfast wrap chicken stir fry with rice tuna salad bowl
dirty rice rotisserie chkn

 

Jeff bends somewhat better than I do and volunteered to clean out the disaster left by an exploding (and festering) large can of peaches in the pantry, so that’s what he’s doing right now.  Yay.

Now to wait for stuff to dry so I can put it all back.

Alex the wondergrand

I got to see Alex yesterday at his momma’s house (Katie is doing very well) and he smiled his face off to see me. Then I gave him my three pound barbell (after all, it SAYS Alex on the side) and he started lifting, bro, which was hilarious, (good form too, even funnier) and then he rolled it all over the floor and then he started dropping the sumbitch, more than once, and this look came over his face – every parent knows it – and after some kind and pleasant voiced persuasion (his mother doesn’t yell at him unless it’s life or death and Alex is more compliant than any child his age I’ve known, as he really really wants to keep his mother happy) Alex went back to rolling it across the floor.  He has learned to say ‘antenna’ which is very sweet.

He has crossed some kind of developmental barrier which allows him to consider things rather than assuming that it’s bad and he should proceed immediately to a-wailin’ and a-grizzlin’.  He didn’t even come close to even thinking about crying the entire time I was there.  The last month has also been amazing in terms of language development. It’s very clear that he understands virtually everything that’s said to him and his speech is becoming clear enough to understand.  I was out of the room and he was toddler-arguing with his mother so I called are you grumpy Alex? and he said, just like a teenager would, No!

No sign of being interested in toilet training.  For this summer camping trips were invented.

He played for a very long time with my Cat Alone app. BUG! BUDAFY!

“DO YOU WANT THE FINGER ALEX” is actually a question appropriate to the game. (If he presses on the magic finger that appears it vibrates and buzzes.)

No pictures. I have memories of a sunny faced toddler running like a fool all over his apartment while issuing sticky kisses and high fives. This from last summer, Prismafied, will have to do.

a6dcd43cc4dff27b966d73367516e858resNet7_4

There were castor bean and nightshade plants on the walk back to the car.  New West, it’ll kill ya.

Ray Donovan was awesome, Dark Matter was okay I guess (fave continues to be 5, played by Jodelle Ferland), Killjoys is ramping up with great scripts and performances and then Keith and Paul came over yesterday to watch the Sugar episode of Addicted to Pleasure, and that was very nice.

Ghostbusters is still on at the International Village Cineplex. I should have gone last night but whatever.

I bought a battery backup for my phone (since you can’t actually replace the battery on a One S, god strake them in thayre tendre partes) and then, in a sudden blinding flash of You Know the MacBook is Doomed Since the Interior goes to 84 degrees C every time you run video and components will inevitably blow you fool! I purchased a replacement in the form of a MacBook Air, from London Thugs. I backed up the old one, Time machined the new one, everything took an hour and worked perfectly (except having to enter brOJeff’s ludicrously lengthy wifi password three times, o well) and now I have a computer with twice the power, half the weight, three times the storage and a much faster video processor. Everything I need to work transferred over without difficulty including Scrivener and Finale, the two really big ones for creative work. I’d like to publicly thank Jeff for providing the backup drive.  All part of adulting….

No I can’t afford it.  But I definitely can’t afford not to, so there you go.

 

Flying visit

Jeff’s out today helping a client.  I did manage to get the weedwhipping done, and now I need to push a few more things back in corners.

ea0a54e82cc49485196a40ae66dede65resNet10_ndAs you can see I’m having a lot of fun with the Prisma app on my phone.  It turns crappy photos into cool pics. In this one I look like a crone from a graphic novel which I kinda like, but also you can still see the big eyed child inside me, which I also like.

Others I’ve done…

d09b4155582be15121444ed4c955077aresNet7_4

mOm’s Penrose quilt plus paper art equals bizarre mashup.
b2a1c8384806e34519330788409575daresNet11_na

Forbidden plateau really looks forbidden

23757881f8d0246574b1715550dafdd4resNetFinal_final5

Saint Sue looks like a fierce old lady, don’t she? That was over brekky yesterday at Ricky’s.  YOM.

405617fe7b595a195b93a69a208dec6bresNetFinal_final5

Alex.

Let the saliva flow

Halibut and salmon on the barbecue which Paul *keeps in his vehicle*, shrimp with lemon garlic butter sauce, fresh corn on the cob, green beans, green salad, beer and wine for dins; Katie and darlin’ Alex, Leo and Linda, Keith and brO et moi bien sûr for company, and the weather cooperated sufficiently that we could eat al fresco.

A completely splendid meal with even better company and I now have another wonderful family memory and I’ve seen almost enough pictures of Pikku Leo and Annabelle, Leo and Linda’s totally gorgeous grandbabies. Oh yeah and their kids are good-looking too, whatever.

Rather than ask some tired questions about how was your trip I asked the specific question, “Where did you get your worst night’s sleep?” Which prompted much reminiscence and hilarity. Also, Linda’s ‘best thing about the trip’ question has a one word answer…. TUNDRA! Plus rocks.  She’s going back to get her degree!  Being retired is awesome.

Our visitors are off to Washington State today and I wish them good weather and a safe journey as they drive their way back through the US to Ottawa. Thanks for visiting!! Now I’m waiting for them to get up so’s I can make the coffee they brought, given we haven’t had any in the house for yonks….

IMAG1326

Leo and Linda and Alex.  Sorry for Potato Quality, both of these pics are from my cell phone.

 

IMAG1325

 

And here, in a picture that would make John grin, is my daughter and grandson, and he has a dandelion in each hand.

Leo and Linda are here

 

Yet another brannigan with Keith yesterday, once again via text.  I made the mistake of telling him that black people are finding his current starryeyedlove fandom ‘problematic’ around race.  His response was the kind of white hot and manly flameout one might expect.

If somebody walked up to me and said, “The treatment of race in Dorothy Dunnett’s oeuvre is problematic, especially the novels set in the modern Caribbean!” you might get a faceful of rapidly exhaled oatmeal, followed by me saying, “No shit! What it is! Gimme some skin, sister!” but I wouldn’t defend it.  I would call it a problematic fandom, and I would be able to give examples and counterexamples of how that’s so.

Keith’s basic argument was I don’t see it so it isn’t there. Plus, the tone argument.

Ow.

My many failures as a mother to provide my children with adequate tools to overcome cognitive bias are being written on the world, and there’s bupkes I can do about it.  Heaving sighs over here.

Leo and Linda treated myself and Paul (Jeff declined with thanks) to Bombay Bistro last night. It was splendid and yommy and now my paltry return to them is a pot of oatmeal currently burbling on the stove.

Paul was singing and playing with me on the back deck when they arrived, and so that was very pleasant, and we’re also rehearsing for next weekend, but with the bug situation (Keith has found another live bedbug in their apartment, so the cheap exterminator turned out to be an expensive exterminator) we don’t know if Paul is going.

Buster is teaching Miss Margot to hunt.

 

I’m going to check on the oatmeal.

 

 

 

a brief response

When you come out of the gate calling responsible use of language “ideologies of victimhood” you *know* who’s gonna love what follows.
Men, mostly.  That was my facebook experience.  I was going to respond on facebook and thought fuckit I have my OWN blog to rant on, why poop on the self-congratulatory parade of men who lined up to agree with every word? Oh, the mean things they said.
Not that any of you care, but I laughed my ass off when she said “For example, homosexuals have been hideously abused through much of history.” This is such a Canadian thing to say it’s quite amusing. You think she’s sticking up for homosexuals, but is she? Who’s she putting down in the process?
(I would argue the whole piece is full of these ideo-logic bombs but I just grabbed one.)
 
I can’t speak for anyone who’s First Nations, but it is a matter of documentation custom AND LANGUAGE you know that SOCIAL CONSTRUCT WE HUMANS USE TO THINK WITH that people who are gender non-normative have been living uncircumscribed lives here for hundreds of generations; the *assumption* of hideous abuse is a colonial use of language, all the more hilarious because McElroy identifies as an anarchist. She thinks she’s covered herself by using ‘much of history’ but no, she’s just revealing the ‘structural swiss cheese’ of her argument in her choice of words.
 
People are at different points along the justice spectrum. Yelling at them to move up doesn’t help and any sensible person with a long term view of social justice knows it. But some social justice enthusiasts are wont to yell, because they want a cookie for how hard they’ve worked on their isms and get shouty and irrational when unappreciated. I am that person.  Except when I’m not.  Wendy’s taking a normal human reaction to cognitive dissonance and trying to ‘other’, denigrate, condescend to and belittle SJWs by saying they’re mean sometimes.  Fuck yeah. Get me drunk and in the same room as Wendy McElroy and I’ll be a right arsehole, you betcha. 
But I’d rather be the arsehole defending the rights of those whom the state has deemed less worthy than white men, than the public intellectual who calls herself an anarchist and then sides with the oppressor with every sign of glee.  Jumpin’ Jimmy Christmas, woman.
 
Oddly, personal experience and testimony to those who think they aren’t privileged do work to move the needle toward justice, but they are really inefficient strategies being one on one, and they put a lot of emotional pressure and expectation on disadvantaged people. If you are immune to the effects of sexism and racism and all those isms, you’re lucky in your life, and cursed in your head, because you aren’t seeing and feeling the world of your fellow humans except in the narrowest way, and while you can’t tell, other people can, and that is among many things an annoying feature of do gooders.  Oh yes we will call you on your bullshit, yes we will.  Who’s a good reactionary? Who’s a good reactionary? You are. Yes you are. You know you are, fuzzums!  

Fairly busy weekend

Today it’ll be cleaning, then hanging with Mike, then brunch with this dude I met at Lorraine’s birthday gathering at the track (which, as I think I mentioned, was a truly awesome event). He makes brunch once a month as a fundraiser / can gatherer for the Food Bank and pics from previous events showing people from 6 months to 65 years old cheerfully consuming pamcakes in a sunny kitchen are tremendously appealing. Also it will be super easy to get to on transit, always a consideration.

There will be laundry and editing in there too someplace.

Then Monday, Leo and Linda. YAY!

Editing

Very close to being done on the Homilies book, and very grateful that I have something to get me into the editing mood before I fling myself back into Sweep Off Those Waves.

I have a tremendous desire for an old family recipe, so I think I’m going to make it today, chicken and mushrooms poached in orange juice over rice.