poem for my mother

colour is admirable
but it is something other people do
and we live in that
all that’s mediated anyway

If I step outside the palette’s different

I’m much the same about colour
breathing
into a teal or a gold or an outbreak of red
but there’s no palette in my brain

and it’s tiresome, because it’s something women
are just supposed to do
and it’s tiresome, and feminism is tiresome
but colour

colour is interesting
when you can see it
it’s all up in your brain
because it’s certainly not ‘out there’

and once again my mother is present
her tongue out just a little bit as she licks
the last of the stamps onto
the last of the letters
to the last of the cousins
yes indeed
yeah unto the end of the established world

we didn’t get here without hard times
evolution isn’t civil
it’s just a very long pathway to a door
that leads us to the ability to think about these things
and if you haven’t

done

anything today then what use is it, what was all the point of this
eating and peeing and crawling and dying
and being remade into seafoam and jade and spiderlings

the having done something is not for history
it’s for you
simulation or inexorable rush of consumptive fire
it hardly matters
if this day wasn’t for you

and your family, of course

and of course

your family can never be big enough

all present and correct

The upsters terlet is working again with its usual gracious acceptance of the truly appalling hard pounding we give it. I mean, if you didn’t know better you’d swear we were teenaged girls we go through so much soap and toilet paper. But I guess you don’t want to hear about that, however amusing we find it.

Today is buy nothing day and I’ve managed it so far although I may not last the whole day.

54044 HOTM word count. I sent some to mOm but I haven’t heard back from her yet.

I’m feeling alone but not lonely. It’s optimal for wanting to write.

meetup tonight

Sauna last night

Mike and Jarmo got REALLY YOMMY FOOD from Mr. Ho’s (the speecy tofu was partickalarly good) and I drank beer and sauna’ed all of which were probably over the top. IT WAS SO GOOD TO SEE JARMO. We are now plotting a trek to Tofino this summer with grandson in tow.

Genre writers meetup tonight.  HOTM 53171, mostly infill on ‘First the Part’

waiting for the landlady to come and grudgingly admit that the toilet needs to be dealt with by a plumber

 

which she has.

 

Mike was here

Day before yesterday Mike came over for supper (pizza) and to watch TV (second season Jack Ryan) and it was good. Yesterday was a quiet day, apart from a trip for donuts first thing in the morning.

I’m GONNA SEE JARMO tonight, Mike and I are getting together with him and we’re a-gonna sauna!!!! The Mobiba is set up again in Mike’s apartment!!!! Not exactly as shown. (he hooks it into the 208, if anyone cares).

I am so looking forward to seeing him, he’s one of the people I miss most from my old work.

Just in case I hadn’t mentioned it I AM LOVING THE MANDALORIAN. It is what it is, uncomplicated and fun. However, Disney trying to get all the gifs of Baby Yoda off the internet BWA YA YA YA HA HA HA OUTTA BREATH HERE

52830 word count

 

I love my weighted blanket

I want to be in bed all the time.

I have dry eyes so I like to close me eyes. Also I love TV and the internet so I like to open me eyes. I open me eyes very wide and very far and very long and then they get sad and dry and I must go close ’em, or put in drops which make the corners of my eyes with the tear ducts feel like some lil fucker with a teeny weeny taser is, like, tasing the corners of my eyes with an eyelash sized taser for about two minutes until my natural secretions get the backwash out.

Reading people I’m old enough to have given birth to complain about their physical pains makes me instantly feel older than granite. Granite just in case you’re wondering is among the oldest of the kinds of rocks on earth.

laptop

my laptop’s dead (battery) and I won’t get it back until the end of next week and I hate this other laptop and it’s practically dead and runs so hot it’s like a clothes iron so I won’t be posting much

 

I’ve written about 200 words on XenoLegum, the tale of Doofus (aka Dóri) going to Iceland to become a lawyer specializing in International law (then he’ll go back to Vancouver and learn the Salish law)

sixtywonderful

52404

 

yup I’m now officially sixty-one. and to celebrate, a tweet that got retweeted (which means I’ll probably get 200k tweet impressions this month, lol) by Xeni Jardin, who’s been cancer free after a HARD FOUGHT WAR for some years now.

This was in response to people telling her that her thoughts gave her cancer.

I quote mOm at the time she was fighting hardest. We were talking about what she said to her body when asked to ‘visualize aiding her body’s fight against cancer’ which she found kind newageous.

“My body got confused about what was supposed to go where. My thoughts had nothing to do with it.” – my mOm, whose apparently infinite reserve of patience got drained by the inane shit the religious rellies would lay on her.

wrote today

Practiced up a storm. Didn’t leave the house except to take out the trash.

51981 is the current wordcount

Talked to Keith on the phone last night. Turns out he helped his friend get a job where he is. He’s got a physically demanding job and he’s tired all the time but otherwise sounds good. He was talking about missing the grands a bit and that always makes me happy, because (after the plague has lifted) I imagine that means he’s planning to go see them.

singing singing singing

I have run a load of dishes but that’s just about it for chores. Instead I have been singing and playing on all my instruments and every time I stop I start again. My fingers now officially hurt and I make pokey jabs at songwriting but nothing stuck.

 

Wasband took me to the park for a walk, and it was absolutely lovely, much warmer and less windy than it normally is at this time of year. I only wore two layers of clothing and no coat (but my hat) and that meant that I didn’t get overheated. I find that on these meds I overheat with a slower onset but a more lingering effect than I did when I was menopausal. He almost clipped a pedestrian at a crosswalk in front of the cop shop when we left. I think I upset him since I yelled at him briefly but I tend to do shit like that when I’m suddenly predicting some chick’s head’s gonna come through my side of the windshield. His reflexes are still pretty good though, he wasn’t technically into the crosswalk when he got it stopped.

I have learned things about his most recent airplane crash that make me think some people have fairy horseshoes on a charm bracelet packed in their asses.

Alone in the house

Jeff’s off in Victoria, back today, and I got to help him to computer-y stuff yesterday by pressing buttons on his keyboard under his close phone supervision so I actually managed to make myself useful.

Editing but no writing yesterday.

My phone made a little meep before it died somewhere in my room and I can’t find it. Jeff, reading this, is shaking his head.