Month: August 2020

the people are rioting in Minsk

because they don’t like their lying dictator. Belarus rise up! Беларусь, падняцца! Беларусь, скинь свои цепи!! As the CBC said

Belarusian opposition candidate Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya rejects official election results handing incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko a landslide win. She says that the vote was rigged and that protests will continue.

Mt. Sinabung erupted again. Ah, it’s nothing, that sucker’s gone off once a year for a decade.

Lazy Day

While Paul was here I handed him the phone and a beer. It was delightful to see how much he enjoyed talking to mOm, and mOm has long considered him a worthy in-law.

We took two turns around the 12th Ave School circuit and sat in the shade and watched a number of people not wear masks. I wore a mask anyway, the one to support the Vancouver Aquarium, which has turned into my go to mask because it fits well and is comfy.

 

I had a couple of days, most of a week, of feeling much better, but I’m feeling very jaded and unhopeful at the moment. I despise Trump and all of his minions and supporters so much, but I guess there’re historical precedents for an entire culture of people being so convinced of their superiority that a devastating war is the only way to slow them down.

Buster trained twice yesterday with vigour. Then he flops on the floor and looks cute. Yes Jeff he got his Sunday dinner.

Saved seeds yesterday. Practiced. Watched some TV but not a lot. Watered the garden. Fed a friend. Made soup. Cleaned a few things. Finally used up that cabbage head which has been unprofitably rolling around the fridge, and made fried cabbage with onions and chunks of steak. Only added half a teaspoon of salt as seasoning, but damn it was good, and that was dinner. Also phoned Mike to tell him there’s some really good soooooop waiting for him here.

Indigenous map of Burnaby AND recipe for vegan lentil soup

check it out!

and did you know there are petroglyphs in the Stô:Lō region?

Jeff’s off to Saanich. I sent him off with some Yorkshire Gold tea to share, as it really is quite nice.

Today, some recording, I hope, and a chance to see the kids.

Practiced a little and ate two bowls of the thin lentil soup I made this morning.

VEGAN LENTIL SOUP RECIPE COMMENCES

Into the pot I throw

2 cups of meticulously sorted and rinsed red lentils

10 cups of water

3 thinly sliced garlic cloves

2 heaping teaspoons of vegan bouillon (from a jar)

3 cm of ginger, sliced thin and then coarsely chopped

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon fenugreek

1 teaspoon cumin

2 cinnamon sticks

1/2 lime, meticulously rinsed and de-freezer-burned because of course you’re like me and buy those spendy suckers on sale and cut ’em in half and freeze ’em because some variant on this recipe will now go into your heavy rotation

1 whole tomato, cored

I do not know how much ground turmeric, at least a teaspoon. I shook and shook and stirred and stirred and it was finally the ‘right’ colour.

Instapot for 20 minutes

remove the tomato; remove its skin; smush and return to pot

remove the lemon; remove its rind; smush and return to pot

remove the cinnamon sticks

Stir but not like you’re getting paid to and devour. As you eat it you will get little flavour blasts of tomato and ginger and garlic and lime and the mouth feel on this one is just superb.

RECIPE ENDS

I simply must freeze some and get it over to Paul and Mike and the kids if they have any interest.

 

 

trying to stay calm, focused and hydrated

Emptied and loaded the dishwasher, finished the first part of the poem about the bird. Considered banging my head against the wall; considered what it would look like if it stayed that way. Considered Jeff considering me with my head stuck in the wall: “well never mind that get me out of here” and discarded head-banging in its less figurative form as a pastime, at least for today.

I must now attend to the horny appendages at the ends of my legs at least twice a week or they get snarled in shit and cause no end of pain. Filed down to a dull roar?  I’m good. Bending is not good. But the outcome is good, and I have a shower stool.

Oh my god, for two seconds I thought that was Jeff humming but it’s power tools or a generator or something NO IT’S THE HARDWORKING GARBAGEMEN OF BURNABY (well I’ve never seen a lady garbageperson so no I don’t feel bad using sexist language about it to draw attention to that) and now I feel like my hearing is disappearing. Well, I guess I should score my tinnitus as super high today.

There, perhaps that’s enough whining. I heard Mike’s voice yesterday, he called, and he’s having a super rough time (work, isolation, life maintenance). He wants to see me but he says that if he ever got his parents sick he’d self-ignite from guilt and I totally get it. I keep working my way up to being mad about it but it’s

I could not love thee (Dear) so much, Lov’d I not Honour more.

all the way, unfortunately in this case. Filial piety has to count for something.

sleep sleep sleep

Got some bad news the other day and I’m still processing it, mostly by sleeping. I’ll comment publicly after I get the test results, probably a week at least. Side note to mOm, who will worry— it’s not that big a deal, I’m just easily crushed these days and once again I’ll be asked to change all of my eating habits, which I am seriously disinclined to do.

Can’t I just quietly die ? <—– what a wuss. And no, that’s just me being drama llama’s fave hanger-on.

 

Also, the fact that I’m getting this news a couple of months after I think I had COVID is really, really pissing me off. There are so many things we don’t know, but I won’t be a bit surprised if I’m not the only person this happened to, although proof will take years.

Raised by narcissists

Raisedbynarcissists is a subreddit, which means you have to go to reddit. I’m not providing the link because while I visit the site regularly, I have a good reason not to push them more traffic. I consulted this subreddit a lot when I was trying to construct female characters who had zero empathy for their children. Although I don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for narcissism (sorry, you want to get some on me, you’ll have find cause) I relived some moments from my childrearing days rather intensely and certain events resonate differently in recollection.

If you’ve always had a good relationship with your family, except the occasional tiresome display of illness or nerves or ‘the cranky’ then I recommend you just grab a couple of posts and start reading. Maybe you don’t care to know how bad other people have it. For me, it was revelatory, and it has since helped me understand how my children can have such deeply canyonated views on me, and how keeping families together falls on everybody in a functioning family and on people pleasers in one that is… not. Not functioning. Anyway, I recommend it, if you have a nice family it will TOTALLY REMIND YOU WHY AND if you have a terrible family you’ll get sympathy and good advice.

Just for fun – I shall take a few questions

Image

  1. Transylvania – I think – I didn’t finish it. I didn’t get into video games until the visuals and music were better.
  2. Probably Alexios
  3. Don’t know
  4. Plants vs Zombies side quests
  5. Probably one of them ditzy broads in Borderlands who cain’t stop killing things or running her mouth.
  6. Probably the dragon in Dead Souls, Jesus did I get bored with watching brO fight it.
  7. brO and his favourite weapon in an FPS
  8. Skyrim, I ain’t even played or watched it and I know parts off by heart although that’s all Mike’s fault
  9. shrug, no notion

Ooh, now I’m thinking about a drinking game for Time Team.

  1. Drink at least a sip of alcohol when they do.
  2. Do a shot when Phil says ‘Ooh Ah’ or ‘Oh Ah’ or says ‘crucial’, ‘stone the crows’ or ‘crikey’.
  3. Do a shot when Tony flaps his arms while running.
  4. Take a sip when a woman archaeologist wears whatever the hell she wants without worrying about the camera.
  5. Take a shot every time you see the Mick doll.
  6. Take a sip when Carenza says ‘there’
  7. Take a sip when someone asks to come down in the trench.
  8. Take a shot when they go up in the helicopter.
  9. Take a shot when the re-enactors show up.
  10. Take a shot every time you see a dog or a cat.
  11. Take a sip when Tony makes a snide remark indicating that he thinks rich people are a bit much.
  12. Take a shot when one of Victor’s pictures is given to the village or the homeowner in the end.
  13. Take a shot every time Robin reads something in Latin.
  14. Take a shot every time they need dendrochronology.
  15. Take a shot if they gather the whole village together at the end.
  16. Take two shots every time the geophys is spectacularly wrong and it turns out to be geology.
  17. Take a shot when it rains.
  18. Take a shot the first time the archeologists go into someplace underground
  19. Take a shot every time you realize that the English really dig the whole colonizing and being colonized thing.
  20. Take a shot every time dowsing works.

now:

Call an ambulance and go to hospital. You have alcohol poisoning.

BRIEF wildlife encounter

If I remember to get a camera, I’m not in the moment, so this is unrecorded in video.

Small brown bird, dapper despite being distressed, greets me by flying through my hair as I go into the media room. I set everything down (I was carrying NOT ONE BUT TWO ARRAYS OF HOT LIQUID GAWDAM AND IT WASN’T EVEN FIVE AM AND I’D ALREADY ALMOST WIPED OUT IN THE BATHROOM) after congratulating myself at not tossing the entire array at the ceiling with an unhinged scream, and considered my options.

While the bird flew pretty much nonstop across the room, NEVER CHEEPING or making any sound not associated with flying, I turned the light behind the TV off and the room light on. That accomplished, I turned on the light into the games room and turned the room light off. The bird obligingly flew into the lit room, whereupon I closed the door, which was the first point at which I could be guaranteed that the bird would not fly up the stairs, into Jeff’s room, and shit on his head as a conversation starter.

And then THE JAPANESE NOREN that has scowled across our living space from various doorways ever since mOm gave it to John in the mists of time BALKED THE CRITTER. It couldn’t fly under it and instead it perched on it – repeatedly, glaring at me.

Talking and moving slowly and carefully, I remonstrated with the bird. “Sister – the door is that way!”

I opened the back door and folded back the noren so the bird could get through the second-last door, and then, scant inches from the open door, the bird communed with my laundry and went all Disney like it didn’t want to leave.

“You may not nest in my underwear, there is a cat in this house, which you already know, dumdum.”

I advanced on the bird and it flew off into the morning twilight. I closed the door and thought, “I didn’t take pictures. I didn’t try to catch it. I just tried to find the fastest way to get our unintended guest out of the house.”

Now I have told you what happened. I supposed one morning I’ll come downstairs and there’s a raccoon going through the trash and then you’ll really hear me screech.

set list

40 Million Light Years

1 Meat Ball

I Pop Pills

Alexios the Murder Hobo

Co Pilot’s Lament

Paradise (John Prine)

Apprentice

2&20 Blues

 

Grandson Greg was at Tom and Peggy’s, he seemed to be in excellent mood. We sang and played in both yards, following the shade, and it was lovely to be fed veggies and rice and butter chicken while admiring the two weeks of work Dan T. put into their back yard. Those fucking bricks weight 80 pounds kids and there’s a lot of them.

Mostly we talked. We sat on chairs six feet apart and talked. We felt like adults. It was really nice.