Month: October 2020

visit from Alex

Jeff reports that during the visit Alex tried to get him to change the tv to Youtube and he got damned manipulative about it too. sigh

But we recorded things and added effects and laughed and laughed and recorded spooky stuff for Halloween. It’s not for sharing – it was just goofing around.

HE’S SO TALL

I live four blocks from him and see him reasonably often so you’d think that last half inch in height growth wouldn’t startle me so MUCH. It just makes him seem older than six. I can see people thinking he’s eight. He says he’s not the tallest kid in his class.

He asked for and received a cup of warm cocoa.

My bucket is fuller.

roast we must

I’ve gone back to feeling really sleepy, so I had a nap. Now I have to roast something that’s thawed in the fridge, and I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE MY SNUGGLY BED. up we go!

Wrote another letter to auntie Mary. Got video of Buster doing tricks. My cinematography is so awful it’s hard to tell.

Bro briefly demonstrates brO says hi! I don’t have his permission for this. So watch it while you can, I’m taking it down if he asks.

Later: the pork tenderloin was absolutely fantastic, the roast red potatoes with Himalayan pink salt, pepper and rosemary were excellent, the mushrooms and onions with a little bit of chicken-flavoured gravy powder were really tasty, and the half squash had to be used because the fridge is set too high and a portion of it froze. All in all I’d have been happy to pay sixteen bucks for that plate (seconds of course are the advantage of home cooking) in a restaurant and that’s nothing like what it cost – the squash was either very expensive or completely free, given that I grew it and had to pay a bomb just for the dirt.

The cold pork will go into whole wheat wraps – I’ll prep a bunch of salad veggies into the right configuration for wraps and we can browse our way through them tomorrow, or eat the leftover linguine.

Because of filming Buster, the laptop should live in the kitchen now. Sure feels weird to be writing when I’m not lying in bed. I’m also handwriting my letters out here during the period of time in the morning my computer doesn’t have wifi, a habit shifter facilitated by brO shutting off the spigot during the required ‘quiet time’.

Between having the computer out of the bedroom at night and no internet in the morning, I’ve been writing a fair amount.

My presbyopia finally shifted around so I grew into my reading glasses. Given what I paid for them I have to say it’s a relief.

Jeff spent part of the day working on busted small electronic things, an activity I heartily approve of, and even more so when I stand to benefit, since he was working on a timer he inherited from Granny, and as part of my review of habits, I need timers.

I should backup my laptop.

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quick note

Yesterday was another lazy day but I managed two loads of laundry including the kitchen rugs ,,,,, why I even swept the floor, and I practiced. I wrote a tiny bit and then deleted everything I’d written yesterday.

Today I’m hoping to convince Jeff to do a small shopping expedition.

Watched a short documentary on Monty Python ‘in black and white’ on Netflix, which was quite enjoyable.

Waiting for the rain to stop to finish cleaning up the garden.

 

Destiel fannage

Added later, watched the Supernatural from last night, it was adorable, there was just so much squee with the boys.

Mailed a letter to mOm and another to Barry. Yes I said I mailed it already. No I didn’t actually until now. Mild chest pain (completely normal at this point) on the way up the hill; the problem is that if I stop I fall down or want to, and it’s been raining, so no work in the garden. I think I’m going to have to get one of those stool canes. I had rocks to sit on in Mt. Seymour but they’re thin on the ground in urban settings. Best part of the walk was no mask.

I should walk some more later, perhaps I’ll be able to talk Jeff into coming. Maybe not so much hillage with the walkage

terrifying podcast about what canada should do in case of political instability before/during/after the election and during the transition period, if any.

 

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This is absolutely terrible but it made me laugh.

Welp, I’m awake. Guess I’m having a cup of tea and some breakfast.

Had a nice long talk yesterday with my mOm about my medical woes. I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine; but my body fell apart after that infection in March, and there’s one symptom in particular that makes me think it’s post COVID, but I guess I’ll never know and should get right with not knowing, while I’m working on improving things.

Here’s Jan M. as a retail worker in 2020

She’s been posting costumes every day on her ‘gram, and some of them have been awesome, why she even did a Castiel the other day. AND I DEAD NOW

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Palate cleanser

content warning Possible Misandry; stereotyping of men; helpful nomenclature; I totally agree with this and since this is my space, in which I can talk about anything but that which might offend my mOm (and believe me, at 80 plus and a lifelong atheist and sf fan, my mOm can tighten her belt around plenty of weird shit, even if she doesn’t understand a word of it) so be warned

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so now, since I already know the outcome, I’m going to ask my mOm to have pOp pick himself out of the lineup

They’re going to disagree, and then they are going to laugh very hard. For those who know them, enjoy!

right okay fine let me kick this in the goolies

How to Stop Being Offended by Everyone (in just 13 steps)

JFC. This woman need a course correction, but I’m not giving her one in the comments. Here’s the skinnified version of what she said:

My being offended is a choice; take a few breaths before responding; consider the source; discern if it was intentional; interrogate the sense of being offended, is it you or the circumstances; locate the part of you that feels victimized; send yourself loving energy rather than going off; listen to the opposing perspective; release yourself of the duty to police other people’s views; wait 24 hours to respond; and I’m quoting #11 in full because it’s SUCH BULLSHIT I WANT YOU TO SAVOUR er EXPERIENCE ITS EXCESSIVELY SHITTY QUALITY: “11. Remind yourself that we are a collective, and that the person that “wronged” you is from the same Source as you. We all have the same “cosmic DNA”. So hating them is hating you”; see the lesson from the offence as a gift; don’t stay offended.

I’ll be simple, I’ll be brief. Imagine giving this advice to a Black person who’s reading about how Black people are terrible workers; to a trans woman who’s experiencing harassment from cis-magats on the internet; to a woman reading something about feminism and allyship from the man who raped her; to an Indigenous person being mocked for eating country food when they could be vegan and ‘save the planet’; or a Jew sent the long-nosed Pepe meme; or a disabled queer person encouraged to just die already and quit ‘draining the public purse’.

THE ADVICE LOOKS DIFFERENT NOW DOESN’T IT. Don’t tell me who I can’t hate, you peccary-approximate clickbaiter. Listen to the opposing perspective when THEY WANT TO KILL ME and or MY FRIENDS. GET FUCKED! NO, SERIOUSLY! AFTER YOU!

Kelly Albano wrote the above noted clickbait. I’d like to annoy her until she drops the pretence that she’s calm, but I have other shit to do today than tell another white woman that she’s totally fucking clueless about how this feel-good advice appears during climate crisis, fascism on the march, destroyed norms of media balance and public behaviour, kids incarcerated and separated from their parents for being brown and poor, and the future of our young people destroyed by crony capitalism. Fuck you, Kelly Albano. Stay in your bubble and quit posting crap.

Yes yes, Kelly, this is advice for something that ‘offends you’ — not for something that’s an existential threat. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, you oft-scratched scab, white women have this tremendous tendency to send shit like this to marginalized people. Yup, I see it ALL THE FUCKING TIME on twitter; they will repurpose this feelgoodery to douchewaddery in four seconds flat and some poor schlub who’s legit angry is going to get told to wind it in by a thirty-five year old white woman who’s never been stopped by the cops for anything and who thinks this shit’s a blessing on a troubled world, when it’s just going to get used to hurt people who aren’t ‘evolved enough’ – Jesus wept – not to get angry when someone’s trying to KILL THEM.

And I’m not talking on twitter about this. The idea that someone I know might forward this shite to a marginalized person who’s suffering is fuckin’ more than I can handle.

 

 

the wilds of Coquitlam

I wanted to just post the video of our trek yesterday. No comment, just the train wreck of ongoing wtfery.

Jeff said he wanted to drive somewhere for a client and I made a face. I know how terrible that part of town is (for driving, Coquitlam is quat nahss as far as greenery etc goes) and I wanted to help navigate, so I went in the car with Jeff and almost, but not quite, navigated us into a large scale portal of a Horror Dimension.

Jeff kiboshed the idea of sharing the footage with a right royal Kibosh, because essentially we didn’t do anything but swear at fate, the other drivers, and the signage.

Among other sweary things: the signage on Highway 1 as you drive just short of the Port Mann bridge. The signage as you come off 7B onto Lougheed, which just sucks in conventional terms; the signage that was COMPLETELY OBSCURED BY OVERGROWTH and it’s a fucking good thing I knew which way to direct Jeff to turn; THE FACT THAT NOT A SINGLE FUCKING PLACE OF BUSINESS ON LOUGHEED HIGHWAY BETWEEN THE 7B EXIT AND OXFORD ACTUALLY HAS ITS STREET NUMBER FACING THE ROADWAY.

The footage of us both cursing at all of this will be lost to history, and Jeff’s perfectly happy about that. The joint wail we let out when we saw the grown-over sign, though, that being lost to history mekketh me sad.

The client visit took about twenty minutes.

We solaced ourselves with Mickey D’s and Toim Tayeem.

Finding out that Phil’s ancestors were among the first to move to England – I would have bet money on that.

that’s how you advertise

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Give the people useful info!

Slept most of the day yesterday, still managed to do a load of laundry and sleep a full night just now…

more from England, in this case from @JonnElledge, for pOp

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donated to the Potlatch Fund today.

I want a proper breakfast and I already ate one. GREEDY GUTS

remember went pOp didn’t hear the woman trying to plead guilty when the cop didn’t show?  This university professor SHOWS THE SAME ENERGY

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I have mailed the letter to my mOm

I felt much better walking up the hill today. I have no idea why. I’ve been feeling so punk. If I write a letter a day I have to mail that and so rain or shine I have to leave the house. The outside is still there. The bush tits flew over my head in the alley, and this year’s black squirrel taunted me in the yard. Collected three more squash and washed them.

Finished sorting the empty seeds from the full ones from the tray of dried sunflower seeds. Many of the seeds in the head failed to set on properly, no surprise as it never got full sun, and fell over and was totally crooked and I know Jeff backed into it at least once so let’s say it never got a perfect shot.  I was a bit worried because I harvested them wet, like SOAKED from two days of rain, but I had to because the raccoons chawed a quarter of the head off, THANKS ASSHOLES. My dodge of putting them on a perforated tray as they were drying seemed to work, and I moved them around when I walked by them, and they dried perfectly, and are now resting in an appropriately labelled sealed envelope, waiting dispersal as gifts.

I started writing a letter to Barry after I mailed mOm’s, but by the third page I began to get the feeling that perhaps I was misplacing the tone a sensible woman of six decades would take in a family letter to a much loved uncle. Upon a re-read, I sounded like I was very nonchalantly in the middle of a WHOO HOO psychotic episode, so I’m shelving that project, likely forever, hey, no harm, no foul, in favour of working on my blog, instead. I don’t know what inspired me to go so Hunter S. Thompson on my own uncle but perhaps it was me reacting poorly to the notion that even after he’s dead, he’ll be a better raconteur than me, so I thought to make up in outrageousness what I did not have in sheer skill.

Phew. Really dodged a bullet. I’ll try again later and perhaps accrue a few possible topics which will be of joint interest with little possibility of causing offence or concern or possibly even consternation.

I need an alarm clock now, as I do not have a phone (why do I want a cop in my pocket) and for the meantime Jeff is loaning me a ‘not working as a phone phone’ / basic electronic minder, with a couple of games on it. That will go off when I need to take me meds, he already programmed it.

The sun has come out. It’s really quite welcome. I’m sneezing a lot; apparently mold allergies are moderate right now. My nose has been runny as well. I’m still feeling very bleak, but I’ve got cheese in the house, is one allowed to feel bleak when one has no fewer than four kinds of cheese in the house and I’m only including that ghastly parmesan on a technicality.

Lunch a cold chicken / green salad, no dressing, no added salt.

My attention span is a little speck on the move, like one of the floaters in my eyes (my floaters have been worse of late), but I’m still managing to dole myself out tasks and do them. Will today be the day of whole wheat bruschetta? Who can be certain? The signs show no favour to one thing over another. It is all a dreadful flux, and we who gaze toward certainty do not enjoy the vertiginous bumps and G-loaded slams between here and there.

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I guess I’m not good at getting up again.

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