Month: May 2021

The old lady and her memories

Today I was reminded that many many years ago I was the volunteer coordinator for childcare for a Toronto Pride, back in the 90s.

There’s a fight ‘in the community’ right now about Pride, all across the western world. Not so much in the parts of the world where being openly gay gets you beaten and murdered and being openly lesbian gets you ‘correctively’ raped. Anyway this first world fight is about ‘children at Pride’ and how a substantial minority of gay people who support Pride want the leather daddies and bondage enthusiasts and folks who whatever they sport amidships aren’t long on clothing to just…. cover up for Pride.

Now I think I established, with my childcare cred, that I do indeed care about children and want them to be safe while their parental units or some fraction thereof want to partay on the streets of the city; I also know that Pride started when among the most marginalized of the rainbow community, black transgender women, decided that they were tired of being subjected to raids and police harassment every fucking weekend, and started throwing bricks at the cops.

So for all the shrinking violets who have finished their days of LGBTQA+ activism and thus want all the rest of us to behave like tv housewives, this is le extended middle finger de moi.

For all the parents who want the leather daddies to cover up, fuck ya.

For all the parents who want to take their kids to pride, how about memorizing some easy answers about the costumes …. and lack of them?

The event is for ADULTS. Children are to be expected, and allowed for, and cared for in context of the parade and events, but they aren’t to be CATERED to. No more than the fucking cops or beer companies.

Having cops at Pride is bad. Having kids at pride is not. Having bigots try to tell activists how to dress is bad. Having bigots publicly struck hard in their rhetorical goolies is good.

just slept the morning away

wheeeee!
Now to get up and eat something that isn’t mostly sugar!

Roasted veggies and boiled corn yesterday for lunch. The veggies came out great (brussels sprouts, yams and zucchini with a spice combo I found at Save On, lemon zest, basil and thyme); the corn was a fermented disaster. Tasted like it had been held at about 35 degrees for a day or so and then put back in the refrigerated environment. No mold, but nasty af.

Actually called Keith for cooking advice about the veggies but he didn’t call me back until after I had it in the oven. The idea that I’d be asking Keith for cooking advice, LOL but that’s parenthood for you, a brace of exploding surprises.

I have now watched 5/6ths of Maximilian and Marie and it’s filmed very dark and foggy, and it just doesn’t seem right. I quite like the principals, and the costumes and fighting and horse-stuff all seems pretty good, but there’s no real understanding of how far Austria is from Burgundy and sometimes it seems to go by a little faster than the contemporary roads would allow. Also, there were a couple of points where I thought well THAT NEVER HAPPENED but it’s the usual Dorothy Dunnett fan grousing about various things. I think they once again did not represent the Spider King properly.

Philip de Commines comes across as a right asshole, too. I did learn that he wrote a huge memoir about his time with the Spider King and is considered a prime source for this period of history, so I bookmarked it in English to look at later.

The crows are yelling at me to put out some food.

Poem – the state of discourse

 

 

does it help that I called you on your birthday
yes
that is a ‘yes’
but below that tidal crest of astonishment

that it is only accidents which provide me with
my shine
not anything I do

and I let go of the designs of things
moving backward through understanding
into confusion again

I wanted to speak to you, and there, I have

but that’s not ornate enough
for my mood

I’m thinking of you
putting your game face on
to send me a chapbook

what is a book but a tree
given speech

what is a friend but my heart
given another home

absolutely wonderful night of sleep

I think I’ve got this almost figured out now.

Lovely walk in Oakalla; late lunch provided by Keith and Paul; tidied a little over there in the kitchen since I wanted it to be a little cleaner before Katie got home from work.

Practiced, wrote 75 words yesterday.

This morning, two episodes of Maximilian and Marie. Looks like another beautiful day!

Better days are coming

Superb night of sleep, I think I’m managing my drugs much better. It was almost six when I woke up!

Curvebeak greeted me from the neighbour’s roof the other day. Very strange to be recognized by a crow.

Of course they bloody well recognize me. The hazelnuts turn out to be contaminated with something I’m allergic to, so I’m feeding them to them a handful at a time and snork snork snork down they go. This being the season when they’re bringing off young ready access to quality food close to the nest is going to be a big deal.

Buster is not happy that I’m feeding crows, but he’d still rather train than sit on the deck with his tail switching, waiting for them.

Timmy Ho’s coffee in mah belleh, I should feel shame but all I really feel is a strong urge to write a scene I’ve been putting off for about three weeks.

TIME TO GO DANCING

stormy night

Feeling MUCH better today; so far I’ve finished a letter to pOp; emptied the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen, brushed Buster, watched another “Debris” (I’m doing a rewatch for a particular reason), and finished the shrimps I ordered yesterday and had another piece of halibut AND a bowl of cereal and a cup of tea. NOM

After the dentist warned me that this top left back tooth would be sensitive, and that the filling is in “Jeez Dave how do you hold your head up” territory as regards size, I’m happy to say that my bite was better than when she started with it (she appears to have trued up my jaw, which may help with my grinding problem) and there is no more than the usual soreness you have after getting a dental dam jammed in your mouth. And this is less than a day later, so I’m pleased.

Reddit is packed with lightning pictures from last night, in east Van – I didn’t hear or see a thing, being restfully sleeping at the time.

I’m so irritated. I printed the letter to pOp out backward, but the printer just barfed on it, and I sighingly reverted to printing it right way about. So my evil plan to make pOp read one of my letters in a mirror did not come to pass!

strange days

Had a panic attack at the dentist today. I was okay during the cleaning the other day but having two people in my mouth at once completely overwhelmed me and I was having trouble breathing. Big damned cavity, too.

I promptly spent a lot of money on delivery, after I walked home (more or less to demonstrate to myself that I was fine now, and also to help walk off the freezing (she gave the exact amount)) so yeah I was worked on by two total strangers after having dr. katz for like 20 years…. I just lay there and cried for the first five minutes and I don’t recollect doing that since the first time I had a root canal.

#FreePalestine #Naqba73

Well, another Naqba – the anniversary of the day the newly hatched Israelis started booting the Palestinians off their land – has arrived. Keith and I went to the demo but we’re both pretty easy to overwhelm thanks to the pandemic so we didn’t hang around longer than it took to watch the parade go by, but there were at least 2500 people there and there were literally hundreds of flags and signs, it was super colourful and people put a lot of effort into the signs. Everyone was masked, it was kind of a condition of showing up.

We parked at Edmonds and Skytrained in, and then sprinted home again – we left when the cops started flashing lights at the end of the column, although everything I’ve read in the news indicates it stayed peaceful. You can understand how the local cops would be a bit sensitive at the moment with bodies dropping left and down the street from here.

Anyway, what the Israelis are doing is war crimes and Hamas is trying to mount a defence that is not really working. I don’t want Canada to be supporting Israel in committing genocidal acts over several generations as outlined in David Ben-Gurion’s fucking diary and I understand the nutgrinder Trudeau’s got himself in on the subject and candidly I don’t care. Not in my name.

delish

Keith made lunch yesterday, a Hello Fresh roasted veggie bowl over spring mix. Damn it was good! Before that Paul and I went to Oakalla. Still forgot to mail Dave’s letter.

I am hoping today to go to a demo with Keith, we’ll see what the Grand Joculator of Fortune brings us….

 

AND here’s where having ADD is so much fun. I sent cookies to Jim and Jan and THEY SHOWED UP ON JIM’S BIRTHDAY. I had no idea, because my ADD makes it hard to manage other people’s birthdays so I just followed the previous family practice of not making a big deal about birthdays (which is good, because they are often disappointing) and just giving people stuff as and when you can remember and afford it. Of course Jan knew it was a coincidence but life is good. Anyway mOm you should have your bikkies soon if you haven’t received them already.

It was so lovely to get Jan’s email. You want to think what you do has an effect on people and yip yip yip!! (dancing dog image goes in your brain *here*)

 

Oh, and just you think I’ve gone soft, fuck the police, the VPD in particks. (Article about the false arrest of Selwyn Romilly)

Gorgeous day

shootings aside this should be the nicest day this year so far in MST country.

I’ve put most of my laundry away from yesterday, I trained Buster twice, and brushed him, I ran the dishwasher and emptied it, I fed two lots of crows, emptied my purse and tidied it, put more recent medication in my spare pill bottle so I will now work my way through the older prescription, (I carry a week of my prescribed medication just in case I’m on the wrong side of a bridge when the big one comes through…), wrote a letter to Dave D and am close to stirring my stumps sufficiently to mail it…. not bad for someone who’s been up since 3:50. I had a very good night of sleep.

so much in the papers about the gang war.

Last time Paul and I went to Fraser Foreshore, which is at the bottom of Byrne Road, we were LAUGHING at the Cactus Club awnings, which look like could easily rip away in a wind and fly out onto the enormous intersection (Byrne and Marine – one of the major intersections in Burnaby as far as complexity and size and traffic level) and now right in front of those awnings one guy in the Brothers Keepers gang was shot dead (died on scene) and two of his faithful were hauled off to hospital last night.

 

Paul and I are about to go walking at Oakalla. If I see anything faskinating I’ll write it up when I get home.

lovely productive day with a dark ending

Leftover Desi Turka takeaway for breakfast. A couple of loads of laundry done. A little bit of planning for writing. Practicing musical instruments. A lot of CBD gummies, my back was scandalous.

Steps from where I got takeaway on Wednesday after the cleaning at the dentist (the mango lassi was SO.DAMNED.GOOD) someone was shot dead last week in broad daylight.

Last night someone was shot dead steps from where we get donuts of a morning. He was sitting in his car, a young East Indian man, eating a hamburger, and pop pop pop.

It doesn’t make me want to rejoin the world.