Month: August 2021

going home today

We went to the Butterfly House and the Country Bee House yesterday. At the Butterfly House Little E the parrot was three deep in Taiwanese uni students, as far as I could tell, so I didn’t get to love on him at all, but I had the great joy of telling a little girl that a tortoise had ‘broken out’ of the tortoise pen, and otherwise it was much as it usually is, and Alex enjoyed it. Alex enjoyed me imitating the goats and sheep at the Country Bee and we talked a bit about the animals and what they were eating.

Slept until about two, woke up not able to breathe, got up and brushed my teeth and drank some water and forced myself to lie down. Fought with sleep for about an hour I guess and then finally found a comfy enough position to go back to sleep.
My hand is much better today, but the ribs are sore and tight and I can neither bend nor twist, and there’s a hot patch, so I’m thinking I need to get a chest xray at the very least, which I’ll arrange when I get back.

yeesh

woke up at 4 am gasping for breath … I feel like I can’t get fully oxygenated. My nose is blocked and I feel dehydrated and gooey in the breathing apparatus, so I’m going upstairs to make myself some tea.

I am seven chapters in to Halliburton’s Royal Road to Romance (1925) and while many queerer books have been written I’m sure this is the gayest one I’ve read yet. His descriptions are so delightfully over the top, florid and memorable, but also one gets the indelible impression that half the shit he’s reporting never happened. Anyway, he ran away from uni in his early 20s, and fetishized his own youth for as long as he could, eventually drowning on a ghastly sea voyage in a thoroughly unseaworthy vessel at some point in his 30s. Content warning, typical American ethnocentric racism.

recovering

I am feeling much better than I did yesterday. Most of the sprung ribs have gone back into their little detents but I still have abused tendons and one very bruised left hand to deal with. It no longer hurts to cough or laugh, but rolling over in bed, bending over to pick anything up, and getting up from and sitting down in a chair hurt like billy-o. I don’t feel much like typing, that’s for sure, it hurts.

We’re having a super quiet time, just talking in the sunroom. Alex is being quite civilized. He’s an amusing lad.

kinda beat up

my left wrist and ribs under my left breast still hurt quite a bit but I’ve established that I can at least nap… rolling over takes about 30 seconds and is accompanied by sounds of me hissing like a snake

I was thinking of making one last stab at climbing Pkols tomorrow or the day after but I know I won’t be able to and I’m just disappointed in myself turning my ankle on the paved part of the pathway…. My foot slipped into the divot right next to the paved part and then I flung myself around so I wouldn’t go down the embankment and crushed my left hand under me. Paul was with me. I had the wind knocked out of me for about a minute and then slowly stood up with Paul’s help – a kindly stranger with a dog rushed to check on me which felt very comforting under the circumstances. And no, I shouldn’t have driven afterwards now that I think of it, but I just couldn’t deal with getting out of the car to mail Tom’s letter so I stuck him in the passenger seat. I think my reasoning is kinda weird sometimes.

the dance of the maggots

to be devoured in a place
where your mind has no purchase
inverse of a location

you find yourself here
anyway

the place goes away and the feeling
of it, a question mark in pyrotechnic smoke
most literal
continues

there is a trope in screen delivered content
a figurecomestoyouinadreamandtellsyou
content
(by which I mean
whatever the plot device is)
is a lie

the movement of maggots is not proof of life
unless you’re speaking of the maggots
and only a corrupt culture
will sell that viewpoint to you

the ground shakes with
their nagging vicious drumbeats
so it looks as if the maggots dance in time

twisted my ankle and fell

at Foreshore Park; it was just before the car park and I now have what is probably a cracked rib and a sprained hand, as well as the usual assortment of roadrash. I am going to leave off going to the hospital just for the time being – unless I’m worse off than my current assessment, and plan to load up on painkillers. I was okay to drive. Finally mailed Tom’s letter. He has pneumonia.

the conformists

brO’s heading out to Timmy Ho’s (guess Katie had an effect) and soon COFFEE SHALL BE MINE. We don’t keep coffee beans in the house any more, because if you have coffee you need cream, and so on.

My list of stuff to take to Victoria is as long as my forearm and I still haven’t figured out which instrument(s) to take.

Much editing (and did it need it, what was I THINKING) on Best roommate in the world this morning.

 

 

TOMORROW

Mike’s weekend got rearranged by something so that made me sadface. But it also means I can take my time packing. Now that everyone (except Alex) has been vaccinated, Katie and Alex and I are off to see the grands tomorrow. I can hardly wait. And I really should make sure that everything that’s migrated here goes back to them, lol.  7 am ferry here I come

do not whack the simulacra they’re running subroutines as fast as they can

Truly, one must have survived two heat domes to enjoy the humane temperature and humidity currently blanketing MST country. I popped the front door open at about 4:30 am to see what I could see, and the soft light and welcome light breeze were balm for my overheated soul.

This morning I’ve run the facecloths through the wash; they’re in the dryer. I have trained Buster and brushed him TWICE (we have two brushing stations in the house and he wanted me to hit him up in both); I have popped some clear plastic face shields and clips into a bag for Mike as spares -he uses them for eye protection, not COVID protection and why not since the delta variant goes through air like cigarette smoke – I wear mine when I’m doing the lawn (which reminds me, I should do some weed whacking once it’s not quite so damp, and now I’ve written it down, so it’s on the task list). Jeff loaded and ran the dishwasher. I cleaned out my purse again, and found something in it which I will not report but made me laugh like a drain. Something-something, a certain morning after at Statpower, my desk, and that’s just to remind me what it really was. I put additional sterile masks in a clean bag and into my purse; I counted my pills to ensure that I had enough until my next GP appt on September 13 and put a weeks’ worth into my purse so at least I’ve got my BP medication if I’m on the wrong side of a bridge if/when that fault lets go; I practiced octave mandolin and dulcimer and kazoo, and you’d know when by the moment Jeff rolled his eyes, put his headphones on and turned up the EBM; I found a shade for the light behind the TV (there’s supposed to be an extremely expensive sun-spectrum light there and after 12 years of faithful and continuous service, except during power failures, it expired, so there’s an ordinary incandescent bulb there now and it was just too fucking bright so I wandered lonely as a person with ADD around the basement until I realized THERE WAS ALREADY A SHADE FOR THE LAMP thank you Granny and swapped it off a lamp we aren’t using for the one we are, so now the light level in the media room is back to semi-Stygian, instead of having an ambience like someone’s training a Klieg light on me for an interrogation); I played a whole bunch of Sherlock (as mentioned in previous posts, my all time favourite puzzle game, available for a very reasonable price from Mr. Everett Kaser please pay the full retail thank you) but never got my 8×8 time below 8:30 (best time under 5 minutes, and I’d like to see YOU get that time) which leads me to believe that my cognition and processing time today will, sadly, not be excellent; and I even got dressed if you can believe it. Now I’m waiting for the various water-using machines to quit cycling so I can make pancakes, and in the meantime I should probably go downstairs and fold laundry until I get bored.

SO LOOKING FORWARD TO BEING IN VICTORIA WITH MY MOTHER (also my dad whom I love just as fiercely as my mother, just not as mushily); SO COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY REFUSING TO EVEN CONTEMPLATE THE CLUSTERF …. THAT WILL BE THE JOURNEY TO VICTORIA. Well, really, it’s Saanich, but most people call it Victoria. Full marks if you get the reference.

I spoke to Tom, who sounded hoarse and thrawn but lively af (he was at work when his phone said he’d missed a call from me, which, strangely, he had not) on the phone yesterday, no housefilk today. The shop will be moved into his garage; (this is his NON side gig, not that anyone but he can keep it straight at this point); his sole employee entered into a state of nullibiety under ‘unforgiveable’ circumstances, and given that grumpy ol’ Tom has a fuse (for important matters, on trifles he is …as people are) of ample dimension and remarkable length, I refuse to even think about what the employee did to earn that particular word from Tom. Also Peg’s got relatives in from out of town, it all seems like too much work and fuss for them.

Still pissed about the mailbox. I feel like every time I take a step forward from being a selfish ass, in this case by writing friendly bracing letters to friends and relatives, for which I need a mailbox, the social environment says FUCK YOU! try harder ADD person, use your executive function for something you shouldn’t have to, because some fucking bureaucrat is trying to save money. Always and continuously, capitalism pushes governments so they are rent collectors instead of service providers. And that, mes soeurs, mes hypocrites lecteurs, is a rant for another other day.