Month: October 2021

The punctuation from one of my novels (first 3500 words)

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hey i didnt close parentheses (later, nope, it’s punctuated properly)

care of https://just-the-punctuation.glitch.me/

biscotti and grief

Later this morning after Jeff’s conference call I’ll be taking Alex’s birthday present and some burnt almond biscotti (they are not burnt but they are definitely crispy) to Paul and Katie and Keith and Alex, and then I’ll mail a letter to my fOlks and then I’ll take biscotti (unburnt) to Peggy.

I put graphite in all the door locks except the garage door, I’ll try to remember that today. What a difference, phew!

I hope to do some more laundry today. I feel very stuffingless and sad and I’m trying really hard to give myself a shake and acknowledge my privileges but dang it’s hard right now.

Sad news

Tom died today – yesterday now. I wept briefly but now I just feel numb and my heart quails thinking of the weight the kids and Peggy are bearing.

I am so glad I went to see him that last time, he was close then and I made sure there was a little laughter in the room, and I played my uke for him. And I’m glad I didn’t go after that. Minutes are precious.

I have so many thoughts and they are all very good thoughts I’m sure but they never get very far, and even if they did they wouldn’t belong here.

He was a good, kind, funny, hardworking man and we may see him echoed in his children but his vices and his virtues will never be assembled in that way again, and it’s so fucking unfair I can’t tell you and I’m up way past my bedtime and I need to try to sleep again.

 

 

Ten year anniversary

On this day ten years ago, my first husband Phillip passed away in Toronto of complications of diabetes and kidney disease.

I think about him all the time but I don’t talk about him much. My last conversation with him was kindly, but very sobering. I saw what happened to a man who gets sick with a disease that requires a lot of management, but who has an executive dysfunction (like me, Phil had terrifically bad ADD, but only time has allowed me to look back and see it.) It’s easy to be drawn to someone who has the same bent and creative fire….

He was a remarkable man, and if he could forgive me for my cruelties, and I forgive him for his, I won’t beat myself up too hard for my failures in being his partner. I hope you’re listening to T. Rex playing new music and working on model cars, while wearing a special outfit covered with cats, wherever you are, Phil.

Not a single photo of him appears to survive on the easily searched part of the internet – I’m assuming there’ll be something on facebook, but I don’t attend there any more.

truncated day

After spending about three hours girding myself up mentally I got myself out the door to see Tom this am. He is thin as a rail and not greatly responsive. I have had my last exchange of words with him unless I am unduly fortunate.

The last thing he did for me was leave food on my porch.

Jeffrey C from Seattle came up to see him. There were already three rellies in Tom’s room when I arrived so I departed after giving him a very hearty and very sincere hug.

I was going to go to Brown’s after but I saw that there were taxis at the stand and said fck it I’m for home. We watched some TV and I ordered fish&chips from Cockney Kings.

Leaving the house is not psychologically easy.

Someone answered my ad for a cultural competence read and while they are a super awesome creative human being with great taste they are alas not what I’m looking for but he gave me some leads which was awesome.

Fantastic night of sleep

I slept almost 10 hours, which is fantastic.

Today the weather has turned cold and wet again, after a glorious day full of sunshine. Paul and I walked the Foreshore again yesterday, and while there were no interesting birds we heard a raven call repeatedly and the trails were almost deserted, which was pleasant.

I managed to squeeze out about four words on a fanfic about a brewpub owner who’s all butthurt about a review by a noted food critic. I find fanfics are a lot easier to write if you get how people make a living squared away first. I’ve only ever worked on one where everyone involved is in the film business and I absolutely love it ….and then story problemed my way into a big mess which I’m going to have to fix at some point before I can write an additional 10k and finish it, but I don’t have the energy. Now to talk myself into a trek down to the hospital to visit Tom. And also eat, I’m not particularly hungry.

Spoke to Katie on the phone and heard Alex in the background. All are well. Katie is still planning a homebirth. Jeff is off to the dentist… the day is begun.

Missing women

I honour and mourn for all the Indigenous women and girls taken and murdered.

I long for justice and for the hearts and minds of the police – who are not seriously investigating these murders – to be cleansed of racism and bigotry.

I hope for healing and strength for the survivors.

I acknowledge my role in dismantling and eradicating power structures of violence and colonization.

I uphold Indigenous joy and rage, not just their oppressors’ narrative of sorrow, and the lands and living cultures Indigenous peoples embody.

Visit

Jeffrey and Jeri Lynn are visiting from Seattle to see Tom.

I am glad they’re here in town but the circumstances are hard.

Let us love each other while we can.

Spoke to Mike yesterday. Strangely he and I both had a horrible night’s sleep, night before last. Last night was much better. Even so my mood is somewhere between spiky and sad. Perhaps coffee? We actually purchased ground coffee so maybe that’s what I can do to lift the mood.

 

Feed the bears

Early each day to her Whistler back yard
The little old bear woman comes
In her own special way to the people
She calls, “Come, feed the bears, all you bums!”

“Come feed the local bears, show them you care
And you’ll be glad if you do
Their young ones are hungry, their dens are so spare
All it takes is two grand from you.”

“Feed the bears, two grand a pop
Two grand, two grand, two grand a pop!
Feed the bears!”, that’s what she cries
While drones from BCCOS fill the skies.

 

 

Based on the news item which stated that Zuzana spent a bomb on feeding bears human food in Whistler and got fined 60K. Her male co-conspirator skated.

 

As I was compos(t)ing this parody, some witless asshole drove up and down Kingsway on a motorcycle wound up to about 9K. This town needs an enema.

Half an hour after that (it’s one in the MORning people) a chopper buzzed the house.

 

supply chain woes

Cars can’t get chips.

Brexit is grinding food and gas supply in the UK.

Experts say DO YOUR HOLIDAY SHOPPING EARLY. Thanks, but no.

Many companies which manufacture the small small things that go in other things are experiencing labour shortages due to the pandemic, which adds to the mess

Transportation costs for goods is skyrocketing.

Weak investment in gas and oil is making it easier for weather events to further disrupt supply and impact demand.

Power supply issues in China are ongoing and will not get better. The problem with industrial power supplies to factories etc. is that when you need power to melt plastic into molds and it stops, you lose the entire run of plastic. I mean you can melt it down again with a little shaved lead – lead is a great plasticizer ha ha – but the colour and the finish will change and then you have to resell it in a different market where there isn’t as much fuss about how much lead there is in the plastic. Or you have to scrap it. And prices go up.

War between Taiwan and China is getting closer – 38 Chinese jets made an incursion into Taiwanese air space recently and the Chinese are making it clear that the South China sea is theirs and other claims will be ignored with prejudice. Alas, that means a global war, and it will be really strange to see American Pumpkin Spice moms getting upset when they can’t get their Christmas Chatchkes thanks to war in the South China Sea.

Shipping containers are scarce, because after the shutdown, when demand started up again– thanks to economic stimulus packages — it started up so fast that the supply chain has quite literally never caught up from 2020. Fewer containers are in circulation because NO ONE WANTS TO PAY the diesel to get them back from where they carried masks to Africa. Nothing is being shipped back so they are still in African ports. I can’t believe this bullshit, but there you go. That boat getting grounded in Suez didn’t help and something similar is almost certain to happen again as the conditions that caused that grounding have not been corrected and very large boats are still being allowed into the canal.

Shipping costs for a SINGLE CONTAINER FROM CHINA TO THE US WEST COAST HAVE GONE UP BY 13 TIMES SINCE 2020. This is making it cheaper to ship empty containers even if there’s demand because companies with capacity can’t afford the offloading time (many ports are hopelessly snarled because COVID killed or reduced their staffing levels at the same time that the jolt provided by the stimulus happened); they’ll get more money at the Chinese end if they dead head it. So eventually those empty containers in Africa will be worth the cost to transport empty but that hasn’t happened yet.

Anyway. It isn’t time to start hoarding, that never helps, but the baloney alarm is really close to going off. Pandemics have always made for violent social and political change and this one’s no different.

 

Matt Buckley sculpted this octopus

stone sighting

There is a dive bar in Charlotte
North Carolina
and to that bar a man went to drink
and the photo of him that hit
next morning on the internet
made the owner yell
and the patrons cuss
it was fun for the rest of us
Cause that man was Mick Jagger (aetat 78)
and he drank a beer and left.

The owner a man whose name is
(of course) Brian Wilson
was putting his five year old
daughter to bed
Now I may be a hapless simp
for men who do their duty
by their children when they’re missing
a chance to meet Mick Jagger
….But I have to say he
comes off pretty good.

I once drank a brand of beer
called Thirsty Beaver
which is also the name
of the dive bar of this song
and everything about this story
makes me happy
It’s unlikely that I’ll ever go
to Charlotte but you never know
and after I will say like Mick
I drank a beer and left

Based on a photo Mick posted on his twitter which since I’m not on twitter any more I can’t see to verify and this.

restless anal syndrome is now a thing

THANKS COVID.

I ordered mask braces today, including a size that will fit Alex.

I am a happy girl, somebody vacuumed the games room. Someone named Suzanne.

I hope to a) do a shop and b) visit Tom today. We shall see.

I try not to comment on shit Trudeau does because mine is not an informed opinion but I literally and honestly believe that him holidaying in Tofino for Truth and Reconciliation day was specifically and vindictively aimed at JWR (Jody) for having the nerve to not be his house NDN.

I wore an Anishnaabe design on my chest for yesterday. I want to uphold Indigenous joy as well as sorrow. It was solemn for me, seeing how many people of different racial backgrounds were wearing Every Child Matters gear at Lougheed yesterday when I went walking there with Paul.

Paul is … more like Paul than ever. He spent ten minutes trying to get his vaxx card up on his phone and I asked him to print it out. Watching him deal with his phone at all is extra crispy difficult.

 

 

BUGATTI WITH THE BUGATTI ROYALE IN 1932

JABBERWOCKY IN WELSH

USEFUL IF YOU’RE MAKING NEW PASSWORDS

Siaberwoci

Selyf Roberts

Mae’n brydgell ac mae’r brochgim stwd
Yn gimblo a gyrian yn y mhello:
Pob cólomrws yn féddabwd,
A’r hoch oma’n chwibruo.

‘Gwylia’r hen Siaberwoc, fy mab!
Y brathiad llym a’r crafanc tynn!
A rhed pan weli’r Gwbigab
A’r ofnynllyd Barllyn!’

Cym’rodd ei gleddyf yn ei law
I geisio ei fanawaidd brae–
A gorffwys ger y goeden Taw,
I feddwl–fel pe tae.

A thra pendronai ymhlith y coed
Y Siaberwoc a’i lygaid fflam
A ddaeth, mor wallgof ag erioed
Gan ffrwtian gam a cham!

Un, dau! Un, dau! drwy’r awyr oer
Aeth min y cledd ysgiw, ysgôl!
Fe’i lladdodd, a chan gludo’i ben
Hwblamodd yn ei ôl.

‘A lleddaist ti y Siaberwoc?
Tyrd yma, hapllon fachgen!
O jiwblus ddydd! Hwrê! Hwroc!’
Gan wenu arno’n llawen.

Mae’n brydgell ac mae’r brochgim stwd
Yn gimblo a gyrian yn y mhello:
Pob cólomrws yn féddabwd,
A’r hoch oma’n chwibruo.