Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
Jeff couldn’t go to the family dinner at Caspell Junction because of both press of work and feeling punk, and Keith didn’t make it home from work until two minutes before I called a cab and left. Katie fixed a plate for Jeff though, and he devoured it as soon as I got home.
I got to see Ryker, hold him, rock him while he was fussy and Katie was prepping food.
Paul seems to be doing reasonably well.
These pics were selected by Alex.
Alex sleeps so hard it’s quite significant. I just got up, ran a load of laundry and wandered lonely as a large fuzzy hoodie through the house looking for my laptop, which of course I already brought downstairs to the guest room.
Last night Alex consumed his dinner, drew monsters, played Xenon pinball, brushed his teeth, played Burnout under Jeff’s watchful supervision on the xBox (it’s a game where you deliberately crash into things with your car), played the same video on his tablet until he crashed at which point I pulled his tablet out of his hand and stashed it somewhere safe.. When he was going between games he asked Jeff, “Are the mechanics the same?” and I almost fell off the spare sofa.
It’s to early to waken him so I’m listening to him making faint breathing noises. If I panicked because he was making no breath sounds at all and did a pulse check that’s just the gramma in me.
We got another 6-10 cm of the solid end of the water cycle and more apparently on the way. The videos of carnage and lack of snow removal on reddit vancouver are telling.
Melting grammas note:
he says Ryker is ‘a really good baby’.
That’s my mOm, my Unca Barry, and my Ontie Mary, sitting on a running board of what sure looks like a Model A Ford but could be something else. Hair like silk floss, has Momma, in this picture.
It will be fun and exhausting!
I will report back more later.
I ordered RATs on line. They should show up after new years.
That was so fun. I wish all restaurants were like that.
— a one line review of one of my fanfics, posted last night.
I love this spa day adventure!
— a one line review of one of my fanfics, posted last night.
Lake Tahoe had some, er snow. I’m going to take a wild guess and say four way stop procedures are in place.
Arctic outflow continues, the house is like a meat locker and I can feel drafts pouring in from all directions. The repairman swore the furnace was fine, I hope the dude was right.
The adorable flashy lights are Alex’s computer, being decrufted for delivery on Thursday.
It’s a full tilt commercial movie which bites off cultural excess and spits out commentary.
Portions of it are completely impossible to understand. There are many levels of reality and the people in them move smoothly through them but … it’s hard, and noisy, and perspective spinning. I didn’t like those parts because when the movie was more discursive – or just plain HERE’S A FIGHT have FUN – it was more enjoyable for me.
The basic premise hasn’t changed; but people have moved through their lives- or what they think is their lives. Everyone is older. Under the kick ass and the high tech and the gloss design and striking palettes, there is an elegaic tone that is impossible to miss, and so, of course, appears to have been missed by every cultural commentator under 40. This is not a movie for young people. Many will go, but it’s not emotionally aimed at them.
It’s also, very candidly, a movie about mental health, and how everything they give you to make you feel better can be wrong on a cellular level.
To me, the movie addressed almost all of the cultural skew (the pull of it, the magical achievement of it, the visual thrill of it) of the first movie and the horror of what happened to the red pill/blue pill takeover of the ideas of the movie by misogynists and repulsigans. It addressed the FOREVER HOWL of MAKE IT EXACTLY THE SAME BUT BETTER which is Hollywood. It addressed how in terms of story logic, Neo and Trinity being separated was sad, and had to be fixed. It raised some really interesting ideas about what constitutes a partnership, why we help people who are going to get us killed, and how the hero feels, being worshipped, when he feels grossly inadequate, tiny and possibly not hoeing the next row in consensus reality.
It gave us multiple villains, some of whom have multiple agendas.
We see what happens when you trade freedom of scope for security of the person. We see what happens when you think HEY WE BEAT FASCISM everything’s GREAT NOW not realizing that fascism reconstitutes itself in every generation and has to be fought again. For all the people thinking this is exactly the same through line as the first movie LOL try again, midges. All of the callbacks had a specific purpose. We were being pushed into an emotional killzone, and asked to question all of the mechanics that got us there.
We see what happens when you make your idea of who is ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’ based in the present, not in the past.
We see AIs incorporated into the body politic. The revolution is domesticated because it becomes routine and non-destructive of the overarching enemy (any aspect of society antithetical to creativity); the revolution is made wild because it must address current conditions, which suck, and demand sacrifice to be overthrown.
All we ever want is someone who can see us, believe in us, literally hold us up, and it’s the driver of everything. It doesn’t have to be sexual, it doesn’t have to be procreative, but it does have to have meaning and reciprocity, and the ending in the light of that hypothesis – for me – was quite satisfying.
Apart from making steak and eggs for breakfast and mac and two cheeses for elevenses and two buttered rum toddies (a strong one for me, a weak one for Jeff) and shovelling the walkways, I had a very lazy day. My unputaway laundry is glaring at me, and the drawers I have to empty out to accommodate its spread is glaring as well, and two more loads at least await.
It amazes me how fast (now that I’ve learned to stay hydrated, pushing fluids all day until 6 pm whether I feel thirst or not) that I get DEhydrated; I didn’t get up and drink tea yesterday first thing, and in fact had nothing to drink until midmorning, and then spent the rest of the day trying to catch up. What they say in the health articles about not feeling thirst as much as you get older is totally true. I don’t know if Jeff has to remind himself to drink something but I sure do. My problem is that I want to drink tea all day and a) bumping caffeine all day is not healthy and b) it irritates me pipes.
I know things aren’t really much better but I feel much better. And because I’m feeling better, I’m trying to spend some time each day trying to process sadness about Tom and Ville. Two such different circumstances, and so tragic in their own way. I have names to put to two of the biggest public health related tragedies in BC history and the idea that their deaths are enmeshed in this greater social history is making me thoughtful. To me their deaths are tragedies and not statistics, but in the end they’ll just be statistics, and that makes me feel a little blank.
Today, Christmas movies (we didn’t watch them yesterday) and some yummy leftovers, and I’m thinking PUDDING RICE PUDDING but that means I have to make rice, LOL. Wonder what happens when I add butterscotch pudding to rice pudding, will it be a Frankentreat?
Laundry started, dishwasher running, kitchen counter tidied, coffee made and consumed; remembered to take mah meds, stole a picture of Jeff quietly working on Alex’s computer and now I have to find the cables to get it onto my computer gigglesnort. It’s only 6:30 and I’m well into my day.
I think Buster is almost ready for OAC speech buttons on the floor. I had the following postural conversation with him today:
Hey Buster, would you like skritches (this is specifically when I take a fork to his face. Yes, I know this sounds outrageous, but he loves it.)
I offer him a choice of forks – plastic or wood. He chooses plastic.
Since he’s sitting in my chair (my half of the LaZboy we picked up at a neighbours’ house) I just barely touch the blanket (I usually pull it out from under him) and instead of it being a tussle (he usually calls and is very reluctant to move and must be coaxed) he steps out of the way, I sit down, and give him a nice long skritch with a fork. Practically took longer to describe than to happen.
I love being able to communicate with Buster. He’s an admirable cat.
You’ll never guess who’s back!
CURVEBEAK!
Yes, the crow with the distinctive honker has returned to the railing next to the back door, and how? and why? On Christmas of all days?
It’s all Jeff’s fault. At this point Jeff is reading this with a faint frown and thinking WHY DO I ALWAYS GET BLAMED FOR EVENTS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ME but he was the instigating event.
Because I had threatened to make mac and cheese, and didn’t yet, he was saying well I’m not pressuring you but if you’re not going to make it I’m going to order something, but I don’t want to order what you can’t eat. I said “Order for one, if you really want something, problem solved,” but really that’s not problem solved that’s not how we do things, we family order to get additional meals, otherwise the cost per meal and delivery gets to be too much of the food budget.
So I finally (I forgot to take my bp meds and metformin at 6 this morning, didn’t get to them until 8, so I crashed hard and didn’t really shake off the doldrums until noon) got up and watched a little of the All Madden Christmas Day special (I saw him in his hotel in California shortly after John died but didn’t actually make the connection until I was back in Canada, which makes me snicker) and then even more finally dredged up the energy to make the ham and caper mac and two cheeses but in so doing I had to assess the current larder slash cheese situation and it was acceptable, except for that one fucking piece of moldy cheddar. You know how there’s aaaaalways one fucking piece of moldy cheddar. Anyway I figured it’s bright orange and crows like bright colours, mebbe they’ll see it and eat it, and if not I’ll trash it.
like crows are going to pass up cheddar cut up into half an almond sized chunks when it’s ass freezing cold and in between snowfalls and that, of course, is when Curvebeak showed up, sizing me up through the window, at the back of the queue, and I almost died of joy. He is a reallly odd looking crow- his head is a funny shape, it’s not just his beak.
Yup, a day whose importance has deflated like a cluster of birthday balloons blown into a ditch has arrived again. I haven’t wrapped a present or done any running around. I haven’t prepped a turkey or assembled the mass of vegetables to peel that oppresses the groaning board. The dining room table remains covered in filk memorabilia, craft cruft and a thousand piece puzzle (Jeff finished the edge). I don’t have to work, be responsible, be hospitable, put on a spread, worry about snax, worry about entertainment, worry about a gathering during a pandemic.
Rob W showed up briefly yesterday with firefly and snowpiercer comics! We mourned for his coworker, killed while moving poles for an electric bus (by another worker in their bus). translink is OF COURSE being remarkably silent about it and Rob, who drove bus in this part of solh temexw (remember? pronounced Sole te mawk) said he always hated doing it because you’re outside the bus and even more vulnerable than usual. I gave him a piece of Sugru (rubber moldable glue, incredible stuff I’m sure he’ll find a use for it) and two KN95 masks, one of which he promptly broke, so I’m glad I gave him two. I provided him with the address at Caspell Junction. Then he mentioned he’s got heart surgery on the docket but not scheduled yet (ablation, ouch). I warned him that COVID is severely fucking with surgery waits. Then we mourned for Tom for a while, exchanged a couple of flying anecdotes (mine about writing a fanfic with soaring in it, and him about ‘landing out’ as in right out of Germany (he was paragliding) and walking home from France, somehow without attracting the attention of the gendarmes) and parted on friendly terms. We were both masked the whole time he was here and Jeff closed his door. Yes, I know showing up unannounced during the plague is not optimal, but what is in these parlous times and I did immediate upgrade his mask.
We both spent a minute just flapping our gums over the last communique about the plague from the government and Doc Henry. Like who the fuck cares, the hospitals are full, N95 masks are unavailable except at ‘this is what is charged during wartime’ prices, people are lining up to be tested using inadequate masks, test kits are unavailable, disabled people are left at the side of society to die unimpeded and thousands of people are at risk of freezing to death on the streets of Vancouver this week. Yup, Merry Christmas we get wished from a bubble of vacuity. Nothing she says means a fucking thing as long as universities and schools are forced to stay open. Maybe she hopes this omicron wave will burn out in six weeks like it did in Gauteng province. I’ve long since given up trying to understand the rationale for the bs.
I picked up a few treats yesterday while I was out getting my BP meds at Guardian (jammed past pandemic standards with anxious people seeking booster shots…) which included FLORENTINES four of them, strangely available at the butcher shop on 6th, Jeff asked for something caramelly and that was as close as I could get, a beefsteak for a steak and eggs brekky this am, six Timmy Hos donuts, and two handpies (strawberry rhubarb) for Jeff. So that obviously means that I walked two k in the slush and muck yesterday but the traction wasn’t bad and I was having a good balance day so walking home a bunch of groceries while I got a little out of breath was certainly manageable. I leave the walking stick by the door in case I’m having a wobbly day, but I’m getting a lot fewer of those…
Okay, time to get the steak out of the fridge and bring it to room temperature. I think I’m just going to bake it, the idea of standing to cook it for any length of time simply appalls. I’m about to blow through two days worth of salt consumption in one go, better make it worthwhile….
Snowed about three cm last night. The world is blanketed and quiet, like it should be at 4 in the morning. I will shovel, Jeff will salt.
It’s five in the morning and I can hear a snowplow. At least Burnaby HAS snowplows.
Madison Cawthorn, a recently minted US Representative, who announced to a bug eyed world that women are EARTHEN VESSELS as far as MAKKING BABBIES and GOD is concerned, is getting a divorce after 8 FUCKING MONTHS. FUCKING CHRISTIANS AND THEIR ETERNAL MARRIAGES AMIRIGHT??? His wife appears like a Fox news twirlybird with an instagram full of 2 hours of makeup and exercise with every photo, and he is a narcissistic misogynistic shitheel/freeform bag of dicks. Anyway the schadenfreude on twitter yesterday was balm for my wounded soul.
Kitchen floor is a glorious symphony of cleanliness, what with the floor swept and the rugs washed. It won’t last, Buster will scoot across one of the rugs within the next couple of hours, but it did exist, however briefly.
All of my clean clothes are put away or on hangars, but I still need to rearrange some things and put more books away and … like that. Denny’s desk is cleared off and ready to go to Alex.
…. and I already need to do more laundry. LOL. Two more loads at least, cleaning rags and regular clothes.
FCKING SQUIRREL came to where I feed the crows and tweety birds. pOp is rolling his eyes, having lived this for decades…. If you put out food, HERE COME THE SQUIRRELS! this one was big, fat and glossily black. Christ, I’m expecting a raccoon and a bear at this rate.
Crows really like pecans. I gave them pecans as a treat and the NOISE THEY MADE it was most entertaining.
I didn’t fetch my Inderal yesterday; I’ve got until 8 pm tonight to get more. I HAS A CHRISTMAS EVE MISSION. Get BP drugs so I don’t blow a hole in mah brain, whoooooeee
The handyman now has pictures of where the railing is loose at the bottom of the stairs at Caspell Junction and he’ll fix it sometime between now and New Years, and then I’ll pay him I guess. I was beating myself up a little for paying for something the landlord should be doing, and somebody else’s landlord at that, but I realized that it’s something that needs doing and if I can make it happen through someone else’s labour, I will. Paul is walking slow (he can keep up with me no problem) and his gait has changed a lot in the last couple of years and I’m just terrified of him falling. I was also thinking about Tom and how he REALLY had a bias for action, for being up and doing, for being productive and ready to help people and it was one of the things I loved about him most (ha ha since I benefited so much over the years) but let me tell you, listening to everyone talk about how he helped them….. that’s how I want to be remembered, as helpful. A little weird, but helpful.
