Month: March 2022

rethunk

I think I understand why those little girls were gawking at him. Usually you see babies in formal settings and you don’t get to see all of their little bodies except for a negligible reusable pool diaper (they go in the wash). So they were gawking because they normally didn’t get close to babies this close to being naked, and so tiny, and so obviously having a good time even though he was tiny (he’s seventeen pounds, you know — the size of a fat cat) and he’s just so robust and engaged now, it’s just remarkable how he looks at everything.

I get the really distinct feeling that he has a much better memory for faces than most babies his age. Did I rave like this about Alex? I was so worried about him for the first little while, and a little put out but not enough to be an asshole about how long it took for him to warm up to me. Ryker is definitely enlarging and augmenting my grandmotherly experiences, and Alex is every day a new kind of entertaining thought process or turn of phrase.

mOm I hope you understand that when Ryker sees you he will already know that you’re his relative. If he’s old enough to know from words that’s one thing but if he saw you now I think he’d recognize your bones and return your smile.

pleasant day

Paul and I went for a walk, went out for phó, and went to Walmart (sigh) to get a bathing suit for me and a Blood Pressure Monitor (same model as mine so he could calibrate it) for Paul. Imagine my ire and stomping when I learned that he’s BEEN GIVEN BP meds and isn’t taking them. So I didn’t actually stomp, I listlessly itemized the medical problems caused by high blood pressure.

Made some phone calls.

Later that day I was looking outside and it was absolutely pouring rain, so the rest of the day it was pleasant to either watch tv or hole up in my room and write a little (295 words on one project, a hundred on another).

I’m getting my hair cut on Monday. I may go back there for a dye job – Cindy goes to the place I am going and she’s always had lovely colours in her hair; but not the first time I go. I’m bidding farewell to my long long hairs because they keep ending up curled into one armpit and then they spring like a trap when I roll over in bed AIIIIYEEEEE

Must buy swimsuit today

also, I lost my frikkin sunglasses and need to buy more, sigh.

Whether I will actually gumption up and leave the house is another matter.

Next week, I have a haircut booked. I have decided it’s time to cut the long hair off and go shoulder length again. I said I’d keep it long but I am starting to have issues and my hair ends up errrrrywhere.

Working on the ‘snow under starlight’ story again, which will end up with another name. No kudos.

Ayesha’s buried in the yard

She has Miss Margot, Gizmo, Eddie, Zeek!, Kira and Bounce to keep her company. Paul said he’ll miss her head butts, and her little chirps, and her full body wriggles.

Paul’s grief stricken. I made him a light lunch and Jeff made him tea and we’re just being peaceful and mellow and unutterably sad at 2 pm. (we then watched a documentary about the Concorde and SST and a Hudson and Rex). Now it’s 5:30 and Paul is going home. His blood pressure is troublingly high and I told him to go to hospital but likely he won’t.

There’s more than one thing to be worried about. I left a message with Katie and wrote out the numbers for him and he put them in his wallet.

bp 118 / 78

That was in the doctor’s office yesterday. Nurse says I’m doing well, wish I agreed with her. I’m finding making the lifestyle changes just brutal.

Suzanne sparkled up the house yesterday. Buster loves her when the vacuum isn’t running and then books it to his various hiding places.

Ayesha will be euthanized today. She has a kidney tumour among other issues.

2 kudos this am, no writing.

Food shop this morning. Finally, some more sunflower seeds for the tweety birds. Also, massacre pony cheese (mascarpone).

In the manner of tyrants, Putin has fired or jailed (house arrest) the two senior court officers responsible for the intel on the Ukrainian invasion. (Beseda and Bolukh are their names). Some wags are saying that it’s for a failed assassination attempt, but they’d just be dead if that had happened. So yeah, they cozied up to a tyrant, lied to him because that’s what he wanted, and now they’ve paid the price. Like others.

The man who killed Che Guevera is dead.

 

poor Ayesha

Paul’s kitty Ayesha is sick unto death and probably won’t make it (her kidneys have failed). I am sad for Paul. I haven’t spoken to him yet, Suzanne my co-grandma told me about it. It’ll be four years two days from now that Margot passed. sad faced primate.

I spoke today with someone whose near relatives are in Romania, and they have their bags packed pending such time as Putin drops the big one. I have this jejune childish urge to become hysterically patriotic and speechify. Instead I set it aside for things I can do that either enlarge someone else’s capacity to do good or enlarge my own. The stoics have asked me to have a care for that which I can control, and so I will try to be kind to other people and kind to myself. The nurse reminded me to be kind to myself; my blood pressure, amazingly, is way down.

existential crises have I one

I will have none whenever I’m done
pleasantly cynical isn’t the style
so I’ll
resurrect a ‘childhood horror’

Nobody knows but me
It isn’t your burden to bear
Nobody knows but me
And, fuck it all, I’m gonna share

in the first years of my teenhood
abysmally utterly greenhood
I lie each night and the bedbugs that bite
are mushroom clouds and Auschwitz crowds
that aren’t just a sigh in a closet
history runs we can’t pause it
but I do not want to be in it
not even for one single minute

If it’s like that

_______________________________________________________

and it’s like that again

If Putin is blowing up dreams in Europe
I now have three questions to ask
when did I notice and when did I act
Is history now Putin’s tale to redact
I for one think that the world’s on the brink
while reliving my childhood terror

unattached to the foregoing::
during the writing of this poem my daughter called me laughing and joking with Alex, they’re doing spelling homework and using it as an opportunity to work the spelling words into song parodies (‘scale’ into “Sail” for example, and to register the Allegra contextual impact you have to know that this song was part of our morning warmup tape when we had the shop). . .and I couldn’t respond properly. In addition to this on going mood I’m in, I have a 24 hour blood pressure cuff on and it KEEPS TURNING ITSELF OFF which is not assisting my apocawyptic bwoodings. I’m migraining as well, horrific multicoloured jagged swirls mostly in the left side of my visual field.

 

I’ve been waiting for this book since July

Just got it out of the library; open it with anticipation. Three pages in I’m like I AM IN THE WRONG BOOK. I don’t care about this. I don’t care about this character. I don’t like how it’s written. I blame Putin. I probably would have loved this book if I’d started two weeks ago.

Anyway it won all the awards and every single human being I know who reviewed it adored it and I’m like WHYYYYY

ah, ADD

Got to the correct appointment place, but not date. I’ll try again today. I’m not impressed with myself, especially since I dragged Jeff into my bullshit and he ended up driving me across town, but what can I do but keep going?

Chornobyl nuclear plant is without electric power which means that in 48 hours there will be a nuclear accident unless the Russians stop being fuckwits.

Although my admiration for the courage, spirit and inventiveness of the Russian people remains undimmed, what the fuck is going on in Putin’s brain right now, sheesh.

quiet day

2468 words, no kudos.

Yesterday: ran, emptied and reloaded the dishwasher, ran two loads of laundry and put all four loads away. Changed laundry detergents recently and I prefer the scent of the new stuff. I used to believe that my clothes wouldn’t fit in my closet and drawers and it turns out (after I took out the sheets I wasn’t using and put them in the hall closet) that I do. M I R A C O L O. Returned the rolling chair to my room. Cleaned a screen on the volcano. Watered plants. Made coffee and tea as soon as I got up.

Today: I have to go almost all the way downtown for a BP monitor test. Grr. I will be travelling by transit and I’m not looking forward. Need more bird seed. Time to REALLY get up, get going, etc. Happy International Women’s Day.

I keep thinking that Putin will get so mad he’ll set off a tactical nuke and say it’s Ukraine’s fault.

Some greek to go with the site branding

“As a student of philosophy, he was coarse and heedless in appearance, and his clothing was squalid”

-Philostratus, from the @sentantiq twitter account

and here’s something you don’t see every day on menus (found it yesterday while thinking about dinner):

If you don’t know what Cordyceps Militaris is, GOOD. That means you can ignore the next three sentences if you want to. It’s a fungus that grows on living, and then dead, insects. SHUDDER AND HURL. I am a very white person and I think there are a lot of perfectly edible things I can’t eat because I have culturally enabled squeamishness.

I found a new font called Truefesse yesterday (fesse meaning bum in french) and so I made this (Amelia script, also know as the Live, Love, Laugh font, is the handwriting font):

and here’s a list of Russian media outlets that died this past week per Alexey @ Meduza:

Gary Kasparov in 2014: