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!
“But your charm is always in bloom—this is how the autumn of your beauty still smiles like the spring in your eyes and on your cheeks.” – some old Greek dude
Makes me think of my mother, and in fact all the elderwomen of my family.
Lovely long call with Dave yesterday. I told him which poem I tried to read to my mother and he said, well, this is more or less where it was an outgrowth of. This video is to reward him/punish him for sending me the SINGLE MOST MINDBUSTING ‘dumbed down’ physics from Scientific American I’ve ever seen.
I mean I can’t even describe it. Three dimensionality DOESN’T EXIST???? IT’S AN EMERGENT PROPERTY? (inarticulate howls of incomprehension).
Anyway he spent five minutes explaining why he can’t get his cats into their carrier. Thus the video.
Spent part of the morning at the Junction. Keith had an errand and picked up Re-Up – their pulled pork and cole slaw is effing fantastic. I kept Paul company, helped Suzanne 1% with Ryker – what a squirmy boy and besides he was napping for the first 90 minutes – and wiped down a couple of counters – and made some hazelnut vanilla tea we got from our last foray into Lougheed Mall. I feel like the ‘volunteer’ at the CMHA Ontario division all those years ago before the first time I got pregnant. (Utterly useless except to make tea.) As far as I know Katie’s first day back went okay.
I got two restaurant meals. Paul took me and Keith out for a delayed birthday supper and also to get out of the house so Katie could have some birthday joy in their absence. (He also paid for a takeout schnitzel meal for Jeff, who was too mired in work to go!) Keith talked continuously throughout. Paul literally did not say a word during the entire meal except “Do you want more wine.” (I had Stella, I don’t drink wine). I tried to get a word in edgewise and it was like whizzing into the wind, so I stopped. I’m buying a fucking chess clock, see if I don’t. It was quite disheartening and I can see why Katie wanted them both out of the house.
Anyway, Keith went to church yesterday (he’s networking in process of looking for work) and he spent a goodly amount of time during his peroration at dinner describing what advice he’d give to the church about growing the congregation and I’m like SILENTLY: DO YOU THINK WE DID NOT ADDRESS AND ENGAGE WITH ANY OF THESE QUESTIONS WHILE I WAS ON THE BOARD OF THE CHURCH AND OTHERWISE ACTIVE and DO YOU THINK I AM UNAWARE OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC CHALLENGES and DO YOU THINK I AM UNAWARE THAT ALL PEOPLE BORN AFTER 1985 ARE BROKE or IN DEBT PAST THEIR EYEBALLS. Keith waving off any comments I made did not impact my digestion, fortunately. He wasn’t interested in my insight and thinks he can wander up and tinker. (He’s already friends with one of the church elders because of his work with Philosopher’s Café.) I put 15 years in. eyeroll. I managed to get his attention with my review of Black Adam, so I guess I misspoke when I said I didn’t get a word in edgewise.
Spoke on the phone with Sue Sparlin who will be 80 in January and is a credentialled TV actor excuse me and it was a lovely chat. I also spoke twice briefly with Peggy but she was on a call for the first call and I was out the door for the second call so I’ll try to arrange something today.
Read a Dowker poem to my mOm yesterday or a fraction thereof. It’s bad, (the urge to do that, not the poem) I shouldn’t have; best bet is to loan her the book so she can read and absorb without having to run it through a phone call. It was so good to hear her voice.
Today, laundry, dishes and hopefully I get some writing and practicing in before I leave the house to go hang with Suzanne (caring for Ryker) and the gang.
In this life, I’m a woman. In my next life, I’d like to come back as a bear. When you’re a bear, you get to hibernate. You do nothing but sleep for six months. I could deal with that.
Before you hibernate, you’re supposed to eat yourself stupid. I could deal with that too.
When you’re a girl bear, you birth your children (who are the size of walnuts) while you’re sleeping and wake to partially grown, cute, cuddly cubs. I could definitely deal with that.
If you’re mama bear, everyone knows you mean business. You swat anyone who bothers your cubs. If your cubs get out of line, you swat them too. I could deal with that.
If you’re a bear, your mate EXPECTS you to wake up growling. He EXPECTS that you will have hairy legs and excess body fat.
So Rob was here yesterday to pick up his hat, and I was so exhausted after Alex (yes I need to work on my stamina lol) that I had to kick him out after half an hour. I know that wasn’t neighbourly of me. I also lowered the boom on him showing up without calling first… twice, and then he said NEW PHONE I DON’T HAVE NUMBERS and I’m like …. THIS IS WHY I HAVE MY PHONE NUMBERS WRITTEN DOWN IN INK FORM. I will accept no notice contacts from people I consider family but he’s a family friend not family.
Katie got a new phone yesterday as well. It was so wonderful seeing her. She’s 34 today, can you believe it. Sunch a bunch of Scorpios.
Digital StillCamera
Donald Trump is back on twitter; thanks Elon. No he’s not; he actually can’t find his password and said he wasn’t interested to cover that.
RIP Greg Bear, author of The Forge of God and Darwin’s Radio (the only two of his books I know I’ve read for sure). He was taken off life support subsequent to a stroke and died peacefully yesterday according to Wikipedia.
Wordle 519 3/6
mentally doing high kicks I GOT THE WORDLE IN THREE … no cheating.
Alex is here, snoozing next to me in the guest room. He doesn’t like this room because the wifi is slow.
In a minute I’ll get up and make coffee, and then he’ll wake up and we’ll go to Timmy Ho’s and afterwards call GGma.
I had a lovely phone conversation with Ruth; she and Lois are coming in early December. I gave her the info for the motel closest to the Junction; it’s literally walking distance away. I really love this part of Burnaby New West for being the right amount of density to sustain useful businesses; everything is walking distance.
I took Paul for a mall walk yesterday (it was assfreezing cold although brilliantly clear) and Paul said a couple of things that gave me a lovely sense that whatever is going on with him, he’s still Paul. He said that sky – that cold blue cloudless bowl – reminded him of Montréal in the wintertime. And when I said how much I was looking forward to seeing Ruth and Lois, he gave a beatific smile and said, “They are two of my favourite people.”
I watched him emerge. He emerges into grander and more squawking life even now. (Katie was 7:2)
Suzanne, may she be blessed, provided a hilarious anecdote. Paul had just gotten up; he’s wearing a singlet and shorts and is leaning back on the sectional, snoozing (I guess he was waiting for his coffee, this would have been Tuesday morning when Suzanne got there to mind Ryker in the run up to Katie going back to work on Monday).
So, picture snoozing Paul, bare-legged.
Ryker staggers up to him and slaps his ice cold hands down on one of Paul’s naked thighs. LOL Paul let out a yell, no one was injured.
My youngest child will be 34 in a couple of days. And I get the oldest ‘grandspawn’ today for an overnight. He’ll be coming over around or just after supper.
Absolutely no way I could have gotten the wordle today without cheating. Heavy sigh. Off to Lumosity to get my brains wrang.
If I am accompanying Paul anywhere in future, unless we’re evac’ing from a fire, we are not taking the gd stairs. If I watch him fall down those curving steps at Royal City Square because he literally has damage to the reflex to put his hands up when he falls, not only will I be filling out forms for a year (nb this is family joke of long standing and has nothing to do with the seriousness of the event) I’ll be traumatized for the rest of my life.
He looked at his blood pressure and said, “That’s not so bad,” to which my response was, “You’re teetering on the edge of a hypertensive crisis. Last November I had blood pressure like that and went to RCH.” His answer to this was to blame the coffee he drank this morning.
The name for the inability to be able to recognize that you have an attested and duly diagnosed legitimate medical condition is anosognosia aka our old friend Annis O’Nose-ya and Christ alive but it’s swift becoming a walking stick among my words.
Paul set himself two tasks today. When I called him to say YOU HAVE TASKS, which I am supposed to accompany you on, he blanked. But he figured it out fast enough, and I got him over here this morning before Suzanne arrived. He handed his phone over to Jeff, who did what he has long been expected to do, and fixed the problem with kind words, and then I disappeared Paul to the aforementioned mall.
The store he remembered was gone. I took no offence to this at all, since it had vanished between today and the last time I was in the mall, probably a good six months ago. I mean, I’ve been into the Save-On and the Wal-Mart (the former much more than the latter) which butt onto the western end of the mall, but I don’t normally go into the mall, which is very distinguished by how, apart from the retail staff, I’m often the youngest person in view. Not to put to fine a point on it, I turned 64 this week. I felt like a mere stripling, actually.
He had to poop. Took a while. Quite a while.
While we were feeling sad about how nobody seemed to have what he needed, I had to poop. I was somewhat more expeditious but I fucking near ripped some plumbing out of the sink when it assaulted me. They put the DRYER AND THE FAUCET ON THE SAME THREE PRONGED CHROME OBJECT and since the ‘signage’ consisted of a teeny stamped-in logo about the size of your finger end, and which disappeared in the reflection created by direct sunlight coming into the fucking bathroom, I had no idea that I was about to stick my hand under what I thought was an automatic faucet only to get an F1 tornado blowing the remnants of someone else’s experiment in handwashing up my nose. The fact I didn’t scream blue murder should earn me a laurel in itself.
Anyway, that mall is distinguished by how indistinguishable it is from other malls, and has like forty cell phone kiosks. We visited them all. We went to the Source, and Telus and Rogers and the rest of the row of cell phone kiosks, looking for an LG accessory. Please note: LG shutdown its smartphone division in 2021. Trust capitalism to orphan Paul’s tech. Finally, at a kiosk that hadn’t opened at 10 am, there was a cherubic Desi kid (he was 25, tops, short and round-faced and long-lashed and cheerful) and he said, “Come around, other side,” and found everything Paul needed (a new phone case and a new screen, which he did a skilled job of applying) and now Paul’s phone may survive a while longer. Paul was ecstatic and we got the hell out of that mall. Driving in that parking garage is one of the Stations of the Cross for New Westminster, stg (swear to god).
It freaking near killed me not to go into the Purdy’s but I knew that it would be something I’d regret and I ate half a chocolate bar yesterday anyway. It was my gd birthday, I HAVE NO RAGRETS… This is a movie reference. I have never seen the movie, but I know about this image. This is the curse of thEE INTarwEBz
Paul almost fell down the stairs heading back to the car. I watched him in real time forget and then remember how to walk downstairs. He should not be living on the second story of a building. It’s moments like this when I understand why Katie is occasionally flashing on terrified. If you don’t live with him or interact with him it’s invisible.
Paul is almost to the point of not being able to use a bank card any more. The last half dozen transactions I witnessed have been characterized by errors caused by him stabbing the keypad at random. If he hadn’t been coached by our Desi vendor it mighta got lengthy.
All our missions accomplished we scarpered, I drove Paul home (we’d gotten enough WALKING going up and down the mall to POOP so I felt fine about skipping a walk outdoors).
For whatever reason (I’m thinking a house fire and an inversion) the air quality is really crappy. We’ve had incredible ground fog for a day, one of the reasons we decided not to leave the house yesterday for my festal meal.
Today I have to run errands with Paul. I make it sound like a chore but I’m looking forward to it.
I wept, watching the Artemis launch (not live, Jeff stayed up but I didn’t). I wrote a song “When are we going back to the Moon?” and Artemis answered that question.
I had a perfect birthday. Jeff got me steak lobster veg and dessert and it was all fantastic.
Paul needed driving around for an appointment yesterday, so I obliged. Went to Merven food truck which is apparently Iraqi style food – for fifteen bucks I got a falafel platter that fed me AND Paul (he was hungry and there was loads – a springy fresh Pita Factory pita, a mound of hummus, fantastic tabbouleh with grated cooked beet on top, five enormous heart shaped falafels with tangy sauce, and rice with sautéed onions on top). So we sat waiting for his blood pressure check and nomming hard. That platter fed two hungry seniors, 10/10 would eat again. Afterward I got in to see the nurse and ask about the ‘driving’ issue, so everyone’s on the same page right now. As things currently stand the doctor has advised Paul not to drive and he’s accepting that, but he’s also thinking he’s going to be able to start driving again and none of us are convinced that’s the case because not all of the tests are back and that will take a while. And in the meantime everyone is safe.
I told Paul that I’ll drive him to the US to see people but he has to cover my housing while I’m there. I can’t just fall out of the sky and land on some Seattle filker for two days when I only see for two days once a year for a con, so I’ll need somewhere to stay while he sees Janice. (She lives with Hank, who’s also a good friend of Keith’s.)
I got a bit of a walk in, in the GLORIOUS sunshine and did loads and loads of laundry, and today I am 64 years old. We’ve got an early supper scheduled.
The world is not at war, the Ukrainians killed two Poles on accident, and shit happens.
Went to Paul’s place to pick him up. Suzanne was there for babysitting Ryker and doing the house – Ryker was asleep when I got there and Katie was out buying work boots – and Paul took so long to get ready I fucking near left without him. Everything is hella slow. Some days I put up with it better than others. Keith mocked me for my asking Paul to shake a leg.
Then checked with him whether he actually had insurance on the car he loaned/gave/handed to me and rather than getting mad at me he just said yes. As Keith has mentioned previously he’s had lots of time to get used to my style.
We went to Foreshore first. I tried to get the little birdies to come to the sunflowers but they were not interested. It was a pleasant walk in the warm sun and the cool breeze, not too many people, and after that we went to the library to drop off Wilful Blindness by Sam Cooper, “The Single Most Depressing Non Fiction Book I’ve Read Since King Leopold’s Ghost”. Then after that to the bank machine at the London Drugs Mall aka the forgettably named Westminster Centre, and then London Drugs itself, where I got a finger splint for Jeff’s ouchy, some dental instruments and finally a bath brush and some of that blueberry acai chocolate candy that I’m addicted to.
Then we went to the Pho Edmonds and I had my usual, the #32 (this time with extra salad and as always it was delicious, filling and a good value), and Paul had a small pho but no spring rolls this time and paid because the last time I paid for the hot and sour soup and sticky rice at Lougheed Mall which they are now trying to call “The City of Lougheed Shopping Centre” which is quite frankly the least exciting and most bloatedly non-informational thing you could call the second biggest shopping mall in Burnaby, after Metrotown, which got its moniker from a town planner in Baltimore in the 60s. OH THE EXCITEMENT OF RETAIL
Lois and Ruth are coming to see their bro in early December. They won’t be here long, sadly, but I am looking forward to seeing them SO BAD.
Today, since Jeff is now caught up on his laundry, I’m going to wash clothes, towels and rugs for a while. A long, long while. And I’m investigating going back on my schedule since my turnip tendencies are starting to irritate me.
Wordle in five this morning. I changed my starter word and that sort of foozled me for a while, but I got it without cheating, so there’s that.
3249 words on ‘special deputy’
9952 words on ‘totally boned’
And I wrote a new poem but I’m not posting it because I’m not really keen on it and I didn’t write it for a mass audience so I sent it to mOm.
It is a brand new top loader. Jeff smashed his left baby finger tip in the process of helping get it into the house; I’d provide a picture but mOm would o,O if she saw it (think of an anxious owl.)
I was supposed to hang with Paul but he never called me back.
Rob W., may the goddess adorn him, showed up with an axe and a plan, but we told him we have to wait for ‘the professionals’ who are being paid by the insurance company to get that treefall fixed, so we gabbed for a couple of hours and then I made him tea and kicked him out. He left his hat.
Jeff and I went for a little walk in the gorgeous sunshine yesterday afternoon. Jeff said that he should go for a walk and I said, “I’m going to stagger up the stairs, stagger up the hill to the park and stagger back again,” and he thought I was joking; he joined me after watching me put my shoes on. This is the same park at the start of the pandemic; the logo has all washed off that hoodie but the hoodie remains.
I missed the DD celebration yesterday. I am not sad, I don’t feel sad. I am somewhat immobilized though.
Russians out of Kherson. They’re starting to put anti tank cement blocks on their side of the border, which triggered Finnish Twitter to do a most pointed and technical takedown of how insanely useless it all was. (Altho the discussion was in Finnish you can translate tweets on the fly and man the Finns were just shaking their heads, it was wonderful. There were also comments that since it WAS useless, some oligarch musta got paid for it, ten times what it’s all worth. Lovely.)
Supposedly the new washer will come in the downstairs back door around 11 am today. No movement on the tree, not that I’d expect it on Sunday.
by aquilegiaformosa on tumblr
guys we’re not being cringe to keep out the twitter users. we’re being cringe to keep out the ALGORITHMS, the CAPITALISTS, the INFLUENCERS. twitter users are welcome as long as they agree this site is UNMARKETABLE
In other words become ungovernable by being someone you can’t make money from…. by being cringe. You know who’s cringe ? autistic people, by virtue of the intensity of their many hobby horses.
I prefer to be ungovernable by having my own website, that nobody ever looks at, but which will be invaluable to my family after I’m dead. That’s how things work. It’s the longitudinal and continuous energy of it, not the content, necessarily.
Worked on yet another fanfic, “Special Deputy on the Run” yesterday. I’ve poked into the file for Part II but I think I added 36 words.
The amount of shit kicking Zibethicus (my name for Elon, means muskrat) has taken on the internet is amazing. In a few short weeks he’s scorched his fortune, facing a lawsuit for over 50 billion dollars from a former investor choked that he essentially stole shares from Tesla, received the brickbats of the commentariat and been held up as a model of everything not to do in business. Every time he says so much as boo on twitter hundreds of thousands of people tell him he’s a fucking idiot; it’s glorious, but not enough to get a twitter account.
Continuing counts in the US election still trend Biden’s way. They didn’t poll people who never voted LOL__ so many pundits have tender buttskin hanging out on this that another public spirited activity on twitter these days is going through the pundits’s last two weeks of salty prognostications and retweeting it, saying things like THIS AGED LIKE MILK or DO YOU SUPPOSE YOU WILL EVER BE RIGHT ABOUT ANYTHING EXCEPT AS THE SPECTRUM FOR YOUR POLITICS etc etc.
It is GLORIOUS and marvellous in our eyes. The night show hosts are having a field day.
Mitch McConnell, easily one of the most corrupt and disgusting politicians in American history, is not Senate GOP Leader any more, and rumblings are someone is going to grab his 15 year old perch in the Senate. The people who are candidates in replacing him aren’t as likely to be as competent at either whipping votes or stealing anything they can reach.
We are about six episodes into Farscape. Every episode is weirder than the next. Truly bizarre show.
Virtually every pediatric ICU in the country is at double capacity. There are so many sick children that you cannot buy children’s aspirin in this country right now.
Spoke to Tammy on the phone the other day, she called. She confirmed that she’s coming at Christmas and I’m seeing her on Boxing Day.
I’m going to take my meds and ignore the world right now. Filk cancelled again, and although it’s Dorothy Dunnett day I have concerns about zooming for a meeting today… oh well.
I have no idea where the above came from.
the hotel room in the Dominican Republic. A married couple who checked in at the same time got a room full of sewage for two days… this room was much better. Also a bottle of rum was like 4 bucks.
Katie was damned lucky I took a spare bathing suit. This is Saona Island.
