Month: December 2022

while I still have power – no water

The pipes in our rental have frozen. I’ll waken Jeff in an hour to tell him if he’s not up by then. We are supposed to go shopping this morning before the icestorm starts.

Oh did I mention that?

this is what I posted on facebook:

 

Everyone in the lower mainland please read this. The atmospheric river last year was a simply terrifying event; now imagine an atmospheric river of half that volume BUT IT’S ALL FREEZING RAIN!!! This forecaster says we may get 36 hours of freezing rain totalling as much as 80 cm. Mark Madryga at Global is NOT arguing with him.
This will be one of the most messed up Christmases in the history of solh temexw. I beg of you all to stay home once the event commences, if you can.
Consequences: complete shutdown of all transit – air, ferry, ground. No ambulances. Fire/rescue hampered into immobility which means house fires may not be put out fast or well. Unless you have crampons and walking poles the outdoors will be extremely unsafe.
Be prepared to literally chop ice while freezing rain sticks to you, if you’re responsible for clearing sidewalks. I plan on using the edger to bust it up.
If you are required to drive over the period in question do not go anywhere without chains. If you don’t have chains now’s the time to buy them. TODAY.
***Cover your car*** if you park outdoors. ***charge your devices***, & charge anything that can charge devices.
Ice melter may not work all that well. You may need to apply sand or grit for traction instead.
LARGE ZONES OF THE LOWER MAINLAND WILL HAVE POWER OUTAGES (remember the Quebec ice storm in ’98? I was selling portable power equipment at the time so I sure do!) AND THE POWER OUTAGES WILL GO ON LONG ENOUGH TO KILL FRAIL ELDERLY AND DISABLED PEOPLE. So check on your neighbours if you feel safe to do so.
Outages (as in Quebec) may go on long enough that there will be no power at hospitals. They may go on long enough that the pumps for the dykes run out of fuel and fail in Richmond; flooding along the river in some places is likely, especially if drains get frozen over or clogged.
AFTER the storm there may be pockets of the lower mainland that don’t get power back for literally weeks. Hotels and motels will be jammed.
If you have a gas generator BUY FUEL NOW AND START IT UP TO MAKE SURE IT IS WORKING. Get a chain and a lock. One of the most memorable takeaways from the Quebec ice storm was that if you had a functioning generator, poltroons would steal it from your porch. If you have a woodstove or a safe fireplace that draws properly get some wood in. Get food you don’t have to cook into the house – even a flat of replacement meal shakes will be better than nothing.
I am so glad I’ll be able to stay home for this. Not everyone is as fortunate. If you have money to spare for the unhoused who will suffer tortures from this weather event, please do so.

China

There are very few painkillers left on store shelves; children’s painkillers are virtually unavailable.

and it’s all going to get dramatically worse. Although the Chinese government is not reporting the death toll from COVID after releasing the lockdown, hearses queued in front of funeral homes tell no lies.

President Xi had a terrible choice; let millions of people die, or sit still for the largest wave of civil unrest in decades. So he let the pressure off the population, and now they’re too busy getting ready for CNY and, you know, dying, possibly of variants whose existence will be as a direct result of the end of the lockdown, to give him any grief domestically.

Overseas Chinese are mailing tylenol home. China makes 40% of the world’s medicine supply. I’m sure you can see where this is going; a complete collapse of the global medical supply chain. There will be one style of hospital care for the rich and another for everyone else. COVID outbreaks in China will also slow shipping globally for everything else.

Pray you don’t get sick. This will be a hard, harsh winter, and a dubious and inauspicious spring.

Apparently Ryker ended up in hospital last week with a breathing problem; he was nebulized and went home. This was when he was with his da. Apart from being maybe 5 percent crankier than normal Katie didn’t notice that he was doing poorly, afterward, which is why I didn’t report it earlier. Scared me though!

weather chaos

Jeff and I are most assiduously staying the hell home in our coldass little rental, because the following is going on out there:

  1. folks sitting on the snowy tarmac of YVR. The de-icing crews apparently had all been working doubles and a lot of them went home; many crews are sick. The current record is 8 hours for smaller airlines that don’t have the deep pockets to advance their slot-time agendas
  2. we were EXPECTING this, all of this, and yet the snow response municipality by municipality, much like the police ‘services’ ahem, are patchy and also impacted by callouts from sick staff. New West cleared all of its roads by the time they said they would. Burnaby kinda kept up; Vancouver proper was a fucking disaster.
  3. in the old days, it was 8 to 10 inches of snow. These days it’s 25 cm. You would think a major Canadian metropolis would get out an’ plow er something, but it’s not good.
  4. TransLinkBC on twitter minutes ago (5:30) “Good morning, folks! Due to inclement weather, the transit system may be experiencing delays.” Like if that isn’t the single stupidest thing, stay home f’chrissakes, I’ve seen video of snowploughs pushing busses down Joffre. I mean unless you want to be standing in this freaking wind for an hour or two, stay home.
  5. Man skiing down Como Lake Road last night, just like how people got around during the Century storm in ’96 in Saanich/lower mainland and the Great Blizzard of ’71 in London and most of the northeast.
  6. More snow today and then bonechilling cold right into Christmas, so this natural phenomenon will remain here for most of a week.

Pity Katie; she has to both remove snow from her car and drive in this shit. At least once she’s out of the alley she’s on cleared roads.

My health and brain are much improved but FUCK it is cold in the house. I may bake today just for the heat.

Have yourself a medicated Christmas

Have yourself a medicated Christmas
It’s the only way
wifi connectivity is days away

Please take all your edibles with caution
No fair greening out
Please share or the rest of us will call you ‘lout’.

Now we’re home for the holidays
they’ll be squalid days I know
Cheek by jowl with relations dear
& we’re up to here

with snow

Have yourself a medicated Christmas
As your purse allows
Numb your brain cells, then sit in a chair and drowse
& have yourself a medicated Christmas now

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So much snow

Yes, we got some. Ten centimetres, more in some spots. We’ll get wind today to blow it around. The house is like a meat locker; when it goes down to Minus Nine that poor little furnace can scarcely keep up. I got out of the house around 10 yesterday and shovelled a path through the back deck and I shovelled the front walk way but I was completely winded at the end of that. Jeff took over and did all the rest of it including the salting, which so far has prevented further accumulation.

Found my crampons!!! so happy, they are now hanging up in the front hall. Never know when you’re going to need the soddin’ things when it’s slippery underfoot.

And after me saying I haven’t heard from Katie, she phoned me that day, just the lightest checkin.

Alex (in front of Suzanne and his mother) was asked what he wanted for Christmas and after seriously considering the question gave a little frown and said, “I think I have everything I need,” and Katie and Suzanne were narrowly restrained from bawling their eyes out, I sure did when I heard about it.

I sang to Ryker through the phone and he smiled…. according to his mammabear, I doubt she’s fibbing.

I tried to watch the World Cup and left after the second goal. A small amount of ‘you missed an amazing game’ ensued. LOL I always leave things too early.

I am trying to move from Twitter to Mastodon and I probably should wait until my brain is no longer swimming in glue.

Lumosity scores continue very poor.

My scores have crashed

I’m either suffering from the after-effects of a small stroke or I’m still too sick to concentrate on anything. I’m pretty much back to where I started. (This is for Lumosity. YES I am aware that Lumosity has had their legal troubles and have overrepresented the benefits and handwaved some of the science and I am not convinced they don’t still jimmy the scores from time to time.)

I’m going to take the uptempo view and decide to believe my brain will get better.

I don’t have any NEW news because I’m staying the hell away from other human beings since the plague situation has been crashing down around our ears. Without Jeff around I’d go completely feral, I reckon. It’s a good thing we all have phones and can at least talk to each other instead of scowling across the vast distance between here and where the kids live. Haven’t spoken to Katie in ages, but the great thing about that woman is I can leave her alone for a couple of weeks and she is still there, and still loves her mOm, she’s just busy.

It’s very hard to believe I was once that busy, flying around with kids under my arm and no vehicle. Yup, I took kids to daycare on transit in Toronto. Hours and hours getting to work and getting home, every day. Paul had to have the car because he worked shifts, you see.

The world cup final is in a few minutes and while we haven’t watched the rest of it, we likely will this am because it is global sport on a very high level and likely from all accounts to be a memorable corker of a game. I should stop what I’m doing and make brown buns to nosh while we’re watching. (LATER damn I didn’t get started fast enough. I was feeling very queasy and I’ve learned that I should eat into my morning queasiness, and then it’s gone.)

Tea, leftover Japanese food for breakfast. Those gyoza were evidence for God, sorry I ate them, jury’s still out now.

Metrotown parkade (THE WORST –– THE FUCKING WORST –– THE ABSOWORST) was BLOCKED for an hour last night, people were literally prevented from leaving by crummy driving and the parking attendants did bupkes. I learned of this from r/vancouver.

2023 is about learning to live with other people’s shitty epidemiological decisions and still finding joy.

I wept when I read Nita’s post on facebook about how she misses her dad. Me too kid; like me you have an awesome dad who filled my life with fun, food, music and art (also discipline, expectations and feelings of security.) Your loss is harsher to bear than mine, and the world lost an amazing man the day Jim decided to walk on.

There are ten people who read my blog every day. I want you to know that I love and appreciate you, even the lurkers, and hope you have an especially glorious day. Try not to get snowed in, wherever you are.

Trying trying trying

Suzanne has been and gone and the floors are cleaner.

She set off the smoke alarm downstairs and I used my ukulele to wave air over it so it stopped. I wish I had video of this; I must have looked DERANGED.  This was four seconds after I answered a phone call from Keith.

There’s me dropping the handset on the sofa, me and Suzanne yelling, and Keith afterwards saying, “That was like an old time radio show.”

I did pick up my FIT test. POOP IS COMING in the immortal words of Marvin Boggs (from the “Reds” movies.) My innards are calmer but I’m still getting messages from the front regarding standing up too fast. My blood pressure is fantastic but lord, that diuretic makes me dry. Normally it’s just my right eye that doesn’t tear enough but this morning I was forced to start crying just to get my eyes open. These days that is easy enough. I’ve cried every day since Jim died. I have no right to, I just do. I was crying about something else though.

White Spot burgers for dinner last night. Thinking of the barley bowl for brekkie this morning.

Christmas Void – Jan and Soon’s new cat Count Tricksy

Christmas Void, Christmas Void / hiding by the tree. / Will you ever try to drop the Christmas tree on me OH / Christmas Void, Christmas Void / hiding by the tree. / Will you ever try to drop the Christmas tree on me. / Make the tree to shed / by using it to shred / It is not alive / but not exactly dead (a ZOMTREE) / Festive all our hearts / Seasonal our joy / Now that Tannenbaum is up the cat has got a toy! OH!

 

& repeat until people throw crackers.

Feeling much improved

The pain is gone, normal toilet functions have resumed, I can stand long enough to chop vegetables.

The actual line of poetry I woke up with in my head this morning was “All human history is a glory hole of mimesis” but where in Christ’s name do you go with that? So I wrote about consciousness instead, it was easier.

Absolutely must get to the lab today. Also need to go to the bank. And rehearse on various instruments. And deal with the element I dropped plastic on yesterday.

I am looking longingly at my writing projects but I’m going to continue to play computer games, doomscroll reddit and try to imagine a world without capitalism.