Month: January 2023

RIP Tom Verlaine

He passed a couple of days ago.

I once went into a record store in Toronto not knowing who he was but I’d heard him at Dave’s place and I was asking if they knew who sang a song with the lyrics, “Tonight the air has teeth,” and right now I’m listening to “Breaking in My Heart,” and weeping helplessly because I know.

I called Mike yesterday. He wasn’t able to drop by and did not want a visit, but we checked in and all our peeps are safe.

Another near miss (asteroid.)

 

Keith dropped by with beef stew

It is excellent, had some for lunch. I sent him on his way with a cheese bun and a cookie Jeff had picked up when he went out briefly in the morning for work.

Dinner was pork chomps, taters and frozen veg heated thoroughly. The chop was fantastic. The last one I put nothing on, this one had a lightly applied dusting of Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, garlic powder and ground basil, all smushed in the mortar and pestle Keith gave me which I use several times a week to release flavours on aromatics and also get the salt grains smaller. The leftover chop (they were so big Jeff and I split one) will go into a chopped salad.

I have had my coffee, done the wordle (4 tries), done my Lumosity (one top five score), put the dishwasher back in its place after running it last night, and now I contemplate a day of in part most probably doing something with Paul. I think it’s a bit nippy for a walk but Paul almost certainly won’t think so, so I should dress warmly I guess.

Chilly screencap from ventusky.com of polar air

Furnace continues to work, thanks be to the manufacturer.

No progress on writing.

 

quiet day

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I was quite tired and slept a good part of the day and then another good sleep at night. My sleep cycle right now is …. weird but hey I’m warm enough at night and this little room is cold.

Wordle in 4 this morning.  Three whole kudos from AO3 this morning – those numbers have really dropped because I’ve locked the account down to registered users only so casual readers can’t see my stories any more.

Desperately seeking coffee. Oh, shit, that means I have to –you know– get up and make it.

errands

Suzanne was here, enshinening happened. Keith has loaned her his car while she’s down a vehicle after her ice storm crash. I arranged bridge financing for her next car while Icy Beasty dithers around with her replacement car cheque, but what the blithering hell can I do, if she doesn’t have a vehicle she can’t work and she can’t walk or bus here with her cleaning equipment and it would completely mess up Katie, who would probably have to take another half hour out of her day to go fetch her for the 7:30 to 4:00 shift she works M-W. Yes, there are cabs, but if the driver’s a jerk it doesn’t work for anyone. I’ve at least seen her new used vehicle, which is quite nice and has everything she wants. (She needs a vehicle big enough for road trip packing as well as for the cleaning gear.)

Got to hold Ryker for two minutes day before yesterday. He made strange with me almost the entire time but he’d just woken up and he obviously is way more familiar with Grammy Suzanne than me. It’s getting to the point that Paul is no longer safe to be in a home with a toddler, since he keeps leaving the kitchen chairs right up next to the kitchen island, and Ryker can now scale ANYTHING in about four microts. Picture him climbing the island, pulling a knife out of the block and then falling on it for what that could end up looking like. Yeah, I kind of blacked out there for a second. He’s covered in tiny bumps and bruises, and he falls and gets up without bothering to cry quite a bit these days. And he RUNS LIKE THE WIND. He’s an acrobat. Suzanne and I talked about maybe me taking him to ‘tumbling tots’ and we’ll run it by Katie.

Got the mats into the washer before Suzanne got here. So weird seeing her pull up in Keith’s green Echo.

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Finally got the pin fixed on my credit card, hopefully that will fix any other problems associated with it.

My nut order arrived and I have roasted the first batch of almonds for biscotti.

I had a good night of sleep but perhaps a little brief. Now to wait for Jeff to get up. I wanna make home fries for second breakfast, I already ate first breakfast, which is leftovers from yesterday. OH THOSE SWOSSAGES FROM THE FORESHORE RESTAURANT NOM NOM NOM

Various things

Took Paul out and got him lunch. We walked in Fraser Foreshore (he could have gone longer than me, but had to pee up a tree on the way back) and I fed some birdies, although they didn’t come to my hand.

He expressed that he feels overwhelmed during the weekly family phone call and would probably do better one on one. We can’t confuse our own convenience with what Paul wants.

I did not do a load of laundry nor did I do the expenses, but I ran the dishwasher, made a light supper for Jeff (I was not hungry for the rest of the day after that late lunch), ran a very restorative bath and washed my hair.

Between now and the end of the month it will be very cold at night. If you have the cycles please spare a prayer for the furnace.

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calm and foggy

So much hooting from the foghorns yesterday.

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I actually changed and made my bed yesterday. Slept like a dog on a sofa, thanks. Also started taking vitamin D again. I can feel cobwebs coming off my brain, weird feeling.

Ate nothing but leftovers yesterday, it was awesome. TOO MUCH SALT don’t care.

I have three whole tasks in front of me today.  The first is getting Paul out of his apartment (I plan to just show up and run away with him, we’ll figure out about walkies and a meal afterward), the second is updating my portion of the household expenses, and the third is putting away my laundry. Can I do it? will I be overcome with Edward Gorey scale bouts of ennui? I think so, yes. Bonus, printing out medical requisition.

Now off to do battle with Lumosity and see how my brain do.

Thinking about Dave today; apparently the weather in Toronto is vile, so I’m glad he doesn’t normally have to go anywhere.

Peaceful

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Keith asked to be on Jeff’s Minecraft server.

Weather overcast and cold.

One of the things I’m having the most problems with as I get older is that over the course of my life my energy has come in waves. Now the tide’s gone out and I have no idea when it’s coming back in. In order to spare myself I often told myself that I am perfectly capable but I need the right combo of mood and energy level to git ‘er done and now…. nope. So now I have to schedule things I don’t enjoy doing and grind, and that’s totally unsuited to my previous way of doing things, and my temperament.

I have a big ugly list and I need to get going on it.

a little list

  1. Pork chops of superlative tenderness achieved. Last two were fossilized so it made a nice change. Roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts dressed with sesame oil to go with.
  2. Three whole loads of laundry. Not put away of course but I’ll make an attempt.
  3. We’re going to get a buttload of cold weather. I’m hoping the furnace makes it.
  4. Brief call with Katie; she’s managing.
  5. Janice did not come this weekend.
  6. 15275 words
  7. Twitter is continuing to make circling the void/drain/black hole noises.

omnibus again

  1. today’s wordle can best be solved if you put the word ‘Arrrr!’ in front of it.
  2. Halibut for lunch yesterday. It was so capacious it served for the rest of the day. I know it’s got a lot of salt but goddam I want the leftover poutine for brekky
  3. Pork chops for lunch or supper today. Johnson Pork is superior, just mentioning it again.
  4. No word comes from Caspell Junction. Is Janice there? Is she not there? I’m almost scairt to ask.
  5. Fascist brand ‘Diagolon’ leader Jeremy MacKenzie has been fired by Scotiabank. He reports to the Western Standard “I have 30 days to find alternative means of financing the mortgage on the home, where my children live & everything else you could imagine.”  I can imagine a lot of scummy things living with a neoNazi so thanks for that little kick at the end of sentence there. I personally have no beef with this kids, who will either turn out to be just like him or the BUCKwildest climate activists in Canada, that’s just how things turn. In a letter he received from the bank, no other reason than, “The bank has determined this relationship is outside of its risk appetite,” was given. LOLOLOL
  6. I was disturbed to view a Hudson & Rex episode (S5E7) in which the writers came out firmly against MAiD being offered after a deliberate medical failure to treat illness – regarding prisoners, in jail. Not a peep about disabled people tho… only watch the show for Mayko Nguyen and the dog, Diesel, anyway, I grumpily add. Once you start looking for the Canadian cultural lietmotif of disability erasure it’s frelling everywhere. thank you @mssinenomine for helping shift my viewpoint (which still needs work, my internalized ableism IS IMMENSE) *this item copied from my twitter
  7. Everything peaceful around here.  Time to locate caffeine and squeeeeeky cheese curds on poutine.

lovely time at Jerome’s

In no particular order:

  1. his new rental is super easy to get to and I had to drive past Ralph and Ivy’s old place and that got me thinking about her. She has always been one of the people I had in mind when I wrote a homily for Beacon. I also had to drive by the John B Pub and that took me back. Many’s the time I sojourned there for the beer and the Blue Meenies, and often Jerome was there since he’s lived out that end of town for years.
  2. Nice little house on a freaking huge lot. Back deck is SQUAREDANCEABLE. Garage faces the alleyway and usually people come in through the back – the concrete walkway doesn’t even go to the street out the front.
  3. Jerome greets me with a big hug and makes me a cup of coffee (I think dang this is good coffee – had it with oat milk – and it turns out to be EXACTLY the same coffee that I taste tested to have the best price point for the coffee at our cafe back a decade ago.)
  4. We speak of many things. Obviously I spent some time moaning about Paul, and worrying about Mike (a dear mutual friend, you won’t believe it but Mike CALLED Jerome AS I WAS WALKING UP THE STEPS) but mostly we talked about ideas instead of people, because he is hyper smart and very broad of mind with lots and lots of interesting life experiences. We talked about suicide and the drug crisis, who we’ve lost. We talked about old friends.
  5. A decade ago I gave him a peyote seedling. (They’re legal now as plants or seeds, git bent if you’re going to bring stupid morality here.) It got stuck in windows with no light and bolted. It’s finally in a proper place to settle down. Now it looks like a three inch long peyote penis, sage green and crooked and skinny and so funny looking that I laughed for about thirty seconds like a cackling witch when I saw it. Honestly you’d laugh too but I didn’t bring a camera.
  6. He hauled out three new (and used ha) guitars, two of which were Seagulls, and you KNOW how I feel about Seagulls. I got off a couple of songs, Don’t You Weep and the Zero G song, which was fun. The second guitar he handed me was the one I wanted to steal though, sweetest sounding steel string I think I’ve ever held in my hands. Then he showed me new guitar tech which I now need to buy for all of my instruments, plus I need a couple of humidity readers. Then he showed me his grandmother’s violin. It is at least a hundred years old and looks amazing, so much darker than modern violins are finished it’s quite breathtaking. That felt like glimpsing a bit of family history so I got chills.
  7. Heard about his kids, and how lovely. Oldest wants to be a professional soccer player and hauls his own ass out of his warm bed to practice IN THE ROOM GIVEN OVER TO SOCCER in the basement. There’s a cushioned astroturf floor, a practice goal and – necessary for wind, I guess – a treadmill. Also told me about a thrilling match between a US team (in Seattle) that cheated (assaulting the goalie to the point he was taken to hospital – he was down on the ground and those badly coached adolescents KICKED HIM IN THE KISHKAS which only resulted in a yellow card WHAT THE FUCK REFS I mean seriously) that Jerome’s kid’s team managed to win despite the godforsaken adjudicating and the violence and pettiness of the other team. Like – as thrilling as the last world cup game in the retelling, I was on the edge of my seat.
  8. He gifted me something lovely and small and appropriate on the way out the door.
  9. I got to sit in Jerome’s sunny kitchen for most of it.

I really did feel restored. Lovely night of sleep and feeling much sounder about the universe.

All y’all have a good one, you’re good people and I’m glad you’re here.

Best

I went to my appointment. I have lost two kilos without noticing. I only lose weight when I’m stressed. My blood pressure is perfect. I got a flu shot (my arm feels like it’s falling off and I’m tired.) My sugars continue to come down. Nurse recommended CBT but apparently that doesn’t work with aneurotypicals with a justice bent and I was so happy to read on twitter reasons why my last exposure to it made me unreasonably angry and DIDN’T WORK …that was when I was still working for company x.

I love it when people dismiss your social justice yearnings as unrealistic or childish don’t you? or actively psychiatrize them. I won’t say more. Anyway, I don’t want CBT, I want talking therapy with someone more intelligent than me and I’ll just let you understand what a simp I am from that.

After the appointment which was reasonably on time, I drove over to see Keith at his place and picked up the stuff that mOm and pOp had given him to bring back to us in Vancouver.

We had a lovely short visit. Kids were in school or at their other other grandmother’s whose name is Christine; Paul was snoozing on the sofa in the LR. I came home and having performed two whole errands, including driving, I enslothed myself. Called Dave, and that was a lovely call. I’d gone looking for William S Burroughs Jr. on line and found David Ohle and from there found ‘Motorman’ his first novel and read to Dave 2 descriptions of the work which were so intriguing I decided I may actually purchase it.

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In an hour or so we’ll fetch groceries. Off to Lumosity to see about that brain of mine.

This afternoon I’ll be visiting Jeromie in his new homie.