Month: February 2023

and the friends keep coming

Jarmo and Susanna were in town! they took me and Mike to pho on Main Street and we had a lovely lunch. Susanna particularly was in good spirits, and Jarmo was talking about his latest invention (he is exceedingly inventive.)

Then Mike drove up to Dana Larsen’s joint on Hastings, just past the blue graffiti of FUCK ThE CITY OF VANCOUVER AND THE VPD, and I am not publicly stating what he bought but I personally was eyeing the ‘cocacchino‘ (see the pic in the article) which is coca leaf tea with syrup and honey and…. then decided it’s counter-indicated by all the freaking blood pressure medication I’m taking. Anyway, the age of degeneracy is here and you can openly buy clinical DMT for personal use and some king hell mushrooms – ones that are wwwaaaayyy trippier than cubensis.

Then he drove me home but he said he wanted to stop at the Bohemian. He says it’s his fave cannabis shoppe and if they have afghan style hash, Jolt THC lozenges and a ten percent seniors discount for tokers over 60, why the hello nurse wouldn’t I return.

All the way there and back again we were listening to (outbound) Simon and Garfunkel and on the way back… Creedence Clearwater Revival. And singing our fool heads off. LOL. Mike has achieved oneness with that vehicle.

Then we got back to our place and he and I and Jeff watched the Creedence Clearwater Revival documentary, and Mike went home for dinner.

The family meeting didn’t happen, for various good reasons.

Thinking about going to church this morning. I’ll drop by Caspell Junction if I do, just in case Paul wants to go.

more fizzling and chortling

My my my.

So the family meeting that was supposed to happen about Paul’s future did not happen because Katie wanted to be involved and she couldn’t be until tomorrer, which is now today.

“Beep beep beep” goes the alarm on the door as Jeff leaves the house to get some Timmy Ho’s.

Ah, wonder what wonders of glaziery he will turn up.

Anyhoo, while I’m over there having lunch because that was still on offer Jan phoned Keith and told him she was in town and could be at Edmonds station soon (she was a walk-on for the ferry because she cheerfully admitted she had zero stomach for driving around the lower mainland, which looks like the wild west to everyone else in BC on the media what with every truck on the road having bad brakes, thousands of people on the road driving under suspension or without ICBC coverage, and the one in one hundred likelihood that the fucker in the Audi next to you has had A FUCKING SNOOTFUL at 11:30 in the morning and will blow so far over that the cop administering the test visibly flinches). Keith of course joyfully accepted and since he’d been given back his car by Suzanne (that all went smoothly for Keith, as usual it was a gong show on Suzanne’s end because her and bureaucracy are ‘mongoose vs cobra: the rematch’), he went to pick her up and then went and picked up foodicles for supper and picked up his nephew from school and we all chatted in the living room at Caspell Junction and drank lashings of tea.

Alex came home and I briefly interacted with him before he got on Minecraft (Keith was also playing with him for a while) and then Katie got home. She was supposed to drive Alex out to be with his dad in Langley for an overnight after which hang out with Jessica for the evening and when she was making final phone arrangements with Daxus, he pointed out that it might make more sense if she stayed put and he picked Alex up and then she could go straight to Coquitlam, because I’ve done that transfer once with Katie and it’s AN IMMENSE AMOUNT OF DRIVING. (Dax is keeping his place for the foreseeable, for various good reasons.) So Katie got to stay and visit with Jan AND THEN NITA AND HER DOG ELLA ARRIVED. SWEET PUPPY. Likes people, not crazy about other dogs.

Where was Ryker in all this? Daddy Mike’s care day, safe in his other grandma’s care.

I was very emotionally exhausted by that point and also realized that I might be in someone’s parking spot so I made my way home, whereupon I was made aware that Mike had called.

He came over, bearing a brand new ukelele. He played it a bit (sounded fantastic) and then I realized he had it customized with my name – backwards. So welcome Argella, you are my latest instrument. Unlike most ukes, Argella has a spine that runs her length, so she would actually be the single most useful ukelele for a bar fight, plus she has a tuner and pickup. HEAVY tho so I need to find that uke strap.

Then we watched The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent with him and ate halibut and chips and also shrimp and took much joy in our little social gathering.

My bucket, it’s full. THEN I GOT ENOUGH SLEEP. Woke up just in time to set up my medications for the week and take them this morning and then Jeff came back from Timmy Ho’s so we had a Tim(e) Team breakfast (the Smallhythe episode, the one where Tony sprays Phil with a hose.)

I am so happy right now. It won’t last but I report it so I can come back and relive it later.

 

Good morning morning

I am alternately fizzing and chortling and weepin’ and wailin, so EMOTIONAL LABILITY is the text du jour.

Jan Maxwell’s package arrived and I may now announce to the world that I have a book about art, anarchists and explosions; THE SCREAM BY EDVARD MUNCH ***socks*** (Jeff got the other pair), a large original pride flag, a Star Wars doodle book, a carven penis keychain (Jeff declined but since I’ve been thinking about the amazing generative power of dicks lately I’m fine with it). Plus a letter and postcard and a yellow “Reading is Sexy” pin, which Jeff got.
 
In the continued spirit of giving I today delivered biscotti unto the needy (that would be Peggy, who fell on the first cookie like she hadn’t had a meal in two days in a most gratifying explosion of crunches and crumbs) and puppy-faced at the Lundervilla (this last a dig at Joe, who freaking Poured It On when he Found the Bag no seriously his puppy face could stop planetary rotation) and pounded down two cups of tea while inhaling church and family news and sharing my own.
 
Then to Caspell Junction, wherein I beheld my quondam husband and our very much in the present son who was cheerful over his passport arriving. I further beheld Suzanne who was returning the car Keith had loaned her, which means that Keith can now drive his pop to the States to visit Janice and housemate Hank. Since I wasn’t required to drive Paul anywhere I made my way home and fell on the Jan package and the croissant Jeff brought home after his work visit this morning. I came home floating on a pleasant cloud of most desirable and informative social interactions. (Except for some, and I have to thank Keith for standing up for me in all that, no more details on offer.)
Because it’s preferable to thinking about how today Keith and I are sitting down with Paul to talk about Powers of Attorney and care instructions because we’re getting to the point. That point. A point I do not want to get to. But it’s very very definitely in view.  Okay scratch that, full family meeting on Saturday instead; Katie is going to be there.

still haven’t left the house LOL

Making biscotti and chicken stir fry yesterday put paid to my mobility ambitions. I will get going today, I promise. Cleaned out the kitchen compost bins and hoooeeee did they need it. Anyway I’m having tea and chicken stir fry for breakfast, because damn it was good. I’ve been watching a Chinese lady cook on facebook videos and she really inspired me.

17529 words.

Found out there’s a samosa factory on Beresford…. I intend to visit there today too. Hopefully Paul will be in the mood for errands.

Absolutely dreading the family meeting on Friday. However, if Paul reacts poorly, he won’t get asked in future; stuff has to happen whether he’s composed enough to take part or not.

 

 

I’m reviewing myself

First biscotti I’ve baked in many many long months are ready. Time to head out to deliver them. Or not. I’m feeling sessile, again again. As soon as I stopped baking them the stove threw an F1 error so I guess the stove has quit (it’s either a control board or a door sensor.)

Got an hour into Babylon (2022) and realized I literally could not sit through it in a theatre; my viewing habits are so fussy I’m thinking it should have been a mini series so you didn’t get more than an hour of it at a time. Margot Robbie is, as always, eye-popping. I learned from her wikipedia article that she extemporaneously slapped Leo DiCaprio as part of her audition for ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and I AM SO HERE FOR THAT FACTOID. Anyhoo…

I committed many voracious re-reads of (the almost totally fictional, thoroughly and salaciously scandalous and culturally influential Kenneth Anger book) ‘Hollywood Babylon’ as a youngster, so I know ‘how this story ends’ (please see my song “Slimfast and Methadone” for my reaction to this story line which I wrote almost fifteen years ago); and I can’t *feel* anything about it that the moviemakers might intend; not a good way to watch a movie. Knowing the source material too well is cloying; we’ve known young good-looking people are just meatpuppets for the rich for HOW LONG? NOW?

This is now the fourth or fifth full length movie I haven’t been able to finish in the last month. I blame the pandemic. It’s me. I know it. Is Babylon technically deft and scathingly funny? Yeah, very much so. I’m just a lump of melted down critique rn. So my review is of me. Allegra is having a little moment of wondering when I stopped being able to sit through a two hour film. In my defence, ‘Babylon’ (2022) is three hours long. Apart from more inclusion of Black, Asian and gay characters, the novelty of wretched excess in the service of entertainment for the masses has kinda worn off for me. So it’s not really a review, like I said, and it’s very very funny in spots. I just…. can’t. I’m tired of this story.

I think I need to get back to work on my own stories. I spend a lot of time thinking about Totally Boned. The whole point of it is two broken people find each other and start healing, and since neither of them are conventionally attractive men, it’s not something that would ever get adapted as a script or screenplay.  (Plus in my universe if you kill someone, even to protect loved ones, you don’t get to Jack Ryan your way out of it thinking that ‘they had it coming.’ Two mothers are now grieving dead sons, even if they were total assholes, they probably got mom flowers.) Brad and Omar would both get ‘glowups’. Remember the white man laughing at the warthogs getting frisky and the Black man who was acting as his guide remonstrating with him, “They are beautiful to each other.” That doesn’t fly in visual media….