Month: June 2023

the cumulative effect

so

if Keith hadn’t asked me to come with for Peggy’s luncheon

Peggy wouldn’t have reminded me that Cindy’s Festival of the Living Rooms concert is Saturday and suggested I back Cindy up

and I wouldn’t have messaged Cindy to be so kind as to allow me to accompany her

and I wouldn’t have found out that Cindy was low key panicking, and we wouldn’t have rehearsed last night and I wouldn’t be backing her up today for the 3PM concert. She brought like 80 DOLLAH of greek food and we ate like chieftains wit’ da meat on spits, good god yall.

Yesterday with Alex was fun. We didn’t call GGMa but we did have a good time, and I got to see my neurodiverse grandson HAVING A SOCIAL LIFE WITH FRIENDS WHO ALSO HAVE DYED HAIR (three little cis boys with red and pink hair noisily occupying a living room) and once again I was moved to intense and grievous anger that he’s being renovicted and may lose these friends, as children do in moves. I will keep that friendship going if I have to take him on the bus I publicly swear it. Anyway he was invited over and I squared it with his mummabear and we exchanged numbers and his mummabear picked him up. It rained, but not enough to really put out any fires.

He played me something on youtube called Rush E. Don’t bother, it’s a memey thing and your life won’t be better if you look at it. Also he needs to remember to bring his blessed charger with him.

I got him to pick a beat on the Kaossilator and we recorded him playing overtop of that. I will post a fragment when I get around to it and quit panicking about the performance this afternoon.

The counteroffensive has begun. Qapla’ Ukrainy (Success Ukraine in Klingon)

 

busy all of a sudden

FINALLY got my bloodwork done, should be ready for the doc by the time I see her for the video chat. The venipuncturist was SO SLICK IT WAS REVELATORY. I literally didn’t feel a thing and she took three fast tubes with collapsing or bruising anything. It’s very amusing when the ripping off of the little round bandaid causes more irritation than the stick….

Keith picked me up and we went to Peggy’s. As we were driving along Armstrong a VERY TALL MAN came into view and I said, “That’s Joe.” He was looking bummed because even though he knew that he was low on gas…. he ran out. We drove him back to Peggy’s (well it’s his home too now) and he dealt with his car and Keith prepped a flatbread lunch (pesto-spread flatbread with fresh mozz and sauteed peppers (WHY WON’T THIS VERSION OF WORDPRESS COPE WITH SPECIAL CHARACTERS THANKS I HATE IT) as well as a delicious spinach salad, and which included extras of each flatbread to be taken over to the OTHER of Peggy’s son’s houses down the hill, but not for Ben because he can’t have yeast.) And Peggy devoured it, with the kind of obvious glee that makes me continuously glad she picked herself out of the crowd to be my ersatz oldest sister. She’s about to get on an airplane and go visit one of her sisters, may many blessings ensue. I was reminded that Cindy’s giving a Zoom concert on Saturday and asked to get my ass over there and provide backup singing support so I’ll email her and find out if she actually wants me to do that.

Keith talked about housing while we were there. It was a dark and emotional convo as one can imagine.

Part of Keith’s emotional turmoil is that he’s really connected with his two nephews and the idea of not being part of their daily care is grieving him.

THEN I found out I get Alex today all day because it’s a Pro-D Day so he’ll turn up with his electric candy apple red hair and tablet sometime between 8 and 9 this morning and go home when his mama picks him up. I have plans for his day.

THEN Mike’s 12v portable cooler was delivered here (for the Delica). (That’s because the Porch Pirates of Burnaby are EXCEEDINGLY ACTIVE IN HIS BUILDING, like they steal food deliveries as well as parcels.) He’s had so many packages stolen that he’s asking to have stuff delivered here instead. So I called Mike and he came and got it and most of the cooking gear he left here Sunday, although the metal chopsticks I gave him apparently took a walk and I reused one of his bowls after I cleaned it, yay ADD. He couldn’t stay because he had to make a grocery run.

I gave him his Um Suleiman kufiyah on Sunday, forgot to mention that. (Genuine Palestinian kufiyah in ladybug colours.) He really liked it and it will match pretty much anything in his wardrobe. I should have waited for his B-day in July but who the hell knows what tomorrow will bring and I wanted to do it NAOW.

Working on ‘understanding short sentences’ with Buster. I keep having to remind myself that UNLESS he’s already ‘primed’ for a behaviour he needs 8-10 seconds processing time to understand and respond to the verbal cue. (Margot needed a stunning 18 seconds to respond to anything.) “Door open” “Cat door closed” “wet food upstairs” “Daddy went downstairs” “Want brush?” “Want to train?” “Jump up for the one two three” (I always put exactly three cat treats on the tuffet in a terrifically underthought attempt to get him to learn counting words.) Also continued to train Oreo at Planet of the Renovicted. Sam is untrainable. (Like most cats with Bengal markings if you don’t get ’em really young.)

eviction notice

Keith, Kate, the kids and Paul got their eviction notice yesterday. So it’s August 1 they have to be out. Kate and Dax are (not surprisingly) having animated discussions about whether they should consolidate households and I know it’s difficult… but the rents are unbelievable. Truly heinous.

Keith dropped by yesterday and we had a pretty good talk about growing up ADD and how Paul and I completely underestimated how disabling his autism/social anxiety/ADD combo is for school and work. Like everyone in the family he masks very well, and then everyone who expected better is disappointed, himself most of all. He feels very at sea at the moment. However I was able to get him to drink some homemade iced tea and pressed some money into his hand to pay a bill. The thing that sticks in my head, apart from the more personal stuff, was that he said that he attended (via Zoom) a tenants’ rights association meeting the same day he was served with an eviction notice.

Coffee has been made and consumed; laundry is done but not folded, and I’m currently sadly contemplating having to replace this laptop. It is getting elderly and the battery is no longer holding a charge for long. It’s just a matter of time.

Jeff continues to walk every day, hope he gets out early today while the smoke is low. The Chehalis River fire is 800 hectares and the Harrison Lake fire is growing ‘explosively’ so it’s gon’ be smoky in the Sto:lo valley. He also changed out the burnt out kitchen light bulb this am and so I fetched the globe from the top of the fridge where he put it while he found a replacement bulb and cleaned it BLECCCCCH. BURNT INSECT BITS BLERG.

I am assembling a package to send to the parental units. It will full of ART or something similar.

Contemplating moving my social media presence to mastodon, but I simply don’t want to change anything about my life – everything’s getting rigid…

 

 

Quiet day

At least I didn’t spend the whole day napping! Finally had a continuous night of sleep. Paul took the bus to Seattle so I’m excused duty until he comes back.

MUST DO LAUNDRY TODAY it’s mission critical.

Did my first neurographic art yesterday. It was okay but when I hacked a couple of inches off one end it looked much better. Here is a botato (potato as said by a fictional Minion, a ‘potato’ picture is a crappy picture which still gets the point across) picture of one:

particularly like the centre bug, it’s so meaningful to me and makes no sense. Anyone notice the Among Us callout?

this is called ‘the kneeling gardener’ or ‘superposition’ and I did it a couple of days ago.

shit people shit policy

From today’s Sun “Internal emails at Vancouver city hall in the days leading up to April’s dismantling of the Downtown Eastside encampment show that officials knew there would not be enough beds to shelter people who were displaced.”

Let’s pile another notion onto this dreadful fact:  that thousands of more people will become unhoused in Vancouver – many of them children experiencing their first, and on the basis of statistics, not likely their last experience of having no stable shelter AND MORE PEOPLE KEEP MOVING HERE EVERY DAY … and tourist season is coming so there’s less housing stock because of the AirBnB units that have kicked out long term tenants.

morning haiku set

grating on your skin
you tense; relaxing you think
it was just sugar

pour out your coffee
onto the firestorm of news
and remark, ‘no change’

the moon, thank goodness
is no longer a pale green
I guess that’s something

Yesterday the moon was green when I got up. I went to look at ‘the Strawberry Moon’ and got a sickly looking moon, scary as hell. If it’s truly an omen for the strawberry moon – the month upcoming – I’m holding myself in braced posture for a lousy time.

The summer will be hot and dry, and that means full of fire and smoke. I just had a vision of Vancouver on fire. Under exceptionally bad conditions we could have urban fires in Vancouver (remember 25 percent of Burnaby is parkland and open space…) and I just had a vision of standing on the back deck and hearing the cops on bullhorns trying to get people out of their houses…. I need to do something else. Sigh.

Russia has repelled a Ukrainian counterattack.

Absolutely none of my Ukrainian and western correspondents are saying this. How easy it is to successfully repel a counterattack that never happened!

However I’m DEFINITELY hearing desperate and very concerning rumblings about a planned ‘event’ by the Russians at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant TO COINCIDE with a Ukrainian counterattack, to get everyone in the west so upset they –I don’t know —  start dancing with the lizard people in their tightie whities while saying nasty things about Zelenskyy, mebbe??  who the hell knows with the Russian strategists right now, they have a century long playbook of assorted misinformation, genocide plus deeply personally vicious tyrannical AND casually banal state actions to pull plays from.

Russia’s ‘many arms in many sleeves’ tactic for its mis/dis campaigns is now extending to SOLICITING SCHOOL CHILDREN to go on podcasts, video streaming and TV platforms to ‘report’ on the ‘military operation’ ie be the next generation of propagandists. These poor kids and their parents are going to be dog meat when the war’s over. I’d like to warn them but no one can.

Jeff and I continue to rewatch Elementary and Stargate Atlantis, are into S2 of LawnOrder, S4 of Medium, and are dipping into Archer, Disenchantment (Eric André voicing Luci and Nat Faxon voicing Elfo are always standouts), Time Team and a couple of other shows.

two items

From my ancestor’s diary via mOm:

 September  8th  1862    Today about 5:15 PM went into W. Sutton’s Office and told him that I had a concern to lay before him which had rested on my mind for a long while, in reference to his practices in his business, that there was so much that partook of Covetousness that I often felt uneasy in my mind in being so nearly associated with it.  Much more I said, so that I fully relieved my mind and hope he will as I told him consider these things as they brought the Truth into disrepute and was a stumbling block on the way of those who may incline to our Principles.  He heard me through and was very indignant but I took no notice although he said I was “demented,” etc.  He expressed a desire for me to leave, and it is agreed that I leave him 3 months from this date.

LOL

second item

over the last week it has been my privilege to see two family friends eating and drinking from the last remnants of the ironstone set from Granny Rivett. Suzanne drank tea and Mike used the platter to serve the meal he cooked us.

And he washed it after. He said, “You have no idea how hard I worked to neither drop nor chip it.” I thanked him profusely. What a guy. I’m so lucky.

i’ve been sitting in the sun

but not at Vantan, one thing, another, the whole Dinsdale stale trail of when plans go awry. I shall be crispy tonight. Jeff said I looked a trifle sunned. I heard stunned but you know how siblings are. (That did not, in fact, happen.)

However Mike came over and cooked supper outside on a campstove and it was nom nommity yes indeedy. Gai lan and beef&onions, over rice, mochi balls to finish. For whatever reason Buster who has in past been his devoted fan, wouldn’t go near him. He’s been fine but weird lately.

Knoweth how to party, Mike, in any event. Jeff had two whole beers. (I am drinking de-alcoholized, as is Mike. The cannabis was stylishly abundant I will leave it at that.)

He is now cleaning up, the Mobile 8th Wonder of the World.

We’ll reconvene over John Wick 4.

I was tired yesterday

I slept SO much yesterday, I think I napped twice. I feel fine this morning, and my brain is pretty clear.

Finally started reading the novella Glenn sent me. My roundtuit is busted I reckon.

Off to the Save-On for foodicles this morning.

Mike’s going to pick me up to go to Vantan sometime this morning. Yinkies, time to do a load or two of laundry.

D Roti Shak for shrimp curry yesterday. DAMN IT IS SO GOOD. I think if I was forced to only choose one way to eat spuds for the rest of my life, it would be the Caribbean style aloo. HAPPY SIGH.

Everybody have a good day now! I’m going to get some sun where the sun ain’t been since the pandemic started…

Not much happening

I think I’ll go spend a couple of hours helping Paul pack today.

Mike says we may go to Vantan, the private members naturist club up at Mt. Fromme, this weekend, weather depending.

Really looking forward to it. Place is completely off grid – even the hot tub is wood fired.

Membership requires 10 hours of work each year or a donation of cash or kind if you can’t work.