Author: Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

Post COVID paper

Infographic about post-COVID

If you click on it, it expands to a readable size.

Katie and Mike BOTH dropped by yesterday, Mike to pick up lentil soup and drop off sous-vide chicken breasts, nom, and Katie to just lay eyes on me and tell me about her life updates, which include what appears to be a shot at being happy, so, I’m like. YEAH SURE I want you to be happy, why the fuck wouldn’t I. She’s known him since high school, it’s not like he fell out of the sky. I haven’t met him, mostly because I don’t have to during a pandemic, but Paul and Keith have.

We talked about how the world is half mad with grief, and those who show no grief show fear and anger.

No walkies with Paul.

Made more lentil soup, made more dough for cinnamon buns; the ones I made yesterday morning are, like, gonzo. I guess Jeff and I really really liked them.

Finished watching season two of the Alienist. It’s much like the first season in some ways, but they handled a trope about as tastefully as one can, and the man follows the woman to her new job rather than the other way around, so that was a nice break, and there was an extremely satisfying revenge killing, one of the best and promptest ever. You killed my brother, I ain’t giving you the CHANCE to prepare to die, I’m just going to shoot you in the back. YES.

When I was researching the show I learned that the author of the original source material had a family story that possibly affected his writing; his dad committed a murder that was embedded in scandal and served time for it. Then he had a fifty year career in newspapers. I wish I was a white guy.

Image

This is a Balmain dress from the 50s. Dress looks like she was hung by her heels, dipped in white chocolate and rolled in glitter-encrusted dust bunnies.

Brief note re Kamala Harris

I got an education in miniature while watching berniebros attack Black women on twitter during the run up to the 2016 election. I got another miniature education when not-stupid white American migrants to Canada told me to my face that there’s no way Bernie supporters could be so ignorant, like TOTALLY shut me down while in the next minute being super chill about Indigenous rights so….

(but she was the kind of person who BREAKS UP OVER TEXT MESSAGE SO FUCK ‘ER and I could go on but t’isn’t my story)

Anyway my position on Kamala Harris is clear to me, the evergreen ‘siddown and shaddap’, at least on twitter. If I’m going to have a white lady opinion, it will be here.

Kamala Harris has been chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate in the 2020 US presidential election.

 

 

 

 

Jeff is home

Victoria trip a success by all accounts.

Fed Paul lunch (beef and cabbage stirfry, which was delicioso thanks) and went for a really most pleasant walk in the 12th Ave School yard. The weather yesterday was so delightful, everything fresh under mixed skies.

For some reason I felt like I should call Peggy, and we ended up talking in part about how the more sensitive among us are grieving for the whole world right now.

I’m watching Hannibal without Jeff. It’s kind of exploitative but that’s the whole point I think.

I donated to Red Cross Lebanon for the Beirut explosion.

This is Jim being silly.

This is beadwork by the stellar Gwich’in artist Margaret Nazon.

listening to Oumou Sangaré on Spotify

the album is called Seya

Kept Buster in overnight, let him out at 4:30.

Trying to think what else to do today besides go for a walk with Paul.

I have a lot of swirling thoughts in my head

Once upon a time
there was a staple gun
it mostly was for work
but sometimes was for fun
when there were bills to post
and scores to settle
we could do it all
with hurtling bits of metal

Picture the tune for this as something like a fifties pablum ballad

the people are rioting in Minsk

because they don’t like their lying dictator. Belarus rise up! Беларусь, падняцца! Беларусь, скинь свои цепи!! As the CBC said

Belarusian opposition candidate Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya rejects official election results handing incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko a landslide win. She says that the vote was rigged and that protests will continue.

Mt. Sinabung erupted again. Ah, it’s nothing, that sucker’s gone off once a year for a decade.

Lazy Day

While Paul was here I handed him the phone and a beer. It was delightful to see how much he enjoyed talking to mOm, and mOm has long considered him a worthy in-law.

We took two turns around the 12th Ave School circuit and sat in the shade and watched a number of people not wear masks. I wore a mask anyway, the one to support the Vancouver Aquarium, which has turned into my go to mask because it fits well and is comfy.

 

I had a couple of days, most of a week, of feeling much better, but I’m feeling very jaded and unhopeful at the moment. I despise Trump and all of his minions and supporters so much, but I guess there’re historical precedents for an entire culture of people being so convinced of their superiority that a devastating war is the only way to slow them down.

Buster trained twice yesterday with vigour. Then he flops on the floor and looks cute. Yes Jeff he got his Sunday dinner.

Saved seeds yesterday. Practiced. Watched some TV but not a lot. Watered the garden. Fed a friend. Made soup. Cleaned a few things. Finally used up that cabbage head which has been unprofitably rolling around the fridge, and made fried cabbage with onions and chunks of steak. Only added half a teaspoon of salt as seasoning, but damn it was good, and that was dinner. Also phoned Mike to tell him there’s some really good soooooop waiting for him here.

Indigenous map of Burnaby AND recipe for vegan lentil soup

check it out!

and did you know there are petroglyphs in the Stô:Lō region?

Jeff’s off to Saanich. I sent him off with some Yorkshire Gold tea to share, as it really is quite nice.

Today, some recording, I hope, and a chance to see the kids.

Practiced a little and ate two bowls of the thin lentil soup I made this morning.

VEGAN LENTIL SOUP RECIPE COMMENCES

Into the pot I throw

2 cups of meticulously sorted and rinsed red lentils

10 cups of water

3 thinly sliced garlic cloves

2 heaping teaspoons of vegan bouillon (from a jar)

3 cm of ginger, sliced thin and then coarsely chopped

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon fenugreek

1 teaspoon cumin

2 cinnamon sticks

1/2 lime, meticulously rinsed and de-freezer-burned because of course you’re like me and buy those spendy suckers on sale and cut ’em in half and freeze ’em because some variant on this recipe will now go into your heavy rotation

1 whole tomato, cored

I do not know how much ground turmeric, at least a teaspoon. I shook and shook and stirred and stirred and it was finally the ‘right’ colour.

Instapot for 20 minutes

remove the tomato; remove its skin; smush and return to pot

remove the lemon; remove its rind; smush and return to pot

remove the cinnamon sticks

Stir but not like you’re getting paid to and devour. As you eat it you will get little flavour blasts of tomato and ginger and garlic and lime and the mouth feel on this one is just superb.

RECIPE ENDS

I simply must freeze some and get it over to Paul and Mike and the kids if they have any interest.

 

 

trying to stay calm, focused and hydrated

Emptied and loaded the dishwasher, finished the first part of the poem about the bird. Considered banging my head against the wall; considered what it would look like if it stayed that way. Considered Jeff considering me with my head stuck in the wall: “well never mind that get me out of here” and discarded head-banging in its less figurative form as a pastime, at least for today.

I must now attend to the horny appendages at the ends of my legs at least twice a week or they get snarled in shit and cause no end of pain. Filed down to a dull roar?  I’m good. Bending is not good. But the outcome is good, and I have a shower stool.

Oh my god, for two seconds I thought that was Jeff humming but it’s power tools or a generator or something NO IT’S THE HARDWORKING GARBAGEMEN OF BURNABY (well I’ve never seen a lady garbageperson so no I don’t feel bad using sexist language about it to draw attention to that) and now I feel like my hearing is disappearing. Well, I guess I should score my tinnitus as super high today.

There, perhaps that’s enough whining. I heard Mike’s voice yesterday, he called, and he’s having a super rough time (work, isolation, life maintenance). He wants to see me but he says that if he ever got his parents sick he’d self-ignite from guilt and I totally get it. I keep working my way up to being mad about it but it’s

I could not love thee (Dear) so much, Lov’d I not Honour more.

all the way, unfortunately in this case. Filial piety has to count for something.

sleep sleep sleep

Got some bad news the other day and I’m still processing it, mostly by sleeping. I’ll comment publicly after I get the test results, probably a week at least. Side note to mOm, who will worry— it’s not that big a deal, I’m just easily crushed these days and once again I’ll be asked to change all of my eating habits, which I am seriously disinclined to do.

Can’t I just quietly die ? <—– what a wuss. And no, that’s just me being drama llama’s fave hanger-on.

 

Also, the fact that I’m getting this news a couple of months after I think I had COVID is really, really pissing me off. There are so many things we don’t know, but I won’t be a bit surprised if I’m not the only person this happened to, although proof will take years.