Author: Allegra

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

Raised by narcissists

Raisedbynarcissists is a subreddit, which means you have to go to reddit. I’m not providing the link because while I visit the site regularly, I have a good reason not to push them more traffic. I consulted this subreddit a lot when I was trying to construct female characters who had zero empathy for their children. Although I don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for narcissism (sorry, you want to get some on me, you’ll have find cause) I relived some moments from my childrearing days rather intensely and certain events resonate differently in recollection.

If you’ve always had a good relationship with your family, except the occasional tiresome display of illness or nerves or ‘the cranky’ then I recommend you just grab a couple of posts and start reading. Maybe you don’t care to know how bad other people have it. For me, it was revelatory, and it has since helped me understand how my children can have such deeply canyonated views on me, and how keeping families together falls on everybody in a functioning family and on people pleasers in one that is… not. Not functioning. Anyway, I recommend it, if you have a nice family it will TOTALLY REMIND YOU WHY AND if you have a terrible family you’ll get sympathy and good advice.

Just for fun – I shall take a few questions

Image

  1. Transylvania – I think – I didn’t finish it. I didn’t get into video games until the visuals and music were better.
  2. Probably Alexios
  3. Don’t know
  4. Plants vs Zombies side quests
  5. Probably one of them ditzy broads in Borderlands who cain’t stop killing things or running her mouth.
  6. Probably the dragon in Dead Souls, Jesus did I get bored with watching brO fight it.
  7. brO and his favourite weapon in an FPS
  8. Skyrim, I ain’t even played or watched it and I know parts off by heart although that’s all Mike’s fault
  9. shrug, no notion

Ooh, now I’m thinking about a drinking game for Time Team.

  1. Drink at least a sip of alcohol when they do.
  2. Do a shot when Phil says ‘Ooh Ah’ or ‘Oh Ah’ or says ‘crucial’, ‘stone the crows’ or ‘crikey’.
  3. Do a shot when Tony flaps his arms while running.
  4. Take a sip when a woman archaeologist wears whatever the hell she wants without worrying about the camera.
  5. Take a shot every time you see the Mick doll.
  6. Take a sip when Carenza says ‘there’
  7. Take a sip when someone asks to come down in the trench.
  8. Take a shot when they go up in the helicopter.
  9. Take a shot when the re-enactors show up.
  10. Take a shot every time you see a dog or a cat.
  11. Take a sip when Tony makes a snide remark indicating that he thinks rich people are a bit much.
  12. Take a shot when one of Victor’s pictures is given to the village or the homeowner in the end.
  13. Take a shot every time Robin reads something in Latin.
  14. Take a shot every time they need dendrochronology.
  15. Take a shot if they gather the whole village together at the end.
  16. Take two shots every time the geophys is spectacularly wrong and it turns out to be geology.
  17. Take a shot when it rains.
  18. Take a shot the first time the archeologists go into someplace underground
  19. Take a shot every time you realize that the English really dig the whole colonizing and being colonized thing.
  20. Take a shot every time dowsing works.

now:

Call an ambulance and go to hospital. You have alcohol poisoning.

BRIEF wildlife encounter

If I remember to get a camera, I’m not in the moment, so this is unrecorded in video.

Small brown bird, dapper despite being distressed, greets me by flying through my hair as I go into the media room. I set everything down (I was carrying NOT ONE BUT TWO ARRAYS OF HOT LIQUID GAWDAM AND IT WASN’T EVEN FIVE AM AND I’D ALREADY ALMOST WIPED OUT IN THE BATHROOM) after congratulating myself at not tossing the entire array at the ceiling with an unhinged scream, and considered my options.

While the bird flew pretty much nonstop across the room, NEVER CHEEPING or making any sound not associated with flying, I turned the light behind the TV off and the room light on. That accomplished, I turned on the light into the games room and turned the room light off. The bird obligingly flew into the lit room, whereupon I closed the door, which was the first point at which I could be guaranteed that the bird would not fly up the stairs, into Jeff’s room, and shit on his head as a conversation starter.

And then THE JAPANESE NOREN that has scowled across our living space from various doorways ever since mOm gave it to John in the mists of time BALKED THE CRITTER. It couldn’t fly under it and instead it perched on it – repeatedly, glaring at me.

Talking and moving slowly and carefully, I remonstrated with the bird. “Sister – the door is that way!”

I opened the back door and folded back the noren so the bird could get through the second-last door, and then, scant inches from the open door, the bird communed with my laundry and went all Disney like it didn’t want to leave.

“You may not nest in my underwear, there is a cat in this house, which you already know, dumdum.”

I advanced on the bird and it flew off into the morning twilight. I closed the door and thought, “I didn’t take pictures. I didn’t try to catch it. I just tried to find the fastest way to get our unintended guest out of the house.”

Now I have told you what happened. I supposed one morning I’ll come downstairs and there’s a raccoon going through the trash and then you’ll really hear me screech.

set list

40 Million Light Years

1 Meat Ball

I Pop Pills

Alexios the Murder Hobo

Co Pilot’s Lament

Paradise (John Prine)

Apprentice

2&20 Blues

 

Grandson Greg was at Tom and Peggy’s, he seemed to be in excellent mood. We sang and played in both yards, following the shade, and it was lovely to be fed veggies and rice and butter chicken while admiring the two weeks of work Dan T. put into their back yard. Those fucking bricks weight 80 pounds kids and there’s a lot of them.

Mostly we talked. We sat on chairs six feet apart and talked. We felt like adults. It was really nice.

scratch track

the distortion is part of the charm – it’s a natural feature of whacking the guitar this hard at a harmonic point with a rubber mallet – yes this is a hammered guitar

It’s the hottest part of the summer and I’m treating myself to beer. God I love this song. Anyway, it sounds MUCH BETTER on headphones, I’m hearing stuff I didn’t hear the first time. It’s just got depth, you know, and then this sort of pounding howl of a chorus, so much pent up jealousy and rage and then back to… I do this, I do this, I do this, life has a rhythm, and then I JUST GET SO MAD. I LOVE IT so there

 

Not a perfect birthday

for Jeff, but parts of it were excellent, and the shakes were REALLY GOOD. Burger Heaven knows how to do that.

Today is a laundry kind of day.

The Hugo awards ceremony COMPLETELY AND TOTES shit the bed. During the award presentations the white men mispronounced everyone’s names and reminisced about the old days, when nobody had to do shit for women and negroes. Disgraceful. The awards themselves mostly went to the good and great but mispronouncing Mur Lafferty’s name AND Fiyah Magazine’s name? wtf you soggy old assholes and GRR Martin was the worst of the fucking lot.

Seanan McGuire’s thread on how to run an award ceremony on twitter this morning was fucking awesome. She laid it out, all the shit the dinosaurs pulled.

snaks all day

Today is Jeff’s birthday, and he’s getting IHOP for brekky and a custom milkshake for an after dinner treat and SNAKS Aw DAE as I intend to take him to save-on to buy cheesies immediately after brekky, and maybe pocky and other noms.

We went to the new weed store in New West – the one on Ewen. I don’t tell adults how to behave but seeing two Black women without masks in there made my blood run cold. One of the packages we were sold was stoner proof. If Jeff and I had thought to make an unboxing video we could retire, because that shit was funny.

Buster, after days of not wanting to train, was a hundred percent the last couple of days ‘YES I WILL TRAIN, BRING HITHER THE SNAKS AND I SHALL JUMP AND LEAP ETC’ so I guess when determining Buster’s mental state that’s something I should include, if he’s a bit off colour.

We’ve had the AC cranked as hard as it will go, and opened the doors as little as possible, so it’s quite pleasant in the house even in the hottest part of the day.

a woman of colour in science

I read this letter and it’s heartbreaking and ENRAGING.

Good day yesterday; I feel a lot calmer. I still get a giggle every time I think of Keith’s tandem jump video.

Wrote a couple hundred words of fanfic yesterday. I’m turning one of the tropes of conventional heteronormative romance “I’m saving it for my husband” on its head for this outing.

The things I’m doing most these days are going for walks with Paul, restraining the desire to eat in a restaurant like a civilized human being, and laying around feeling sorry for myself. Also, practicing an instrumental opening for “Gelis and Nicholas”. I mean I’m spending almost an hour a day on it, and it’s not that great but getting better; Tammy said she wanted a copy.