Author: Allegra

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

No bruises and only my legs are sore

The move went as smoothly as one could expect or hope. We had a slow, panicked start (Keith and I fucking near died of having our eyes pop out but Keith maintained) when we learned that the move couldn’t happen because Paul didn’t have insurance for his studio apartment and Keith had already rented the truck. Fortunately Lois and Ruth are back in the country after their amazing trip to Portugal and they GOT ON THE CASE, and all was well, and we started loading the truck pretty fast after that. Dax helped get one of the ugliest pieces into the truck (he didn’t help with loadout because he was working on his car).

Alex volunteered and rode shotgun with Uncle. He was of material assistance the whole way through. (off topic aside to mOm – Maybe Richie seems like an unrealistic character but when I have kids like Alex in my life he’s easy to imagine!) Paul bought we four lunch in the Wendy’s on 6th and I asked Alex if he’d ever been misgendered because of his hair – his brilliant hair – and he LAUGHED and said “Once, an older new kid at the school. So yeah I have been misgendered.” And continued to dip his fries in his frosty, as one does.

I told Katie that night that Alex was so helpful and hardworking it was amazingly wonderful and balm for my wounded nerves.

Anyway, the rest of the move is up to cars moving boxes and this is me being happy because he’ll be safe.

I got very hot, but I was very consistent about hydration and Keith helped me manage how many times I took the stairs. Needless to say Keith performed heroic service and I love and respect him right now more than I ever have, which was a lot.

Came home and there was Rocky Point Strawberry ice cream in the fridge. One word. Exquisite.

Love y’all, more later.

 

Finger much improved

Everything else is a disaster. Housing most especially.

Paul is not really packed but the truck is rented, it’s basically going to be me and Keith, and I’m probably going to be a wreck by the time we have to get the truck back. I’m going over around 8 am, no sense going earlier. At least he’ll be somewhere he knows the neighbourhood and can get around okay to this point and transition to memory care is within the facility.  Rob is down the street, I’m five blocks away (literally), he’s blocks from Peggy.

There’s no way for Paul to interpret what’s going on as anything less than an interpersonal disaster. He hasn’t lived alone in his entire life, as far as I can tell; he’s either lived with family, lived with a girlfriend or lived in a co-op with friends/acquaintances/family. I’ll be having to figure out how often I go see him for a cuppa and walk around for errands; I said twice a week but I don’t even know at this point if I’ve got that in me. The car stays with me for the time being but it’s the spare car for the kids if anything goes wrong with theirs and that’s an anytime thing, Keith hasn’t really been maintaining his car because of money, and Katie has an ongoing issue with her vehicle which could brick it overnight. And in fact, since Ryker had the choice between tossing his mother’s wallet in the toilet or her keyfob and picked the wallet, she’s already had one helluva near miss as she most entertainingly recounted yesterday.

Katie’s located a possible rental in Sapperton but the rent is more than half of the total rent on the place she’s in now, and she’s splitting that 3 ways. She is not moving in with Dax as she doesn’t think they’re getting along well enough right now. The heat and constant drumbeat of dread around housing is very hard on relationships and my own eyes tell me Dax has been working hard to make it better but what can I say, ADD women are a challenge to ‘go to housekeeping’ with. (American expression circa Rev. War)

I used to think I’d go back to Ontario, but DoFo took away rent control and I’m on a fixed income, so unless someone wants to put my name on a lease for below market rent I’m sitting it out.

The Humidex will be 30 today at the height of the move. Oh well, at least my finger is well enough to assist.

head like a whacked hive

350 words on TB yesterday (note to mOm, infill, not new SO don’t expect an installment until after I’ve recovered from the move)

Bluesky is inimical to Black creators, BEEG SURPREEZ

Okay day

Took Paul for a walk at Fraser Foreshore yesterday, then brought him back here, where he demolished two soups (gazpacho and ramen) and one stir fry, and half a glass of unsweetened ice tea.

He does not really understand that he’s moving out tomorrow. After Suzanne comes today I’m going to go help him pack. I’d prefer to go earlier in the morning but life is what it is.

Ron Desantis saying that the insurance companies will ‘come back to Florida’ if there’s a light hurricane season is like saying that I’m going back to Paul if he apologizes. Did someone sit ALL of his university exams for him?

open vein, commence rant

Finger still hurts like hurt fingers do. Typing that ‘o’ hurt. That one Ow too. Shit.

All the energy I had this time last week is gone. But I am committed to having energy until after the garage sale.

I was hoping to have rant energy, but sober consideration of the matter leads me to think not.

I put away a load of laundry and there’s one load left. <— ha ha accomplishment

walked two circuits at the school with Jeff<— ha ha accomplishment

Made an art (Typeface is Klitschko vs Illiteracy obtained by dipping boxing gloves in ink and punching the ink into walls until it’s a letter)<— ha ha accomplishment

The 'G' in GIF is hard because life is hard

 

 

 

 

 

Errands complete

The following is from ivie-online on tumblr and explains some of the enshittification of the contemporary internet

 

 

– so between 2014-2016 facebook launches a massive ‘pivot to video’ campaign to draw media orgs to their video-based features. zuckerberg’s doing rounds, saying that in the near future, newsfeeds will mostly be video, and that video is the future of media. to back this up, they release tons of wild viewership metrics for ads on facebook, enticing advertisers to prioritize video, and as a result, the media that relies upon advertisers for funding began to do the same.

– this had an industry-wide impact, and media orgs, from established news, to humor websites, to smaller creators, fire writers and those primarily focused on print, and direct resources to their video creation efforts.

– around 2016, it’s revealed that facebook completely fabricated their original numbers, likely inflating them between 150-900%. additionally, their viewership metric considered 3 seconds of a person watching to be a ‘view’ (whereas youtube had a 30 second requirement for the same metric).

-Having totally restructured in order to pivot to facebook video, many media orgs were unable to recapture hard won (and sometimes decades old) audiences. College Humor, Funny or Die, MTV News, Vice, Mic, and Vox were among those that were seriously impacted.

– after a 2018 class action lawsuit, facebook (who maintain that the whole ordeal was caused by a simple error in calculation) was made to pay 40 million in damages, which 1, is a paltry sum when we consider the 22 billion they made in profit that same year, and 2, does nothing to bring back the jobs, audiences, and media orgs they destroyed. to make matters worse, many still posit that it was never the public, but rather advertisers that preferred video over text, meaning that facebook intentionally deceived everyone involved specifically to secure more advertising dollars. so yeah, fb is evil and… probably should be stopped

mornings like this

I’m really not very communicative because I’m really preoccupied with stuff in real life.

I have to work on a Katie etc family project (the garage sale) with basically all of my spare cycles until pretty much the end of the month, so I’ll be providing updates but not much else most likely.

I’m getting extremely positive feedback on advice I’m giving to younger women with ADD and other parents and you know what? I am fucking awesome, and a river to my people.

Dishwasher’s running, laundry sitch now critical, have to run errands for the garage sale today.

For you mom

Circular needlework showing Bayeux tapestry style characters and buildings, and in Bayeux style lettering says Behold the field in which I grow my fucks lay thine eyes upon it - and thou shalt see that it is barren

There are many versions of this but one of my filkacqs received this from a loved one and JUST YESTERDAY I was talking to you about that, so funny coincidence.

Ran over to help Keith do Alex coverage, we played games and watched part of a movie and I asked him to name all his family and that was VERY INTERESTING as a window into his mind. Also meltingly sweet.

When I was done, Paul was done with his errands so I picked him up and watched him throw his prescriptions into the trash. I briefly lost my cheese and then one of the gaggle of Desi girls who works at the Tim Hortons he was sitting in front of came out with the key and helped him get it out of the trash.  Honestly her kindness made my day.

Lovely wide-ranging phone call with Dave yesterday. He’s doing okay, it’s been hella hot in the Tdot.

Got both mOm and pOp on the phone yesterday. That was an unexpected happy note in my day.

Working on a new tune on the uke. Plugging away at both current writing projects. Must do laundry today.  Summer service at John H’s tomorrow – Keith’s going early to help Marilyn (they were in Philosopher’s Café together) set up chairs.

Offered Buster many options this morning but what he really wanted was snuggles from yours truly, so that was sweet. Then he went out into the kitchen and catched treats without training. He is a cat.

Love and soft hugs and warm thoughts for all 8 of you, my dear consistent readers. If you have grandchildren, I hope you take a minute to enjoy them. I enjoy mine. And my oldest child is 37 today, and he wants media. I will see about it.

were you born in an agricultural outbuilding or what

Picture shows a drawing of the traditional white Jesus fallen across a stone and splaying out his hand to ask 'why?' Text: Mom: SHUT THE DOOR, WERE YOU BORN IN A BARN? JESUS: picture as described

it’s like he’s saying WTF MOM I had nothing to do with that. Raywat Deonandan reposted that on twitter. I still go there, but bluesky, the TWITTER KILLER, (actually the smug social media dwarf kicking its immense moribund corpus) is SO MUCH FUN. It’s like early twitter and I am having a complete blast with the freaks, geeks, artistes and trans people. I have had more positive interactions there than on twitter and I only just joined and have hardly any followers.

It’s Raywat that got me writing about Guyana. LOL These foolish things. And the more research I do the more I get wrong. I mean, once I went to Iceland and learned JUST HOW BARREN THE RING ROAD IS I went back and rewrote Iceland scenes with that knowledge.

Pics as promised

Okay this one is not promised but I think my characterization of my mammogram as a ‘tittysmash’ appointment is CLASSIC.

I had literally just jumped out of the shower and not brushed my hair, but the all black outfits with Astronauts on them is pure fam and I make no excuse. Mine says “Earth to the Dandy Warhols” and Alex’s says Off to Space.

Barkeep, he seems to be saying. The soother comes into and exits his mouth on the basis of some arcane baby logic. He is STANDING ON THE CAT TREE which is lying on the ground because he kept climbing it. The cats KEITH VERY SAD have gone back to their original keeper.

 

Ryker equals Taz

Yesterday I helped out at my daughter’s place while my co-grandma-in-law Suzanne had an appointment, so I got to ‘care’ for Ryker. (By which I mean chase around the busiest toddler in 10000 years of human history.) He is 1.6 years old and can open doors already – that’s how tall he is.

Suzanne hung around for a while to transition the care over and I sat in the living room, touched my chest and said, “I’m GG”. (He knows who I am but he’s a human being and I was trying to be polite.)

A minute later he walked over to me, touched my chest, and softly said “GG”. Suzanne saw. I didn’t cry but it was a near thing. He used that name another time but I didn’t hear.

He is so close to talking in full sentences that it’s wonderful, and he puts two words together all the time – but he still uses baby sign for more – I was feeding him a cut up peach. Munch shudder munch shudder stuff munch shudder. It was hilarious.

When he was hungry, he climbed a bar stool -honest to god I was in the same room but not fast enough – and LAUNCHED HIMSELF into his ‘food appreciation chair – without toppling it, mostly because I finally found the JATO bottle and ‘hit it’ – arriving at the chair in time to ensure he didn’t fall off the FRONT of the chair.

In other grandson news, Alex and I were both wearing astronaut t-shirts and Suzanne got a pic (not available yet) and I got to watch Alex lovingly and appropriately interact with his brother (including carrying him out onto the deck so he could continue his passionate and one-sided love affair with the recycling truck) and okay, now I’m crying in earnest.

Ryker can also watch ‘Bluey’ (a recommended kids show, if you want to make your great grandchildren happy hint hint have some of it downloaded so they can watch it.) For twenty minutes at a time. He absolutely loves it and dances to the theme song. WHILE he’s jumping all over his mommabear’s bed. He fell off twice and walked it off. Fearless and self-soothing. TERRIFYING in other words.

AND I got to watch Alex playing a game, Carrion on Steam. It’s a pixellated horror side scroller and ‘not appropriate for my age’ as Alex sagely observed, playing the monster and casually eviscerating the security guards at the research facility. pOp, it would make you happy. I took my eye off Ryker for TWO FREAKING SECONDS (I was talking to Keith, who had just returned from Seattle and a visit to Hank and Janice and Laura with Paul) and he’s IN his brother’s room IN the computer chair (Keith says he has a thing for computer chairs) and PUTTING THE FUCKING HEADPHONES ON. He is the ultimate monkey. His new nickname is Taz, for the WB Tasmanian devil.

Jeff bought me a delicious chicken salad from White Spot yesterday. Honestly it’s one of the best I’ve ever eaten and packed with noms. And the air conditioning works, so again, thank you Jeff for picking out one of the most durable wheeled air-conditioning units ever sold. It was so hot the crows perched with their mouths open.

Jeff and Buster went for a walk this morning, I should find out how that went.