Author: Allegra

It felt good to be toasting Dame Dunnett yesterday.

It was a group of women who can afford to own condos in Vancouver, and so when various social issues came up you can imagine that I took the opportunity to be pretty sad and at one point crassly remarked that we might as well declare war on the poor.

The food was excellent. I brought a reasonably expensive (and tasty, I had a drop) red wine.

I committed to going back in January because I borrowed some books but I’m feeling kinda battered today.

I tried about five times to talk about the books I’ve written and what’s for sale and everyone talked over me and finally we listened to people who can afford to cruise the Med twice a year talk about ‘that hotel in Istanbul’. Yeah.

Also, think about how much happier (and Seen and Heard) I was eating with Ben the other day one on one than in a room full of smoothly polished middle aged women clacking about how bike lanes are a terrible waste of public money when the sidewalks are in such poor shape.

I ran an errand on the way home. I managed to get some exercise and do something for the household. It’s okay. I’m writing this morning.

Also, Jeff has some news but I’ll leave it for him.

TLDR oldfud report: She et with a friend but it was not a true pig out. moar friends today.

Met up with Unconbentional (a late twenties wedding photographer, brony and lifehacker I met through Lorraine at the weiner dog races, blogs passim and don’t you just love how I get to write true sentences like dat there’s a little old lady living this weird goodness vicariously) and the food was amazing. You pick a broth and then pick stuff to add and it boils away merrily on your table. NOM

I don’t take pics of my food unless I prepared it but YES IT WAS GOOD. We got caught up on our various projects and it was amazing to get out of the house into the bright sunshine and very pleasant day.

NOTE TO SELF do not try to find a Chinese restaurant in Richmond on the fly, figure out where you’re going first. I texted him after my unsuccessful traverse of the mall with I WILL GO HOME TO DIe so sorry CANNOT FIND and he ran out of the restaurant and danced up and down and yelled until I located him which given that I’ve only met him once IRL was really decent of him. You know, pro-social.

TODAY the Dunnetteers – I’ll be leaving in half an hour or so.

Animal photos

continued progress and happiness.

Tomorrow I’m going to get out of the house and go for Hot Pot in Richmond with a bunch of people I usually only talk to on social media, and Saturday I’m going to be lunching with the Dunnetteers, which means I should probably pick up a bottle of wine and some cheese. I will be using both opportunities to sell books, so sue me.

Planet Bachelor, including Katie, Alex, Paul, Keith and Jeff and me had A FEAST and it was

I always say what the food was so mOm and pOp can enjoy along at home.

Crock pot pork roast with sauerkraut

Green salad (I provided)

gravy

Smashed potatoes

steamed cauliflower and carrots

HOME MADE INDIVIDUALIZED YORKSHIRE PUDDING

Alex was wonderful, and we had food and fellowship and it was just so wonderful in that quiet “nothing happened but it was everything” kinda way.

I spoke to Mike and invited him. Just not feeling it. But we connected and that counts to me at least.

Spoke to Tammy on the phone today, I will with luck see her next month when she comes to Van over Christmas.

No Mike this weekend, I don’t know whether he’s out of town or what. Normal rules apply… if I don’t hear from him once every two weeks I call him to ask him if he’s dead.

BUT I got the kidlets yesterday. We sat around Planet Bachelor with Alex as he slowly started to get sick. He goes to the bathroom by himself now and announced at 5:30 that he was off to bed. Katie lay down with him.

Keith fetched us Desi Turka food which was yummy and we watched a bunch of Paw Patrol (the theme song to which I loathed immediately, but the show itself isn’t bad) and some Moana and some Rock-a-Doodle and we talked about our favourite shows when we were little.

Alex had sparkly fingernails and toenails.

He complimented me on my red dress. Imagine wearing a red dress because you think your toddler grandson likes the colour and he says I LIKE YOUR RED DRESS GG

and you meeeeeeellllllllt

Katie gave me a lift home. It was a very cheerful little visit, and it was like we were four people all doing our separate thing in the same space, and that was really kinda cool. ALSO Hot Wheels.

500 words on Honey on the Moon yesterday – cover finished for Upsun – edits up to about 20k words on SOTW. I even managed a couple of hundred words of fanfic.

Plotting and planning continues!

which has continued wyrd. I don’t get it every November, but this is coming on very nicely, although in meatspace this is Jeff checking up to see that I haven’t left doors open and cheese on counters. In other words, perfectly normal. I am distracted with the distraction of (I can’t say what… an internal process… not a bad one) and I’m finally through the course of ulcer drugs and starting to try to digest things again.

Side note. My surface itchiness dropped to almost zero while I was on the antibiotics. Make of that what you will. It’s been heavenly. I feel like I’ve been rolled up in lotion and left at the spa. It’s been fucking awesome. I’m expecting it to all be over shortly, of course.

I had an enormous bowl of organic instant oatmeal. I have to start making my own since this stuff has too much sugar in it. Paul says he gets a special kind and steams it and says that’s Scottish style and I say it’s undercooked. We both can’t be wrong. Part of the fun of oatmeal is the goo in between and having it served as a sort of hot salty dense salad with salt water dressing seems a bit much to me… I suppose I’m out of line casting (the hook appears, thankfully

I have calls to return. I have a group lunch date on Friday next, and possibly a group lunch date Saturday next. I’ve actioned some actionable shit. There’s a load in the laundry.

THERE IS A GODFORSAKEN INCH OF FUCKING SNOW ON THE DECK.

Calice, tabernac.

Anyhoo, despite the rudeness of the awakening (jest about spat out mer tea when Er saw that E’rm telling yer) I am filled with bubbling happiness. Upsun’s in, Sweep Off is well under way and I’m going to keep churning with the edits since after six fucking months I’m finally in the mood to edit again because what I’m reading no longer seems like dreadful shit.

Read enough fanfic and you’ll DEFINITELY get yourself into the mood to edit the living shit out of everything.

Also, I’ve realized what shifts in English I’m prepared to flow with, and which I’m going to be all Prof. Fussey on and go all “I DIE ON THIS HILL, and possibly on THAT ONE OVER THERE, ok maybe I SHALL OF COURSE CAST MY LOT BEFORE GOD ON… which one of you wiseacres said I should just be calling out the GPS coordinates” on.

Fanfic is interesting that way because some of the things non-native English speakers do is cool and okay by me and other stuff — that’s really common, no matter where she learned English — makes me want to learn magic so I can raise all her ancestors from the dead and stab them to death on a laser guided unicorn horn, in front of her. Just writing out that line made me realize I need therapy but I can hear a series of catcalls from the shadows, starting with most of Paul’s male relatives, when I even put that thought out into the ether. I am a bloodthirsty critter in my fictional selves, and such a mushed-out wuss in the one true self I step around in.

ODDFudbuster But I’m a much happier critter now, possibly healthier and SNOW.

You have been reading some very strange books / you wanna go to hell, but just for one quick look / did you not realize how long you’d have to stay / and all the memories you’d have to take away

I give advice – and I don’t give orders! / You’re gonna fall / you’re gonna rise above it all

The strain that you feel not making trouble for yourself / comes out as strain, strain for someone else / you may try to bar the devil from your door, but / he got in once, and you know he wants more

I give advice – and I don’t give orders! / You’re gonna fall / you’re gonna rise above it all

So anyway I wrote the above noted song after we were living in Amedeo Garden Court, which would be around 1985 or so.

It was really really weird to have it come into my mind yesterday. It matches the Supernatural show. That freaked me out.

Then I remembered how many times I’ve written songs that either came true or acted as love magic. My muse is an odd and powerful critter.

It’s in final prep stages prior to availability for sale. I’ll be getting to Sweep Off Those Waves after I’ve had a celebratory hot chocolate and viewed the latest NCIS.

Is being through the course of antibiotics and antacids. My mouth tastes like chokingly bitter metallic assbarf almost half the day now; I spat out water at the Aerie yesterday because it tasted terrible. 

I’ve had two sips of other people’s beers in restaurants over the last couple of weeks. Mouth says yuck, which is useful, or maybe aforesaid metallic assbarf.

Tattooed Archivist on Twitter has given me my first on line review. In response to “who is underrated?” from Goodreads.

“Midnite Moving Company by Allegra Sloman
Glorious language. Sentences you’ll want to read over & over.” 

I jumped up and down like an idjit and practically screamed. Mike was amused by my gratified reaction.

She also pronounced herself in love with George’s hair, so I gave her a sneak preview that there will be a ‘coming out party’ for George’s hair.

Me, my love is saved for Michel.

For some reason this made me want to edit Hair Sinister, who knew, so I’m armpit deep in that as soon as I hit save on this

Soon I’ll be finished this goddamned HPac of antiulcer drugs. My digestion has improved, marginally, and my liver is getting better every day if the swelling and … other evidence … is anything to go by.

Working on HOTM but I can’t settle to write, I’m jumpy as hell.

neither of my children have phoned me in days so I’m pouty (I don’t call them unless it’s been weeks – at which point they sound almost guilty)

my gut is a quiescent mass of furtive anxiety

I am having trouble performing the simplest of tasks

I feel kinda messed up but there isn’t anything really wrong with me

Keith sent me a text which inadvertently reminded me of why Paul and I broke up

The weather slurps donkey balls from a lava flow.

On the plus side

brO and I have started watching Mindhunter. Oh, what am I saying, we’re two episodes from the end of S1. It is my firm intention to go back and watch the whole thing again when we’re done.

—

brO and I have viewed Their Finest. It is a spirited defence of film-making as art, a heart-wrenching confrontation of the death and geographical disorientation raining down from German bombers, a workplace dramedy, a digitus impudicus directed at the people who, for graft, glory, the ability of the state to draft you and / or sheer moronic dog-in-the-manger ill-will *fuck* with aforesaid art, and a woman-centric gem.

I’m intending to watch it again and just roll around in the performances. Bill Nighy is delicious in a fashion I could never hope to convey unless you watch the film too and help me put words to it.

—

Two of the characters for Earbuds sprang to life in my head and had a post coital convo about work, life, religion, chronic illness and poly that just made me love both of them harder… I didn’t write any of it down and Jeff is likely scowling at me

Mike’s back from whatever work travel hell hole he was most recently despatched to

I’m not really doing too bad, but my gumption machine’s broke down

So I’m on day 4 of the Helicobacter Pylori treatment pack, and my guts are making noises like ship’s rigging in a high wind. The worst of the ulcer symptoms are already gone. I still have pain and tenderness under my right ribs so my liver is obvs still unhappy with me but it’s nothing like two weeks ago when I could imagine that I was slowly dying with no difficulty.

1726: Thomas Doulton was pilloried in London ‘for endeavouring to discover the Windward Passage upon one Joseph Yates, a seafaring person.’

Sorry, stole that from the twitter account WhoresofYore this morning.

I recently fell in love with Mike Stuchbery on twitter, a simply delightful colonial boy from Australia who’s also a historian. Because he ties his history to things like facts and evidence and modern understanding of race and colonialism, the fucking nazis on the internet have gone for him hard.  His posts about history are gold – his responses to Nazis a mixture of dreamy calm and crushing wit.

Also, he keeps liking my responses to his posts.

when I look across the world as it is now I find

it’s no longer capitalism that draws my ire

It’s the complete and total death

of colonialism that I desire

this is a form of blues that was taken up by whites

called talking blues and as you can hear it isn’t rap

I could say that it’s a Victorian style recitative

but over a twelve bar blues bass line

who’s going to buy that crap

May I at this time point out that settlers really should not

imitate the folks who make the money

they earned the right to rap like that

and when we do it it just isn’t funny

or topical or edgy or forward facing or cool

it’s something called appropriation

holy shit that’s exactly like

what happened in the founding of our nation

(Millenium Falcon dying noise unavailable for copyright reasons)

without all the death of course

(Bass line starts up again)

when I look across the world as it is now I find

it’s no longer capitalism that draws my ire

It’s the complete and total death

of colonialism that I desire

so that long after your ancestors

stole all that land and wealth

you seize the speech of oppressed peoples

and hug it to yourself (and your coterie of cool friends)

Theft becomes a habit that is really hard to break

lift up, restore and sing resolve not denigrate and take

when I look across the world as it is now I find

it’s no longer capitalism that draws my ire

It’s the complete and total death

of colonialism that I desire

I’m white for what it’s worth and I’m telling you it’s our job

Our unpaid job, our emotional labour

to quit thinking the world’s a shithole

and we don’t need to take care of our neighbours

to quit spending all our social capital

on the golden fucking age of tv

to kiss farewell the tensile promise of me me me

on a geologic scale we know not many of us will likely make it through

but I hope that temporarily someone will and I’m hoping that it’s you

you the people who will seize the peace in whatever form it takes

and lead who’s left to a better world before physics hits the brakes

when I look across the world as it is now I find

it’s no longer capitalism that draws my ire

It’s the complete and total death

of colonialism that I desire