Author: Allegra

Walked over to the 7/11 to get cream for my coffee and a small treat for Jeff. Walked at Lougheed Mall yesterday with Paul since the heat and air quality were not great. Air quality is going to suck for the next little while.

My gumption machine is broken.

Air Quality Index today is 136, 57 in Saanich. So no walking outside today for sure.

Not much to report otherwise.

All the blue of the sky is gone. My eyes are gunked up. You couldn’t see the far shore of the Fraser when I got up, it’s just barely visible now.

The trip to Victoria was wonderful; the best moment of all was being able to point to the single most glorious late strawberry the world has ever seen for Alex and feed it to him. It was red all the way through and Alex ate it and then he looked for more and found more and his mother helped with that.

Mike received family gifts with thanks and immediately donned the shirt.  It had just the effect I was going for pOp so big thumbs up all round. Kitchen knitted wipes also will be put to good use thanks mOm.

Two delightful teenaged boys played with their fidget spinners with Alex on the ferry. His mother broke down and got him the toy ferry that makes the honk noise. Alex is currently enchanted with ferry boats. And why not!?

Alex makes friends wherever he goes.  It’s rather delightful. And Katie is an awesome mUm!

Alex of course didn’t care, but he freaking loved Miniature World. In Andrew Brechin’s honour I made damned sure I showed him every toilet in Miniature World.

Off to Victoria tomorrow. My dwaughter has talked me into going over the long holiday weekend, which is just stoooopid, but there you go. Back Friday late, which will also be insane, but whaaaddeva

Upsun is coming along.

Very hazy skies from the fires in the Interior. Air quality alert’s been extended through Friday.

Thinking about going to see Valerian today. Part of me wants to be ENTERTAINED gorramit.

Erk.

Anyway, Katie and I plan to haul the squirming evidence of my parents’ reproductive fitness to Victoria at some point in the next two weeks. But wehn??? weeeehn? is the issue at hand. There will be much discussion I’m sure.

I am writing between 2500 an’ 5000 words a day of fanfic. There, I said it. I should be ashamed of myself. Instead, I am viewing it as how the difficult gets out. I have a lot of difficult. It’s rather abundant. This is draining it, somewhat. It’s also a very high order of pantsing, and I’m liking that too. People are telling me they enjoy it, and I’m tired of writing very hard and not getting cookies. There, I said that too. There are good and bad physical consequences to writing fanfic. There, I said that too.

I’ve seen the dentist. My front tooth is fine. If I have leaky fillings, that’s not where they are. MOar dentrification in August.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately (along with Marxism, the second and hopefully final resignation of Christy Clark, twitter statistics, coffee and do I have enough cream, laundry — hey I WASHED AND REPLACED THE LINENS on the downstairs bed may I have a cookie please — my will, my finances, how when I called Paul’s second Echo, which is Katie’s car now, her ‘sanity machine’ she agreed with me – my daughter’s negotiations with the whining necrotic skintag who quite against all expectation — ed that’s quite enough of that — how pleased I am with the last tweezers I bought for the one piece of performative heteronormativity I do, which is pluck my eyebrows, how I only seem to be able to manage one hard thing a day these days — which is not sufficient to help save the world — and how on fucking earth I’m going to keep a fresh smell in the washing machine — because it sits with a bunch of water in it all the time and it gets funky like, all the goddamned time, and now I have to add to my list of things to do hosing it down with vinegar at least once a fucking month, o joy — and how I’m supposed to cope with the large piece of furniture that magickally appeared in my living room, and Joe of all people suggested what, and why I’m such a lazy disorganized sod, and how mango lassi is almost but not entirely proof there’s a God, and where we should buy land in northern BC to try and deal with a place to live during climate change, and how the landpeer is really nice but, wow, not exactly bumping fists with the laws of physics, and how Tom Hiddleston is just heart-jumpingly sexy) is the shape of family.

The shape changes. And when the shape changes we get a change to chance ourselves.

Lovely not long enough but I was falling asleep conversation with D last night. Three lines are a good days’ work for him so you can imagine that I have to use a different granularity for comparing output, not that writers ever do that.

Left messages for various other people; Tam-tam is gonna call later. Got in touch with Katie, who showed up bearing two pairs OF EXCEEDINGLY COMFORTABLE PANTS (I don’t know if they’re a dead woman’s pants so DON’T ASK ME) and Alex. Alex is so so so so  so    so        so

very cute.

Today is a day that I shall cherish in memory, for today is the day that Alex learned how to use both flippers on the Bally Star Trek TOS pinball.

I have started asking for comments on Ao3, and I have gotten them. I write sparkly dialogue, who the hell knew?  Jeff is thinking “I can’t even understand her half the time and the other half of the time she grunts and waves her arms to communicate so this sparkly dialogue bit is …. nope.”

Temperance the Tarot Card that is.

George YOU ARE NEEDED.

I am doing okayish. I hope I get to see Alex today!

later

OFF TO THE SHOWER Perez Hilton just liked one of my tweets

We (Jeff Mike and I) had a lovely meal last night at Taverna Greka, and then went to Rogers Area for the Dylan show. Here’s the setlist.

Let’s just say Mike did not expect to hear Bob Dylan sing Tangled up in Blue and Blowin’ in the Wind on his 50th birthday. Spent the night and got back around two, Mike cooked brekky. We watched the world go by from the balcony at the Aerie and all was good.

I was entirely blown away. Great concert great sound great venue.

Katie is back home safe. Haven’t seen her yet. Paul and Keith here for a couple of Expanse episodes.

I’m really happy right now. It won’t last, which is why I’m enjoying it so much.

Hung out most of the weekend with Mike, and now he’s on vacay this week. (Basically he woke up from his partay solidly the worse for wear and even though I drank pretty much continuously from one o’clock on that day I was not hungover, at least not painfully so, so the first order of business was to get Phở and nap in the sunshine like capybaras.)

He cooked me a couple of meals; brekky yesterday was the best goddamned farmer’s sausage I ever et plus eggs and toast and a latte; dinner the night before was cold soba with chicken and steak cubes with bok choi and enough garlic to make shit levitate. It was all really, really good.

Like the asshole friend I am I recorded Jim, Mike and I attempting to sing Acadian Driftwood during the party while we were drunk and I played it for Mike the next day sober; it had the desired emotional effect, which was horrified horror and childish gales of laughter. Believe me, I didn’t come off well. AT ALL. Couldn’t remember lyrics, held notes too long, it was like a speshul kinda agony.

In a less asshole-like fashion I tried to put together a list of top ten Mike moments since I first started hanging with him in 1997 – yes it has been that long – and while I can’t share all of them –

• The time he slipped on an icy walkway on the way to his hot tub, which at the time was set up in Jarmo’s yard, and not only did he spring up again in a fashion so untoward that the laws of physics got a black eye, he didn’t spill a drop of his wine. Honestly… if I hadn’t seen it, I woulda called bs.
• The time he broke about a hundred light sticks and smeared them all over a Tyvek suit and went walking around the Lantern Festival. Like a multicoloured glowing stain.  Right. It didn’t last but it was amazing.
• The time the fam had been hot-tubbing at Mike’s old place across from Trout Lake and I couldn’t find my undies when it came time to change and he deposited them on my desk the next morning in front of scandalized coworkers. so.funny  god I smirk every time I think of that….
• The time we and the fam were walking back from the hot springs at Ahousat and Mike slipped and came off the walkway and came (I’m not exaggerating) perhaps ten centimetres from impaling himself through the heart on some cleared brush. For years he would show the double hole in his fleece jacket with a laugh until it finally got too tatty and he threw it out.
• The big one, the one that sits parked at the top of the ‘everything Mike means’ pile, how he took me in for a day three days after John died and reminded me that even if John was dead I wasn’t; he tended me (literally, with a spa treatment and 90 minutes of extremely required massage) and was continuously and quietly sweet to me at a time when I needed love and support like I rarely have.
• Mike doing the Surrey Macarena at a party and me laughing too hard for civility. If you know me, it’s a constant fricking trial how hard and loud I laugh.

Mike and I and Jeff are going to see Dylan tonight.

Daysign card is Death. I guess it rally *is* time to clean my room and do the prep so Jeff can post Upsun.

attendees Trent, Jim, Hal (and his spectacular gluten free southern style peach cobbler which was outeffinstanding, Cassidy, Joe (and his SPITBALL GUN), Jean, Keith and Paul. Not everybody was there all the time. The sun came out after a grey day, when things got underway.

It was lovely. Eat Drink Talk Laugh. Finally everybody left except me Mike and Jim, and we sang and played, and then Jim got a mischievous look and we sang my partay song “An Evening of Serious Drinking” and then I crashed. Mike’s sleeping in the basement.

The outside is tidied already; the inside shouldn’t take too long. Keith volunteered to help clean up today, isn’t that sweet of him? Anyway, today looks wonderful.

It’s four-something in the morning, a little note.

The day sign is the Ten of Pentacles. Little happy dance. In a minute the shoving of the furniture for the party will commence. I have to make a list.

Looking forward to seeing the folks tonight!

Katie and Alex and Paul are off to Edmonton. I hope she has a healing trip and much laughter and fun with her friend Julie.

Keith said that he’s never been happier, since Alex moved in.

Katie and Keith are getting along really well. Paul’s in his glory.

This is my new favourite picture.

I’ve put on ten pounds since I stopped working. Time to run around a bit more.

I feel much better. Seeing Alex (his little head on my lap as he watches tv; his busy little feet as he crashes his ‘car’ into various objects in his Poppa’s back yard) makes me unreasonably happy. Seeing Katie getting ready to go visit a friend in Edmonton for a week. Hearing Keith say that he’s never been this happy in his adult life (after having a toddler move in with him, what does that say to you). Hearing Katie say “Notice how clean the place is” and me giggling.

Things that hurt quit hurting. Seeing Katie happy.  Something’s been missing for ten years.

Seeing Keith and Katie so mutually supportive. I’m crying on the inside, because you never know, right?

Sunrise at the Aerie yesterday – I should have been writing or editing and played computer games instead, lazy sod. Lovely lunch at Mr. Ho. Very lazy day, apart from the walk to see the kids (Paul’s in Seattle).  I think now my tank is filled back up I can work.

Lamb dinner at the 6th Street Grill last night.

Maybe 100 words. I need to understand that it’s EDITING TIME NOT WRITING TIME.