Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
Nose stuffed, lungs congested, and I don’t care. It’s been ages since I had a cold, one does have to get them once in a while. Jeff’s feeling somewhat bloogy too.
I’m actually awake after having slept. Now that I’m awake I should edit. But will I? I want something to eat and drink and then maybe I can get going.
I am so, so grateful for the friends I have. Communication had gotten kinda wonky between us and we had a full free fair frank and productive conversation last night that’s gotten me buoyant again. On two different subjects he and I were viewing the issue from such wildly unadjacent angles that I burst into tears thinking about how horrible it must have been for him. And I got to say how much he means not just to me but to everyone in my close family. You can’t show the people you love that you love them enough, in my view. Telling them is not always the right thing. There are a lot of love languages.
He is The Magician. It is all right.
Anyway, it’s not fixed because it wasn’t broken, but it sure is a lot shinier.
Stuck on editing at the exact halfway point. Last two nights at work were very busy and for nights, yesterday morning was completely and thoroughly insane; twice as many calls as normal and people freaking out and being rude, not my fave. Anyway, I literally couldn’t edit because the second I opened the clamshell the phone would ring again, as it does when you’re getting paid to answer it.
I go back and forth between thinking it’s a piece of crap and finding it mildly amusing. It isn’t as funny as MMCo, that’s for sure. But I think it’s got a little more heft to it.
Phoned a friend to stay in touch after his wife died. He’s doing astoundingly well, for two weeks later, but I just bleed for him. The first year is full of firsts; the first concert you bought tickets for that you were both going to see, and, well, she’s not there anymore.
Whenever I heard a BMW motorcycle for the first year I’d weep. Even now there are days I miss John so much I feel bitey. Then I’ll remember him without tears; with laughter, with gratitude.
Tammy and I keep missing each other on the phone. I hope to catch up to her soon.
I’m starting to build up a head of steam of needing to see Alex. Maybe I can see him today or tomorrow.
Watching facebook friends discover The Expanse makes me happy. Jeff and I call it EGGPANTS! like little kids who can’t pronounce it properly, it’s so exciting.
So the dude whose rudeness almost made me quit this job – which is far from perfect, but is an actual job – called me at 1 am this morning and asked me to swap shifts. Because he doesn’t like working Saturday nights sometimes, yo.
Haven’t heard from him for two months since he’s been on vacation and the first thing out of his face was ‘do me a favour’ followed by whining about how me not agreeing is inconvenient to him. He wants me to break up my weekend to be nice to him, and there is really not a fucking thing in the universe which would make me want to be nice to him, since he’s already made it plenty clear that he’s a mansplaining assbutt whose response to me attempting to make conversation is to talk louder and interrupt me.
Also, if you’re a nurse and you say you’ve phoned four times for a room clean and your male colleague has actually called once, and only 20 minutes ago, I’m gonna think poorly of you.
Various things are happening in the background of my personal life right now that are causing me grief, but I’m doing my absolute best not to borrow trouble that isn’t mine.
Thrill ride, thrill ride
come on a thrill ride with me
Thrill ride, thrill ride
come on a thrill ride with me
It won’t be an ordinary thrill ride
I’m gonna make you
skin your knees
(About the time Paul cracked up, listening to me sing it for the first time)
chorus
It won’t be like any other thrill ride
Where else you gonna get
Intimacy
Chorus and extremely wicked cheesy farfisa organ and surfer guitar duel bridge. Okay, that’s how I hear it…
Won’t be much like any other thrill ride
Cause I’m all about
Consent you see
CHORUS AND FADE
In my experience, inebriated moose are introspective and slow to react.
Why can’t four lanes of traffic kill a rat scampering across the street??? I have no idea.
I’ve edited one half of Upsun. More tonight.
Transit to work has improved greatly over the last week or so; now if I catch the 10:30 bus I’m at work ten minutes early, so that’s one slick commute.
We got a little snow early Sunday morning but it’s mostly gone now.
In about half an hour I’m going to nuke up my leftovers from this morning’s brekkie at IHOP, thank you Jeff! I’ve also started taking in my own cocoa powder to work; I make it up with skim milk powder so it reminds me of the dishwater cocoa we used to get served at lunch when we were kids in Ottawa.
Some fun at the Oscars! I never watch, but announcing the wrong movie winning is pretty effed up. And Bill Pullman is dead, cue the Game Over Man jokes <<<<< bad joke it's really Bill Paxton. He was only a couple of years older than me, so that's just crappy all around. All my laundry is done! Now to put it away, which seems to be the part I never can do. Otto is looking at me reproachfully. But I am working seriously on edits, and I've finished part 1 of Upsun, and will continue to hack away at it tonight.
I have ceased writing dreffle fanfic (although I know that I need another 35K to finish the story arc and it’s plotted out and there will be a rousing finale during which the estrangement between the bros will be all fixed), and have written the first 575 words of Honey on the Moon, the log and journal of the Ungainly Potato, an Upsun story. I have also edited a substantial chunk (first 100 pages) of Upsun. So I should just barely meet my end of February deadline for Upsun, we’ll see.
Then I huck it over to Jeff, who’ll post it for me, and then we’ll do another round of emails and try to sell that one too. I’ve already had two people tell me they’re waiting for it with anticipation.
Well, since I’m never going to make a dime on any of that smutty Supernatural fanfic, I am officially going to shut that sh*t down and edit. When ten different people ask me to start writing more fic I will; until then I’ll just jot down story ideas and concentrate on my own crap.
No memorial. Paul says there are no flights and its 1200 bucks minimum to fly out in the window I have at very short notice, so it’s not happening.
I am really sorry that I can’t go, but Dave and Paul and I all agree that a longer visit after the memorial service would be better.
Jeff and I are going to add some stuff to k-side. Anybody got any suggestions?
I may be going to a funeral this weekend. The joys of getting older include having friends and relatives die far away and unexpectedly. More later.
In the grip of graphomania, again, but at least I’m working on paying projects again. Tangled Angels is up to 32K words so I need to grind through another 25K to be at book length.
Posted 18K of Destiel fic. I’m so ashamed, but I still have to own it. That last episode, though, really kicked queerbaiting up several notches. I’m ashamed to be a fan, I truly am.
There are few things more entertaining than having a former lover sniffing around and being able to repel boarders (so to speak), and unworthy thoughts of weakening into “Well mebbe just this once” territory, with a well timed “So have your girlfriend call me and we’ll thrash out the poly thing while you aren’t in the room!”
PHUT
Doesn’t take much.
I’m thinking of having HOLD FAST tattooed on my knuckles, but only long enough to envision what pOp would say, and nope.
So yesterday I pulled my tarot ‘day card’ at midnight, as one does when one works the graveyard shift, and it was ‘The World’. And so I immediately thought this:
Mark 8:36 King James Version (KJV)
36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
And then I thought, what is my soul?
And the answer came, “My family.”
And I realized I hadn’t seen Alex in a month (or it seems so) and burst into tears.
I came home and watched the Expanse with Jeff, and then burst into tears again and said I have to see him.
So I did.
I came in the door and he ran up to it, grinning and nodding, starkers, because he was about to get in the bath with mom.
I was overcome by tiredness and Katie said lie down on the big bed and sleep, and then she brought Alex, made sleepy by his bath, to lie next to me.
And we took a nap together for 2.5 hours, and at one point I whispered to him that he would be warmer if he cuddled with me, and he said “Yuh” and launched himself at me, but I turned my head and so he didn’t break my nose. He woke up snuffling and crying a couple of times and because Zizi was there he could settle down again.
I don’t ever want it to go that long again without seeing him. I was in physical pain, like glass was breaking in my chest.
Thanks Katie and Alex, you refilled my ‘heart bucket’.
I just took toilet paper to Psych Emerg because the two count’em two HK staff didn’t think an hour old stat page was worth their attention. I fully expect to get into trouble about this, and if I do, I’m going to go back to psych emerg and tell them I got shit for it, and then I’ma buy popcorn.
For I know, since I clear their cache for them, that both the full time staffers on days and afternoons are looking hard like hard hard for better work. Disciplinary measures never looked so good in prospect. Like I said. Popcorn.
Editing progresses. I think, after all this Supernatural fanfic (I’ve written 50K words since the middle of January…. insane, right??) it’s time I quit trying to pull someone else’s canoe to shore.
Some kind soul left a box of jalebi in the cafeteria and in a shameful show of carnal weakness I absconded with one. But only one. Hand to god, only one.
Training again, my sub coming back from a nasty bout of flu. She’s gonna be flying solo tomorrow night, so I am trying to make sure she gets the real skinny so she can do just that.
Two whole days off. Whatever shall I do????
Commute into work tonight was horrific; I arrived, 7 minutes late and as cold as a damp grave, after leaving the house literally an hour early. Translink, which had been faithfully waking me up every fifteen minutes with pings on my phone about cancelled buses, had fallen silent so I assumed, entirely wrongly, that the buses were now running. Anyway, stood in the freezing rain for a long fucking time before a bus came, and got to watch people behave like arrestable idiots on Canada Way.
Shoveled the walkways before I left for work; if the snow stays snow I’ll have to do it again when I get home; if the rain comes it will depend whether the temperature stays above freezing or not. More salt must be purchased; this is obviously not going to be the last snow of the year, since the arctic outflow conditions over the balance of the winter will only too swiftly return….
I will admit that of late my thoughts have not been entirely kindly toward Katie, as I am still quite miserable about what happened with the store, and have not yet learned to let go of it. However, there are times I love her fiercely, and today she provided an easily parsed example of why.
She posted pictures of playing in the snow with her little family. Alex and Dax and her. And the next post was Bill Nye offering another defence of women’s rights, in the form of reproductive rights.
Yeah. Fierce girl, fierce.