Author: Allegra

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

I keep FINDING things

I am laboriously cleaning my room – the dust is unconscionable – and I have located my Labyrinth poem from 2004 – I’ve never transcribed it and the damned thing is seventeen pages long. I imagine I’ll be revising it most severely all the time I’m transcribing it.

I ordered delivery for breakfast and supper. That said, I’ve eaten more fruit and vegetables today than I have in any given day in weeks (fantastic assorted fruit cup for brekky and an orange and broccolini) and my digestion is telling me that my liver, while not exactly happy, is now much less inflamed and behaving much better.

I made coffee to go with breakfast and learned that if I don’t smother it in cream and sugar it doesn’t torch my gut in anything like the usual way, so that was a pleasant discovery.

I could have gone to Caspell Junction for lunch but once I realized I was actually in the mood to clean I committed. Now to wash bedding.

Jeff is away

He’s off to Saamich.

Today! WHAT’S ON FOR ME

PUT LAUNDRY IN SLIDING CAVES! (drawers.)

CALL PEOPLE TO BE FRIENDLY AT THEM! HULLO FREN I AM FRENNLY! I was thinking locals.

WISH ALAN A HAPPY BDAY. (He’s our Bowen Island Fren and I already did that on facebook.)

GET MY HANDS ON THAT BASS UKULELE because it is highly weird (John Belushi eyebrows) but so am I! SO I GUESS I NEED TO VISIT PEGGY

CURSE MYSELF FOR NOT GIVING KNITTED EEYORE TO MY brO FOR mOm TO REPAIR! (I recently rescued it from the floor at Caspell Junction and washed it, so it’s ready to be repaired.) (I suppose I could try but honestly when a childhood toy that your mother made for you and your sibling is damaged and she’s still alive, the urge to give it back to her and say MUMMY FIX! is still LORGE.)

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! REMEMBERING THAT OVFF IS NOT CARNEGIE HALL, BUT EVEN SO. and no I have no plans to go to OVFF because I’m not getting on a jet again; I’m allowed to be honestly disgusted at the entire prospect of modern travel. I mean if I could push a button and end up at Dave’s front door I’d go for it, but a thousand dollars to be herded and refrigerated and lightly starved and jostled and soaked in some mofo’s cologne and chairkicked by somebody’s badtempered crotchfruit and mocked for wearing a mask, and deprived of sleep, comfort and easy access to a bathroom for the best part of a day and exposed to the Arcturus variant of COVID anyway, which is currently ravaging India and has already turned up in Washington state, and then forced to LONG MARCH through YVR, which is a pretty, useless airport and YYZ, which is just so effin’ big, and then an hour minimum on transit or a sixty dollar cab ride all seems more than my wee brain and iffy mood can deal with. But I’d like to be there. I am weak and lazy.

Hullo Dave!

Due to reasons this blog need not hear, he is dreaming a lot these days, and he has been recounting them. They are eerie and ordinary, the way dreams often are. We have been talking about where stories and creativity comes from, and whether dreams draw at that same human well, and candidly, it’s hard to believe otherwise. Me, I haven’t remembered a dream in weeks, and it was benign, thank goodness. There are enough horrors in waking life; I need not experience them at night.

I can’t think of anything else I want to do. Much love to the handful of people who visit every day! I hope you have a simply delightful day, and a tolerable one if delight is not in the cards.

 

Finished Gettysburg

It is a long movie.

There is a reunification of the couple at the end, in this case two brothers on the Union side. That Zizek dude is ludicrous in some respects (I refer with awe to his belief structure, which is arcane) but he’s such an inventive and compelling film critic that he makes every other film critic I ever ran across look like a series of slurs designed to invoke a picture of someone unblessed with any powers of reason, rhetoric, charisma or observation.

My estimation of Tom Berenger went up – I didn’t remember his performance at all from the first time I watched it, but he obviously gets more dialogue in this version. Sheen’s performance, consistent and attention-worthy as it was, made Lee seem a lot more ‘dreamy’ as Jeff put it than was necessary and it might have been actor-sweat well spent to make that dreaminess more like complete mental and physical exhaustion after two solid years of war.

My mood is so much better today I am equating normalcy to giddiness. I have folded my laundry but I haven’t put it away.

Time to make phone calls.

pleasant times

Lovely indoor walk with Paul yesterday at Lougheed. He seems very beaten down and oppressed by his illness but cheered up for the walk. It always cheers folks up to eat, so we got some lo mai gai, which was particularly fine in comparison with previous outings, and there was a lone har gaw in there because they were out of enough lo mai gai to fulfil my order, and the hot and sour soup was as good as I ever remember it being there. We went to Cobb’s but I didn’t buy treats, just spongy crusty white bread which is my kryptonite for stuff I’m s’posed to lay off for my liver.

Continue reading pleasant times

goodness I slept late

I have no idea how that happened. (10 mg THC lozenge rolls tiny cartoon eyes). Alex is still passed out but he’s stirring so he’ll be up soon. I will not be partaking for the sake of my fatty liver, but we’ll go to Tim Hortons and get treats plus orange juice for Alex.

Sent the ‘Gamer Uncle’ photo to Suzanne, who said bwa ha ha and advised me of such by return email. Keith is working very hard to be a good rellie to Suzanne, and it’s working because she adores him (most especially for his efforts with Ryker – who, just in case anyone hasn’t been paying attention, also adores Keith – and his being committed to cooking her gluten free.)

Battle Cats, Alex’s latest game, has very compelling music… so compelling that Alex feels compelled to sing along with it (he misses like one note in a hundred, so that makes me feel good too.)

 

Scales on a moth wing from a microphotography contest
Scales on a moth wing, Alex’s new desktop pic.

Wordle in three HURRRAAHHH, Lumosity no top scores, 2242 words on Instructor, 23321 words on T.B.

Errybuddy have a good day yall.

Alex just got a good night call from his parents

Which was very sweet.

I’ll be asking him to “lights out” in a few minutes. Also just learned what his email address is.

So many happy feels right now.

pOp’s recent surgery results are back and he’s going to be with us for a while longer. Which is good, because the Camaro will be coming back in a week, all fixed up thanks to Uncle Gary. There is definitely something to live for

SOMEBODY IS BLONDE YALL

Blond Alex plays Batle Cats just before bed.

Anecdotage

Drunks are such a downer.

flattened 'report drunk driving sign' next to the backwards facing sedan that hit it.

Working on a letter to Auntie Mary. In a few minutes I’ll take my morning pills, wait until I no longer feel like throwing up (the pills are bitter as squill), and go get money to pay Suzanne with, for today is a day of enshinening.

A black kitten sits on the back of a unicorn stuffie with the label And lo, I saw a rider on a pale horse and the rider was death.

Finished S1 of Van Der Valk (the new series) – you can faintly hear the old theme song hiding in the new one! Yes Dave you were right to recommend it.

 

 

Ukraine update

Putin and Xi have finished their meeting and sadly, China’s ‘suggestions’ for ‘peace’ are basically Russian eating Ukraine and shitting out grain shipments and rooting around for Black Sea oil while jacking off to dreams of Romanov imperial splendour, opulence and supremacy.

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Statistics agency: Ukraine‘s GDP down 31.4% in 4th quarter of 2022. Ukraine‘s GDP fell by 31.4% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to a 30.8% drop in the third quarter, according to the State Statistics Service.

464 children – have been killed by Russia in Ukraine.

934 – injured to varying degrees of severity.

150,000 – were kidnapped and moved to Russia. – Source unknown but it matches everything else I’ve seen.

PLEASE NOTE 11000 CHILDREN HAVE DIED IN THE YEMEN CONFLICT. (In other words brown children are getting killed too; it’s just that Ukraine was twice the land of my foremothers and I feel a connection.) I wasn’t able to figure out which proportion of the 52000 civilians killed in the Tigray conflict (Eritrea) have been children. And of course there’s more than one way to run a genocide; China sterilizing Uyghur women at the rate of 250/100000 <—- insanely high for a country with a PLUMMETING BIRTH RATE, and budgeting enough money to sterilize one third of the women of Uyghur origin in a single municipality in a single year is also horrific. It’s easier to prevent kids than waste them I guess. Source, Vox.

Maxim Tucker reports:

In some battles, like Vuhledar and Bakhmut, the Russians have a 1:1 ratio of killed to wounded, Nato says. Ukraine’s medevac procedures have helped it achieve 1:9, KIA to WIA according to statistics it shared with Nato. Half of those rescued will be able to return to active duty.

Jesus Christ on a rubber crutch, I’m glad I’m not a Russian medic. This is Putin treating his troops with the ultimate disrespect. Medevac must be a joke to them. Ukraine at least treats every combatant as precious and the difference in how their commanders treat them must be VERY OBVIOUS to the guys taking fire.

Wagner Group is apparently having to release half of the soldiers they have left because they fulfilled their contracts and managed to survive the meat-grinder. So on top of everything else, Russia’s going to have another call up, and they’ll probably be sending reform school teens and the worst scum of the Russian prison system. Good thing the first thing you hear from the Ukrainians is how to surrender without getting killed…

Keith cooked lunch

it was a veggie burrito bowl

and NOM and SO FILLING I DIDN’T NEED DINNER. I had a weird turn when we went to the Buy Low for groceries and had to sit for most of it on the stairs outside (got to watch a worker install flashing) but was feeling better by the time we went home and at least got up to help pay for it all at the register. Definitely a lovely experience shopping there – they added a cashier, processed us fast and were very warm and professional. It’s been open for years and it’s around the corner and it’s the first time either of us went. Funnily enough it’s exactly the same distance to either, 1.4 km. If I was walking I’d go to Buy Low because it would be downhill on the way back. Keith said the prices are comparable or better unless it’s Costco.

Alex overnight tomorrow unless it turns out that my ‘turn’ is actually me being too sick to care for him. I feel fine right now but I haven’t tried to get up yet lol.

LEFTOVER BURRITO BOWL AND TEA EQUALS NOM.

So satisfying to eat what he cooked.  Tee Hee.

2179 on Instructor; no progress TB. Wordle in five (it was a hard word…) and two top fives and a best ever in Lumosity. I do feel snappier in the brain than I did yesterday.

 

finished ‘Prehistorian’

mOm do tell Ontie Mary that I finished reading the book she gave me. Absolutely loved it. V. Gordon Childe was an incredible original, reminiscent in many ways in his antiestablishment and decidedly leftist views to our dear and now passed Prof. Mick Aston; he excavated Skara Brae (although he was dead wrong about the dating, it’s Neolithic not Iron Age) and systematized many aspects of modern archaeology we now take for granted. He read a dozen languages and couldn’t pronounce any of them for shite. He was so confirmed in his view that older archaeologists were a fucking plague on the profession that when he turned sixty five he returned to Australia, land of his birth, said goodbye to remaining family and friends, put his affairs in order, went for a walk and jumped off a cliff.

Sometime in late February we got a Walmart delivery to the back basement door and didn’t notice. It got et by critters. Jeff phoned Walmart. We can now recycle the rotting order from the back deck. There was a child’s playhouse in there too, I guess Ryker is getting it. Jeff and I feel terrible about it. I’m going to make a weatherproof sign for the back door so hopefully it never happens again, because this is twice in a year.

There’s something very contentment-making about friending an old boyfriend on facebook and …. he’s acting like an old friend without being nosy. Not whatever it is that young men are supposed to have turned into. Age has its consolations, youth its horrors.

Today Keith comes over to fix us a vegetarian lunch. I roasted some beast yesterday (three veg nuked). It was edible but far from choice. Didn’t stop me and Jeff from piling it down, however, and horseradish sauce covers a multitude of sins.

1974 words on Instructor, no progress on TB.

Lumosity was a bust today. Wordle in 4. The word was tough, quite literally.