Author: Allegra

Didn’t go out in it though.

Still thinking about that amazing dense, perfectly iced chocolate cake Peggy brought us. She literally can’t eat chocolate, so it is amazing that she bakes it, but not amazing that it tastes so good. Because she is excellent at most of what she tries, and her hospitality is the model and standard against which I hold myself.

Buster is shedding still, sigh, but nothing like Margot good god.

Tuesday we go to see the new cats. Excitement! One of them is already a lap cat and is in training to be a shoulder cat. Words cannot express Keith’s happiness at this. Hoping to get a pic of him with Ryker passed out and the new olde cat on his shoulder WHILE HE’S GAMING for an update of that last gem! ‘Twould be awesomesauce.

330 words on a new fanfic ‘The Instructor’; I am trying to work on stuff for TotesBoned but it’s not flowing at the moment. Also the plotty stuff approaches and I’m fer shit on that.

Three top scores in Lumosity, Wordle in 4. My brain is working.

I’ve been sleeping through the night and almost four hours extra in the middle of the day. Well, the blood test did say I was fighting a viral infection. As for what the air is like in Vancouver, lemme see now….

the peace of glob be achoo

Called Dave, his room has changed. Still no ultrasound. His test results continue to puzzle the specialists, often an unwanted combination of words, but his electrolytes are better. His cats have been fed and watered and he has additional phone numbers if he needs them. My relief is most great.

Jeff has been super helpful and kind the last few days. We actually left the house yesterday, picked up some treats, were the only people (almost 100 percent except for some staffers) wearing masks indoors.

Wordle in three, haven’t done Lumosity yet, 22847 words.

James Hong wore googly eyes on his bow tie at the Oscars. You’d have to see the movie ‘EEAAO’ to understand why that’s even funnier than it is on the surface.

Paul is still in Seattle, he’ll be back eventually.

Back in 1996, Paul, John, Bounce, Duke, the kids and I all lived on Dee Avenue in Toronto. For five whole weeks, before our lives got upended again and Paul’s transfer to Vancouver came through. Our bedroom had 11 separate walls as I recollect. That was also the house where Paul and I self diagnosed with ADD and where we were living when Keith ran into a car and hurt his ankle and he was so traumatized by the untreated mentally ill man in the ER that we left AMA. Eventually John followed us to Vancouver, where pOp helped him get a job at John’s Jukes.

I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of the street.

So after looking at Toronto maps for a while I finally remembered “Knob Hill Farms” which was walking distance from there. They closed in 2001 but I got the locations and was able to backtrack the address.

Hope that asteroid misses us today.

Anniversary of Marx’s death date today.

She got stuck waiting at a government office and is expected shortly.

I went for a walk in the park at the northwest end of the street. I started like a tortoise but I had a good pace, swinging my arms, as I finished. Balance seems good today, it’s been off for a while.

I should toss the rugs in the washing machine.

My friend Dave has also had bad news and he is so ill that his specialist told him to go to the ER. I cannot imagine his state of mind at the moment but Dave if you’re reading this I’ll be thinking of you until the next time I hear from you.

We could have done a shop this morning but I’m in no mood to leave the house. I may go later this morning but right now I have no urge.

Roasted veg scrambled eggs this morning…. damn it was tasty! Had to stop drinking coffee though because I use cream, so it’s tea for me for the foreseeable since cream in tea tastes godawful.

10:30 appointment. Probably won’t get in until noon. Normally I go across the street and get something from Brown’s Social House but today Keith’s cooking us lunch, so I have to make sure everything he might need to cook is ready to go. Then I’ll show up and EAT. Sounds ideal.

Wordle in three this morning. I should think so, my ancestors would hit me if I didn’t get ‘horse’ in a hurry. gosh did I share the solution? Good thing fewer than ten people read this blog erryday.

Coffee next and some reheated Chinese food. Nom.

Apparently I’m picking up Alex on Friday so Paul and Keith can go to the States to visit Hank and Janice. Good thing I know what to do now! Takes a village, etc.

Yesterday apart from cleaning off the kitchen counter and loading the dishwasher I did nothing. Oh, I practiced. I feel empty and rattling and completely full of leftover wasp nests. I got my February blahs but good. And yet my mood isn’t BAD.  It’s just kinda … blank.

Yesterday I got up and did my things including laying out my meds for the next week, and ran the dishwasher and made chow mein noodles and tangy marinated tofu with veg. Then Paul called for a walk and possibly lunch. I said I’d be by in an hour during which we watched a rather tiresome Farscape (Jeff was okay with it but so much pointless yelling tho’ Rygel puking was pretty funny) and then I went and got Paul, during which time I chatted with Keith as well which was good because then I knew we had a time limit. Home by two for a family phone call.

We went straight to the peepee hut at Fraser Foreshore because Paul thought to tell me about it before he had to march into the bushes and play “Aren’t I cute Mr. LOO’OUT WIF MY WEENIE HANGING OUT” and I thought you know what, it’s here, I shall go too. Because the day was so lowering and mizabrub, what with rain that was doing the classic ‘Vancouver dry rain’ thing that it does, it was nice to find a place to park nearby the johns for once, and the misery continued what with the fire over in Richmond ‘cross Sto:lo throwing the densest blackest most apocalyptic looking smoke across the entire southern horizon and THEN a bank of cloud rolled across the landscape and ENTIRELY hid the smoke, as if we hadn’t in our dozens of park-goers and dog walkers SEEN THE SMOKE and it was like God holding me in the palm of my own head’s hand and saying, “SEE, YOU CAN’T TRUST ANYTHING.” With a wave of the weather some catastrophe was removed from my sensorium. Something close obscures something far, but the something far still is. A leedle epistemology promulgated by my forever strange assessments of the world.

Word came later that it was a fire in a pile of recycled building materials and the smoke was way worse than the fire, which was put out in an hour.

Nice, brisk walk. The wind picked up. A convention of little leashed dogs in jackets with a purple clad toddler much shorter than Ryker wading into the middle of them (everyone behaved). The wind picked up some more. The blown mist turned into gentle rain that was colder than a well-diggers butt in February. The rain got worse. We stopped to search for the smoke, and found it. All we could see was a tiny bit of it through a tunnel of thinner fog. Never smelled it, I never saw the cloud cross the river, although you could see the grey discolouration of it through the smear of clouds and fog on the River Road side. Paul and I were doing the fogey sprint for the last hundred meters as the rain got steadily worse, and got ourselves into the car puffing and blowing like lolruses.

I was wearing my Oodie. Little did I know that when you get an Oodie wet, it grips onto certain kinds of plastic really hard, so there I am, trying like fury to turn the fucking steering wheel to get out of the parking lot and NOTHING is happening. It was easy to diagnose this king hell driving hazard so I paused, shifted my suddenly EXTRA CLINGY clothing into a less ‘this will be hard to explain to the accident investigator’ style, and we finally got out of there.

Then I took Paul back to our place and we had the noodles I made earlier. Then he asked me to do his feet which was no problem, he was like a month overdue. I clipped his nails, buffed everything down so he can’t snag his socks, and rubbed balm on his foot cracks, also helped him get his socks back on. I really enjoyed having him today and we didn’t have a cross word between us (either way). We’re allowed to be snarky but not mean if you know what I mean.

Apart from the two assholes who tried to t-bone us on the way home, and the weather getting steadily worse (wet snow by the time we arrived) everything was peachy, and as I watched Paul go up the stairs and into the house I thought he looked jauntier than he had in ages. I did ask him if he’s depressed though and he says maybe a few degrees more than his baseline, but managing. Know iggzackly what you mean, my dude, I really do.

Then on the way home I trekkethed to ‘The Pie Hole’ (‘Forkin’ Good’, as the packaging notes) and got 2 smores cookies, and two hand pies, one blueberry for Jeff and one butter pecan for me. For reasons I do not understand, I had an allergic reaction to my pie (which was damned tasty) and my thung thwole up and got a great big hive right in the middle of it.  No other hives I can feel or see, and no other symptoms. Very tiresome, Jeff’s going to finish it, we’ve got nothing but tragedy in this house, can’t you tell? I’m laughing. I made off with one of the smores and it was fine. Is it possible I’m getting a nut allergy, because I’m already careful around peanuts, cautious around cashews, and eschewing hazelnuts altogether, including, sadly, Nutella, until I feel comfortable enough to re-test.

Then we watched the last Lidia Poët, which was wonderful, and then one of the Stargate TV movies (Ark of Truth) and then I went to bed early. That was my day.