Author: Allegra

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

service plus party

Paul and I were very moved by the service for David Hamilton, who in death seems even more quietly mythic than he was in life.  A genuine, humble, intelligent, thoughtful, listening kind of man, with music in his very soul, the eulogies were funny and moving and real and the comments by his daughters-in-law particularly stood out as coming from two very different women, but uttering the same grateful praise.

We spent a lot of time catching up (I refused to look at my watch.)

So we were late to the restaurant, but it all came out okay.

Then back here.  We played Cards Against Humanity and had so much fun.  I haven’t heard Jeff laugh that hard in company since high school.  Both of us laughed until we were leaking, and at the point when we thought our ribs couldn’t take it any more we’d start laughing again.  Keith played games master. Also in attendance Cassidy, Mike (birthday lad), Joe and his gf, whom I’ve probably been introduced to four times but whose name I cannot remember, Brian and Chari, Paul of course.  Paul had the advantage, with Keith, Mike and Cassidy, of having played it before, and he came up with some combos that were hilariously unprintable.  I won a round with the best and simplest two card combo.

“For my next trick I will try to pull HOPE out of MY SEX LIFE.” Keith was the judge that round, ya shoulda seen his face.

I also won a round with “Dick Fingers”.  Since there was also “Five Dollar Foot Longs” coming up as a card in that round the group immediately came up with a  band name of Dick Fingers and his Five Dollar Foot Longs.

Yes, we had fun.

Jeff wore his Stargate “No Place Like Home” hoodie, squee.

I don’t even know who won and I don’t care.  It wasn’t the point.

Keith noted that you aren’t supposed to play it with family members but we managed all that quite nicely.  It’s an extremely rude game, and you may learn, as Jeff remarked, things you really didn’t want to.

Thank you to Jeff for getting the pinballs going – Joe and gf, who is apparently a pinball enthusiast from way back, went downstairs and made pinging noises for at least an hour and then dropped into the middle of the CaH game.

Around 9:30 I realized I could no longer stay upright so I went to bed.  Also, darkness equals bugs.

Thank you to all the beautiful people, friends and Beaconites, who made it such a perfect, and perfectly exhausting day.  Now I can’t sleep.

 

The true final count was

Final word count for the day was over 1500 words.  (This included editing, since I was ripping adverbs and adjectives out with vigour.)  I still have not commenced the new chapters. Also worked on the chapter entitled Exit Interview.

Today a memorial service for a church member and a birthday party for one of my closest friends.  I find that often happens to me, two big events in one day; I imagine I’ll be ready to get my drink on by a quarter to five.

We blasted through the rest of the Bojack Horseman season.  I really enjoyed it, especially the stuff going on in the background and the non-stop shellacking of all manner of Hollywoo ‘types’.

One of these days I’ll talk about the process, but in the meantime I’ll just say I love Scrivener.

The latest theatre shooting in the States was at a feminist movie and the people who were shot and killed were all women.  There IS NO WAR ON WOMEN MOVE ALONG PLEASE.  Right wing radio gave him a platform for his hate.  And thank you for killing yourself you fucking scumskin, your parents and ex-wife probably got their first night of sleep in ages, despite their grief and horror.

1028 words today

Jeff’s off at a client’s and I’ve done my writing for the day, on the chapter entitled “I don’t know what they are for”, so I think I’ll have another cup of coffee and make a list. I can survive the next couple of days without issue – if I have a list.  mOm I’ll send you what I have of that chapter so far.  Domestic arguments about aliens.  Yeah.

Being able to comfort baby Alex was my big accomplishment this week.  The way he greeted me and Paul made me want to float away and dance with unicorns and other magical creatures.

 

Jump in and go where life takes you

Like today.  Breakfast out, followed by a hearty doing of nothing, and then Katie and Chipper called in rapid succession and then Paul called and said let’s go for a walk and I said I’d already arranged to go see Katie so I had to call back Katie to get the ok to have BOTH grandparents descend at once and she said yeah whatever, by which I mean to say she kind of sounded stuffing deficient.

Jesus, the point loading of Buster’s feet is like a war crime.  Okay, still gasping a little from the surprise.

Where was I.  Oh yeah.  So we stop at Katie’s and hang for a while and my god Alex is, like, so happy to see both of us – he will NOT stop smiling.  HE HAS A SMILE THAT SAYS “I HAVE SIX TEETH.  BEHOLD MY TEETH.  I HAVE A TREMENDOUS QUANTITY OF DENTITION.”   Seriously.  Nobody has been that happy to see me since I settled a debt. And it’s not fair, because he’s been a right bear to Katie all morning and the second we show up he lights up like a Christmas tree and stays that way. It is possible he was in his crabbiness objecting to his mother wearing makeup for her driver photo (a discrete amount, and a discreet amount.)

We pick up the CAR SEAT OF HOLY VIRGIN HOW MUCH DO IT WEIGH and remove the three canoe paddles and the bike rack from the back seat and then Paul doing the stuff, stuff, stuff of the CAR SEAT of HVHMDIW into the back seat, because it’s super hard to get the seatbelt past all of its hangup points and then we stuff Alex into it.  Katie aims at getting her L today but with Alex like dat who knows. One cannot plan.  One can only jump in and go where life, or in this case, your father’s car, can take you.

We go to Paul’s for lunch which is leftovers and fresh corn and bread and chasing cats across filthy floors – Katie doesn’t believe in overprotecting a child from household dirt and he was shiny with grime in some spots by the time he had given full faith and credit to his mother’s parenting style. She mopped him before we left.

I collect Mike’s birthday present and stuff it in the trunk. The gift is a long term loan of a mandolin whose provenance is much clearer than its ownership, being Edith, the little Aria mandolin which first came into our family when Keith decided to take lessons. It came to live with me and then it went back to Paul’s but he never played it so I suggested another berth and Paul enthusiastically agreed.

Katie decides rather than going straight home to her place we are definitely going to the Drivers’ licence place and she’s gonna do the test and Alex, sensing his cue, passes out like a good little lad, and Katie goes in for the test and the rest of us wait in the car and so Paul and I catch up on not much since we saw each other so recently, and Katie texts that everybody trotted off to lunch (they take lunch late because people come in on their lunch breaks) and so she waits a fair while to take her test.

Alex wakes up after a nice nap and starts to roar in a very soft, puzzled, low key kind of way, thrashing about looking for mum. I wander around the back of the parking lot with him, humming “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and he fusses and kicks and growls and does this high pitched whine, brief but indelible in the tinnitus-inducing sense of the word, and then I CAN’T BELIEVE IT he relaxes in my arms, starts to yawn and is commencing to grumble his way back to sleep (so long as I keep holding him) when his mother dances into view and he commences with that extremely vigorous kicking like holy shit I’ma break a rib.  HE IS HAPPY.  We stop at Home Hardware for a bucket (Paul is feeling fine, thanks for asking) so he can collect graywater when he showers and then we drop off Katie and go for a walk in the Quay.

On the way back I can’t stand how lonely I am without my friend Beer handy, so Paul got cider and I got an India Session Ale from Red Racer and then I tell Paul that I’ve been practicing Dave Carter’s When I Go and have actually worked it out on the mandolin and we play that for a while and sing our way through it once and then Jeff and I watched Sunset Boulevard for the first time each and so to bed.

 

What a day.  Weather has been stunning. Zero writing, but I don’t care. Tomorrow is going to be amazing.

350 words yesterday

I’m taking a break today, it was like pulling teeth yesterday, or at least, like my experience with getting teeth pulled, which is prob’ly a more accurate description.

 

One of the many filkers I haven’t met yet came up with this gem.

 

UNCANNY VALLEY
(tto “Red River Valley”, words: B. Childs-Helton)

Though from Stepford they say you are goin’
I won’t miss your sweet face or your smile,
’cause they’ll wind up on some other robot
to remind me of you for a while.

Don’t lament flesh-and-blood boon companions
as you hastily bid them adieu,
just remember the Uncanny Valley
and the robot that looks just like you.

Is it man or machine, what’s the difference —
just relax, you’ve got nothing to fear
when your new plastic pal writes a pop tune
and goes Turing with Kraftwerk this year.

The elite’s obsolete as the workers.
Don’t be sad or depressed or Deep Blue.
Just remember the Uncanny Valley
and the robot that looks just like you.

Yes, I just kissed a girl named Maria.
No big deal — she’s a robot, you see —
but I’m not really sure if she’s kissing
one more robot that looks just like me.

Let us press on to full automation
till there’s no human bein’ left to screw
or remember the Uncanny Valley
and the robot that looks just like you.

 

 

Are you Mary?

Instant mini housefilk at Cindy’s place; me and Paul and Cindy and Miss K for appreciative audience. SUCH A GOOD TIME. Also we gave blood then we ate Indian food and went to the Bloedel Conservatory and I got into a discussion with a parrot and then nearly passed out from being down a pint and Paul sat with me for the 20 minutes it took for me to recover… all this happened before the housefilk. Feeling fine now but tired obvs, it was quite a day. Funny story… go to give blood at the Oak St Clinic, gal at reception asks “are you Mary?” which I hear as Are You Married, and I say no we’re divorced. So now on top of everything else I need to get my hearing checked.

 

400 words

Thank you Jeff for coming to get me. It was a tough ride back with the congestion.

Got caught up on all the shows except Ray Donovan.

Paul took me for a walk around 8; when we got back from the Quay (I avoided buying beer, yay me) Margot recognized the sound of Paul’s car and came out to greet him, which he took as a compliment.

I have a strong feeling I should not write today, but look after some other stuff.  This is going to be an emotionally difficult weekend upcoming.  I have a memorial service and a party to go to on the 25th and a sauna party to go to on the 26th.

Coffee, here I come.

Saw my editor

She is so very awesome.  Plus cats.

The fOlks and I took a really nice long ride around Saanich.  They fed me at Sassy’s.  Honestly, I am so frikkin spoiled.

I am going to make coffee and do laundry.  I underestimated my pants requirement.

No writing, but just getting the manuscript handed over has made me feel much better.

Pleasant day

Spent a good chunk of the day labouring on Sweep off the Waves and only managed 574 words.  Did a lot of editing – essentially re-read the entire manuscript as it stands right and every time I ran into something stupid (anything that slowed my reading to a crawl as I tried to work out what was happening) I’d fix it.  I wrote more wordywordwords than I removed, but it was disheartening to go into negative numbers for a while.

Messaged my editor about dropping off the rest of the manuscript for the first book early this morning, and it yet being hours ungodly have not had a response. If I can’t raise her I’ll find a post office and mail it to her while I’m here. (People are, after all, entitled to leave town on vacation and I didn’t call her first…)

After thrashing about on how I am supposed to write another 25-30K (minimum) it occurred to me that I could do another ‘media compendium’ chapter, I just need the narrative catch point…. a transcript for a special presentation on TV with the lovely Farah Jalali, or a blenderized Stand on Zanzibar style ‘this is how the aliens merge into pop culture’ core dump, or a ‘curated’ section in which a multimedia artist tries to assemble a collage, and the problems she encounters in so doing.  If I decided to do all three, I will NOT have a problem making that wordcount, but it will not be as much fun for mOm to read, so sorry mOm.

Raspberries and cream two mornings running for breakfast. Life is GOOOOD.

Rides in cars

mOm and pOp picked me up in the Camaro yesterday, so by the time I got to Dan’s I looked like the Wrath o Godâ„¢. The trip to the ferry was horrible, and I’d like to kick the ass of the 620 bus driver into an interdimensional sling.  Drove right past me AT THE CORRECT STOP and two appalled American tourists who insisted on sticking to me until we got on the ferry, and then I asked them to get bus tickets before the wicket closed, and they came back to where I was sitting and mOm saw them briefly when they debarked.

I had a lovely nights’ sleep. I’m definitely tossing my mattress when I get home and getting something like the bed in the guest room here, it is like Morpheus’ fainting couch or something.

I should go make myself some tea – it’s noon and I’ve had nothing to drink so far today, which is just ridiculous, but I loathe Victoria water so I have to flavour it with something.

Yay internet in the guest room.

Blackberry jelly from Tom to pOp, hummingbird finger puppet from me to mOm.  (Level up noise.)

There’s a letter from Lois to mOm thanking her for putting up Kaitlyn’s plaque.  That made me cry.  Everything these days makes me cry, but that doesn’t bother me.  Not being able to feel would bother me a lot worse. If you read the hashtag on twitter #ifIdieinpolicecustody you’ll do some more crying.

 

One thing leads to another

I googled ‘writing in bed’ and got this. (This because Jeff is, if not appalled, then somewhat perturbed that I do most of my writing in bed.) From there I googled “Death of George Orwell” and from there I got the wikipedia article (bien sûr) about Eric Blair.  From there I got this.  And the first paragraph of the third chapter nearly made me croak with laughter.  Vermicular progression!!! I shall be quoting that in my novel if I don’t watch out.

The opening poem is a corker, too.  Every fucking elected Republican in the States and elected (debatable) Conservative in Canada should read it.