Author: Allegra

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

Why you shouldn’t buy a Hummer

It just seems like the end of civilization to me.

2.2 hours.

Civilian tilt rotor aircraft?  All I can think of is the maintenance.

Keith came by yesterday and pumped up my tires and did a pre flight check on my bicycle.  I am now ready to do a shop via bicycle.

I’ve gotten back into practicing every day, which means that every once in a while I fondle my callouses.  We’ve booked another musical evening at Paul’s for the 17th of April. SO looking forward to it.  Sue and Brian can’t come (already got some answers back, waa.)

Crappy maintenance and poor planning on the part of SFU crash the hopes of single women trying to get a career together.

They put filk music in quotes and rilly rilly pissed me off. A lot about this article is if not wrong, then wrongheaded.

Buster’s toy

There was a baby mouse running around the house.  The plan was to let Buster catch it and then remove it, and that’s what we did, but Buster was not amused at the loss of his most interesting and nice smelling toy.

Keith came over to watch the last episode of Ken Burns’ The Civil War and to assist me with giving my bike a once over now that it appears to be spring with very few hints it’s going to go much below freezing over night.  My bike now has full tires and a cleaned and lubricated chain, and the tail light works and I need to get a proper headlamp.

I’m off to the dentist tomorrow to get a chipped tooth looked at.

Sandy’s back from Halifax, and this time she did not have the complete devastation of her water system as a welcome home surprise.

short night

1.8 hours.

 

The appropriate use of force doesn’t seem to get taught in the clown colleges graduating police these days.

Waiting and hoping for a call for an interview.  There hasn’t been anything to apply for in the last little while.

Life goes on regardless….

 

We shall overcome

  • Singing that in church on the 50th anniversary of Selma.  I cried, it was really hard not to.  The minister preached an excellent sermon, and owned from the pulpit our shame and Canada’s in the treatment of the First Nations specifically with reference to the residential schools.  The part Unitarians played in Selma was retold.  In the future, they will ask, were you there, and I will have to answer.
  • 1.8 hours on the cpap.  Feel very crusty this morning. I had strange dreams.
  • The Rogue Folk Club is under attack.  They want to redevelop Saint James complex (the United Church of Canada local diocese) and given where it’s located, half a block from one of the priciest stretches of real estate in one of Canada’s priciest cities, I hardly think bake sales and fundraising will help.  Honestly I’m glad John didn’t live to see it.
  • March 14 there’s a demo against C51.
  • March 11 THEOLOGY PUB.  Rob and I are going again but the steak I felt comfy enough to treat him to is not happening again so he’s coming here first for sour owl jowls and then we’ll have soft drinks at the pub. He encouraged me to download Sketchup and it doesn’t fucking work with my Mac OS version so I am really irritated.  I’ll see if I can put it on the other machine. My irritation is softened by our amusing convo yesterday morning.  Me: Hey Rob, missed you in church last week, are you coming? Him: (sleepily) I was planning a leisurely shower and hop on the bus. Me, looking at the clock downstairs at church: Uh, it’s quarter after 10, hon. Him: I set my clock backward instead of forward.  Me: Showing up in time for coffee is a fine Unitarian tradition. Him: Skipping shower…. inbound!
  • Workshops are how to grow a church, who knew.  This is an in joke.
  • My landpeers are not raising our rent – for the second year running.  It’s like a March Miracle.  This is officially the most reasonably priced detached rental in east Burnaby.
  • I got Reddit gold.  If you don’t know what that is, good, and if you do know, ask me for my reddit username so you can bask in the glory that is my helpful commentary to the angry and sad.
  • My pOp played an extremely hilarious practical joke on me and Jeff, and to preserve the dignity of the everyone involved, I am not talking about it on the internet.  I did however light a candle for it in church and it must have sounded funny to the congregation, because they laughed most heartily.
  • I sent off another thousand words to mOm yesterday and as usual she is agitating for more.  It felt so good to have something to send… that chunk is only half way done.
  • The sun and warmth has been glorious.
  • Jeff and I tag teamed to move the fridge, clean under, beside and behind it, remove the MAT of dust on the fan intake, and once I clean the interior the fridge will be cleaner than at any point since we moved in.  I’m thinking of tackling Jeff to help with the kitchen “cupboards must be examined for stale dated contents” clean.
  • I have to call the city of Burnaby today and ask them where the food scraps container we are supposed to get is.
  • The purple and green screeching iridescent ribbons have gone from my fabric stash to church.  I have spent much time thinking what I should do with them, but finding out that the RE kids are doing a Maypole this year means that I never have to look at them and be sad again.
  • I enjoyed my sewing machine so much the last time I’m going to haul it out again.
  • But probably not before I clear off the living room table, which will probably take a couple of hours.
  • Keith is going to come over in the next couple of days and help me get my bicycle in riding condition.
  • I have an appointment with the bone health doc for the end of April. The MOA who called with the appointment info was a truly delightful person and though the call was brief it left me feeling really good.

moar sun

1.5 hours on the cpap.  Yesterday Paul and I ate lunch on his front deck – I had having a most severe craving for European style weiners (for about the last month) and he providentially had some.  Jeff and I don’t buy any kind of weiners at all these days since they are basically a commercialized form of waste. Paul and I left the beer in the fridge and drank mineral water instead.  Paul wasn’t quite feeling up to giving blood, so I’ll book into the next clinic in New West next week.

Day before yesterday we had a blanket on our laps like old folks on the ship deck, and yesterday it was so warm and pleasant we didn’t have to.  Oakalla was so nice Paul took his shirt off (he has long since lost the power to embarrass me) and I contributed to the Caucasoid Hairiness Factor with my legs.  We looked for frogs and didn’t find any, and I identified a Towhee for passing strangers.  We didn’t see any other interesting birds, but we heard the m-e-e-e-e—–p bird in the bushes.  It makes a sound of plaintive disgust, sort of “I am sad and irritated and not energetic enough to make more than this soft little noise” – and I sure wish I knew what it was.  It was definitely warm enough for snakes to come out and Paul was pretty sure he saw one.  The last snake I saw that wasn’t a pet was a baby that Robof9 and Patricia and I saw on the stairs at the old Xantrex building up the hill.  Anyway it was a glorious walk and exactly the right length.

I have unlocked the achievement of getting an appointment for the specialist, and it’s in April, barely.  With not driving a standard so much (I’ve only driven Jeff’s car twice since I figured out what was wrong), and changing my gait just a wee tad, and putting a support pillow in the right place when I’m sleeping, and never, ever running, I can say I feel much better.  I also completely stopped taking any painkillers for most of the last week to see where I was, and I am pleased to say that I’m managing okay in the mornings.

I think what is happening is the cpap is actually getting me oxygenated enough at night that I can heal.  I do feel better.  The only thing that’s worse is my eyes, and I’m going to drill down a bit on that problem next.  I’ve had dry eyes since I was in my 20s but I’m thinking a humidifier in the drier months of the year, maybe one of the personal jobbies for my room, might be a good idea.

Jeff was supposed to go to the fOlks’ but he is going to be very busy with an unanticipated technical challenge.

No Alex yesterday!  How fast we get into habits.  Hopefully I’ll see him sometime this weekend.

 

56 days already…

I am now ready to go back and be punctured for social equity and also, blood.  Hard to be believe 8 weeks went by so fast.

Paul and I had a wonderful afternoon swapping lies and drinking Coulrophobia on his front deck.  (Two decks and two bathrooms, now that’s an apartment). There’s actually a nice view, although frak me, nobody stops at any of those stop signs.  He liked the beer so much he went back to the store for more. Then I gave him some salmon I cooked earlier this week for his dinner.

Buster has brought in from, and Jeff has removed to the great outdoors quantity one mouse.

7 hours total sleep and 3.1 with the cpap.  Progress is being made.

There’s a job in craigslist asking if you can make starbucks coffee in a fast paste environment.  Not sure I’d want to.

 

Sure hope I get a job soon

  • Got mah hurr did yesterday.  Tried not to stink up the joint too bad, Jeff says I did well – Garnier Nombre 60 ftw.
  • Got out the new sewing machine (it’s been two months) and repaired a dress and made a blankee for Alex when he comes over here out of the fabric mOm gave me. THE NEEDLE THREADER IS MADE OF WIN. And I put it away afterward.  So happy.
  • Off to see the financial advisor today … backspaced over the rest of my comments.  Privacy yall.
  • X Company is a really good show – there will be eight episodes in all, but it’s nice to have a show about the only spy camp in Canada in WWII.
  • 1.2 night before last and 2.1 last night on the cpap.  I will keep trying – it’s obviously worth it at this point as I feel much better in the morning when I do manage to keep it on my head.
  • Somebody used the word pillock on facebook today.  It does apply quite nicely to the person it was applied to, so that all worked out.
  • I have an urge to work on a side project right now, so I think I will.

Playing catch up

Saturday I was at Mike Beach, Sunday was church, which was excellent.  Sue fetched me to and fro, and the minister gave a really excellent sermon. Last night 3.2 hours on the cpap, which makes me really happy because I skipped a night and I was wondering what was going on. I didn’t have a problem with the mask fitting but I woke up with my right eye pretty much glued shut because I forgot the Liposic.  I was hoping Katie and Alex would come to church but they didn’t make it.

Salmon, rice and cauliflower for dinner last night, which was unfortunate, because I set off the burnt offering alarm.

I had some wonderful news over the weekend but for the news to be presentable I have to do some work this morning; I’m going to go through the take-off checklist and get going on that, starting with going downstairs and getting some coffee, since it’s obvious I’m not going back to sleep.

I’ve been watching a debate between an white Jewish woman ally commentator and a black man who’s a media activist.  The woman is suffering from GCAS (Golden Child Ally Syndrome) and the man is not anything but long suffering.  As much as I love being the centre of attention and being told I’m necessary for the proper running of the world, when a person of colour is telling me about his experience I’m supposed to a) listen, b) believe him, c) leave my defensiveness at home d) consider what I’ve learned on my own time in my own space and e) not flip out on social media and encourage a bunch of sock puppet accounts to attack him to try to get him banned from various places (like what the ever loving fuck is up with that??) and jack in the box squawks about hypocrisy, intersectional privilege and ‘what are you making this all about race’ which was so fucking tone deaf I wanted to pole vault through the phone with a punch in the snoot as my opening gambit. I didn’t pile on her, but I did snark hard on a few of the more clueless sock puppets..  Now maybe it all started for me because I was married to a black man during a period when the Toronto cops were randomly shooting black guys with mental health problems (not that this disproportional bs has stopped, but that one summer was not a fun time) and maybe it’s super easy for me to be convinced I’m an SJW  because I’m essentially an evil person who’s a race traitor but my narcissism makes me think I’m an ally –  but I wish that people who are white and left wing could parse their own outrage with more intelligence and humility.  Listening won’t kill you and it’s not safe for POCs to be around you as you’re processing your feelings, since you’ll probably say something racist and not even realize it because duh intersectionality.

Read

Listen

Go away and think about it

Integrate

Reiterate

Engage when your heart is soft

 

blue eyes

So 2.1 hours day before and 1 hour cpap last night.  I changed the temperature but although I got to sleep faster I tore it off faster.  I think the mask is now too tight and it’s hurting my nose.

Alex and Katie were here yesterday for Laundry adventures.  Katie’s working him up to being left with me for a couple of hours.  Unless he’s asleep he cries for mama within ten minutes, so child care is going to be an interesting proposition.

He was sitting on the deck in his stroller car seat when I opened the door, and as soon as I opened the door he recognized me and smiled.  Not a big mama smile, but an “I see you and I like you” smile.  MELT.  That’s Margot in the background, and although you can’t see it, every once in a while she’ll lift that little black paw and bat laboriously at the cat toy hanging right in front of her face.  That’s her fave spot; Buster of course sits at the very top.

Alex27Feb15

I find Alex very baby like.  He drools so much these days he could sub for a horror movie monster.

You can’t see the logo very well, but that’s a pinball machine on his shirt.

 

Now that’s what I call a tiger mom!

Pity she sends her daughter to a Catholic school.

2.6 hours on the cpap last night.  Guess it’s ‘trending’ in the right direction.

Walked 2 k yesterday in the rain.  I was quite sore when I got home and walked up the last hill like an arthritic corncrake, but at least I got out of the house.

Also applied for a job.

Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden

in that moment when your comrade falls

all the world is out of sequence

each space is subdivided into noise

fear and cruelty

crumpled parchment

stuffed into a crack

is every line of scripture

how could there be recovery from this

then another falls

we left behind will stiffen, shoulder loads

agree that we are soldiers

or at least survivors

there is a task that lies ahead

perhaps to drown in blood

with hands blown off

which is what it feels like

when another one falls

i am neither these lines

nor this war

this entire earth a cry of sorrow

for the things you will not see

my fallen comrade