Author: Allegra

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

It isn’t a poem

b ut it’s mine, and it’s mildly amusing

A poem, condensed from my Tweets over the last year

Bizarre bromance

by GrandmaOgre <---- my twitter handle Than a lesbian think I'm a bigot. Way through to spare your feelings. We do what we can with what we got. Shit. Fortunate dudebro! Blessings! Against the NFL. Prepping popcorn. And call it the whole beast. When the blind pig finds an acorn? It needs to be widely broadcast. Go Jodie! Leave the perfect to the critics. Valve. Some traditions need to die. I have ever used it works fine. Had no idea what they were called. "God wills it!" & "I got Mine"

Wild

I was deeply moved by, and greatly enjoyed, this movie starring Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern.

On my brand new seven star Unitarian movie rating scale, it’s a seven out of seven.

It’s essentially a feminist hero’s journey, without being preachy or intellectual. Some drugs and nudity.

Response to Björk interview

oh what is written on this page
and how connected to this other
the words are most important
not the glue that holds the book together

perhaps in this light you can see
what seems to be invisible
pushing against the limits of sight
and derision

How could that glue be more important than the book
when the pages have now come loose and rebuke
all order
she was glue
she was invisible glue

and now the book she held together is gone

you mourn the missing words
and speak of Herculaneum
and when the scrolls were put aside
until some scientist could peer into them
and see how the ink stood out from the ashen pages

perhaps one day you will see me as I am
invisible glue
and in the meantime
you will celebrate
nothing but what I hold together

The Clutter song

Thanks to Chris O’Shea for starting that group on facebook!

When your hoarding is quite utter
And your spouse begins to sputter
Junk away, junk away
It’s time to clear the clutter

A foolish decorative stutter:
Empty jars of peanut butter
Junk away, junk away
It’s time to clear the clutter

Out, the spavined paper cutter
How your heart is set aflutter
Junk away, junk away
It’s time to clear the clutter

Pull your heart out of the gutter
Find a home for that old putter
Junk away, junk away
It’s time to clear the clutter

You will grumble, whine and mutter
You were going to find half a day and do something about that decorative shutter
Junk away, junk away
It’s time to clear the clutter.

The hypochondriac in me

I fucking hate it when somebody on facebook says “I meet most of the diagnostic criteria for X HORRIBLE INCURABLE UNTREATABLE DISEASE”.  Because, lalala, I run off to the dreaded Differential Diagnosis Machine that is Google and go “ARGH MY GOD I HAVE THIS DREADED DISEASE and it isn’t fatal  BUT GOD HOW INCONVENIENT.”

No, I don’t have this dreaded disease.  I am just complaining about how the ‘monkey see monkey do’ part of my brain seems to be hyperactive.

Keith and Paul, bless ’em, have gotten me out of the house for walks over the last couple of days.  Oakalla was gorgeous, as always, full of lovely dogs.  Whom I respected from a respectful distance, but Paul never saw a Samoyed he didn’t want to manhandle.

Inherent Vice is a sterling example of how you CAN film a Pynchon novel.  Joachim Phoenix is remarkable, as is the rest of the extremely well chosen cast.  Josh Brolin is a standout.

I have met Keith’s girlfriend!  She exists.  L. is a charming young woman with a most infectious laugh. I gave her a lift home the other night and so had a chance to interact with her.

Buster is remarkably blithe for someone who’s been castrated. He leaped up onto the pinball machine less than 24 hours after the operation.  If he keeps this up he’ll rip out his stitches.  Remarkable feline. Hopefully his remarkable aim, persistence and bladder capacity will be put to more pious uses in future.

Today’s walkies will include tomaters.  Jeff needs tomatoes for BLTs.  Also, I must cook bacon.

Everybody have a lovely day now!!

 

Moar coffee

I got a perfectly good nights’ sleep but I feel very sludgy today.

On the list of things to do:  Mail package to Sandy.  Buy butter.  Make a list of the stuff I have to get  for the Feast of St. Brigid – we’re having a musical evening at Planet Bachelor on February 1st and I’m cooking (and likely cleaning, if trends hold). Practice songs and assemble song books for that event. Moar editing – I’m doing a little every day, which is happy making.  Hopefully it will result in fewer “What the hell is this??” notes from Dianne. Make some phone calls.  Go for a walk – I am thinking of walking up to the library. Watch the Librarians double episode season closer. Put away my clothes, including my COAT which Buster PISSED ON.  Argh.  Sally told me yesterday that once male cats get that habit you’ll be dealing with it forever, but we can has UV lights for piss detection and we shall enzyme clean and Feliway everything in the house if we have to.  Right now it’s REDOLENT up in here. Take a metric crapstack of painkillers and clean. Figure out how to get the mirror off the wall in the bathroom so I can get it resilvered, I am tired of looking like a zombie in my own bathroom mirror.  Fix my website. Get more crap to Value Village. Make a square blankee for Alex.

Jeff is really liking Z Nation – it’s not a soap opera with occasional zombies like Walking Dead, it’s all zombies, all the time, with occasional stops for breath.  He sometimes comes upstairs and tells me of the new and improved zombie killing methods the show comes up with, like squishing them with the Liberty Bell, which you have to admit is hilarious.  Also it’s shot in the Pacific NW so props.

Seahawks did the ultimate haw haw you thought being two td’s ahead was going to stop us to the Packers yesterday.  The fans screamed themselves hoarse.

I forgot to say how VERY HAPPY I was to see Ivy back at church yesterday.  I love that woman and I’m glad to see she’s recovering well from her busted hip.

 

 

Church today

I am wearing my pink dress and my tie dyed tights today; I won’t be easy to miss.

Buster peed on one my mOm’s quilts which is very annoying but Jeff popped it in the laundry for me.

I am continuing with the decluttering.  Yesterday it was all my bookmarks on my computer.

I edited three sections totalling over 15K words today and yesterday.  I will go back and edit them again, tightening, deleting, expanding, and upgrading the punctuation.

A brief exchange of food

Paul dropped by yesterday morning on the way to work to drop off a cheque for his half of the baby carriage (which it turns out Alex loathes unless it’s moving). He brought fresh bread (cousin Jim’s recipe) and I had a container of home made rice pudding (strangely, IN a commercial rice pudding container).  He couldn’t stay so we chucked food at each other and he left.

Buster got out the door.  He paused (like a moran) on the deck to inhale the sweet air of freedom – and I chucked him back in the house.  He doesn’t hate me but he was not amused.

He gets snipped on Tuesday.  The whole house smells like pee, sigh, but we have a plan to deal with that as Buster recuperates.  I will be ever so glad when he can FINALLY get off the cone of shame.

I’ve put some items on craigslist for sale. No responses yet.

Alex at three months

He looked like Katie the last time he was here; now he looks breathtakingly like Keith at that age, most especially when he has a look of concentration or is smiling.

He responds to music by turning his head to see what’s going on. Alex is delightful to perform for. We spent about half an hour ‘walking’ him back and forth between me and Katie. So strong.

I took him downstairs to commune with the Star Trek pinball game, and he swam around on his stomach on the glass, sometimes following the ball with tremendous concentration, other times just slapping the living shit out of the glass and drooling on it while making the usual gurgling cooing noises.

Man, he hates the stroller unless it’s moving; then he’s unconscious.

I have video of him but can’t find my camera cable.  It’s getting to the point I prefer using my camera phone, because it’s so instantaneous and hassle free.

Mash up

So I finagled a tune.  I hum it all the bloody time, but I never wrote it down before today.  I uploaded it and of course my computer went crazy and won’t let me actually save the damned file to the media portion of my blog.  FML!

(Jeff says: you can hear it by clicking the following link and choosing to open the file. It should play in your computer’s default audio player. 60s tv show theme)

Anyway, tunage wise, it’s what happens when you collide the Dick Van Dyke Show theme song with the Red Dwarf theme song.  You’re welcome.  Hey, I did something about my backlog today and it isn’t even NOON.

KATIE AND ALEX ARE COMING.  I hope.  Things do change.

Good morning!

I’ve been awake since one ayem and up for 45 minutes; I had rice pudding for breakfast plus a large mug of coffee, so that puts paid to me sleeping – or does it?

Spoke to a girlfriend this morning.  Her husband is giving her grief.  I am trying to be sympathetic, but she knew she was marrying an alcoholic, and even if he’s dry now the physical and behavioural consequences of his life choices are not allowing him to be a good mate.  I am on a drama-reduced diet, myself.

I joined a decluttering group online and so far I’ve removed two bags of clothes from the premises.  I am going to deal with the tyres today (the group leader is English).  They’ve been sitting in the garage for two years, why not.

 

 

My day so far

I’ve climbed back on the writing horse, but since it’s edits I can’t really say OH I WROTE THIS MUCH TODAY.  It’s going well.  I have to figure out how to represent targets though.  Manuscript pages edited?  Dunno, that seems most likely.

I baked bacon for BLTs and made up ingredients so they are ready to go.

I watched the last Hobbit movie.  It was quite well done, although purists will be shuddering from head to foot for the duration.  I am not a purist.

I went for a walk in the predawn murk and fetched cream for coffee and milk for tea, to keep that writer’s support of caffeine flowing.

Poor Hannah, the gal who was supposed to help yesterday, was sick. I was sick all the bloody time when I was her age.  Now I literally cannot remember the last time I had anything resembling a cold or flu; how much I’m washing my hands might have something to do with that.

So many people, including the visitors from last week, volunteered that it made life much easier; the soup lunch is always quite chaotic, and then there was a business meeting at the end of it that I was just as happy to stay out of. I had Peggy’s turkey soup.  It was quite yummy.

I wore my brown snowflake motif pj’s and my steampunk hat, and was complimented.  Seriously. By everybody from Jane (who has an identical set in purple, it’s like she’s my time twin or something) to the minister, who cracked up and then told me she admired my sense of style.  The only places in the world that make me feel anything approaching the same level of acceptance, in order of closeness, Mike’s place, Planet Bachelor (but only when Janice isn’t there…. ha ha), Tom and Peggy’s, my fOlks’, Conflikt and Polycamp. I am a lucky hound, f’sure.

I told Rob to invite himself to supper sometime.  He was happy to hear it.

I’m selling printer ink on Craigslist – buyer is supposed to show up tonight around supper.  There’s nothing like buying $75 of ink and having the fucking printer promptly quit.  I’m letting it go for cheap just to get it out of the house.

Sue drove me home again, home again, and then off to an audition.  I hope I’m like her in 18 years!!

Katie didn’t come to church but she just posted that Alex rolled from his back to his tummy.  I wonder if and when he’s going to start crawling.

Margot stared me into throwing a treat to her this morning.  I can’t wait for Buster to get fixed, he’s so lively, even with the cone of shame, that it’s quite exhausting for her.

I dejunked my phone this morning.  I took out a hundred phone numbers, mostly for the café, which, duh, I no longer need, and 1.2 gigs of crapware.  Go me.

I got enough sleep last night! I went to bed at 8 pm and woke up at 5, which is wonderful.

Here are the cinnamon buns I made yesterday.

Cinnamonbuns