Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
I woke Jeff up about quarter to two to ask him to help me take the awning down before it blew away. We were both pretty wired after that so we watched some TV and went back to bed around three. The wind and noise here last night were terrifying. I don’t think I’d deal well with a hurricane or tornado… this only topped out at gusts of 110 kph.
Sigh. A hundred and forty bucks up the spout. The last one lasted 4 years and this barely survived one season. I’m really disappointed.
Okay, here it is. I am VERY MUCH going for the Warner Brothers sound, so don’t tell me if that’s not what you’re hearing.
Oh, man, Jeff would have laughed his ass off if he’d seen me doing the trash yesterday. The garbage truck comes down the alley one way and then back up t’other, so I had some warning, but I ran around like a hopped up honey badger throwing the garbage and recycling together. I spent so much time cleaning out the fridge in the early hours of yesterday morning (and by Toutatis, it needed it) that I didn’t actually have things ready to go when the truck rumbled by. Fortunately everything was in order when they came back up the hill. And even more fortunately, the lingering smell of DEATH, CORRUPTION AND HORROR in the kitchen should be entirely gone as everything narsty is gone as well.
Yesterday I went to the single most bizarre job interview EVAR. It was a masterpiece, a confection of weird, a symphony of surreal. JUST IN CASE I get the job, I shall not describe it further. I was already in New Westminster, so I phoned Katie and she said c’mon by, so I did.
Alexander farts a lot. He also blew his first raspberry yesterday. (We howled.) He is already lifting his head; he’s average size but holy crap he’s strong.
Then I walked over to the beer store and went home.
I have printed off the first section of the novel and will be mailing it the the editor today. Heaving sighs.
I am also going to be sending something to Sandra, but she doesn’t read this blog any more so it will still come as a surprise to her. I still have some t’s to cross.
She isn’t wandering around the house crying, but she’s obviously sad. She doesn’t even try to resist when I pick her up. Jeff’s on the island.
Church was great yesterday. Sue gave me a lift to and fro so I helped her set up tables. Rev Debra’s sermon about Our House (our rental house, but she mentioned that..) was very inspiring, and apart from silent meditation being too short it was a good service. I cried during Sue’s testimonial. I never met her equal for being funny and pulling my heartstrings in the same sentence. I got to talk to Karen, Renée, Glenn, Jean about Jenise’s passing (I bailed or more accurately, quailed, at going to the service but Jean very kindly emailed me to let me know how it was; it was well done and to Jenise’s taste, although I still would have been toast for going), sang my new call to worship for Tom, put tablecloths down (and took them up again) for the coffee hour downstairs.
And watched Dennis make his way to the men’s room. I didn’t need to help him. He’s 92 and pretty much blind, but one of the great things about Beacon is that it isn’t too badly set up for people with various physical challenges, and he’s just so…. Dennis. Me Loves Him. I watched him go along the wall, his white cane tucked into his back pants pocket, because he didn’t need it. Because it’s His House. A more beautiful and mundane example of just what the preacher person had been talking about would be hard to conjure.
I know, it’s silly and small, but it just made me feel like the universe was a really good place for about 30 seconds, before I got distracted again.
After I got home I called Rob W to find out how he’s recovering from his knee surgery last week; he’s laid up at his auntie’s place downtown.
Spent most of the afternoon working on Come and Worship on the keyboard, to the point where my SHOULDER started to hurt. Now I must reset the height of the keyboard so I am in a more relaxed pose at the keys. I can actually play it in chord mode (there’s only three chords, haw haw) and I am almost to the point where I’m totally keeping the rhythm too. This will make it much easier to score, too, since there’s a tiny little display on the keyboard which tells you which note on the clef you’re pressing.
Jeff reminded me that it’s garbage day, so I’m off to collect some trash.
Some dudebro posting under a social justice moniker on twitter just told me that douchebag is not a gendered slur. Do you know what it feels like, protecting Stephen Harper from gendered slurs? I feel…. fucking weirded out, 0 humans!
Of course douchebag is a gendered slur. Men don’t douche. (Women shouldn’t either, but that is a bottle of cultural worms I’m not prepared to uncork at the moment cause then we get into the whole stinky hoo-ha thing… just, no.)
Anyway, Stephen Harper is a REAL man. Where REAL stands for Reliably Evangelistic Authoritarian Leader.
So after he (obliviously he) tells me that douchebag is not a gendered slur, I answered thusly,
Are you implying (along with coconuts migrating) that men douche? Cause, damn, dog, that’s some scary shit.
I think it’s time to turn off the social justice firehose for today.
Manuel Noriega – Ol’ Pineapple Face himself – is suing a gaming company for unauthorized use of his image.
In the words of John Caspell:
Last night I went to the Hard Rock Casino and learned first hand how very odd casinos are. I, Amanda, Mike, Stuart, Ian, Sarah and Otto got together for a simply lovely meal / some drinks. Catching up with the old Statpower folks was really wonderful, and I’m in a really good mood this morning. I thought I was going to gamble going in, and after quite the lecture on statistics from Meester Mike, I no want do that. So I didn’t. The food at Asylum was standard pub grub, perhaps 10 percent more expensive that was reasonable, so pretty ordinary for Vancouver.
Jeff is off fixing things and making the world a better place.
I’ve already done my homework for my first piano lesson.
Today I’m going to clean things, write things, sing things, dance things, ingest things, and excrete things. Isn’t it wonderful that the word things even exists.
Always wanted to try it, this just makes it more interesting. Ayahuasca, that is.
Party at our place in December, details later!
And somebody in my life was dying and I didn’t do anything about it but exchange emails with her less than a month ago.
Farewell Jenise. I am very sorry for the pain and suffering you felt in your life, and if there’s one good thing about your death it’s that you’re no longer in physical pain.
I should have gone to visit her. I wonder if I’ll ever get the lesson. The last time I saw her was in 2009, and I fed her. I thought it was a couple of years ago and then I searched for her name on my blog and feel crushed all over again.
He was taken from us too soon, but it was still a privilege to know him.
And Elizabeth.
And Sue.
And Derry.
And Michael.
And Glenda.
And David.
And Bareld.
I don’t mourn for the aged dead, who went when they were ready.
Today is a day for fasting from social media and contemplation of mortality. But only for a bit; I still haven’t completely mucked out the kitchen from Thanksgiving and I’ve got a piano lesson today at one. I’ve other chores as well.
The ongoing crisis looms a little closer to North Americans. Sell your Airline stock. I’ve asked Paul to retire. Or to consider it if and when we get an Ebola sufferer coming through town via YVR.
Katie is having a rough go, poor lassie, not getting enough sleep.
Turkey soup is bubblin’ away.
Jeff’s at work and going to bring home treats. I am going to curl up with Thomas Piketty.
Comments having nothing to do with Alexander:
Margot likes babies. She doesn’t even leave the room when they cry. Every time I think I know my cat she reveals unexplored depths of character and personality.
It was so good to feast the folks, including Mike and Casey. The meal consisted of (because mOm will want to know, not because I am a food porn type): Roast turkey stuffed with parsley, one head of garlic and a lemon, boiled and roasted yams, brussels sprouts parboiled in chicken stock and sauteed in butter, sauteed parsnips, iceberg lettuce salad, stuffing made in the crockpot (sadly lacking onions, but still damned good), boughten cranberry jelly, homemade gravy and possibly the worst – the most gluey and lumpy – smashed potatoes I ever made. Everybody else ate them so it’s not like they were inedible, they just weren’t choice. Absolutely no sweets, but white and red wine, plus beer, to go with the meal. I did promise Paul his mother’s lemon snow recipe for dessert but that will wait for our next meal together; he very kindly did veg prep and ran people ’round town and brought wine glasses and suchlike, for which I offer thanks and praise.
Keith got off work early; Katie turned up around 4, so we all sat down together around six.
The carcase, less the sandwich making leftovers, is in the stockpot; I made beef and bean burrito fillings yesterday as well, so I don’t think I’ll have to cook for a while, yay me! I mean apart from deboning the soup ingredients.
Around 8 Katie got toothpicks, and Casey was in the same boat, so Paul took them home. For another hour Mike, Jeff, Keith and I sat around downstairs and watched Archer, and then since the boys both work in the morning, off they went.
It was not a spectacular meal, but it wasn’t one that anybody else in our group would have WANTED to cook, so I’m glad I stepped up. After I could sit down, I had a lovely evening.
And Alexander was there.
Or my cooking will be screwed up.
And I have Some Load of Cooking to do today.
Having fun with the song I wrote last night,
The boys of Planet Bachelor were here yesterday; Keith watched some Archer with us and Paul took me for a walk in Oakalla and consumed cake (I made some more chocolate cake). The walk was simply lovely, and took place in the only block of fair weather we’re going to get for the next few days. Keith is considering getting a pufferfish.
THANKS TEXAS YOU RATFONDLERS. Ebola is in the news and you sent a man with a fever who had just returned from West Africa home. ZMapp is a long way from commercial production. A million dead by January 2015, and everybody from the WHO on down lying; the only people I really trust to report with any candour are Medecins Sans Frontieres.
2020 says ha ha fuck you
Haven’t heard from Katie, but I imagine the babymoon is continuing quite nicely without me. Keith will go see her and Alexander today and make the acquaintance of his new nephew.
I love my friends. Mike took me out to dinner (lamb) and pummelled me until I felt a lot better. I had no idea I was sore! He told me about some of the stuff that’s happening at Schneider and I laughed quite immoderately.
Check out this example of divine decadence, being a chair shaped like a scorpion.
REALLY glad I mowed the lawn yesterday; the rain is going to last 5 days. So the place won’t look like an abandoned house when we have guests on Monday.
I have a big table for Thanksgiving. My immediate fam in town plus two orphans. (Neither of whom are technically orphans). This totals 9. We are going to eat like FOOLS. Really looking forward to it, even if I’ll be trapped in a tiled cell with a dead bird for a day. There will be parsnips. I found a crockpot recipe for stuffing that sounds nommerful.
Batman and Dilbert are spying on ya?
That central Africa would like to drop out of the headlines for a while?
That I have the wrong hobbies?
That every time you think racism can’t stoop lower….
That you simply cannot have enough hats?
That the answer to this question is frustratingly obvious?
Tonight I’m heading over to Mike’s place for music and mayhem of some description, hope it’s low key.
The Natal chart is Nine Cards formed up in a tree of life:
Father (or father’s family) – 5 Pentacles
Mother (or mother’s family) – Queen of Pentacles
Family (of birth or adoption) – 8 Swords
Health – Ace of Swords
Longevity – Knight of Pentacles
Occupation – 7 Pentacles
Contribution – 6 Pentacles
Need – The Magician
Life Motif – Ace of Wands
This is the life flow of a practical, not particularly talkative or spiritual individual who may be depended on to work hard, show up, be kind and jump in where others hesitate. He will rise above family disputes when not called upon to broker them. His longevity will be determined by his habits, but he will tend all his life to be old-fashioned, and to enjoy the work of those who have a lot to teach him. I see someone aloof and kind, intelligent and unimpressed by book learning, glitz and laziness.
