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 don’t have enough energy for the anti racism curriculum now that I’m working full time so I’ve emailed everybody and told them I don’t have the energy. It’ll be okay.
Not going to church this morning. I feel rather disengaged.
Finally made biscotti again after a long hiatus.
I’m tired all the time.
“We live in an anocentric culture…everything runs in circles around assholes.”
I am not tone deaf I went to tonedeaftest.com.
That’s my next homily.
I’m looking forward to writing it. I’m reallly reealllly looking forward to my writing weekend, it will be epic.
I am grateful to be employed.
There are a LOT of dead rats down where I work.
Those two statements have little to do with each other, really.
I am full of happiness at how sunny the day was, how I am alive.
I grieve for the end of life of the mother of a friend. I hope to see her soon, before she goes into hospice.
I send a kiss and a smile to a man I know, and the international call me sign to another.
Spring deliberates so briefly and then it comes on, flouncing in on a raindrop, hazy with pollen. There is a time when trees unpack themselves and fling themselves at the sun, deliberate as all get out, but by damn, they get there, and sequoias be your guide.
My son is going to check out Edmonton for work. I am very pleased, and also just downcast. If he likes it he will probably be gone by the beginning of May, and if he doesn’t, he’ll be unemployed, which he has not much use for at all.
He and Paul are away so I have to do cat care tonight on the way home from work.
Time to get dressed and be off to work. I’m dressed, it’s just the wrong clothing.
I have another homily in May, Theology at the Movies.
As part of my prep for the next blast of writing, I am rewatching every hopelessly romantic film I can, so I got Jeff to watch the 1991 Disney Beauty and the Beast with me last night. Honestly, I must have cried for half an hour, I was so filled with nostalgia, plus of course that wonderful transformation scene. I also found it strange that I knew every note of the soundtrack even after all these years.
We’re slowing up on Downton Abbey because of course we blasted through it. I do love the show.
Now to see if Jeff is ready to watch Game of Thrones….
Spoke to Katie yesterday, she sounds quite well, which is always good to know. She cracked up as she recounted how pOp’s reaction to her gestational status included the gem, “And the worst of it is I’m now sleeping with a great-grandmother.” … which is a variant of what he said when he found out I was knocked up with Keith.
She asked me if her favorite stuffed toy had survived her childhood. Blank! I only kept a few. I’d be buried in them had I kept them….
Church this morning. It’s about food security, so I will be asking Jeff if I can borrow Mr. 2.
I’ve had another great week at work; we’re doing a bunch of training for a new computer system and after Epicor’s Avante it’ll seem like roasting marshmallows and drinking beer.
And I got paid.
Gotta like that!
I descuzzed the kitchen surfaces (except the sink, Jeff got to it before I did) and now am contemplating the agony of getting on the floor and cleaning out the fridge, which smells like Something Dead, since bending knees and back does not suit me. I have had to learn how to step down off the bus all over again; if I lead with my right foot I nearly collapse on the ground from the pain, so I have to remember it’s left foot first.
Jeff and I are very much enjoying Downton Abbey and recommend it.
Coming up – last episodes of Warehouse 13, the season ender for Justified, more Archer and hopefully more Rick & Morty. And Game of Thrones starts up again tomorrow night.
I need to transfer some music onto my phone to relieve the tedium of the bus ride, and also maybe some TED talks or books on tape. Apparently the Dunnett novels are all available but of course I haven’t found a free one.
I opened up the novel again and worked away at it for a bit last night. I’ve booked the Easter weekend to do nothing but write, but that’s two weekends away. Maybe I’ll even finish it; there’s a novella length single scene I have to write for close to the beginning of the book, and it’s going to be hopelessly and most soppily romantic, so I’ll have to really be in the mood.
Haven’t heard from Katie lately, but apparently she’s not throwing up constantly any more, so yay. She lost a lot of weight, poor lamb, and that is never good. It’s as well that we’re made of tough stuff.
I answered the door today to a couple of Xtian types wearing my screaming blue “I am on the side of the scientists’ t-shirt, which I acquired from a geekgrrl at Conflikt VI. Happy days! Declined their dead tree, have enough of my own thanks.
It has been more or less unremarked that the first climate change refugees left their Pacific Island this week. Very sad.
The global banana crop is about to fail due to a pathogen which has now been found on every continent. Also, sad.
I’m expecting panic. In the meantime, Steampunk of Mixed Ethnicity.
Found out about it on Facebook today. Here’s the wikipedia link to Chad Mitchell Trio.
But it all got et anyway. It certainly wasn’t good enough for church but Jeff didn’t mind. I took some nice bag tea into church, and Sue did too. Soup lunch was yummy.
Yesterday was a laundry and church and mini relaxicon kinda day, with phone calls interspersed to various people. I am woeing at the moment over various things, but I had a nice long talk with Sandy yesterday. We were messing about with tarot again. She asked recently for pull cards for purpose in life of various family members. The deck was messing with me again and most of the cards were correct if reversed. I said to the deck, are you for real???? and pulled a card she hadn’t asked for, for her. It was the same card we pulled the last time, which had me laughing most immoderately, because that is what the deck is like. Just at the point everything is random and screwed up, it reminds me to look harder.
Then I pulled the Hierophant for me. (Sandra said, what you haven’t already? I am incurious about some things.) Well well, telling me I’m an institutionally based spiritual authority less than a month after my last homily is not exactly a slap, but it was pretty funny, and got me thinking. I know that UUism is my spiritual home but it’s annoying. Do I set myself up in authority? If so, what can I do to stop being like that? I’m not a minister or even a good candidate for ministry (although given my gabbiness in the pulpit I get asked about it occasionally).
I was proud and humbled when this was read in church on Sunday. This is part of the context for the anti racism curriculum.
Brother Jerome called me! He congratulated me on my new job. (Woke me up from a sound sleep too, but other people are not responsible for keeping track of my goofy sleeping hours). I forgot to tell him about how the Green Man came back into my life since he’s one of the few people who’d appreciate it. I am so blessed in my friends, they’ve been really good to me.
Did cat coverage for Paul this weekend, Ayesha is a sweetie.
Yuck, I’ve had two spiders crawl across me in the last twenty four hours. I flung the last one onto the floor. I hate killing them.
There is brie in the house. And fresh sourdough bread. And smoky, luscious Russian Caravan tea. I know what I’m having for breakfast!
Jeff and I are off to Thrifty’s once he wakes up.
I have been thinking about what I like in an actor.
A good actor works consistently and takes time off only when she must. She tries different roles and treats everything about herself as a component of performance. She can differentiate between the toxic pixie dusts of celebrity and notoriety, interviews graciously, is courteous to fans and professional with coworkers. She is judicious in her use of alcohol and drugs. She leaves her personal life out of her work unless it helps to bring snap to the performance, recognizes and honours excellence in others, never stops learning and protects those aspects of herself which make for great performances against all comers. She can take direction and make suggestions. She understands as much about the business of acting as she needs to. She takes every job seriously, even the fun ones. And the only time you hear about her when you aren’t actually watching her is when she’s promoting a role; she saves the interesting stuff for the screen and stays out of the fricking tabloids. A good actor is a working actor. A good actor balances knowing what she does best with working in a challenging role, knowing she might fail spectacularly. A good actor is too busy working to worry about the last blazing success or ignominious turkey.
Soup lunch today. I may bake something if I feel energetic enough.
I have decided that I am an Assam person, not a Darjeeling person. I may blend the two teas together; that’s pretty much how they make English breakfast tea anyway. Proper loose leaf tea is really a thing of beauty.
Were you aware that the global price of coffee is going to triple over the next five years? If you can bring yourself to stop drinking it except as a treat you’ll be doing the planet and your wallet a favour.
The California drought is going to end. Whether it will be enough to save the almond plantations is an open question.
Artificial organizms, here we come.
It was a great week at work. I learned things, made mistakes and enjoyed getting to know my coworkers. Being able to look out the window and see the mighty Stolo makes me happy.
Keith and Paul are back from visiting the fOlks and are now off to Seattle so I have to feed Ayesha.
I hadn’t weighed myself in a while, but my clothes were getting tighter, so I was delighted to see from the scale this morning that the weight I lost after I broke my shoulder has stayed off. Now I’m getting ridiculous amounts of exercise, since I have to walk a minimum of 2 kilometres a day through terrain plus two sets of transit stairs just to get to work, so I expect the weight will stay off. My hips and back are better; my knees and feet are shouting things ungodly at me. I’m sleeping better and staying up later.
Jeff has commented that he’s getting interesting pings from various muscle groups now that he’s back exercising regularly with his new rowing machine. One of these days I’ll check it out but I’m never wearing shoes when I’m downstairs…
Many hugs to Jeff for letting me borrow the car yesterday after my phone freaked out and I ended up being late getting out the door in consequence … I brought home some treats.
The family that ________s together….
In one of those bizarre coincidences, I mentioned the cave of Chauvet in my last homily, and until she broke her ankle, our speaker this Sunday was to be a woman taking as her text Werner Herzog’s unbelievably amazing Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Since she can’t do it, we’re subbing in three church members talking about their creative paths, and I helped one of them since he was being put to it on short notice and he said he was feeling apprehensive and I gave him some advice. He appeared happy to get it (my enthusiasm is a substitute for skill sometimes) and I await with pleasure how he will deal with the creative challenge of a minihom. So I would have enjoyed the booked homily and will definitely enjoy the substitute homily, and that’s pretty much how she goes at church. Which reminds me, I should scare up a ride.
Benedict Cumberbatch will be taking on Hamlet in 2015, live somewhere in England. Sigh.
Currently watching: Archer Vice (interesting, but no longer quite as funny), Rick and Morty (most recent show? the last two minutes took me to an unanticipated height of awesome), Justified (Boyd Crowder, how you do blow things up!), Downton Abbey, NCIS, NCIS Body Count, CSI, Person of Interest, Castle, plus the occasional Frontline and 60 Minutes. I’ve pretty much given up on White Collar, mostly because those whackdoodles at Netflix don’t appear to want to stream it to my profile, and Jeff’s burned out on Burn Notice (ha!) although I still want to finish the show. Person of Interest continues to be the show that Jeff and I are most likely to halt on the PVR so we can talk about the issues they are raising. It’s a show that demands close attention and thought, and Root walked the dog Bear last episode.
Jeff is trying to get caught up on March Madness, otherwise known as the Squeaky Squeaky show from the sound of all those basketball shoes squeaking on those nice wood floors.
I wonder if two zone bus passes are available yet? I’ll need one of those. I do think longingly of getting a car, but I’ll be better off in at at least three ways without one.
Happy Friday to you all! The port strike is over, although the drivers are still plenty choked.
Chubblies is Lady Miss B’s name for the cherries which are blooming in such profusion in Vancouver right now… to the point where I curse every time it stops raining, since the pollen count is grievous whenever they get a chance to start pushing out their nasty tree sex stuff.
I have a morning routine now, always pleasant. It’s an hour door to door now, with lots of lovely exercise. When the weather is crappy I will get off at Main because it is both safer and flatter. Currently I have to cross two two-lane roads and two sets of train tracks with no level crossing, through a bramble bush, all in rapid succession, to get to work. I am a determined older worker.
I spent thirty dollars on tea and tea related items yesterday, as I am tired of drinking crappy tea. And Friday Afternoon Tea is far away.
My new welovecolors.com order came!
Brain training doesn’t work, says a crappily researched article on the internet today. I subscribe to Lumosity, and it has done two things that I can see for sure. One is that my field of vision is huge now; I can see what’s going on in front of me with proper attention, to the point when I will catch things on tv shows and Jeff will run it back to look, and Jeff is an attentive viewer. It made driving easier, too, I felt more confident that I could see the full picture. The other is that my short term memory is definitely better. Not improved to the point I am happy with it, but better. Anyway, as long as I see benefits I’ll keep training.
We have weekly staff meetings. Happy sigh. With Skype, even.
I was only an hour door to door getting home last night so that was pleasant. I’m going to try to work something a little different this morning going in as well. There will be a ‘sweet spot’.
This is an entertaining comic. Human sexuality is weird, but what the animal kingdom gets up to is amazing. Very mildly unsafe for work.
Indian food for dinner last night. Desi Turku (2020 says THAT’S DESI TURKA AND WE ORDERED FROM THEM LAST WEEK) is a new restaurant but I don’t think we’ll be ordering from them again, their food is all too salty for Jeff’s taste – I can tell but I don’t mind.
Sandy is calling me this morning for a tarot reading. Wonder what’s up?