Author: Allegra

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

Ingredaments acquired

Yesterday was a day of cleaning out my car, and the kitchen, acquiring ingredients for spicy soup, and feasting Tom at Tom and Peggy’s.  Poor guy has some kind of lungcrud and was muttering about whether a girdle would work for his rib pains from coughing so OF COURSE I told the family story about how when Grampa got kicked by a horse he repurposed Gramma’s girdle to ease his rib pain.  She even wrote a poem about it.  Good times!

I assisted in the making of cheese sauce and it was lovely to see Lady Miss B and her energetic lad; I’d been up late and Jeff was feeling distinctly poorly and so we ate our lovely roast beast and skedaddled early.  Paul and Keith were also in attendance.

I updated my resume and sent it off to the recruiter.  However I have not stopped sending out resumes, hopeful as I am this lead will pan out.

Ah, soup lunch.  It’s worth it all to see the happy congregants sucking back lovingly prepared food.  I guess I’ll always have that corner of momness in my brain.

Poor Carrie… she’s having a hell of a time moving off Haida Gwaii.  After saying they would, now the Ministry is saying not only won’t they move her she’s going to get any ‘profits’ she makes from the sale of her furniture that she scrimped and saved for deducted from her income.  She’s got disabilities that make packing and hauling a bit problematic.  And gosh, she’ll be making 10 cents on the dollar, if that, for the furniture seeing as how people are leaving Haida Gwaii in droves after the last two big earthquakes and the weeks of aftershocks which followed.  The west coast of Haida Gwaii could get a tsunami anytime.  Jeff and I feel for her and we have room for her for a month, but no room for her furniture even if by some miracle she gets to bring it with her.   And really, she wants to live in Victoria and Juliana has no room due to her tenants, and the parental units have no time or space for stuff or drama.  I looked at my friendslist here in town and I have no suggestions.  Anybody disciplined enough to not have junk overflowing every room is already renting space.  It’s awful to feel so helpless when friends are in need.  I’ve already told her that if she puts her stuff before her safety life may get very very uncomfortable.  I like to think I would not go running back into the house on fire to fetch Otto.  I am more important than my stuff! But I still feel bad, this is something I’d like to fix… if I had any spare cycles.  I’m also very very concerned about other stuff going on in her life which I don’t feel comfy about posting.

 

Everything’s up to date in Kansas City

Including using popular image sharing destination URL Pinterest for mugshots.  From the article.

Cops’ experimentation with Pinterest appears, like the service itself, to have grown up outside of the elite cities and high-profile departments like New York and Los Angeles. The Pinterest policing pioneers are lower-profile cities in the middle of the country, places like Kansas City, Mo.–whose police department appears to have been the first on Pinterest–and Pottstown, Penn (pop. 22,377), thirty miles outside Philadelphia.

 

Happy happy joy joy

Let’s see, what was so nice about yesterday?

I got called by a recruiter for a job.  That, friends, is a shot in the arm!  My updated resume has been fired off and he will get back to me by the end of next week, AOTBE.

Katie and Kyle fed me and Paul and Keith home made lasagna.  Jeff didn’t go cause he has to stay away from cheese, and it was cheesy.  Cheesy and DELISH.  I got to watch the grandsnake Izzy eat a live mouse.  He struck so hard at it he banged his noggin.

Katie gave me back my camera, which has some great pics on it so she tells me…. pics a G’ma might like to see.

The sun shone all day yesterday and looks fair to do the same thing today.

RIP Aaron Swartz.

And here’s a little diagram showing how agriculture leads to war.

Today I have cleaned out my car, which it desperately needed, and been to brekky care of Jeff (wherein we talked about a business idea we like and could do together, although likely not in the lower Mainland), and later I’m going to do some churchy stuff, including going out and getting ingredaments for Tom Ka Guy for SOUP LUNCH.  Because feeding people is important.  Must remember to google where the nearest T and T is, I have a tremendous craving to put fresh galangal in the soup this time.  O SO OM NOM NOMMABLE.

I should probably make a list, but my procrastination is pushing back on me.  Have fun it whispers….  NO DAMN YOU TIME TO FOLD LAUNDRY.  Or watch an episode of Galapagos….  back, back foul fiend Procrastineo!

 

 

What the Grand Joculator brings us

1.  Jeff says he’s paying too much money for rent.  In Vancouver that is not true but he sure could pay less rent elsewhere in the province, someplace on the Island for example.  He says he’s going to give me plenty of notice so I am very relaxed about this.  Not having in house tech support would just about kill me, as would giving up the flat screen and cable and the PVR, but life is full of interesting times and changes.  It definitely means I might end up with a different roommate though, and that raises the specter of a whole other series of maddening things; Jeff is/was the best roommate evar, as I believe I have stated a number of times.  I can see his point though and we all have to take care of our own needs.

2.  The new Galapagos BBC 3D documentary from David Attenborough is ABSOLUTELY STUNNING.  Highly highly recommended.  Don’t forget to watch the “making of” too.

3.  Signed off on my taxes for the last 4 years.  I should get a large amount of money back, but of course the feds will have to look at the returns before that happens.  I remain sanguine.

4.  Job hunting is interesting.  I got a lead from my network of contacts, and it is wonderful that it happened BEFORE I started instituting the new job search parameters (working the network).

5.  South Fraser Unitarian Congregation may get me as a speaker for Easter.  I’d whip out my previously provided Jesus service.  We shall see; I have not yet received a response.

6.  The sun is out, and I walked around in it, and of course the world seems like a better place.

7.  (link removed for safety) This.  Oh, this.

8.  I came up with a really cool idea for a science fiction story and forgot to write it down.  It has something to do with old people and robots, and damn I’m mad – I have a pad downstairs for all the ideas I get while I’m watching tv and there are tons of them so far.  Why, o why, blarp blergle.  I could have just written it down.  That’s what pen and paper FOR, SILLY APE.

9.  Did I mention I am on the waitlist for the Translink busker program?  If I’m still not working, I may do that to raise cash.

10.  I’m going to have some of the roasted squash and roasted garlic soup for lunch and then back to the job hunt.

11.  I’ve been sleeping downstairs and completely NOT HAVING ANY SCREENS in my sleeping room.  As a consequence my back is much better.

12.  WOWZERS.  Great news for deaf people.

I know I have never

fallen asleep like this.

It’s a dog with its paw in its mouth.

Chalice circle was a very big disappointment.  Like uncomfortable making disappointment.  It got better, but I still felt very withdrawn and disconnected at the end.

1.  I did some but not all of the homework.  I was supposed to print out the homework and bring it with me, and also a show and tell item, but I didn’t do that.

2. Lot of no-shows.  This is hard to bear; a lot of organizing went into this and I feel for both host and facilitator.

3.  The ritual was in my view goofy, poorly worded and ever so sincere (we’re doing this out of a book called Soul to Soul and while I admire the effort put into it it’s all a bit ‘canned’) with that reverent spoken word Unitarian sincerity which long timers will completely get and the rest of you will go hunh?  And it got my atheist back up.  I don’t give a shit about facing north and thanking mother earth for her wisdom or toenail clippings or whatever.  I was sneakily pleased that I wasn’t the only person in the room with the ish.  NOTE: If it had been a real Cree or Salish greeting of the directions, I could have stood that.  That has emotional resonance; not some made up pseudo Wiccan horse maneuvers.  However the ritual was brief, I’ll give ’em that.

4.  I was appalled, and I mean it, when I brought 10$ worth of cheese and got told to take it home with me as these chalice circles were not to involve food. I could feel the ghosts of a hundred Mennonite relatives cluster round me with staring eyes and pointing fingers, Matthew 25:35 “I was hungry and you fed me!”  How can the soul be nourished without the body!?

5.  The long pauses in between sharing were good.  That was stabilizing.

6.  There was housekeeping afterwards and my comment about food got taken seriously.  We will have tea or something bracing and then have the sharing.

7. The goofy ritual is supposed to be tried 4 times until we get used to it and THEN if we don’t like it we’re supposed to ditch it.  Hard to believe this never caught on with the Catholic Church.

8.  And there’s @@@@@@ homework.  We covenant to do the *$YO homework.  Srsly.  The point is to increase sacrifice and therefore commitment and it counts as religious education, which the minister is getting marked on, and it means that everybody is going to go through the curriculum at the same time in much the same way (varying by facilitator of course).  If it was my puppy, I’d be doing it SO DIFFERENTLY AND  there would still be more time for sharing.  I totally get why this is happening this way, and the increased emphasis on shared experiences to somehow account for how we don’t really have a liturgical year or specific faith wide rituals has to do with gluing newcomers into the church and broadening and deepening fellowship.  I get all that.  But without food?  Jesus wept.

I believe it could be done better, but since I’m working on other stuff for Unitarianism (my current in process homily is called “Threat Level”) and there’s this LITTLE NOTION THAT I CAN’T FIND A FUCKING COMPETENT BOOKKEEPER TO SAVE MY LIFE and I’m desperate and miserable and anxious and horrified and frightened about it really is not helping.  I thought I had a back up plan but I can’t get anybody.  It’s so painful and awkward it’s warping my frame.

On the plus side I’m getting a lot of money back on my taxes, or so the accountant tells me.

 

This is a year when my faith will be tested and toyed with, and it was ever so.

 

 

 

 

Lovely long chats

In the last week or two I have spoken on the phone to Lois and Terry and Bonnie and Carrie and Ron (an old family friend I probably don’t often mention) and Tammy and Dave the poet and my mother and the minister…. I keep forgetting what it’s like to really talk to somebody who knows me from when I was a pup.  And sometimes I am doing more listening than talking, but…. I believe there’s something about friendship which occasionally requires this ‘sacrifice’.  Tammy more than anybody I know makes me feel heard.  It is a most wonderful sensation, even if we are murder on each other as travelling companions, heavy sigh.  Carrie is being driven spare by repeating earthquakes and aftershocks and her moronic and supposedly no contact order former spouse.

Chalice circles start up again tonight.  There is homework, darn it and we have to COMMIT to going twice a month for four months.  It’s down at Sue’s place which is nice and close.  I hate that there is homework.  The free form chalice circles of yore worked a lot better for me.

Out to brekky with Jeff this am.  I am hoping to convince him to combine it with a trip to Thrifty’s first as there are tiresome holes in our larder, like eggs and cream for coffee and white sugar (we have brown but it just doesn’t cut it for certain kinds of baking).  Yes, he has agreed – as long as we don’t get anything frozen.

RGIII’s knee injury last night during the Seahawks Bengals game was just about the most disgusterpating thing I’ve ever seen lovingly replayed about a hundred times.  Blergh.

Between now and shopping and brekky, it’s JOB APPLICATING TIME!!!

KATIE was at CHURCH YESTIDDAY!  I haz a happy!  (Song went okay).  JEFF fixed KYLE’S COMPUTER.  I haz a happy!  I can’t get hold of the new bookkeeper!  I haz a panic attack!  TRE AND BATTERY dropped by for an impromptu visit and TRE PLAYED ON THE PINBALLS while BATTERY AND JEFF CHATTED!  Tre is three and really really enjoyed it, although Margot wishes him to the uttermost pit.  We haz a happy about dese tings!  EDDIE IS UPSET AT SOMETHING in the yard.  We haz a scaredy.  LIZ MCINTOSH FRIENDED ME ON G+.  Yay, my second oldest friend has gotten back in touch with me electronically.  I HAVE AN EVIL PLAN TO MAKE MONEY IF I CAN’T GET A JOB.  I can haz a scheming plot!   And so, from asterisk to asterisk, from ALL CAPS TO italicized, from call to call and packet to packet and cheque to cheque and cheek to cheek and from plug to drain, these are the expostulations of our lives.

 

 

 

 

Didn’t happen

I drove all the way down there and there was no safe place to park (sorry, I’m no parking under a towaway zone sign so I can – with no cash on me – deal with trying to get home on transit  or cab and then bail the car out).  I guess my revisionist tendencies continue.

Church in 3.5 hours.  I am going to go a bit early to make sure the instruments are at the right temperature and help with set up.

My favourite story about myself

My favourite story about myself brings together many of the threads of my life in one place.

I was working at the Canadian Mental Health Association Ontario Division office in downtown Toronto.  I had a job I liked, a boss I adored, and coworkers who taught me a lot and accepted me as I was.  I was expecting my first child and they threw me a surprise baby shower.

Like most expectant moms I was reading baby books as fast as I could and had absorbed an incredible amount of information.  I was planning on breastfeeding and the night before the shower had read how doctors had once told mothers to run bristle brushes over their nipples to toughen them up for nursing.  I considered this to be entirely barbaric and even complained to my then spouse about it, and he agreed with me.

I was so flabbergasted and so touched when they brought me into the boardroom for presents and cake that for a brief moment I was speechless.  Then I started reviewing the gifts which were thoughtful and kind, until I got to a present that was a brush, labeled ‘Nipple Brush’.

I got quite irate.  “If you think I’m using this on myself you’re out of your mind!” I said firmly.

Then.

I realized.  This was for a baby bottle, not me.  What I had been reading the night before was so close to my mind that I had just assumed….

As realization flooded over me I blushed to my hairline and muttered “Never mind,” while my coworkers sat around me and laughed until they cried.  Pretty soon I was laughing too.

Not all of the misunderstandings in my life have been so funny.