Author: Allegra

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

Full of gratitude

It is so very pleasant to be able to pick up the phone and be able to talk to my mother.  It’s the most bracing luxury.  It is a luxury, a luxury to think that the people and machines that keep the phones running will always be there, will never be distracted by anything else.  And yet bracing, for when my day darkens and my drears get all bleary, I can contemplate easily calling my mother, and even if I don’t call her, it’s still a bracing thought.

Murmle mushy pancreatic implosions of daughterly joy.  Snirf, ack, ptui.

Canada Post website is down

Call the toll free, get pissed on from a great height.  Sorry, can’t answer your call, call later.  Click, Bzz.  Need to talk to Canada Post before I can tell one of my coworkers that she’s an ignorant sociopath with delusions of adequacy; strangely I need to check my facts, even if she doesn’t.

Annoying.

Broke a large piece of glass this morning trying to get the food I cooked  for a company potluck into a bag to carry it.  Cut myself three times cleaning it up and I just realized I cut my leg as well as dropping the lid on my foot.

Happy fucking Monday, y’all.  Only good thing about this morning was the brevity of the commute and the pan fried scallops I had for brekky.

Trying to train Margot to grunt on command is hopeless, and yet entertaining.

I wrapped the present for the needy family this morning.  It’s the first 3 books of the Scott Pilgrim series.  The 14 year old boy did ask for graphic novels after all.

In other news, I went to check out the cajon that’s on craigslist in town and it sucked so I didn’t buy it.

In other news, Katie and Keith are back in Vancouver and I cooked a baron of beef (mit gravy) and mashed spuds and broccoli for dinner last night.  Paul stopped by to eat and run.  I don’t mind, he cooked two meals earlier this week both of which were awesome.

Feels weird to be through The Wire.  I am thinking about that a lot.

Sunday roundup

I was feeling like I missed Leo and Linda so I made Finn pancakes last night.  Paul stopped by on the way to work and devoured some.  I think he’s missing the kids, I am definitely missing them, and Katie posting that she was sad on Facebook diddint help.

We also sang and played a bit last night.  He sure makes my Seagull sound purty; I’m working on a new tune and it was a treat to work it up in guitar first and then hand the guitar to Paul so I could noodle on the mandolin; there was some tasty stuff in there.

Jeff and I watched the last episode of The Wire; for each part of the ecosystem of the drug trade and city infrastructure, folks die or retire and others take their place; that was the point at which I realized that The Wire is really about corruption.   A corrupt system only needs a bit of corruption from everyone and a whole bunch of corruption from the big players to work; now there’s research indicating that maybe that is how it’s supposed to work. Humanity will always have corruption with it, but how does one cope?  Carlyle said make of yourself an honest man and then there’s one less rascal to deal with, more or less.

Eclipse on Tuesday/Wednesday.

Of the many, many things I am grateful for, having a mother who never made me a sweater like this is one.

It snowed last night, but not enough to matter; I checked a webcam rather than going to a window, does that make me a bad person?

So glad I’m not travelling for Christmas.

The diagnosis game

To protect Katie’s dignity and privacy I won’t go into much of the background stuff.  The foreground stuff is a lot of me shaking my head and going “This is bullshit.” (From disbelief, disappointment, anger, fear and vanity.)  At the same time I’m hearing things I didn’t hear about at the time they happened and I’m starting to understand how parents can wake up one morning and find one of their kids hanging from something or possibly having left town abruptly or maybe just plain old O.D’ed.  “But I had no idea he was so upset!”  Yeah…..  My daughter’s having a crisis and all I can think about is how it affects me – how it makes me look.  How mature!  so I’m really trying to make an effort to not make it about me; it was easy enough to do when she didn’t live with me for the best part of five years.  Now she’s sleeping on the media room couch (why didn’t she go to bed? Bet she stayed up talking to Keith…)

She is feeling better.  She says so.  She’s diurnal again.  She’s painting a lot.  She’s going to Victoria today with her brother.  She swapped my laundry over for me last night so I’ve got clean clothes this morning.

I am also thinking A LOT these days about Elly, and thinking I should get on the phone with her.  She is just about the most loving and sensible woman I ever met, and I hope she can help me with what’s happening, just for perspective, just for asking pointed questions, giving sage advice.

I hope Katie and Keith have a lovely time in Victoria.  She’s taking her easel.

Paste that smile on lucky bastard

Maybe I’m the luckiest person on earth, but I don’t feel that way now.

Katie took me to the reptile house at the King Eddy pet store Saturday and I FELL IN LOVE.  I mean head over heels, you are mine forever, with a Senegal chameleon.  One critter made straight for me and attempted to mate through the glass with my big ol’ hat.  The ferrets made me ill though, their scent has always been too much for me.  Mr. Man at the store said that Senegal chameleons are for experienced reptile fanciers; I should stick with a twenty dollar anole for starters.  Four hundred bones will get me into a chameleon; whatever sex it was it was an extremely personable reptile.

Talked to Dowker yesterday; I’d been going crazy (yeah, yeah, I know) trying to figure out what the name of a song on a mix tape he made for me in 1990 was.  After a lot of backing and forthing it was the written as a Joy Division song BUT released as a New Order song called “In a Lonely Place” which has the best opening drum roll OF ALL TIME.  Anyway, now I can listen to it any time I want, and oh oh oh those cymbal crashes.  Also big time heaping good.

Also found Big Hard Sun by Indio and am learning the song.

Watched Meryl Streep in Dark Matter.  Bloody sad movie.

I’m getting a migraine.  I’m fine until I look at a screen, and then half my visual field gets sucked up into a rainbow and static hole.

Church was okay.  Not a big fan of intergenerationals, but I had to do set up and count, so there I was.  No church on Boxing Day so I suppose I could go to the folks that day.  The kids are making noises about going earlier than that.

There’s loads of yummy leftovers in the fridge.

Keith and Paul and I sang and played last night.  Keith is getting quite feisty on the bass.

That’s about right.

Indeed.

Yesterday my mother celebrated her 75th birthday.  Now if we’d been from the other side of the family we’d have piled in cars and gone to see her and had a damned big party but this is what we did instead. Not a single one of us bought her a present.  Not a single one of us sent her flowers.  Nope, nor a card.

I wrote my mother a poem (picking up from where an earlier one left off) and made all her descendents call her on the phone.  You can call me chintzy, but all I can do is thank my ancestors that they conveyed to our family a very sturdy notion of what is important and what is not in family life.

My mother taught me a lot of things.  In most of these matters she had help from my dad, but not always.

Civility costs nothing.

Get a good education and then worry about what you’re going to do to earn your bread.

Be kindly towards the religious expressions of others.  Atheism will always be a minority opinion so don’t be rude about it.  Bob your head for grace; sing the carols; kneel and stand when you’re s’posed to.  Absolutely nothing about being an atheist gives you a hall pass to be rude about the religious expressions of your relatives; may as well generalize and extend the civility requirement to anybody who isn’t actively trying to kill you.

Given a choice between spending the time and spending the money, spend the time.

Stay busy.

Housework sucks, but the requirement for it doesn’t go away, so learn to do it efficiently and without whining.

Be authentic about what you love even if it looks silly to other people.

Human beings need to touch each other and baby human beings need lots of touching.

Budget the luxuries first.  This entirely counterintuitive take on personal finances has assisted in keeping me happy.

Better two good friends and true than 50 dubious acquaintances.

There’s no excuse for being a shitty driver.

Alcohol and recreational drugs are not necessary for any aspect of life.  Painkillers on the other hand are a must.

Let the medical students experiment.  It isn’t fun but it’s soon over.

Beauty, truth and goodness are everywhere.  So are evil, waste and want.  If you adjust your vision to see the former more than you see the latter, you may not have a more accurate view of the world but you will have a happier one.

Music is important.

Privacy is important.

Don’t fight in front of the children.

There are only a few criteria for determining whether you have been a successful parent.  1. Child survives to breeding age.  2.  Child does not go to jail.  3.  Child stays pretty much continuously and voluntarily employed at job or household tasks and arranges personal life so as not to be dependent on the state.  4.  Child stays out of mental hospital.  5.  Child comes to visit you voluntarily.

If your child meets these criteria, you have been a successful parent and lying around moaning about any aspect of child’s life, from choice of spouse to wacky UFOlogy paradigms, just makes you look like an ass. Bonus points for grandchildren, but you don’t have any control over that.

Your family can never be too big.

If you look hopelessly square and do not attract attention by odd behaviour, people will leave you the hell alone.

Getting old is not for sissies.

Whining is something other people do.

The Warlord’s Cook

I have a self-entertainment story that I’m always working on in the back of my mind called the Warlord’s Cook.  The Warlord is about 70 at the time of the story and the cook is about 50.  The story is set two generations into the future, post collapse. (Fertility tanks, diseases break out of the antibiotic jail, global depression triggered by fraud and currency speculation, banditry, shooting nukes between India and Pakistan leaving large swathes of both countries and downwind uninhabitable, and as the final wretched maraschino on top, collapse of the rubber industry when the long predicted blight attacks the monocropped rubber in Malaysia and SE Asia.)

Anyway, in my version of the future The Clipper is still in use.