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!
Food and drink and saw Katie and went to church and goods and services auction and sang Tapioca Song with accompaniment by Tom and Peggy and sloppy joes for supper and Miss Margot seems to have recovered from the eye problem Jeff reported yesterday and went for a walk at Oakalla and saw a radio controlled Spitfire and heard coyotes yipping. Did some writing, practiced a song. Must swap laundry.
I thought I would go to bed early and I’m still up. craziness…
I told Tom and Peggy and Paul last night that I wanted to learn every song John used to sing. They obliged by teaching me two; one was Careless by Nancy Freeman which turns out to be super easy and frikkin awesome, and the other is way harder, because Dave and Tracy’s Gentle Arms of Eden (which I also long to parody, may the Goddess strake me privily) is played at breakneck speed with chord changes to match. My finger tips have almost completely calloused up again. It’s like they learned how to get calloused when I was young (I took up guitar at 11) and now when I return to it they get busy.
My embroidered dragon has been located; John’s shirts and his superhero cape have gone back to Lady Miss Banjola, who startled the living mucus outta me by the sudden dramatic change in her appearance. Yes, she has allowed her sister the hair stylist to apply yellow and orange to selected portions of what’s grown back of her hair, and she looks fabulous, and I mean it. If I could change my hair like that and look that fabulous I would – well, I’d probably be south of 30, for starters. I immediately wanted to run out and do the same thing, which is how I frequently feel when Lady Miss B does something… you know, the OOOO SHINY response.
Off to church now. Keith was over at Jeff’s last night… Katie and Paul and I stayed at Planet Bachelor (singing in the evening and church in the morning = I didn’t want to go home). Katie is in good shape – we played cribbage yesterday, and because she learned to play from Doug and Elly, she whipped our butts.
Dax’ car got struck TWICE by other cars, in the last two days; one was a hit and run, t-boned at a red light. I will now maintain a discrete silence.
Singing and playing for two hours completely re-set my brain. And the sun is shining the way it did when I was young, before anything ever hurt me.
but the audio is, I warn you, painful to listen to.
Gentlemen are assembling the back deck and yelling at each other in Urdu, or maybe Panjabi.
I had to get the bite adjusted on a lower molar (it still hurts to bite down but not as much) and I’ve got two cavities to re-excavate prior to losing my dental plan. And I may be in for another crown, but that’s pretty normal, and there is always the possibility that there’s an infection the xrays didn’t show; I don’t care, I just want it fixed.
Landpeer Tony beat at the house with a sledgehammer for an hour and a half Thursday night. Jeff thought of remonstrating with him and decided it was pointless. They still haven’t brought me back the keys they took the day they ripped the deck off the house.
I phoned Kim when I got out of the dentist’s last night and the house will be ready Monday. Jeff will call her and inspect it for move in readiness as he doesn’t work Mondays and then we’ll hire a truck, likely for the first weekend in June, as it’s likely to be too nuts between now and then anyway, not packed, John service, and the generalized insanity of having dozens of friends and family I haven’t seen in years or many moons turn up and need coddling. I am now to the point where I don’t feel like I’m going to fall off the edge of the world. I feel a more grim determination that I’m going to do the best I can by my year off, and really really make an effort to finish things. John kicked my ass many times to be more physically and musically active; strange that he had to die before I felt like listening to him.
A big bag of his clothes arrived; thank you mOm. I got the frog silk shirt back, thank you for your indulgence Juliana, and I mention his white tiger shirt and his superhero cape. I will be interested to hear what Lady Miss Banjola would like done with that. I want the Beacon music shirt but the rest should go to his friends and family. Also, I am going quite insane thinking of who should get the willie warmer he owned – and occasionally wore, rather horrifyingly – and I kinda think his old housemate Colin should get it but I’ll leave that little conundrum to the family as well. I can’t imagine Keith wanting or wearing it, or Jesse for that matter, and those were his only two nephews.
Most important thing on my list between now and the 28th is writing John’s eulogy. There will actually be two, one for public and one for private consumption, but the public one comes first.
Took Jeff to the Keg as a gross act of self and brotherly indulgence. Today I need to pack, pack and pack again, as well as launder and throw out trash.
I’m having a rilly hard time concentrating at work. No surprise there.
Yet more people have found out about my planned departure and it’s as if it’s the ‘end of an error’ is making people really freeked out. I don’t want to freak people out. I just want my life back. Yes, I know it looks like I have a life from my blog, I’m forever doing exciting or at least utterly bizarre things, meeting strange life forms and having thinky-thotz, but I’d like a more interesting life still, and I want to be able to say I did something besides work. Like create. Continue reading Still alive
June 19th is my last day. I’m walking down the road to Jericho Beach Tuesday night and thinking “This is nuts. How much more pondering do I have to do to know I don’t want to be doing this anymore?” I phoned Katie and told her, and she provided consoling words. Then I turned the corner and there was the biggest rainbow I’ve ever seen. I’d post the pics but rainbows need a good photographer and a hefty lens, neither of which I had. Then I enjoyed the show at Jericho (Brighter Lights Thicker Glasses, and I can’t recommend them enough) with Peggy (after playing John’s Song and That Godforsaken Hellhole I Call Home), and then came home and told myself I’d sleep on it. And I did, and I went to my brother and said, “I’m quitting my job today,” and he said “Great!” and then I went in and told NewBoss and then everybody in the building knew and I had a stream of miserable engineers and unhappy techs come by and ask if it was true.
Why? Because John died. I knew, after Brian C. quit, that something very fundamental was gone and not coming back. I knew I was not giving it my best. And time’s winged chariot is outside my front door honking. I have an immense list of stuff I want to do and no energy or heart to do it as long as I’m working full time.
Daughter Katie came over last night so I could help her with her job hunt. I fed her and Jeff chicken thighs in mixed herbs and bouillon, peas, asparagus and tater tots. Mike came over.
While they were here, Miss Margot jumped up on the keyboards that I have negligently and sloppily left in the living room, and I turned them on, and then Jeff coaxed her into walking up and down the keyboard a couple of times. Katie and I knew, and Jeff and Mike did not, that the keyboard splits and is percussion sounds on the left and piano on the right. So we were laughing – I laughed until I was gasping for air, and we were all crying and hooting in a most unseemly manner – because she walked to one end of the keyboard sounding like she was trying to compose the climactic piano music for an artistic horror film from the sixties – and then she parked her butt on two keys and just sat there, eyeing us with something resembling resentment and puzzlement, her butt making a chord the whole while, for at least a minute, possibly longer, while Jeff tried everything to get her to walk up the keys. Then Mike did something that got her attention, and she walked toward the other end, writing a very beautiful and unusual song as she did so, and I ran to get the camera, and all I got was her walking on some percussion and dismounting with a “Bam-dum KISH!” exactly like she was finishing off a comedy sketch. It’s not long enough to post and the light level is very low, and I’m SCREAMING with laughter and shaking the camera. I wish I could have gotten the whole thing, it was just about the most amazing thing I’ve seen lately. And it happened in my living room. Katie, wiping her eyes, said that was the hardest she’d laughed in a very long time. Miss Margot is a really remarkable animal. I mean, a cat who eats oatmeal?
You know, if I quit my job, I could train Margot, the clown cat. I wonder if I can get a false nose fitted for her. No, some ideas are better left unrealized. Hey, I DID quit my job! But taking a year to train a clown cat, THAT has income possibilities. I should set the house up for camera operation in every room. Oh, Jeff!? Wifi webcam throughout the house? I know Miss Margot won’t be little and cute forever.
I need a root canal. I hope I can make it through the weekend. The poison from the abscess is affecting my jaw and tongue.
Forty second video of Miss Margot attacking her reflection in a shiny bowl.
I know the Bible is supposed to be read with discernment, but if I can’t keep a straight face don’t expect me to discern anything.
A married man with three boys goes through an MRI to find out if he likes his wife (I actually first typed life, which is pretty funny) or Angelina Jolie better. He’s still alive, so you know how this turned out.
Take your kid to work day goes really wrong.
On the other hand, brute force and ugliness DOES work for some applications. Just ask any guy who fixes aircraft.
You’ve gotta be shittin’ me. This is CANaDA? I just don’t remember Montreal being like this. Trigger happy anti immigrant cops, sure, but this is ridiculous. Okay, I’m definitely learning a cop brutality song. Pukka Orchestra’s Cherry Beach Express, here I come.
I washed clothes and cleaned things and practiced my guitar yesterday. I also watched the unbelievably pretty Heath Ledger in the Order and saw a new Robot Chicken. I don’t like the new season. It’s dark without being funny.
But really funny…. a parody of Gretchen Wilson’s Red Neck Woman from a slightly more…. uh… realistic point of view.
Supposedly filmed in BC by a comedy troupe. Who knows.