Author: Allegra

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

BANG

JESUS GOD that just about made my heart stop. Under Jeff’s supervision I was trying to bring my bicycle up to rideability after a couple of years in the shed, and I’d been adjusting the tire pressure. I rolled it around and I was looking RIGHT AT the front tire when it blew, scaring the entire shit outta me and flecking me with this plasticky watery bright green paint. Jeff and I have no notion what the hell it was, but… yuk.

Feeling very sorry for myself. Jeff said I could just roll it up the street to the bike place but screw that noise, I’m going to borrow the bike carrier from Paul and take it there that way, and then after that I’m going to offer it to Katie, and if she doesn’t want it I’ll sell it. It’s got lovely MEC panniers and is otherwise fit for use, sigh.

I suppose you want a picture but I don’t want to be reminded of how I felt when shit flew into my face.

Testing again today

I’ll be testing myself again for COVID today. Paul reports a violent headache (worst he’s ever had, he says, or so memorably bad it’s wiping out any recollection of a worse one), malaise and aches, no fever. He was coughing pretty well constantly and because I’m a total moose – I said sorry my misophonia is driving me nuts with you coughing into my ear like a fucking artillery piece and said I’d call him back later. He says he can’t tell whether he caught it in the states or not and here’s me thinking to myself that he hasn’t bothered telling anyone he was exposed/exposed himself to. e y e r o l l he certainly didn’t tell me, if Katie wasn’t a goddess among women and the matriarch of our family I wouldn’t know. Imagine that. Okay, don’t, it’s none of mine anyway.

I woke up at two with a headache (I get migraines, not headaches) so I immediately got up and made coffee and drank it and I feel fine now.  I have been feeling a little weird in my body the last few days but…. who knows.

11251 words (YAY progress finally, and likely more today – right now our trio is having a public discussion about exactly what lies to tell and to whom and Brad does not want to describe the first set of kidnappers) and FINALLY a single kudo, on the fic about the cult-survivor and the mechanic.

My face when I learned Elon’s buying twitter:

Image

Teresa Zgoda took this pic in 2017 Taenia solium (tapeworm) microphotograph

I continue to watch what’s going on in Ukraine, but it’s the false flag shit that Russia’s doing to its own people that’s really got my attention right now. They’re shooting themselves, quite literally. And the PRC is helping the state propaganda efforts. It all entirely sucks.

I’ve reupped at mastodon: I can be located here: https://social.tchncs.de/@TheCorrection

The bum I um

I feel like a bum! I still haven’t written a proper thank you letter for the books and newspaper clipping from Onti Mary, I haven’t written a word of fiction in days, my room got messy again…. and I don’t care.

I’m retired, I’ll get over it.

watched My Spy

It’s on Netflix, and it’s really funny, most enjoyable.

Very mellow day; no Alex because Paul’s got COVID. I tested myself with an RAT and came up negative, which given I was in a small room with Paul for two hours the other day as we were singing and playing (maximum exchange of aerosols LOL) means that I’ll be retesting in a couple of days.

It’s so weird… still no kudos. It’s like people have stopped reading fanfics or something. Misha Collins came out as bisexual (I wish I could state how this makes me feel without sounding like a widgeon) so there should be an uptick in readers at the very least.

WH Auden wrote a blow job poem. I’m not linking to it here because it’s not er his best work but it sure is er something. Anyway it’s called the Platonic Blow if you’re insisting on finding it on line and reading it; the only reason I munch on it is that it’s AMAZINGLY LIKE FANFIC. Like, a lot.

Buster’s abscess broke yesterday and it was profuse without being vile. I touched it up with some peroxide and we’re keeping an eye on it in case it starts oozing or smelling. We’re definitely keeping him indoors because he’s getting injured, sometimes quite badly, every time he leaves the house.

I baked up the leftover noodles with milk and cheese and it was very tasty with the leftover green salad.

 

remarkable day

Jeff and I got up and went for a walk yesterday morning, just walking around the neighbourhood. The birdies were loud and it was a very pleasant walk. I’m thinking TWO WALKS IN TWO DAYs Allegra must be feeling better (finally, and I do), and then Mike called and we went for a walk in Fraser Foreshore park. I told him to take his camera and he got:

heron

eagle

log booms

skyscapes

and unfortunately the chickadees were not interested in coming to me because it was the wrong time of day, but it was still a lovely walk and one of the crows walked right up to me and begged.

(I didn’t start limping until I was coming up the walkway for home.)

On the way home Mike picked up some marinated halibut and we joyfully stank up the whole house, likely the neighbourhood, likely the city, likely all of solh temexw, cooking it (Seriously I can still smell it with every intake of breath so I can only imagine what horrors Jeff is experiencing) and I made green salad with avocado and boiled up some herb fettucine noodles. Then we watched the dubbed first episode of the anime ‘Ghost Story’ (weird, also funny) and the boys started ‘The Batman’. Since I didn’t watch the whole movie (at eight pm I announced “I’m cleaning up and taking my drugs and going to bed,” and abandoned them mid-movie (I’ll be candid; I can’t review the movie because I didn’t watch the whole thing, but it was not impressive to me), and I slept until 4:40 a.m yeah!!! So I have no idea how long Mike hung around for, but go me for setting boundaries. Also, we consumed no alcohol – Mike has quit and I’m not supposed to and Jeff rarely drinks and only drinks beer when he’s feeling good already.

Yes, it was a remarkable day – I got in two walks! At some point I hope Mike will send me pics, I’ll fire off an email to him now.

On a completely different topic, and late, I’d like to thank Unca Garry for helping pOp with the Camaro. pOp really needs that car available for drives in the country (he’s retired, go around him) and Garry made that possible. I couldn’t see him when I last went, even though he was in Victoria, because of the plague and having to be considerate of the immunocompromised (Alex has has one shot but the baby has not and we could all still carry it without symptoms) so thank you Garry and sorry I missed you Diane.

And tonight I get Alex. I have work to do before he gets here…

No words, no feedback from AO3. But the publication for the ‘Guest’ that my poem will be in creeps closer!!!

The Hul’q’umi’num’ word for heron

smuqw’a’

closest I can render in IPA (a colonial tangle if ever there was one, but the only thing that helps) it’s

Some dialects it’s smoke-wa, no soft ‘th’ at the end.

I spent part of the morning listening to what my consulting animal is called in many Indigenous voices; from the homophone of ‘Paul’ (yup, some solh temexw languages call a heron a word that sounds like ‘Paul’ which is funny to me) to the rolling assemblage of stately consonants and vowels that is the Kanien’kéha word for heron.

Still feeling most uplifted

Yesterday was so lovely, and I always enjoy seeing Ryker, and although I didn’t see Alex yesterday I get to see him tomorrow.

I feel like I have a little bubble of love and care inside me that wasn’t there yesterday.

Wordle in four, Lumosity brain stimulation accomplished, now to get at some stuff I’ve been feeling too overwhelmed to even poke at.

Local photographer

Paul Cipywnuk made photo this at Fraser Foreshore this am.

Katie took me and Ryker walking at Deer Lake – she got to see a single garter snake. Then she ‘threw together’ a spectacular meal and went down for a nap, and Paul and I sang and played, and then I came home and hung out with Jeff watching TV and now I’ve taken my last food and drink and pills of the day and as early as it is at least I didn’t nap or drink alcohol and from the walk I’m feeling pleasantly tired….

pictures

a small white boy plays with two purple shaker eggs

there’s the little boy I love. He got bigger, and he’s still loveable playing with shaker eggs like a true filkkid. There’s the houseplant Jeff’s kept alive for decades, which continueth. There’s a rondel of art created by Alex. There are the kazoos we both still play. There’s the fabric curtain I made to keep flies out in the summer time. There’s the Guatemalan fabric bag Catherine gave me two decades ago. There are the chairs we got from Granny’s estate. There’s the expensive cat food Jeff feeds Buster. There’s the table I bought at IKEA when Jeff and I moved in together. There’s the place where Margot used to sit. There’s the place I hide Halloween candy.

There he is again, playing Xenon.

There he is with Margot in the background.

No kudos, no increase in wordcount.

I haff asket off da shpeshialist

I don’t know why I think krummy German accents are funny, but I do, I always have, it’s transgressive somehow. Maybe rewatching Foyle in gulps is doing it to me. My blog title today is an acknowledgement that Suzanne is a specialist. I asked after talking it over with Jeff. Suzanne was made aware of our slippery rug situation, and I told her we’d been thinking about bath safety strips but that we’d very much like to hear her opinion, and although it’s currently being used for something else, I actually have a chunk of the material she’s suggesting for the purpose. Yes, the specialist has made the judgement. Other solutions are available, we agree, but there are nice-to-haves to go with any solution.

Anyway, you can buy it by the yard at the fabric place down the hill, or in short expensive rolls in the stupormarket or in relatively short reasonably priced rolls at Rona. SOLUTION is: movable, washable (nay, even sanitizable!), flexible and unlikely to make things worse. Yes, this is the solution we were looking for. IT SHALL BE TESTED as part of the great experiment that is “Making Our Dump More Comfy,” the name of me and Jeff’s new podcast. He will specialize on the bathrooom side of things, and I’ll be more about cleaning with brain damage. I’ve hated it with rancor and pustules and bilious vomitings my whole life, yes, that would be my attitude toward housecleaning, and I have to tell you, a small but troubling amount of brain damage and an increasing inability to bend is not turning it into a catered picnic with a live trio, if you catch my drift.

I am laughing very hard right now, mostly because I’m picturing Jeff’s dismay at me saying anything about the two of us having a podcast about, “Making Our Dump More Comfy,” since absolutely anything BUT that will happen in our household, I can guarantee it with mirth and complete certainty. Sorry to perturb you, if perturb you I did there brO.  It’s just that I know you’ve got at least two good bathroom episodes in you (I mean descriptions of ‘the manufacture of comfort for the benefit of all’, not some recent feat of excretion, in terms of  subject matter) and I’m likely underestimating both your creativity and lived experience.

It shall remain an ever-receding possibility in terms of joint projects! and everyone said GOOD and turned to other things.

Like this.  I think it’s apropos.

I never loved you because you were fighters//I loved you because you were shitposters! Two panels of Drummer addressing her lovers.
I never loved you because you were fighters//I loved you because you were shitposters! Two panels of Drummer addressing her lovers.

last night I dreamed I died in bed

and everybody was mad at having to clean out my room LOL

1 kudo. 10648 words. Every time I think about writing the next 2k words I’m bored… I’m more interested in what comes after, and that is problematic in terms of word production.  I haven’t given up, and poked around in a couple of unpubbed stories to see if I could work on them instead, but not a sausage.

Brief and pleasant walk with Paul yesterday. He was in the US again for a while, so it seems he’s figured out how to get back into the country without paying thousands of dollars in fines.

This morning’s wordle was a BEAR. I am so lucky I guessed it in six.

Mariupol hasn’t fallen, but it’s a matter of hours. The Russians are calling it liberation but the city has been flattened, and they’re taking civilians they murdered 20 k out of town to bury them in a mass grave. I am numb, wherever I’m not angry and sad. The Estonians, may they be upheld, have as a nation declared Russia guilty of genocide, and have asked other nations to do the same. I believe that I have previously made a reasonable case that Russian troops and leaders have already committed war crimes.

As Fark remarked this morning, a psychopath with 6000 (some restrictions apply) nukes is holding the world hostage.

This is a repeat, but it is one of my faves of my own art. Best of all, people who knew me growing up know what this picture is an homage to.

They’re saying that Will and Jada Smith could have one of the ugliest divorces in Hollywood history, and you know what? I think they’re going to reconcile and stare everyone the fuck down. Well, that’s what I want them to do.

Suzanne will likely be here today. Everyone have a shiny day!

 

 

Laundry, Buster training, writing

10608 words. Haven’t checked for kudos yet, snicker. Okay, now I have, and it’s just the one.

Buster trained so hard this morning, and was so weird yesterday morning, that I honestly don’t know what to make of him. And while the communication board has shipped, I can’t get tracking data because they want me to have a cell phone to download the shipping app onto.

jesus parkour christ, seriously?

Yes, I know it’s 4-20. But every day is that for me, so celebrating it seems foolish.

 

a repeat, but a good one

The Plateau

I went walking with Jim and Jan, a long time ago, and ‘prisma’ed’ the above photo…

 

well that worked

went to a social media platform – shan’t say which one – to tell everyone there where my fanfic is located on a03 – and got 26 kudos overnight.

From three people, most of it was a single person. That person, wherever (she?) likely is, spent at least 12 hours out of her one wild and precious life bingeing my shit and so this morning my reaction is a classic MWAHAHA.

I have a LOT of laundry to hang, lol.

10078 words.