My day so far

I’ve climbed back on the writing horse, but since it’s edits I can’t really say OH I WROTE THIS MUCH TODAY.  It’s going well.  I have to figure out how to represent targets though.  Manuscript pages edited?  Dunno, that seems most likely.

I baked bacon for BLTs and made up ingredients so they are ready to go.

I watched the last Hobbit movie.  It was quite well done, although purists will be shuddering from head to foot for the duration.  I am not a purist.

I went for a walk in the predawn murk and fetched cream for coffee and milk for tea, to keep that writer’s support of caffeine flowing.

Poor Hannah, the gal who was supposed to help yesterday, was sick. I was sick all the bloody time when I was her age.  Now I literally cannot remember the last time I had anything resembling a cold or flu; how much I’m washing my hands might have something to do with that.

So many people, including the visitors from last week, volunteered that it made life much easier; the soup lunch is always quite chaotic, and then there was a business meeting at the end of it that I was just as happy to stay out of. I had Peggy’s turkey soup.  It was quite yummy.

I wore my brown snowflake motif pj’s and my steampunk hat, and was complimented.  Seriously. By everybody from Jane (who has an identical set in purple, it’s like she’s my time twin or something) to the minister, who cracked up and then told me she admired my sense of style.  The only places in the world that make me feel anything approaching the same level of acceptance, in order of closeness, Mike’s place, Planet Bachelor (but only when Janice isn’t there…. ha ha), Tom and Peggy’s, my fOlks’, Conflikt and Polycamp. I am a lucky hound, f’sure.

I told Rob to invite himself to supper sometime.  He was happy to hear it.

I’m selling printer ink on Craigslist – buyer is supposed to show up tonight around supper.  There’s nothing like buying $75 of ink and having the fucking printer promptly quit.  I’m letting it go for cheap just to get it out of the house.

Sue drove me home again, home again, and then off to an audition.  I hope I’m like her in 18 years!!

Katie didn’t come to church but she just posted that Alex rolled from his back to his tummy.  I wonder if and when he’s going to start crawling.

Margot stared me into throwing a treat to her this morning.  I can’t wait for Buster to get fixed, he’s so lively, even with the cone of shame, that it’s quite exhausting for her.

I dejunked my phone this morning.  I took out a hundred phone numbers, mostly for the café, which, duh, I no longer need, and 1.2 gigs of crapware.  Go me.

I got enough sleep last night! I went to bed at 8 pm and woke up at 5, which is wonderful.

Here are the cinnamon buns I made yesterday.

Cinnamonbuns

 

 

Let it be

Today I read on Making Light a gloss on, “What if my problem isn’t horses or zebras but COCONUTS!” which is the kind of multiply memetic comment makes tiny aweggabrain go A-squeeing.

Here’s the post that comment followed on. Some language, but dayyum it be amusing.

The dishwasher is running, the bathtub is shiny, and now I’m going to push some crud into corners until it’s time to go pick up my Mac, which went into the shop a couple of days ago, and which, on top of Otto being in the crankenhouse, is entirely crazymaking.

I didn’t know that the Germans bombed London from Zeppelins during the Great War.  There was a very cool program about it on the PVR and I’m hoping Rob, who is a bit of a Zeppelin fan, comes to watch it before we delete it.

I have slowly started making progress towards winding up the paperwork side of the cafe.  I am no longer feeling mired in anxiety and anger and despair; now it’s more like, “Welp, gotta fix all this if I’m going to blow all my retirement money on world travel!” And before the folks become apoplectic, I am hoping just to go to Germany in the spring and the UK in the early fall, and maybe a couple of other places on the continent at other times.  Also I have to update my will, and fix up my burial details, and put together a master plan for if I check out untimely.  Hopefully I’ll get to that shit faster than John did.  ha ha.  not.

 

Leaving for Georgia soon

I will be keeping a trip diary and posting irregularly… I have decided not to take my computer because I simply cannot afford to have it confiscated by the US government.  I have NOTHING on the computer which would warrant that, but I’ve been complaining under my real name about the US government for 10 years now.  Most hotels have a guest computer room.

If I do write any George stuff while I’m gone it will be cursive, or uploaded to Google drive…. they aren’t likely to confiscate that. I will take my phone and charger.

I pack today.  It will be a big batch of weird stuff I take, I hope the TSA and Customs can deal with it all.

I’m going to drop the keys for the business off with the landlord.  I have been trying and trying and trying to sell it, and almost 60 people enquired, and I showed it to at least 30 sets of people, but I can’t pay rent any more.  I closed the file with Fraser Health yesterday.  It has been a year out of my life, and we only operated for three months.  I learned a lot, got my heart and my shoulder broken, and I really think I’m a better person.  I certainly have more self-knowledge, a lot more respect for restaurateurs.  Knowing that I will never ever step through that door again is, candidly, more of a relief than I can say.  Anything else I say will be oversharing.

I am practicing and writing every day – music or one of my other projects.  That’s really the only thing that counts.

Jeff can handle getting a bolus into Eddie by himself with no difficulty, so I don’t feel like I’m abandoning Jeff over that.  Eddie is moving as little as possible to accomplish his goals of just barely eating, just barely drinking, and getting to the litter pan.  I’ve taken to leaving a hot water bottle next to him as he was cold to the touch the other day, and lifting him up into the chair he is sleeping in pretty much 24/7 these days.  Margot is being very sucky towards us and practically knocked Eddie over with her tail the other day, a liberty he simply would not have tolerated a couple of months ago.

So many people have told me how much they are looking forward to seeing me at GAFilk!  I feel genuinely underrehearsed, but I recently read that if you’re feeling nervous, make yourself MORE EXCITED.  So I will.

ATL is not currently experiencing delays in or outbound with the exception of international flights outbound.  Travel will be icky, but not impossible due to weather.

I’d like to call out Patricia for helping arrange a drinkypoo on my return, and a very warm hug for mOm and Chipper, who have been extra specially supportive beta readers for George, and for Tammy, who provided me with the book that unblocked my last objections to the writing.  I have something very specific to say on the subject of first contact, which is that we’ve had 100 years of science fiction in popular culture, and we have to start writing first contact fiction that allows humans to respond intelligently to aliens.  Not to freak out or say stupid things. To say, “Cool! Weird! How can I help? What’s in it for me?  Where’s your ray gun?” when somebody who really does think globally comes along.

 

Everybody who can, have a good day!

May you find what you seek

In some cultures, that’s considered a curse.  Anyway, to the point; I am looking up stuff on Afghanistan and Persia (now Iran) because I am following information about Rumi.  Accidentally I land on the wikipedia page of the anti-Rumi, which contains a bunch of 14th Century dirty jokes.  They are at the bottom of the page, you’ve been warned, etc.  One of the jokes is so disgusting it could cheerfully be used by people who hate Muslims as propaganda.

We are watching Ken Burn’s Jazz, and it is uniformly excellent.  I wish I could have watched it with John, too.

Off to the library today.  I have a couple of other errands to run.

My request to have assistance in developing anti-racism curriculum is in the newsletter for church.

I can only wonder what my uncle, who got a PhD in Fluorine Chemistry, would make of this website mocking PhD subjects.

another, another no show, and Peter O’Toole’s dead.

I am feeling rather wretched about that, but it is what it is.  Two other simply lovely things (okay, interesting and fun things) happened today.

The first was the Christmas pageant, which was stupendous (I Augustus Caesar will tax you because I want all the money / we will now take the morning offering) and hilarious (the Christ Child was BLACK suck it haters!) and exceedingly participatory.

The second was me and Keith and Katie and Rob going to the shooting range and blowing holes in shit until we all felt better.  It was expensive and noisy and worth every penny.  Watching Katie fire a gun for the first time was AWESOMES, since one awesome isn’t enough.  And thank you pOp for subsidizing it!  I have pictures, which I will share privately.

I tried firing the 9mm but my shoulder said many many rude swearz so I stuck with firing about 3 mags worth of .22.  I was not unhappy with my accuracy.  My accuracy with the .38 sucked, so I have to assume that heavier firearms aren’t going to cut it until my arm is a lot stronger.  I call that motivation.

Peter O’Toole died in London today.

Jeff and I are both crabby, but I still cooked him pork stroganoff for dinner, and he still liked it, so we aren’t being crabby with each other.

 

 

Another no show

Person of interest didn’t show.  I’m supposed to be meeting with someone else this weekend re the cafe.  It’s a numbers game, I have to be patient, etc.

Eddie is basically not coming up the stairs at all these days.  He lives in Jeff’s bathroom closet, only coming out to eat and drink and use the litter pan.  He’s painfully thin and his hair is coming out in patches and sometimes when he looks at me I get the feeling he’s trying to figure out who I am, then he lets me pet him, calls softly and sadly, and goes back to his hidey hole.  Every once in a long while he tries to jump up on something and loses his balance. Since he is still eating and drinking and taking his meds, we’re in a state of watchful waiting but also premonitory sadness.

I’m hoping to score a flu shot today, if I can gird up my loins to get there.  Also to pick up the colour printer from Paul’s place and also to do a bunch of other errandy type things.

Customer surveys can be hazardous to your marriage. (picture of a hotel survey)

 

Dialogue

My refrigeration guy from the shop is trying to help me sell it because he feels sorry for me! He brought one potential buyer yesterday and we’re meeting again today with someone else.

Walked a k yesterday in the snow.

Practiced long and hard yesterday; Jeff was away for a good chunk of the day so I could really wail.

 

If you want to know why I’m watching Burn Notice with such rapt attention, the following piece of dialogue may provide a clue.

 

Do you have a plan?

Plan? Do I have a plan? No! I have tactical goals and a rough approach.

 

Happy, Happy sigh.

 

 

No show

Oh my screaming g’s the Detroit Philly game. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Six inches of snow on the camera crew and half the football disappears when you put it down. When the player rooted double handsful of snow out of his face mask I howled.

Furnace is broken, internet is spotty.  Working right now, but who knows later.  It’s been like this for days now.

We’re at the end of Season 4 for Burn Notice and Jeff has declared a short moratorium.  That’s okay, because I’m currently thrilling to the amazing dress sense of the lovely Phryne Fisher of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.  It’s very much in the Foyle’s War category of murder mysteries, except Australian and Phryne is a SLUTTTT! A cheerful, unapologetic and unambiguous one (but sex scenes are strictly decorous and mostly off screen).  She drives a Hispano Suiza! She has a gold plated pistol, which never seems to have any ammo! She is awesome.  So until I get Michael Westen back, probably about a week from now, I’ll have to watch Farscape and Miss Fisher instead.

Person to see the shop yesterday didn’t show.  Somebody else called, I’m showing it Tuesday.

David Simon (of the Wire) talkin”bout capitalizm.

I am thinking of going to the shooting range the next time Keith and Rob go.

I know I spend a lot of time whining, but I am really happy to be alive, and I’m writing and practicing every day, and there’s food in the fridge, and my friends love me, and my cat is cheerfully indifferent to me unless I’m crinkling packaging.

Eddie is feeling a bit better – his appetite has returned – but he’s now hiding in Jeff’s bathroom cupboard a good chunk of the time.

I have half completed my first of two new homilies (March 9 and May 11, or perhaps the other way around) and intend to have a completed draft of the first by the end of the week. mOm I should have a bit off to you shortly.

The Alberta government has tabled legislation that will prevent public sector union employees from even TALKING about striking.  What unutterable bullshit! My prairie populist ancestors are whirling in their graves like a rotisserie set on stun.

Yay, Natalie Reed is blogging again. She is a queer trans blogger living in Vancouver and she can write like a m*****-******* riot.

I may be a busker in a future life!

I am thrilled to report that Translink accepted my application and I’ll be auditioning on the morrow. I’ll have to spend money on the licence and the RCMP background check, but I think those are reasonable expenses.  Now I have to figure out where I get to stand and how I keep me and my instrument warm enough to play….

Showed the shop yesterday.

 

No walkies yesterday

I spent a fair amount of time at the shop cleaning and stooging about for tradesmen, but Ramey changed two lightbulbs without saying anything…. I think he was wondering if I was so clued out I wouldn’t notice.  I thanked him profusely.  The compressor on the walk in is working perfectly again.

Today I have a long list of things to do and I probably won’t get around to any of it.

 

Here is an interesting article about ‘the ring theory’ of kvetching.

Cafe

A man, in all seriousness, offered me a thousand dollars for the cafe yesterday.  It’s really too bad.  After he made his crappy offer he stayed with his brother in law and wife and child, in the shop for another half hour.

I called him later and said I didn’t think it was possible to negotiate in good faith with him, so I cancelled the meeting with the landlord.  The landlord will not sign a lease with this guy until we have an agreement in place.  Which, candidly, isn’t going to happen.

And I walked 5 k yesterday.  I am good and sore in the feets department today, and there’s more coming…

 

 

Beautiful but windy

Katie’s all perky because various job interviews are going well. I am very happy about this and hope she finds work remunerative and suitable to her one goal right now, which is to be back in her own apartment.  I must say, it will be a cold day in hell before she supports another man.  Or so she says, I hope she carries through.

Foyle’s War on Netflix is a wonderful show, Jeff and I are very much enjoying it. No swearing, decorous violence, great dialogue, sweet vehicles, and history all wrapped up nicely with the superlative Michael Kitchen at the helm.  He is GORGEOUS but in a very low key Oh So English way.

Streptococcus salivarus, I salute you!  It is the probiotic that turned my bad into glad, digestion wise.

Mouse traps have yielded nothing; we are moving on to sticky traps today, damnit.

Practiced 45 minutes today.

Yesterday was gorgeous but WINDY.  As I contemplate the lawn, which has now grown tall and fallen over, I keep hoping the Goat Man will pass by.  But he never does.

Ziva’s in Craigslist, priced for quick sale.

A satisfactory day so far

Jeff helped me set mousetraps at the shop.  Sigh.  But he got breakfast, so that was good!

Dishwasher is running, Jeff is downstairs catching up on feetsball on the PVR.

I’m posting my resume every place I can think of.

Later on we’ll watch some more Foyle’s War, maybe I’ll go protest something, and I will definitely eat steak.  So a satisfactory day in prospect.

Short fuse

Keith parked in my spot and I yelled at him, mostly because we had a frantic and disgusting drive in from the ferry and I had no spoons left.  I still think he was inconsiderate and he still thinks my response was disproportionate.

I hurt my back at the duck pond yesterday (put my feel wrong and hurt the left side L5 S1 area) although feeding the ducks was plenty fun, especially with Lois and Bob in attendance.  I told her I was pissed off that she came to Vancouver and didn’t call me, but that’s life when you’re the ex, I guess, and we did have an amazing catch up in Victoria.  Bob continues to be so calm and kind and funny and Lois is as she ever was, energetic and fierce and informative and hilarious.  She was kidnapping ducks yesterday, my how they flapped until she released them.

Katie made two cheesecakes at the grandparents…. aaaaaand, they’re GONE.

Best night ever on the cpap in Victoria.  As always, Katie is right when she opined that my problem with the cpap is no longer the programming on the machine (I adjusted it, it’s fine now) but the total lack of comfort and quality in my mattress.  So, off to spend money on the most important six hours of my day today, mattress or bust.

F***** HELL.  The light in my bedroom is possessed by Satan.

Much amusement in some quarters that Paul’s girlfriend can’t get up until noon; since I’m no picnic in the sleep department, not to mention snoring like a chainsaw in a bucket of snot, I won’t judge, and I think it has been clearly demonstrated that Paul can tolerate many behaviours in his loved ones, shy of being told what to do.   Anyway, Jeff, Paul’s girlfriend’s sleeping habits impacted certain family members, so thanks for the Netflix info, since it allowed certain people to watch tv for 4 and a half hours while the rest of the household was resting in the pale limbs of Morpheus.  At least the kids have access here so they can come and go when it gets scary or boring.

I made a list on the ferry last night to try to deconstruct the anguish I’m feeling over certain kinds of decisions.  There’s the list of items, the emotional freight each action carries, and the financial implications.  I need to go over it again, but is putting COMPLETELY different emphasis on my to do list.  I suspect I could refine it further but don’t have to… there’s only so many ways to parse first world problems balanced against, you know, existential threats.  Selling the café is obviously a huge boat anchor at this point.

Dishwasher is running.  Obviously I should have run it before I left.

I am really looking forward to physio on Tuesday.

Off to do some more research!!

 

waiting

for a callback

for the onset of a period of adjustment – I’ve finally bought my machine.

for inspiration about esthetics for sunday

for inspiration to make my comments on the minister’s Rite of Ordination

but despite the waiting there has been movement; I made supper for breakfast this morning; chops and fresh green beans and fresh brussels sprouts, quartered lengthwise, both steamed together, and quartered purple spuds done up in rosemary and garlic and salt like last time since they were a spectacular hit if the comments were any indication.  That you get to watch them disappear and get thanked for them… that’s rooted in the place happiness comes from.

and I have my machine.  It smells plasticky, but that is really hard to avoid.  There are a number of lovely features, preheated moistened air, a quiet period so you can sleep before it fires up and then just sleep through that part, really quiet fans, a really nice LONG and robust power cable for those times when you really have to string it aways across a floor and he gave me a good long walk through the features.  The mask I’m already used to; it is apparently a medium and covers both nose and mouth.  It’s of a milky silicone hue, and sensorily I must report with all gravity that it feels like somebody’s upended a little hovercraft over my face. Before I figured out how to seat it properly, there’d be blasts of icy cold air going across my eyebrows, evenly on both sides, until I (once again I am not exaggerating) thought my eyebrows were going to freeze in the act of fleeing as far up my forehead as they could fling themselves.

In other acts of random candor, I must report now in a spirit of feminist self criticism.

I recently started plucking my eyebrows so that about half their normal mass is now yielding before the first pair of tweezers I ever owned that was worth a docken.

I am pleased with the results and believe it makes me look, along with new stylish glasses, and a short neutral haircut, and me resting in the ammoniacal arms of Garnier number 60, reasonably well-kempt in a low key way.  I no longer care to wear contacts even though I own a relatively recent prescription pair; the capacity to wear makeup except in the context of a miracle play or other public event, or possibly dressing up for an awards show I got invited to by accident… I wouldn’t even wear makeup to my own wedding, were my life to break out in bizarreries of that nature; no creature who loved me would countenance it, let alone ask for it.

But I must now say that every ravaged follicle under both eyebrows rose up and said in one voice, as the arctic blast from my cpap mask chased my denuded brows into the heather, “Bet you wish you hadn’t plucked us now, you sellout!” I can’t say how much warmer I would have felt, but their ghostly cries interrupted my five minutes of thinking of this and that before I fall into my nightly ‘sleep’.

I’m amazed I remember that; my sleep is like a special case of amnesia, where all my bad memories go down dark hallways and get conveniently throttled, while all the sunshine and fireworks and gleaming new bicycles and a pair of pantyhose that lasted ten years lived.

My Mac died, and I’m sad.  I have another machine, so I’m happy.

There is a balance in everything. Sometimes you’re at the pivot point, and sometimes you’re hanging on for dear life off the end. Sometimes the only thing you care about, as you fly through the air frightened and alive and hyperaware, is that the right kind of music is playing.  That is the rather neurasthenic and precious point I find myself at, and I’ve tied myself into this wildly swinging rope in the hope that inertia reasserts itself and the rope quits moving soon. I have a sack of popcorn, a tarot deck and a small stringed instrument.