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!
I am hopeful to at least get sent to an interview this week. In the meantime, I have completed and frozen the turkey soup, which is more like turkey stew, and now must repair the damage to the kitchen – a twenty pound turkey carcase leaves a greasy trail.
Landlord was unhelpful. I must now wait another month. Oh well. Those that burn their arses must sit on the blisters.
New Game of Thrones Mashup. I did laugh quite immoderately.
Good news first, I have been asked to come in and talk to a recruiter this afternoon. This is the closest I’ve gotten to genuine job hunting activity in months so I am obviously thrilled.
Bad news. I’ve lowered the price and still can’t get anybody interested in the cafe; I will have to break the lease. HEAVY HEAVY SIGH.
Tarot for Atheists, a couple of hundred words’ worth of progress.
Turkey soup is on the stove – I will adjust seasoning shortly and then start freezing it in containers. Jeff can’t stand the smell of the bones, and has no idea how this sentence would have ended if I hadn’t backspaced over it.
Replaced cpap machine with one that smells a little less disgusting. I must make a purchase decision within 2 weeks.
Completed writing down a song, converted it to midi and fired it off to mOm. I only have another hundred songs to write out. It really IS the Song That Never Ends.
Herewith today’s linkorama:
This guy and guys like him are why I make no further efforts to date.
If you rape a girl and leave her naked outside in freezing weather, and you work for your family’s restaurant, and your local prosecutor despite eyewitnesses and video refuses to prosecute, and then the whole town turns on the rape victim and burns her house down, well, the internet just might give bad reviews to your restaurant.
Apparently I’m driving the kids to the ferry on Saturday, which should come as welcome news to my mother. Hopefully pOp will be feeling well enough to participate in the normal family routines with the kids. I know Katie was quite concerned. I won’t be going because the ordination of the minister this weekend, which I am thankfully having nothing to do with except showing up. It’s a big deal, if you’re into that sort of thing.
I have had no fewer than three nibbles on the shop in the last 24 hours. It remains to be seen if anything will come of any of them. I have to go into the shop for 11 am this morning for a showing.
If I haven’t sold the shop by October 26, I am going to start baking again at that location. It will be hard but I have some plans to make it easier for myself. Somewhat, anyway. Two weeks out if it isn’t sold I’ll do all the stuff I’ve been avoiding thinking I’d be closing it down and I will have a list of sales calls to make the first week in the afternoon (bake in morning, sell in afternoon). I also need to put together a list of marketing / packaging I’ll need to have done. And of course pumpkin spice biscotti for Halloween. I will have to come up with a recipe if one doesn’t already exist.
The dishwasher is purring away. It leaks like a mofo, but differently each time and we have no clue what makes it leak. I’ve been very good and keeping the dirty dishes cycling through so the kitchen has been staying cleaner. You can even see all of the kitchen table right now, I think it’s been three months since that last happened. I have to remember to invite people over for dinner!
Super disappointed with both Bones and Castle this year. Flimsy writing and plodding acting BORING. I am going to stop watching them, there’s too much else on that is better.
And now, to grind out a few words on Tarot for Atheists.
I fed the folks roast beef with Katie made gravy, green salad, brussell sprouts, taters, unyums, carrips, and since S. is a vegetarian, a lovely cheesy baked fusilli with garlic and basil. Also, lightly sauteed mushrooms. The beast was a standing rib roast two for one so there’s another sitting in the freezer waiting on another family meal occasion.
Lu the physiotherapist reading me the riot act last Monday had a salutory effect. He’s such a pleasant individual (and he’s a dead ringer for TJ Thyne…) I hate to disappoint him. So when he said I was basically fucking up the rest of my life by not getting enough shoulder exercise (put much more pleasantly than that) I did much strength and stretch last week and he pronounced himself pleased with my progress. I got to mimic the Titanic position while prone and with a TENS machine strapped to my shoulder. I am MUCH improved; there’s another ten degrees of extension more to achieve and then I’m back to normal and all I have to work on is strengthening exercises. I have all the equipment needed. In about 3 – 4 weeks I can start swimming again although I can of course do whatever aquafit stuff I want right now.
There are oatmeal chocolate chip drop cookies in the oven right now.
Church yesterday was about how to address the social ill of loneliness.
Jeff and I have finished reviewing the family photos for mOm.
Cookies are now out. Jeff likes them but says they are too sweet – I’ll have to find another recipe.
I paid $287 to the dentist today for Katie’s last extraction. She’s gone, but the bills keep coming in. I said I wouldn’t complain, but being the everlasting upsucker of other people’s shit doesn’t sit well with me. Yes, it was nice to see her last night, but I am still very angry and disappointed about the shop. A lot.
A potential buyer will be talking with me later this week.
Yesterday was church, soup lunch (yay), a showing of the shop (we’ll see…), another nibble on the shop, meeting Ayesha, Paul and Keith’s new kitty (and dropping off Paul’s church directory for 2013 since it just was reprinted and heaven knows when he’ll be back at church with his crazy schedule) and it all started when Jeff took me out for breakfast, so that was yummy.
I loaned my camera to Rob W (as he was headed overseas) so he didn’t have to buy one. Forgot to send him the transfer cables but I can deal with it when he gets back.
Breaking Bad. One show to watch and finale next week.
Physio this morning. I’ve been exercising lots.
It’s been rainy any cold.
I will be showing the café this afternoon after church. Funnily enough it’s to a gent named Paul.
Did ALMOST all of Mt Washmore yesterday, now of course the seemingly impossible trial of you know, like, folding and putting it away. The challenge this time is to siphon off about a garbage bag’s worth of clean clothes to take to the second hand store as I have far too many clothes.
Eddie peed on my wellies recently. Miss Margot pointed it out yesterday. They would have been impossible to clean as he managed to get the pee inside the boots as well. So, they are gone and I’ll be picking up some more as those are what I mow the lawn in and we have to mow the lawn at least once more before Thanksgiving.
It’s pouring rain right now.
I got a solid night’s sleep (no cpap machine, I just couldn’t).
Check this out…. geodesy!
The weather has decided to be summer again, it’s going to be smoking hot today; the ac is already on.
I paid bills yesterday. It was a relief.
Today I have been to the physio, replaced the batteries in the label maker, worked some more on both Midnite and Tarot, confirmed my next doc’s appointment, vacuumed and washed the kitchen floor, and beaten out and washed and dried the kitchen rugs. This represents a rather larger commitment to physical labour than has been the case lately, so I’m preening.
Physio was awesome. It hurts like hell but I ALWAYS have more mobility when I come out of there, so I am pleased.
I think I’ll get myself another cup of tea and do some paperwork now.
New show! We started watching Hell on Wheels, which is starting a third season; I’m quite liking Anson Mount as the lead, and the commentaries on racism, capitalism and the role of women are very interesting. The only thing that pisses me off are the consistent anachronistic items that pop up in dialog. I’m having to watch that in George’s dialog – he learned English in the 70’s and so his speech should reflect that. I do like Christopher Heyerdahl as a villain though, he’s damned good at it, (he was Hollin and Todd in SGA) and it’s filmed in Alberta, which is nice, and all the people playing Indians are actually native people.
Showing of the shop yesterday will likely come to nothing, but the gent in question was a stunningly tall and gorgeous Russian man in his late twenties, with a very pleasant accent and lovely manners. So I was not unhappy to show it.
I have started making lists again vs. the overwhelm.
Wrote some on both projects this morning.
This made me laugh very very hard. It’s a combination of the clothing and the locomotion.
Slept at least a couple of hours in the cpap machine last night. I don’t remember waking up and tearing it off, but I did.
Today, more laundry. Really what I should do is get rid, mercilessly, of every piece of clothing that is too tight or ugly or stained, but I get super attached to clothing.
I show the shop again today at noon. Heavy sigh. At least the last time I went in I got rid of the last of the stuff that was going bad (I hadn’t been able to see it, unfortunately, and this last time I crawled around on my hands and knees until I saw it, removed it, bleaugh). So it will smell a lot more like a restaurant thankfully. (Added later… another person wants to see it.)
I think in about two weeks I may be able to handle a tray of cookies, so if I don’t sell it, I will be going back to work.
I forgot my physio appointment yesterday – how, I have no idea. However I get another on Friday. I am getting stronger, but sometimes things ‘catch’ and it hurts A LOT. There’s a huge divot in my shoulder where all the muscle attachments fell away. Or whatever, I am not one hundred percent sure about what is going on except I sheared off my greater tuberosity. I have to check on my next doctor appointment, I sure don’t want to miss that.
I am reading Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian and it’s making me REALLY REALLY MAD about policy toward native people in Canada (and in the US, because like most First Nations people he considers the border a willful chimera, and so deals with both nations). I mean foaming at the mouth mad. His metaphor to deal with the constant refrain of ‘get over it’ is miraculous, and I will be using it whenever I talk about intersectionality and civil rights in future. He also makes mincemeat of the whole sad and tired trope I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS RACIST STUFF AND I’M NOT RACIST SO QUIT CALLING ME ONE. It’s certainly not an academic work, but there’s plenty of followup reading. I had NO FRICKING IDEA that there were first nations film documentarians (including a woman??!!) in the 20’s in the US, whose work of course is so far out in the margins I’ll be lucky to ever see it. We get Nanook of the North instead. Tanks Mr. Flaherty.
I am going to – definitely! – read more Will Rogers.
I got up late … for me … roasted a chicken and made new potato salad. Then I showed the shop. Then I went to a church potluck followed by a workshop about leadership, about which I will say no more, except that it kind of brought home to me that I’ve known more about religion since my early twenties than a lot of people, the major takeaway being that the only thing all religions have in common as a precept is ‘don’t gossip’, and then I came home and watched some TV and then Katie came over and removed some more of her stuff to her place and then I went to her place and met her relationship partner SG (who does not own a vehicle or he would have dealt with it) and his two cats Ara and Stig (two mostly black females who are very entertaining and energetic). He seems a pleasant enough individual, with a lustrous beard. I was supposed to go to Newton Wave pool with Peggy but the prospect of meeting SG was too much to resist.
So I guess my Labour Day had, you know, labour in it, of diverse kinds.
Today will also be busy, but in different ways.
Keith and Paul dropped over and it was lovely to see them, however briefly, this morning.
Two of the people I’ve known the longest since I got here (a couple in WA state, former coworkers both) have announced wedding plans after 14 years together. I am so happy. I’ve been following her posts about him for years now on FB and she has said many times how amazing he is, especially since she has been quite hampered by health issues subsequent to a car accident in which she should have, by the physics, died. And she’s had a lousy couple of years, what with her brother dying in a car accident leaving young children, and there’s been other stuff. So I told her “I couldn’t be more pleased about this if it was happening to me!” and I meant it.
I think I need to get another foam mattress; this one is four years old and starting to feel rather lumpish and flat.
Miss Margot had an enormous eye booger the other day, and she started purring when I pulled it out.
I have ONCE AGAIN had to encourage Eddie to stop teasing the dog next door. I politely asked him to return inside. Otherwise he sits on the concrete pad when Creamy is on the back balcony and the poor dog barks himself to distraction.
Saw Plunkett & Macleane, and loved it. I can understand why it got lukewarm reviews, but believe me it has improved since it was released.
Today a friend is coming by for a visit. I have been feeling mighty low, and knowing that whining isn’t attractive has prevented me from pissing my woes out against an uncaring world. So I am very much looking forward to having a girlfriend visit and getting caught up with the smoking hot gossip etc.
I am just dying for a cup of coffee, which is weird.
I’ll be dropping into the shop today to pick up supplies and check fridges. I will be re-running the ad again, as there is no activity currently and the shark has to keep moving.
If I keep my options open I may ask the physiotherapist to come into the shop and show me how I can go back to work if I have supporting devices, etc so I can get stuff in and out of ovens. The bottom oven working properly now is probably my best bet until I can raise both hands. I can hold up to fifteen pounds with my right hand but not lift it. Dishwashing is still hopeless, which means I have to get somebody in to do that OR install a dishwasher, bleaugh.
I also need to figure out packaging – the Uline catalogue had some individualized packing tubes that look like they would be perfect for singles and doubles of biscotti. It would only cost about three hundred bucks to get started on that.
Okay, time to find out whether Jeff wants to watch Newsroom or Ray Donovan. Love, love, love that man.
Yes, I am now working on a number of different projects. I’m trying to concentrate on stuff I enjoy. Anyway, the most recent one is called Tarot for Atheists, and it’s a radical revisioning of the Tarot in light of contemporary life. For entertainment purposes only. It’s loads of fun. I have already invented a pi layout and a Fibonacci layout and an x bar layout and a delta layout and will find other mathematical and scientific layouts I’m sure.
George and Kima also continue to chew thoughtfully on my brain. Kima just ran down Denman street like a Catherine wheel in octopot form. George is chasing after her apologizing to the pedestrians. The next day signs appear all up and down the street Beware of Runaway Squid.
Margot is suffering dreadfully from allergies, her eyes are getting gunked up every day. Eddie pulled a Margot last night and did something he’s never done the entire time I’ve known him … he got under my feet when I took my eyes off him. I’m lucky I didn’t boot him across the room.
Used the cpap loaner for the first time last night. YUCK. It’s supposed to get easier, but it smells like ass and I can only sleep in one position or the mask shifts. This will hurt my back. Shoulder quite sore today, but I will press on through the exercises.
Today I go deal with business winding down things, hopefully. We shall see.
I have now read a substantial portion of the Benedictine Rule to support my learnings in watching the Cadfael mysteries. St. Benedict was an interesting dude.
The new nova that showed up in Delphinius is alREADy losing luminosity, so we may not even get a chance to see it before it fades beyond binocular recall.
Andrew Brechin is dead. He was active in the poly, SCA, pagan, lantern festival, fannish, filkish, trans & queer rights, union and clown band communities; he could pun without apparent effort, was a wonderful coparent to a number of children, not all of whom were biologically his, made me laugh harder than any of my other facebook friends, and he was younger than me. He wore OUTRAGEOUS hats, and once showed up to Fetish Night dressed as Cthulhu (man, he musta sweated his balls off in that head to toe gear) with no fewer than 8 skimpily dressed women in attendance as his priestesses. (The pic is now going round the internet like a dose of salts).
He apparently died in his sleep, which is definitely the way to go except it should have been at minimum 30 years hence. I only met him half a dozen times, if that, but he was the menschiest of men and had more friends – more real friends – than many people could claim. The last time I saw him IRL he and Mike M. realized that they had sat next to each other in engineering school (and they both flunked out, mOm tell pOp that as I think he will find that mildly amusing). And we ate. There’s a memorial dinner for him next week and unless I feel really bad I’m going, because I want to hear more stories about how awesome he was, and I think he had the coolest friends circle in town. I will miss his wit, his humanity and his mighty heart for justice. I had no idea Cindy knew him – her precis of her relationship with him on livejournal practically had me in tears.
The video camera aimed at the cat door has revealed that Miss Margot does not re-enter the house daintily. Generally she rockets through the door at such a rate of speed that the effect is quite comical. Hope to have video at some point.
Physiotherapist scolded the crap out of me. NO I MAY NOT DRIVE. I may do the following three exercises. I may not sleep on the injured shoulder. MY POSTURE SUCKS (HOW HE FROWNED). Here is how I should sleep. I crept out of there in a very sad frame of mind, but I’ve been doing my exercises faithfully.
Showed the shop two days ago, showing it to a different set of customers tomorrow. I am no longer worried about it…. it is what it is, I have a roof and food and friends and painkillers, so tra la la. Also Cadfael on Netflix. Man, I do heart Derek Jacobi.
I have the tester cpap machine. A new one is going to cost 2400 dollars, but it’s the ResMed, and it has all of the features I want. The tech said the Respironics machines break like clockwork just out of the warranty period, and he’s sold 300 of the ResMeds and only one ever came back and that was because the dumbass customer left the water in when he put it in his car and of course fried the circuitboards. I haven’t started using it because CANDIDLY I am feeling just that little bit overwhelmed at all of the changes I’ve had to deal with in the last six months. Getting into and out of the restaurant, Audrey and Andrew and Bareld dying, breaking my shoulder, deaths and breakups in my circle of close friends, Kira dying, estrangement from one of my children, not being able to drive…. and there’s more but listing it all seems a mug’s game. And of course if I don’t mention how my church family has rallied round me I’d be a true mug.
Jeff and I are heading out to Home Depot. Type atcha later.
I am going to get help with my new current problem, which is that all the food in the walk in has spoiled thanks to the compressor quitting because I forgot to turn the fan back on when i showed the place. It’s all my fault, and on my pocket be it. In the meantime, it has to get cleaned out, and then I have to find a place to put the really disgusting garbage that will arise, and then wash the equally disgusting service dishes, for which I am also soliciting help. Cannot seem to catch a break, apart from the fact that things are actually more or less okay, I just need to be thankful.
Pacific Rim was a really good giant monsters vs. robots movie. The script almost went into eyeroll territory a couple of times but solid performances (not excellent, ok) and fight scenes where you could tell what was happening helped. I loved Ron Perlman’s guest shot, HATED the stupid scientists, who both needed tasing, in my view, and I enjoyed the special effects greatly. Plot didn’t bear close examination, but oh well. There are now Kaiju filk songs, yay.
No surgery for me, yay. Doc says I am healing properly. I need to give the nerve damage many more months to heal, but I can go get physio now.
Back to writing. George is a bag surrounding computational colloid. Weird, hunh?
So the folks came by to see the shop yesterday and asked me if I’d finance. I was very polite, but you can just imagine what I was saying on the inside. What I did say: “Gosh,” I said, “If you can’t come up with 20K you’re going to have cash flow problems right out of the gate. “And, seeing as how I don’t really know if I’m ever going to be able to hold down a job ever again seeing as how I may have surgery and rehab and who the hell knows, I was kinda hoping to cash out.” The hell of it is they told me their business model and it would be perfect for that location… but I think they’ll buy in North Burnaby. Oh well.
HIGHLY RECOMMEND the documentary The Flat. If you are into family history, it’s a must. Seriously. It has so many twists and turns it’s like a particularly unbelievable novel. mOm you’ve been warned, and it comes with subtitles.
I am so lucky to have family that loves me. I am crabby, in pain, worried out of my mind because I’m not healing well, and Jeff just banged on the door and offered to take me to breakfast. Coffee and cream here I come! Also, the cats are adorable; Margot has been particularly cute of late, and she’s being very biddable when I have to decruft her. Hard to believe she’s five, watching her skitter all over the kitchen to chase a kitty treat.
Assange...etc. I love the spit that Sterling gets on things once he starts ranting….