First, a cake that looks like an octopus.
Impressive, eh wot? Continue reading Sundry and various
First, a cake that looks like an octopus.
Impressive, eh wot? Continue reading Sundry and various
Margot watched me singing in the kitchen, tears streaming down my face.
Honestly, honestly, I want to run out there with a pitch pipe and give him what for. Continue reading aaaak. I hate it when the song sparrow’s a quarter tone flat.
Poor Jeff; I just talked to him and he’s burying him in the garden right now. Crying at work is never much fun. Partly in Gizmo’s honour I’m going to put cat-centric verses to the song I’m currently working on, 40 Million Lightyears.
Well, I’ve been busy. Granny’s eulogy follows.
Right now life is a slurry of goodbyes and re-introductions; changes in temperature, ambiance, the furnace breaks, the filk convention looms, the tooth is snaggled, Granny’s dead, I’m finally back on the ERP at work, I am up again and spinning at a great rate of knots. The distance between life and the blog is bigger than normal, and I have few venues (not none, fortunately) for venting about it. Some things are burning brightly, some are swallowed by silence and distrust of the future. The major thing is allowing myself to be happy by how genuinely pleased people are to see me. I feel like I’m home, and I’m happy.
My back hurts. Commuting subjects me to lots of interesting loading on my lower back. This is making me crabbier than normal.
One of my coworkers dreamed I was coming back to work. I don’t know whether to believe it and I’m not really worried about it either way. I’ve had one precognitive dream that I remembered, so although my sample size is small my willingness to believe is large.
Pocky. It’s what’s for dinner. I bought Robbie B lunch.
Long hours of sleep, punchuated in the morning with traffic noise. Lest my mother be upset, that typo was deliberate….. now let me wander off my rails again and think about how we can set up an Aspie friendly place for the boys to do their mourning. Because as sure as Darwin’s winnowing fan claims us all, I can think of four of my blood kin who need to go off and have their own corner to grieve in. Of such are the ways of the accommodationist, the ever blooming woman of the boundary layer, who would be, of course, me.
Probably during the week – the staff at the Cedars want to go.
Work is awesome, and will be even more awesome when I have email, ERP and a proper phone for the call center work.
I am thinking of my dad and it’s hard not to cry. It doesn’t matter how much you expect it, it is still shattering. And while shattered, you must get up, and eat, and deal with lawyers and doctors and arrange things and make lists.
The memorial is February 6th.
Guess I have a eulogy to write.
From my mother’s email.
We hadn’t thought we would be, nor had we planned it, being there only
three hours a day, but we were there for Grannie’s last breaths. There
were indignities in her last weeks, but her last moments, and her
appearance in the process and afterward, had great dignity.
It went long, and it was emotional. Tre and Battery and Tanya had to leave because Tre got fussy, but Lindsay (strangely enough! my former boss and grandboss at work) came and sat next to me, and while I didn’t speak much to him, I’d like to thank him for being with me. Tanya came back in to greet Owen with me and then we went home.
Ryan was a very special young man, in a lot of ways, and sure I was crying for myself (thinking about what it would be like to lose one of the kids) and for his parents (whose mental state is easy enough to guess), but I ended up doing most of my crying for his friends, who really loved him and who will have to work very hard to live up to his standards.
I have a packet of seeds of Ryan’s favorite flower in my coat pocket now, and I’ll plant them when it’s a bit more like spring.
Uncle Dave died this morning. I will always hold him in my heart as a vibrant, somewhat ornery, disciplined, fun, rational person, whom it was an honour to know and a deeper honour to be family with. I see him sitting on the back deck at the Augur Inn, back on 2nd St, laughing and talking and eating and smoking his pipe after a hard day arguing with the walls, or the flooring, or mudding, mudding, mudding. Remember the time he and Paul tried to set fire to the house? … yeah, it’s funny now. I’d be in the kitchen, listening to him and Paul laughing uproariously, and thinking how very happy I was. That’s the image I will hold. So many anecdotes, about his travels, his time with the Princess Pats, his time on the boat in Australia.
I light a candle for Alyssa and D. and the girls, Paige and Chloe. I am thankful beyond words that he died at home with his loved ones around him and I so feel for Alyssa, who took herself to the end of her strength to perform this last office of love. I didn’t cry on the phone with mOm this morning, but I’m sure as hell crying now.
I had breakfast over at Paul and Keith’s so I was there when Jeff called me, and now Paul and Keith know too. I just called Katie. It’s not like the world is so full of good human beings that we can suffer the loss of one without impact……
Today I am going to go and see a music teacher who lives close by to see if I can take lessons; then I’m going up to my old workplace for lunch; then I’m going to Surrey for a while, and then I should be home for supper. This is the most I’ve been on transit since the fireworks last summer.
Last night Tom and Peggy and Paul and Keith came over for broiled pork chop, cauliflower and home made cheese sauce, salad, cole slaw, corn and garlic bread. Dessert was fresh fruit and pecan torte. It was all nommers. Then we sang and played for a while.
I light a candle for everybody killed and injured at Fort Hood yesterday. I am sure there will be an uptick in attacks on furrin brown people as a consequence. I light a candle for the man who thought he could made a contribution to world peace by slaughtering his fellow soldiers. It’s just so grisly, and so wrong.