Category: Deaths & Obits

Wreck

Mike brought the UV shelter, without which I would have fried to a crisp.  I had a presentiment not to take Otto, so I didn’t.

It was a lovely day, trickily overcast, but lovely.

After the rather exhausting trip up the stairs Mike turned the aircon on in the car and what a relief that was.  It was even hotter on the beach day before yesterday; I can’t imagine Katie hauling Alex in the frame backpack up those stairs, cazart, but she did.  I haven’t even got out of bed yet so I don’t know how bad it is… my back, strangely, doesn’t hurt.  Anyway I didn’t skip leg day yesterday.

Also 300 words before I left.

Rozo has a gorgeous apartment across the street from Pacific Spirit Park.

David H at church passed away on Thursday and the announcement came yesterday afternoon while I was on the beach.  He was an intelligent, kind, highly musical, funny-dry-droll, heart centered man, and my heart aches for his lovely family.  Normally you don’t die of prostate cancer, and it’s just so damned sad.  He had a gift for congregational accompaniment that I likely won’t hear in this life again.

 

Finally

Six hundred forty-five words yesterday, all praise to moving around and trying to write in a different location.

Sad news, Joe W’s dad died this week.  He was a frequent guest at parties at the old place and part of the Trent/Joe/Mike gang.  It’s very sad and Mike will get me funeral details.

Also, the son of a friend who was in rehab checked himself out by destroying property and making threats, and I feel so sad and sick about it that I’m almost on the ground.  But we must rise, and rise and rise again.

Swimming with Baby Alex tomorrow, plus mamma.  Today I’m thinking about a trip to the New West Farmer’s Market this afternoon.

I made tomatoes and scrambled eggs and toast this morning for brekky.

Now to find something to either write or edit.

Justice is what love looks like in public

Here’s another take on the Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Three hundred words yesterday.  I really kinda did take the weekend off.

Yesterday I went to Mike’s AGAIN for lunch and he fed me andouille sausage with red pepper and asiago and the salads we had yesterday.  Then we exchanged body work (for me my back, for him some muscles I can’t pronounce because his martial arts training as a 20something included snap kicks which literally pulled the femoral head out of its normal spot and he’s got pretty much permanent pain 20 years on, plus he had a family meal Saturday and it was a cascade of underslept monkey vs. weasel family meshuggas). Then we napped.  Like adults do when they are two beers drunk, well fed and laying about in the sun. Mike hadn’t slept for an atrocious length of time and he was much refreshed.  Then I got up and rode my bike home (it was around 7 pm) and it was deliciously cool since it was mostly downhill, and then I asked Jeff if he wanted to go to Sunset Beach with us (he was too sleepy) and I grabbed Otto and Mike grabbed his parlour guitar and we traded instrumental and lyrical songs and addressed the bay while the sun went down, and the light made rippling rows of Loch Nessie clones roll up and down the bay. We toasted each other in beer in plastic cups. I thought of John, and how proud of me he would have been for all the song writing I’ve been doing, and how he would have laughed his ass off at the books I’m writing, and mocked me roundly for my many errors and just how jeezly much I miss him.  I will never hear him wheedle me again “Dear sweet, kindly, agreeable sister in common law…” when he wanted a haircut or some assistance wrangling his succession of massive and inconvenient cats.  Then mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds silently arose from the ground and swarmed me and we fled to the exceedingly conveniently parked car, because Mike’s parking-fu is of a calibre to excite the comparison “Magical”.

For a while our only audience was a Canada goose, who booked it when a dog named Jack got too close to him, and a pair of mallards, who sat right at our feet.  I knew they were hoping for schnacks but still it made me feel good, as did watching a pair of herons fly over 4th Avenue. Then other people sat down without crowding us so we had company.   This is the weird bunch of signs from behind where we were sitting.

IMAG0968_BURST002

Going there we went through Richmond, and we didn’t hit a light until we were were on Granville. Going back we went through town and we counted the number of pot dispensaries on either side of Kingsway after Main before Boundary and there were four on his side and three on my side and one hydroponics shop.

Then he took me to Phó Boi and I had a small number 3 and ate ALL of it. An insanely attractive interracial couple was having their first date at the table next to us and Mike and I tried to drown their inanities out with soup slurping, but there’s only so much you can do with the audio when the man next to you is mansplaining how he doesn’t know how to order phó.

Mike was shaking his head as we left.  “Phó for a first date is a terrible idea.”

In the morning yesterday I was in church, Sue came and got me, and John H. was there, first time he’s come since Anita died, and we many of us wept to hear him mourn her, and Debra, who has her earned her bread with us with great skill, asked us to be silent for a while after he spoke.  We gave a cheque for $2700 to a local charity which helps homeless people and I took what were probably not very good pictures of the handoff.  We mourned the deaths in Charleston, and thanked all our volunteers, and broke for the summer recess.

It was a good day.  Today I have no plans but to write.

 

Updates and more death

Pentium, Tammy’s remaining kitty, was euthanized yesterday.  I am so glad Mike was in Toronto.  I’ve supported him through a pet death so this seems like karma sneaking in.

Got to talk to Paul and Phyllis on the phone yesterday. They and Katie and Alex were taking the sights in Port Stanley, always a family favourite with the folks.  Phyllis (to be candid) sounded exhausted so I hope he’s not chivying her too hard.  Phyllis seems smitten with Alex, although how things could go differently is hard to figure.

Keith came by yesterday.  Being on the spectrum – both of us – makes our communication extremely intense, haphazard and painful at times, but this turned out well so I’m going to characterize it as a win.  He’s enjoying the mix of work that he has right now, including supplying eyeglasses through his company to X-Files.

Buster’s back/butt wound should get veterinary attention in my view, but I don’t own him.  All I know is that had Margot received such a wound I’d have her into the exam room in 12 hours; portions of the wound are now 72 hours old and not crusting over so I am quite concerned about an abscess.  Fortunately Margot is only subject to persistent eye goobers, thanks to her allergies, and I’m trying to stay on top of those by removing them every time her eyes get droopy.  She does not thank me, but she usually quits running and lets me pick her up when I’m persistent.

It’s been deliciously sunny and breezy and not too hot.

412 words yesterday, mostly on Pharos.

Mike is planning on renting an entire commercial sauna for his birthday.  Man o Man, that’s gonna be some party.

 

There’s this woman in Spokane who is white and has been pretending to be black since she was in University.  This is what I have to say about her:

Libertarians are calling Rachel D. the ultimate manifestation of white guilt. I’m calling her as a gender-flopped urban Grey Owl.  Her romanticization of black culture without living through a black childhood isn’t guilt, it’s a minor mental disorder.

Further:  SHE EMBODIES WHAT MY TAG RACEFAIL IS FOR.

 

RIP Christopher Lee and Ron Moody

I know he was knighted, but I no longer acknowledge the right of the so-called Queen of England to bestow honours.  Yes, I know she’s been a benevolent spirit during my life, but only for me.  Seeing what she represents in terms of the people whose land got stolen opened my eyes.

Here’s an obit.

Ron Moody has likewise made his last exit, stage left.

418 words yesterday, mostly infill.

No bead curtain.

MOTIVE HAS THREE SEASONS? Yes.  And we are watching them.  I adore how it twists one aspect of the police procedural so that the tension is evenly balanced throughout the show, and I adore even harder how instead of making three or four episodes a season arc-heavy, it spreads the arc out like breadcrumbs throughout the season. No GARBARCAGE here.

It’s kinda cool to be watching a show starring Canadian actors without constantly thinking how awful they are. (quite the reverse…) Kristen Lehman was born in New West, after all, and Louis Ferreira was born in the Azores and moved to Toronto when he was a tad.  The guest stars are usually pretty good as well, including Molly Parker and Charles Martin Smith, who also directed.  Actors from SG1 pop up with amusing regularity, sometimes causing Jeff and I to pause the show to try and figure it out, before we give up and go to imdb.

 

Visits and departures

A church elder died last evening.  The elder leaves an immense gap in our spiritual life, for the elder was a person with great institutional knowledge, practical wisdom and a steadying presence.

I’ll say who when all the family and everyone else knows.

BUT  Battery is coming today, and he always brings happiness with him, so that is good.

I will try to write today, and work on other projects if I can’t.

And we come upon a time of death

We are come upon a time of death, a time when Mortality scales up and lays out everything at once.  In your life, it is a news of a death of someone close, and then another, and then another, and then your facebook feed is full of deaths of friends of friends, people you’ve shared a meal with, people who are a voice and a way of seeing things and not merely a statistic.

People I love from church are already diagnosed and dying at home.  Now we have news of more, another elder, again, cancer. We have our protocols and our way of dealing with it.

In our church, we sometimes delegate another to take our calls when the first stinging news hits, how like grit in a high wind. We can’t take the deluge of calls.  Someone we love steps in.

There has been a lot of death in my life lately, but I’m not sorry for any of the dead.  I’m sorry for the grieving and the dying, and I’m very sorry for myself, for feeling these things more than I should.  When the feeling doesn’t turn to action, it’s sounding brass all the **** over again.  I can grieve in service or I can stay quiet.

So I will admit that I’m sad, and that I have reason to be so, but I will also say that having snerted my little snert into the hem of my thankfully washable dress, I will try to write a funny scene, hopefully full of delicious slapstick and horrified parents.  I can’t be of service, but I may at some point entertain.

Also, Mad Max is not all that great a movie.  I’d give it a solid B+, although there are some indelible images in it.

Woke up at 1:30

I have been passing wind continuously for 90 minutes.  My abdomen makes noises – “borborygmus” – so loud my whole bed frame shakes. A couple of minutes later, spectacular, long, windy choruses free themselves from my body. There is no pain, no high exhaust gas temperature, no stench.  Just LOTS OF GAS AND NOISE.

’bout one hundred words yesterday.  I’m feeling sessile.

Also, people keep dying. Somebody I was in an APA with 20 years ago (Morgan) has passed away.  She was close to people I really like and I haz a bit of a sad as a result. She told the most wonderful stories.

On the plus side…. It was lovely to talk to Chipper and Tammy on the phone yesterday.

 

Good bad ugly

brO and I are waiting for MR2 to come back from the krankenhaus so we can do a proper shop.  We went for a walk this morning and I picked up some milk and cream so that if the car doesn’t come back today I don’t have to leave the house again,

which is fine,

cause I’ve already written 500 words today and I think today will be furtherly productive.  Kima’s first pregnancy chapter “Someday it’ll keep you” is maybe a couple of pages from done, and I’ve got a good start on Brendan’s first chapter “Check unheard messages” which is all about what happens when you let the Sixer version of nepotism determine who your collaborators are.

And the great thing about writing English goodest is bragging rights.

Ayuh.  All I know is that when I think of the ideas I want to introduce and the hearts I want to break  MUAH HAH HAHHHH! choke gargle.

Fuel oil spill at English Bay.  I’m sickened by it.  The province says “It’s a federal matter” and the feds have killed all the funds for boats for oil spills.  Harper won’t be visiting I’m sure and the boat responsible can’t even be pinned down and fined f’chrissakes.

The grown child of a friend of mine (and a facebook friend) was metres away (indoors thanks be) from the police incident at 5 last afternoon.  Perp got all stabby with two dudes rendered more topologically complex and one woman clinging to life as of this morning; and when bean bag shot didn’t slow him down they gave him summary justice, lead punctuation edition. Vancouver seems to be abloom with police shootings. IA is all over it.

1.3 hours.

ALRIGHTY THEN BREAK TIME IS OVER.

 

Stan Freberg

I could spend a lot of time talking about how Stan Freberg was an integral part of my childhood, but I won’t.  I mourn the man.  

You can call me the Queen of Denial…. Keith and Paul conveyed me up and down the Fraser Foreshore in a canoe yesterday afternoon. The tide was slack. We had a brief picnic on very soggy and clay-ey ‘beach’. Of particular note (beside the weather, which was glorious) was the immense sea lion carcass on the log boom. There was a live sea lion swimming by the railway bridge; he or she chose to surf the waves generated by a fishing boat. We had a few beers and sang and played on the deck afterward and Paul mowed our front lawn (I ran outside when I heard the mower fire up to get the parade of “I live close to a public school so my lawn has lots of junk food wrappers on it” policed up.)

Justice for Cindy Gladue

I am very sore today because merely standing triggers my pelvis pain to the point where I drag both my feet.  Also, Paul very efficiently tricked me into mowing the back lawn, so I was really, really sore by the time I was done. 2.0 hours on the cpap – keep forgetting to put the mask back on.

I wrote this in my notebook over a rather lavishly irrigated lunch yesterday.  I went to the rally, which was triggered by this.  As is my custom, I did a square search count of the crowd. It was never fewer than a hundred people and swelled to 150 around 11 am.  Knowing that we were gathered in 20 cities across Canada (including Saint John’s NFLD, where it was ass freezing cold and blowing snow) made me very proud.  And sore, as I mentioned.  I am going to pick up another one of those mini-chairs from Lee Valley, I simply cannot stand for an hour and a half without problems.

So I was angry when I wrote this.  I am still angry, but it’s the quiet, smoldering kind.

Edited for errors in usage and kindness Feb. 20 2021, the day I learned Bradley Barton is going to jail.

April 2, 2015 unceded Coastal Salish land. MST LAND

Canada is the kind of country where a sex trade worker deserves to die for being a sex trade worker.  If she’s Indigenous, and ‘somehow’ ends up with an 11 inch stab wound which is paraded through the courtroom in a specimen jar in a grotesque parody of a ceremonial object, she had it coming.  Somehow the fact that a misogynistic piece of sh*t named Bradley Barton murdered her in a drunken stupor gets dropped from the equation, and he left the trial a free man.

I’ve been angry at the Canada ‘justice’ system before. Lots.  But I don’t normally get off my ass to protest.

Cindy Gladue did not deserve to die.

She didn’t get justice.

Her children and her family and loved ones did not get justice.

I am enraged that Cindy Gladue and her 1200 and counting indigenous sisters are being treated by the justice ‘shitstem’ as entirely disposable human refuse.  The UN has asked Canada to investigate.  Harper says it isn’t even on his radar.

F*CK THIS RACIST SEXIST ENTIRELY HORSESH*T SYSTEM.

It’s gotta come down.

Let it come down.

With unity of purpose and steel in our veins, let us BRING IT DOWN.

There were 150 of us in front of the Courthouse yesterday. Indigenous and white and mixed and ‘other’.  We were men and women and non-binary and children. We wept and drummed and sang and screamed our disappointment and anger that Indigenous lives are forced to be so far from justice, or even its prospect or possibility.

Justice for Cindy Gladue.

An annoying day

Cleaning shit off the cat.  Other jangly annoyances.  Then Sue appeared out of nowhere and performed marvellousy in assisting in logistics for returning the rental car.  Honestly, it was like she dropped out of the sky. All she was doing was returning the cloak I loaned her (came back as I lent it, I’ll add.)

I got some lovely foodstuffs at the Costco and there was a beef stew in the crockpot as of 5:30 this am so there should be food in about an hour. It really hurts my hands to peel vegetables.  I am feeling a bit weird about that.  Dishes are washed and put away, the laundry is on, life proceeds.

Mike called the other night.  He has a rather bleak three weeks in front of him, travelling on business.  I don’t know how good a job I did of cheering him up, describing Alex’ tremendous gas (I am not exaggerating by much to say that he rattled the windows in the fOlks’ sunroom) and otherwise burbling; he described Rhonda’s memorial service in such a fashion that I had many reasons to have wanted to go and one really big showstopper reason not to.  Apparently Konrad was there too; I haven’t seen him since that MEGA AWESOME EPIC miniature camping trip some 7 or 8 years ago.

I should go move the laundry; the wretched clothes don’t wash themselves.  Although if I take the long view, someday they will.