Category: Disaster

the delayment of the inevitablelike

I AM NO QUIT I AM EXTEND SON

I’ll be working until the end of January. The woman I was hired to temporarily replace for medical reasons and to be a casual is now not working for the company, reason unknown. My reasons for not wanting to be there are still in place but I’m getting paid and I don’t have to work weekend days so I don’t care.  Steady middies for me!

It’s amusing that I’m awake now.  The world is white and quiet with snow, and if I was working tonight my shift would be about to start…. I just woke up.

I could use the money, although I’d forgotten the extent to which commuting in the wintertime is such a fricking drag in this burg.

Getting to and from work the last week has chewed through a bus station mop. But… it only took an hour to get home yesterday.

My characters are sad and so am I.  It’s the pathetic fallacy folks.

Also one of them is quitting drinking and I’m walking alongside him for portions of that, which I loathe.

Although I did think of THE MOST DISGUSTING SIXER RELATED GAG I mean I burst out laughing when poor Jeff was trying to watch the Dallas/Tampa game, which was ugly and beautiful and what the hell’s going on with the zebras, and mah God Dak Prescott, but I just had this vision of Sweetie, who is like 3 kilos, being the security guard for the whorehouse, and controlling a patron with the vilest impersonation of Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry one could possibly imagine, and I couldn’t stop laughing because the joke grows organically out of the situation and at this point we could all use a laugh,

because Trump sailed through the Electoral College, and the Republic, tottering after decades of hacking at the Constitution and weak from never dealing with racism and the Civil War, is in full kleptocratic collapse.

What to watch for over 4 years in the US:

Moar racism

Moar war

Higher infant and maternal death rates – this has actually been going on in slow motion over the decade I’ve been keeping track, it’s sickening…

More prison rioting (underreported) as the food in prisons gets worse and worse under Trump’s prison owning buddies

Higher violent death rates, across the board, all kinds – vehicles (road rage), guns, knives, stranglings.

More alcoholism and alcohol related death

More needle drug abuse and higher rates of AIDS HIV infection. More people dying of ODs, pills and otherwise.

Zika running wild in South Florida and the gulf coast and women being forced to carry the fetus to term with no health insurance for a lifetime of need thanks to Republican state legislatures

Hundreds more deaths each year from white people carrying guns, being scared of black people and shooting grandmothers and toddlers but mostly teenage boys who are existing while black

Muslims being burned alive in their mosques. Hasn’t happened yet but it’s going to happen and more than once.

Tripling of deaths in custody. (The statisticians just learned that the number of people who’ve died in custody in the US in the last five years is ACTUALLY DOUBLE what they thought because there’s no reporting mechanism and now the cop unions are trying to prevent any oversight of this statistic at all…)

Diaspora people – Jewish, black and Muslim – who have family and opportunities in Canada, moving here, although they’ll probably need a couple of years of Trump to realize it’s time to get out of town.

Tourism tanks across the US and Trumpites CELEBRATE America for Americans.

Confederates bringing automatic weapons to Pride Days and killing grandmothers and toddlers along with some queers.

Open war on First Nations Land; mass incarcerations and arrests, and Trump’s buddies making money on it.

More legal weed.

Secession talk from more than California.

The Left NEVER calling him President Trump. Just Trump. Or Cheetolini.

Patton Oswalt falling in love again and remarrying.  Because honestly, that man deserves happiness.

Sad family note. Young cousin got a bad (not what he specifically and carefully asked for) haircut… but we have a hairdresser in the family and our relations did not have to have that experience.  I wish it were otherwise but how often does adult convenience drive the nightmares of small children. I speak from sad and memorable experience here, thinking about Katie and the earring back. I still cry when I think about that, tho’ Katie has long since forgiven me.

A friend asked me what my Christmas Day plans were and I said “Reheating takeout and watching Die Hard with my brother” and now we’re eating at Hal and Cassidy’s, go team!

At some point Jeff and I have to leave the house for supplies, but the urban slushy streets are too disgusting….

 

 

I’ve been here since noon

In a couple of minutes they’ll call the flight and I’ll find out if I’ve been sitting here like a fucking idiot for no good reason for the last day. Fort St John is not a fun place to fly to on passes.  PAUL WANTS TO TAKE THE SKYTRAIN HOME.  On April 4.  With no Compass card. My feelings are simple.  He can do what he likes, although with no Compass card he’s not likely to get far, as I laboriously explained to him.  I’m going home in a cab; it’s hours after my normal bedtime and I have hours to go before somebody offers up a bed for me.

later….

Home.  What a fucking waste of a day.  Three flights came and went and I’m not going to FSJ unless somebody pays for my return flight.

Some man was shot dead a few blocks from here.  I don’t think I want to live on this planet any more.

 

 

CARNAGE

Buster brought in 4 RATS yesterday, laying them all out in a row downstairs.  He’s killing them all so Jeff doesn’t have to deal with rats which have died in locales where they are like to rot or little bits’o rat everywhere, just secure tail and trash.

THE HEATER IS NOT BROKE.  It merely has an absurdly sensitive orientation sensor and Buster probably knocked it off its flatness while jumping down from my desk.  Everything a-ok there.

Took a walk down to get cream yesterday morning.  It was a crisp crisp morning so I wore the mitts my mOm knitted for Katie that I somehow ended up with and the cute animé hat Keith got me a couple of years back.

Later I went to the interview.  It’s always interesting seeing myself and all my imperfections as a potential employee reflected through someone else.  The poor little gal who interviewed me.  I hope my pity for her didn’t show.  She’s probably just barely making a living at what she’s doing, but she was wearing a thousand dollars’ worth of clothing and a freaking expensive watch and had the coldest, limpest handshake I’ve shared in probably years. I thought that when she shook my hand it was probably the first time her hand had felt warm since the last interview.  Stupidly big office, in one of the industrial/office complexes on Still Creek. The entire courtyard had so much bird shit in it I felt ill walking through it and you all know me as being somebody who can deal with disgusting with fewer collywobbles than most socialized women. Drove away thinking what an incredible waste of time it was, but I’m still going to send her my references.

Then got beer and various foodicles, why not, it was on my way home.

Then we caught up on the Librarians and Robot Chicken, etc.

I have no idea what will happen to my writing energy if I get a job.  We’ll see. I know I can work and write, but it needs a ‘specially calm kind of job to allow me to think about stuff and write.

Jeff is awesome.  He has been helping me with technology (backups), when he’s not trying to pull info out of third parties and disposing of rats.

Word count over 7000 as of today.

Tomorrow the bday party for Katie. I already got her her present, and I’m not talking about it in a public forum, but most of my friends already know and so my expression of precarious and secretive amusement is thus explained.

Life and art

Yesterday there was a windstorm, of the kind that’s going to happen earlier and later in the year but normally happens in November.  It was violent and destructive and while we did not lose power nearly everybody else did, it seems. Winds gusted to 117 kph, which is over 70 mph, and there are videos all over the internet of the carnage, including the first ten minutes of local CTV news which shows some very tall trees coming down. Trees down everywhere, traffic lights, restaurants closing for lack of power, Katie still doesn’t have power this morning.  Welcome to the future.

Keith came over briefly after walking in the storm. We watched a West Wing.

And containment on the bears at the Zoo was breached.  I wrote a bit yesterday about critters and aliens at the Greater Vancouver Zoo and learn this morning that the bears got out because of a windstorm, not because an alien with mental health issues let them out. I’m relieved I wasn’t at the Zoo when the bears got out.

BAD NEWS about climate.

350 words yesterday, but it was mostly infill, and teasing apart two chapters that got jammed together, and fixing pronouns for my gender non-conformist Slider, who is turning into a lot of fun to write.

RIP Oliver Sachs, may you live forever in the healing you brought, the lives you touched and the words you left us.

I have a job interview Monday.  It’s an admin position at an established restaurant supply company.  I’ll report back after I go.

 

Roxane Gay rules and this post is TMI

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED…..

So my very favourite Bad Feminist Roxane Gay, who has to deal with so much more intersectionality than I do, has participated in a puff piece in stylist.co.uk talking about her hygiene routine.  I told her I would follow her example.

At this point I can hear Jeff saying something, and then when I ask him to repeat it, he says, ‘Oh, nothing, nothing.’

I probably should shower more frequently than I do, being about three times a week, but as I get older I get dryer, and I feel like I’m turning into a desiccated old piece of sod.  I use Belle de Provence Honeysuckle soap because it smells very good, lasts a long time and is the one piece of luxury in my hygiene routine. Hardly anyone carries it and since it’s 6 bucks a pop I tend to buy in bulk when I find it.  I use Head and Shoulders brand shampoo/conditioner and buy it in the large pump size as it’s cheaper.  I use no other soap products.  I wash my hands every time I handle the cat, before I prep food and after I come in from being out in public as well as after I groom myself or go to the toilet.  I didn’t give a shit about washing my hands before I ran a restaurant.  Now I really, really do care about it, and it’s the simplest, fastest and easiest way to prevent illness, so why the hell not.

I hate all deodorants but I stink if I don’t use them.  When I’m feeling radical I wash, dry thoroughly and apply baby powder to my pits, but that’s good for about 12 hours before Jeff’s eyebrows do something improbable (the fan in the basement blows my effluent in his direction when we’re watching tv, so … yeah.)  Otherwise I use whatever kind of bo juice isn’t loathsome, and I’m like a lightning rod for deodorant being discontinued, so I try to be cool, but right now it’s a pretty loathsome vanilla smelly thing.  Gak.   Still better than the alternative.

I use two different kinds of eyedrops, thanks to the amazingly practical and super unjudgey Lady Miss Banjola, one for day, one for night, and I am not consistent in their use but by gar it’s a good thing to have them, because when you need them you’re like ACK MY EYES MY EYES I CAN’T GET MY EYES oh thank goodness I can see!  Also, thanks to her I found out that dryness amidships can be ameliorated by the twice weekly anointing of der ladygel, and she made brand recommendations, and I can get them reasonably cheap on line.  With that one small recommendation she made my life go from a meepy, withered parody of what Beeker sounds like after he’s been mugged, to me being able to contemplate having a boyfriend.  I don’t actually want a boyfriend, and the men in my life who squire me around do not wish to fill this or candidly any other vacancy wheresoever situated, but at least the prospect shifted from being painfully impossible to being ludicrously improbable, and only the Rumi’s Beloved could parse that shift in meaningful terms, but I view it as an improvement.

I pluck my eyebrows every day.  I watched the best eyebrow guy on the planet do a tutorial on youtube, and I thought “Hey, my OCD and some grooming tips wa-ho!” but I tell you my brow game is fierce, and it helps with the performative feminity, although I have not recently been mistaken for a man (it only happened the once, and I think the person was altered.)

This upping of the eyebrow game was subsequent to Keith picking out to extremely flattering and stylish frames for me.  I was looking really hard for a job and I wanted to be ready to interview at a moment’s notice, and now, provided I have a clean dress, I really am.   I pluck my chin hairs, and my (sigh, fuck my life) chest hairs.  I do not shave my legs or pits and anybody who wants me to can shave his or her legs and pits all they want but this lovely, amazing, FEATURE of adult life called BODILY AUTONOMY does not stop being awesome just because you are creeped out by my hairy legs, and the next time somebody calls me on it I’ll just say that sexism is uglier than hairy legs and any sensible person knows that.  Body hair sure makes men who have basic issues with mansplaining and feminism go away right quick, and smell ya later, ya squirrelfondling preverts.

Also, I got really really bad frostbite on my lower legs when I was in public school, so bad that the skin on my lower legs (the shaving zone) is burst-into-tears sensitive, so yeah, no, fuck your leg shaving.  It HURTS.  I bleed, and then all the little hairs growing back in catch in my bedding, so fuck you and go AWAY if you think I should shave my legs for any reason whatsoever.  As for my armpits.  When more than 50 percent of north American men shave their armpits, I’ll sign up for one of those monthly boxes of shaving gear, but until that day (bwa ha ha, coming soon!) yeah, just no.

I used to use Garnier number 60 hair dye and I still have some tucked away, but it really really bothers Jeff and I’m not a fan of doing it, I am a fan of having it done. Fortunately the colour is almost exactly the same as the two remaining stripes of colour I have in the mounting nest of grey that is my hair so even when I let it grow out it looks reasonably okay.  If I get another interview, which will be hard, as I am officially as of this moment no longer looking for work since hey we’re in a recession, and nobody would want to hire me even if I wanted to trade the best part of me for 24K net a year, which I don’t, and which makes me an elitist asshole. Ok.

I make my own perfume, which is called Cyprus, and has a secret blend of floral oil ingredients, and which smells fantastic on me (to the point where other women have demanded I sell them some, which I did) but everybody from my mOm to my brO thinks it smells like I’m hanging truck stop air freshener from my pits AND about 40% of my friends have chemical sensitivities and find it overpowering even when I’m using it gingerly so it’s only for special occasions.

My last pedicure made me limp for THREE FUCKING MONTHS and I am never paying for one again as Hecate may bear witness; now I cut off the parts of the toenail that stick out and abrade down the rest with a number of different kinds of pedicure gear.  I occasionally soak my feet and use footrub on myself or get somebody else like Katie to help out.  I am very very on top of my toenails because I can go from Happy Feet to ballerina outtakes (thankfully not shown here) in less than a week.  My hair, feet and nails grow at a tremendous rate, which is great because I get rid of heavy metals that way, but I must cut, hack, saw and file away with vigour.

I used to be an assclown about dental hygiene but I brush and floss every single day now (occasional lapses, but not many) since I can’t afford to lose the use of any more teeth when toothpaste and floss is so cheap.  I buy firm or super firm brushes and brush whatever way feels right and I pay for getting my teeth cleaned professionally once a year.  I am seriously considering investing in dental picks.

I have incredibly clean ear canals.  I hate the feeling of anything in there except air, but I no longer scrape them out with anything hard because it removes the hair that grows in the canal and I’m so clumsy I might deafen myself.

I wash my face with soap once a week.  Any more and I dry out like something that went with Scott to the Pole.

Once every three months I apply a clay facial mask.  I like how my skin feels afterward.

Once in a very long while I get a massage or a spa half day, but I can get the same results from rolling around on Wreck Beach and probably get exposed to the same amount of coliform in the process.

 

And there you have it.  Nobody asked for it, but that is my hygiene routine.

Success, or an approximation

So I’m off to get a CT scan of my unstable pelvis, and the tooth Dr. Katz fixed is now completely perfect in all respects, plus he ground just a smidge off a cuspid and now my mouth feels normal again.  The scan will be booked and they’ll call me, and then I back to see the bone doc about ten days after the scan to give them a chance to read it.

3.0 hours on the CPAP.  I feel very refreshed and not particularly in pain, which is pleasant.  No words yesterday.

I am ashamed to say I bailed on Paul last night, he wanted to go swimming, but I biked to and from the dentist and had a rather trying day in other respects, sitting in cold rooms waiting for doctors not being one of my oh doodie moments. Went to bed early, went to sleep early. For some reason the mask felt very comfortable last night, although I still took it off.  I think I was contemplating getting up and yelling at Buster since he was making so much frikkin’ noise.

Jeff is home, and Buster is much, much happier.  (With Margot, you can’t tell; her baseline temperament is so incredibly calm.) He is a daddy’s boy.

I did the math; if all the people who live in Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Kamloops, Kelowna, Abbotsford, White Rock and Chilliwack were homeless, that would still only be half as many as have been rendered homeless by the earthquake in Nepal.

Sometime in the next two hundred years Vancouver will get its own rumble. If it’s a megaquake it’ll be felt across Cascadia.  I’m starting to keep extra water on hand.

This sweet little piece of satire is from a filking buddy.

The worst slave trader.

Continued drug gang related violence (or so one supposes) in  Metro Vancouver.

Chipper sends me this hand flute playing virtuosity.

She also sends me this cute panoply of chordate behaviours.

I will endeavour mightily to get back on track today.  Except I have to do something for church.

My Yellow Cab review

On December 24, 2013 at around 9:30 in the morning, Driver 10 picked me up from the stand at Granville and Georgia. I gave him the address and he didn’t know where it was. He HANDED ME HIS PHONE TO TYPE THE ADDRESS INTO THE GPS. With a rising sense of WTF, I did so. Then he proceeded to drive down the street looking at his phone. By the time we got to the bridge I was frantic. I told him, first in a calm voice, and then in my ‘yelling at the kids voice’, “What you are doing is unsafe and illegal. Please pull over, confirm your route, and continue.” I must have said this four times. He told me I didn’t have any Christmas spirit, and I repeated my request. Yes, I was yelling, but that’s what you do when somebody is being unsafe and thinking it’s okay.

He said, “Get out of my ****** cab you *****.” He stopped the cab and I got out. Another cab driver from another company appeared out of nowhere and got me safely to my destination, all the while apologizing, as if it was his fault somehow.

Under normal circumstances I would wait for a call back from the Manager, but I left an urgent message that day and another this morning, and the Vancouver Taxi Association complaint line voicemail is full (wonder why, snicker). I’ve been taking cabs in this town for almost 20 years and I’ve never experienced anything like this. The driver was not safe to drive, and should be disciplined at the very least. Something tells me nothing will come of this, but at least I have warned others.

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…

 

 

Immersion

What between getting sleep in two hour bursts (all I can manage with the cpap, which I put on and took off three times last night), donating blood on Friday, and somewhat inadequate levels of exercising, Physio Luce is telling me that my flex is good but my strength sucks.  He totally bought that sleep deprivation has slowed me down… and loaded me up with more exercises.  Ainsi soit-il.

Today I will be adjusting the moisture content and seating of the mask on the cpap.

Dishwasher is running, sun is shining, Eddie is feeling much better.  He needs a special diet so we are attempting to feed  the cats separately and it’s kinda sorta working.  His thyroid is wonky but there are meds for that.  He is SUCH a good kitty.  He despises being pilled so much that when Jeff puts the pill in front of him, he consumes it rather than go through the gharstly struggle.  He was also a sweetheart the last time I trimmed his nails.  (Kitties shouldn’t click on floors).

I am assembling yet another project in Scrivener – Broad Hints.  It will be selected songs, poems, essays (no homilies though, that’s another project), humour, blog posts, recipes and miscellaneous writings (like band names, movie and concert reviews).  I have a ton of stuff in there already and it’s going to be book sized by the time I’m done. At the following URL (ya hafta scroll down) there’s my third fave pic of my grandpa: He’s a real cowboy with real First Nations….  http://allegrasloman.com/indexold.php?showall=1&month=9&year=2004 

Holy crap! some twin engined plane just went over the house at about 500 feet.  I hate when they do that.

Church yesterday was great, excepting that the split pea and ham soup I took for the meal afterwards overturned in the car trunk.  Fortunately I’d taped the lid on and it was still so cold that only the condensation from the defrosting came off it, plus I put the crockpot in a large garbage bag, so there was some leakage but not the HOLY FUCK disaster I thought it was when I leapt out of the car to investigate the gharstly noise.  I did the aesthetics and screwed it up, but Rob rescued me by leaping up and getting a taper for the service leader (Donna).  I don’t think aesthetically it was too bad.  We didn’t sing enough and there was a congregational discussion afterwards grump grump.  I’ve had to lower my pledge because, HEY no INCOME! which cheeses me off, but other delights await, including my return to delivering homilies!  And getting to sing the compost song first service in 2014, more or less hopefully.

I am going to go back to chores now.

We’re number one! In pipeline accidents.

 

The gift

Yesterday was a gift of small pleasures and brief beauty, enamelled and jewelled and assembled with unhurried care.

I awoke early and started my rushing around for a very busy day at church and promptly forgot the single most important thing.  As I stepped out of the house, a scene of surreal beauty met my gaze: in New Westminster all the tall buildings were outlined by the effulgent glow of the sun through a wall of cloud.  The effect was enough to stop me in my tracks and call for Jeff to come and see.

I then went to Thrifty’s to buy meat, bread and cheese for sandwiches for ‘afters’, and then went to the church where I tried to help with setup and then realized I’d forgotten all the Stewardship Drive materials.  D’oh! Back home to collect them and then back to church in time for everything to start.

I gave a several minute ex tempore speech on the subject of pledging and was congratulated by no fewer than three people afterwards.  I never seem to have an accurate sense of how I’m doing, I thought I sounded ill-prepared and merely attempted to connect emotionally and practically to my church siblings.

Please imagine that I was dressed as a steam punk vampire during these shenanigans, as I was.  Somebody else took a picture.

The minister preached a mighty sermon on giving, and used the potlatch as the central idea.  The notion that gracious giving and gracious receiving is part of our human heritage was posited; the emotional calculus of feeling shamed or lorded over when we receive gifts was examined in the light of our materialistic culture.  I must admit I teared up toward the end.  The minister called me on it, asking what happened as I started out smiling and started not exactly scowling but getting more and more serious and I said sheesh if I stop smiling maybe it’s because I’m very moved.

Short talk with Rob W about a specialty item of clothing he may feel inclined to sew up for me. Planning is.

The sandwiches went over (and down) very well.

Tom and Peggy invited me to supper.

The minister helped finish the washing up.  (one of us, one of us!)

I returned home at 1:30 (told you it was a hectic morning…) footsore and tired, and no sooner cleaned one pan and changed that Paul rang.  “Walkies?”

I looked out the window.  With his inerrant attention to the weather, he had picked the one portion of the day wherein we were likely to get direct sun.  Although my feet were already complaining, we did a circuit of Oakalla (aka Deer Lake Park), and saw:

A beautiful sky, filled with cirrus and nimbus and cumulus clouds

A VERY LARGE and unidentifiable raptor soaring in the same skyfield as a gent flying his glider at the model airplane field,

A chickadee chasing a moth (I had never seen such a thing) apparently for pure sport (the moth put on an incredible burst of speed)

Dragonflies catching the last of the sun

Many happy dogs who really should have been on leashes but were well behaved anyway

Sleeping kids in strollers.

Then home, where I relaxed with ER and SG1 until it was time to haul myself upstairs and make biscotti to take.  I made pumpkin spice biscotti out of my own head’s recipe; they were well received.

I supped with all of the local Lunder-males, grampa, boys and grandbean, and it was a delicious meal of inadvertently caramelized butternut squash, roast chicken breasts, taters, broccoli, home made cheese sauce and pumpkin pie.  It was all edible and choice.  Bean-pie is so adorable as he falls asleep it was most charming.

Then home, to sleep; woke at 1:30, forced myself back to sleep and up again at 7.  A windy nasty day, but I have coffee and biscotti and the world can go hang until I watch Treme.

Today  – renew car insurance (I folded – I feel like I can’t live without a car as long as church is so time consuming and then there’s the issue of job hunting), church business have to leave the house for, more church business, another bit of church business, contact the folks in Pemberton to arrange transport of the furniture, and, if the fates are kind, some practicing and writing.

I light a candle for all those in Hurricane Sandy’s way.

I light a candle for the folks at Pennzoil who topped up my brake fluid without charging me.

 

 

Funny pic

Lovely caption…

Katie slept over at Dax’s last night.  They are looking for an apartment together. These next two sentences deleted on the insistence of counsel, who is currently shaking her perkily coiffed head and pointing to a sign indicating how long things you don’t want to be reminded of last on the internet.  Yeah, darlin’, I see it.  Oh well.  Katie can’t live here forever, and much though the prospect fails to entrance me, it’s her life, not mine.

Yesterday was not a complete writeoff; I got a couple of things I needed to do done, I went to church (how early do I have to get there to precede Dave T?  The man’s driving 15 times the distance I do and he still beats me!), did set up, watched everybody take my set up apart and make it better (weird and uncomfortable and full of fail on my part, but in my defense my instructions were unclear), took it all down except the basement, ’cause Sue did it for me so I could drive Carol home, (and may I just interject that when you’re asked to do a service on less than 12 hours’ notice – Rev Katie was ill – and you do it that well, you can expect me to be impressed, thank you Sue and an early happy birthday because I will likely forget) – next two sentences deleted involving pee and ice cream; I burned up a piece of paper with all the things I want to get rid of out of my life on it (personal failings) for the Fire Communion, realized that as much as I love the lyrics of Tennyson’s Ring Out Wild Bells, the choon as limned in the hymnal blows a dozer, and you know what? I ain’t writing a new one. We have the best of accompanists in David, but a song leader would be optimal.  I also cooked curried chicken, got in a walk in the blazing sunshine, and took the banner home to be Amazed. Ralph told me I might like a new book he’d heard about called Godless Religion or maybe it’s called Religion without God.  After all, the experience of awe and wonder belongs to all hoomins.

So, did that sentence about the banner irk you?  Amaze is powdered enzyme tucked in with a lot of surfactants.  I don’t actually know the ingredients but that’s my guess.  The old outdoor church banner (which we just started hanging out front again since we have the perfect railing to tie it to and it magically reappeared from wherever it had been in storage) is covered in an unlovely combination of urban grime, Vancouver exterior mold, & soap scum from the last attempt to clean it; suffice it to say that it’s so filthy that the scuff marks are impossible to tell from the dirt.  I hope to clean the banner today, and I so hope it comes out cleaner, and that I can winkle the dirt out of the creases.

(later…. I’ve been consulting experts, and recommendations have been made, incl. GooGone).

I went to Candace’s and collected my music stuff so I can take it to Conflikt.

Spent some quality time with Katie.

Visited with Keith and Paul for a while.

I am extremely sad and upset about something that I can’t talk about here, but I won’t dodge that I’m upset.  I’m autism spectrum and I don’t actually get a lot of the social BS and I shouldn’t bother teasing people, especially when I already know the person I’m teasing is (this observation deleted) and in chronic physical pain.  I would have preferred an opportunity to fix it, but such is life.  It is a loss.  Another one.  I could write a long self justifying rant, but that is precisely what… oh, never mind.  So many other people have that covered these days….

Today, we sing.  Keith has decided to join me and Paul; we’ll be heading over to Tom and Peggy’s this afternoon.  That’s going to happen, period.  Not enough singing in my life and I have to debut two new songs.  I am so happy Paul’s job dragged him out to Vancouver.  I couldn’t invent Tom and Peggy and they are so spectacularly wonderful, I can’t imagine life without them now.

Since my chances of actually getting it all done are minimal, I propose NOT mentioning my list today.  But there are three items on it…. I will report back success.  If any.  Singing doesn’t count; that’s going to happen today without fail.

Sad Face

It is with blank incomprehension mixed with sadness and dismay that I bring to you my woeful tidings.  Rev Katie has resigned.

Now, she gave us a year’s notice, so it’s not like we immediately have to run out into the street looking for another minister, and it’s most likely that she will stay in the lower mainland, so we won’t lose her presence, but I called Paul when I got home from the board meeting last night and we just went “Wow” at each other for about fifteen minutes.

I am exhausted this morning; it took ages to get to sleep, I was so keyed up.

Grr-thwack

Zombie walk this aft.  Katie K and I will meetup at the Art Gallery and drag our shambling carcasses down the parade route.  I can haz corn syrup and food colouring, and clothes to sacrifice. Oh yes, there will be pix.

Church meeting earlier this afternoon.  I’m an invited guest rather than a regularly scheduled attendee; I suspect I am the Katelijne Adorne of my crowd, and happy I am that there is precisely one reader of this blog who will get the reference.

Leo is whomping up Finnish pancakes in the kitchen.  Lawsy me, and there’s BACOM tooooo. Linda indulged me by watching the most recent Futurama episode with us last night, of which much internet woo, and I have to say “The Prisoner of Benda” is one of the best episodes ever and it’s FULL OF MATH.

Tomorrow, hymn sing at Tom and Peggy’s (ever so much more fun than it sounds, my irreligious pals).  I’m thinking about going into work and doing some documentation, but I bet I turn lazy and stay home and watch depressing movies instead.  Leo and Linda will head out sometime Sunday.

It is my sad duty to report that Katie and Daxus are dating again.  Hence the title of the post. I am keeping my mouth shut (apart from giving Suzanne and my mother a heads’ up, and Paul and I had a brief and eyerolling confab yesterday) and hoping that a cooler head prevails.  It’s too bad that her staying away from him was a condition of tenancy.  As of the end of this month she’s homeless – you read me? – and only Paul is prepared to take her in, as Jeff and I -after a brief and dispassionate strategy session – do not wish to borrow more grief than is already our portion.

Did I say recently how much I love and appreciate Jeff?  He really is Made of Awesome.

The quinoa is as tall as me and four cobs of corn have set on.  I let the peas go to seed.