Category: Family

happy family news

Paul got a job! he’s working part time for the thrift store around the corner from us both here in East Burnaby. I had the Sudden Strong Urge to phone Keith (I try to ask if he’s got 15 minutes and tell him I don’t have an agenda at the beginning of the call so he can pace himself, I think I remembered that last night) and among other news, I gleaned that. I am thrilled. We talked about sleep hygiene and how he’s adjusting his cooking style to suit his housemates, which is also happy making news.

I am well rested and in a good mood, maybe I’ll get my executive dysfunction whipped into something like a shape and get something done today.

Pic a nic

The picnic on the lawn of Alexis’s building yesterday WAS FANTASTIC. I got recipes. Keith drove me and Paul, Alex and Katie went in another car. kMike didn’t go, he was bagged.

Made a mushroom omelette this morning; toasted sourdough muffins and put out some veggie platter veggies and we ate on the deck like civilized folks.

She’s not a family member but I sure looked at her picture a lot as a kid. She’s 84 in 2021 and looks fantastic in this roughly ten year old photo.

famjam inbound

Forecast for Sunday is partly cloudy and 21 degrees at this point, which seems favourable for a picnic. So unless that changes, the famjam is ON for 4pm Sunday.

THIS FROM ALEX

WE ARE GO FOR FAMILY PICNIC ON THE BEACH ON SUNDAY

I’ve got a *tiny* red spot/bruise in the crook of my left arm. The phlebotomist was very good. I always donate on the left. It felt weird the other day to have a nurse check me for track marks. I don’t feel off but I’m not 100 percent perky again yet – I had another very solid and reborative (*not* rebarbative lol) sleep.  Yesterday I ran two loads of laundry and made tuna salad for a late lunch (ingredients, tuna, real mayo, capers, scallions and artichokes all chopped into the tuna, over iceberg lettuce salad and I’ll thank you very much to nod when I tell you it was good) and watched a fair amount of TV – two episodes of Elementary, can you believe we started a rewatch again so soon after the end of the last rewatch? We did a shop in the morning and bought no chicken, pork or beef. I watered the dogwood and the cedar hedge. Kim the Landlord had the cedar hedge put in and she’s attached to it and I try to help keep it healthy.

Now I know I’ve been mentioning mascarpone cheese a lot, because we’ve been eating it every week. I got it for myself as an eating treat for the first time about six months ago and now it gets used for any number of wild purposes, like being added to Indian food to take the heat down or being used as dip for crackers. My current favourite treatment for it is to chop pecans and dried apricots into it and add home made chocolate syrup and whomp it up and eat it like a parfait, but mostly I just put it on bagels, a truly lovely application, especially for a sweeter bagel like a blueberry bagel. I have converted Jeff into a mascarpone fan. The other day he referred to it as ‘massacre pony’ cheese and I thought I was going to die laughing, because it sounds exactly like the kind of mishearing I applied to many things when I was a kid.

I have learned – directly from Katie – that she anticipates the birth of a boy child. The happy couple is fine either way. “I’ll raise strong men and get awesome daughters in law” she said and I laughed.   I don’t have facebook or I would have known a couple of days ago. She calls me on the land line, all apologetic, because I don’t have a cell phone or she’d have texted me. Isn’t modern parenting wild?

Now I got myself all wound up over mascarpone cheese, so I toasted a blueberry bagel, and one half of it is on Jeff’s desk for when he comes back from looking for something downstairs and the other half is being consumed with tea, Yorkshire Gold, hot, by yours truly.

Did I ever tell you guys that for months and months I could hear what sounded like somebody tunnelling under the house, but it’s stopped? I don’t know what it was but it kept me awake LOTS and now it’s gone. Hopefully their ‘extra space for renters’ or ‘panic room’ or ‘torture chamber’ or ‘sex dungeon’ or ‘man cave’ is all finished now. Still I persist in wondering. I figured it couldn’t be real since Jeff couldn’t hear it. Maybe it was particular power tool oriented rats?

Still no envelope of suitable size and robustness for ontie Mary. I need to get up off my ass and go ‘into town’ (lol less than ten stops on the 123 bus more like) and get some.

Did I ever tell you guys that like most people who are on the spectrum and or have ADD I have tons of sensory issues around food and drink? because I grew up in a household where ‘suffer in silence’ was actually a family motto I’ve long since learned to power through the overwhelming majority of them (not painfully or ruining my day, just as a going to the dentist kind of powering through it), but one thing that has stuck with me since m early teens is that tea is supposed to be as hot as you can make it and to be drunk just shy of scalding; I sometimes reheat tea five times if I keep forgetting to drink it when it’s the right temperature…. the spectrum makes me need it a certain way, the ADD prevents it, it’s like there’s two witless mofos trying to control my sensorium all day. Spectrum makes me want to be upstanding and meet my commitments or SHAME of GREAT SHAME will ensure; ADD says fuck ya, smokes weed and ends up hitting the twangy box in the guest room while Jeff flees to the safety of his EBM Dark Club Music on headphones.

 

leafhopper earrings from @kanakirisuzume1’s twitter feed

Yesterday I

– loaded and ran dishwasher

– tidied kitchen

– showered and brushed teeth

– policed up my picks, they end up everywhere so I had to round up the herd

– practiced

– ran a load of laundry

– gave blood

– lunched with Paul

– STILL NO FREAKING ENVELOPE FOR MARY’S LETTER and I could not wait fifteen minutes on the phone for a doctor’s appointment so I’ll try again today and also the Visa issue still isn’t straightened out, and it’s annoying because apparently I can use my card on line but not in person? like what the hell, people.

Paul called around ten and asked if I wanted to donate blood. He arranged it all, since we normally go together, or with another family member and I hate the blood.ca website with everything in my gristly heart. I pounded fluids and ate lightly, and I felt fine after the donation (I drove home) until bedtime, when I felt a little woozy and highly strange. I’m more or less fine this morning, but sore (not at the donation site, more in my joints, which is weird). It takes even longer than usual to donate blood with all in-person questions and on screen questionnaires! It took about half an hour to process me, and even longer for Paul, likely because he couldn’t stop joking around with the pretty intake nurse (just my speculation, but definitely classic Paul), but I only had to wait about twenty minutes in the car while I hosed back 400 ml of mango juice and a mini oaty chocky bar, and Paul (who was driving, much against my wish) managed to find a lovely spot in the shade.

Made the unwelcome discovery that the CD player is no longer functioning in Paul’s Toyota; he only ever listens to CBC radio anyway so it likely would have been another year before he noticed a problem.

After, Paul declared himself desirous of a shrimp banh mi and I thought, “It’s the Pho Hong, there’s gotta be something there I can eat even if I don’t want banh mi,” and realized as we entered that they had been closed back in May/June for renovations. The Pho Hong used to be an Italian restaurant and when the first owners moved in they didn’t touch the decor; wish I had pictures, the walls were festooned with classic Italian tacky shit, as were the rickety booths, and there was a dropped ceiling.

The next renovation cleaned up the walls. All the character was gone, but the food did not change.

This renovation is all black melamine plates and dark woodgrain plastic booths and no more fabric anything (this will be a feature, post pandemic – only the most luxe places are going to have fabric anything, because otherwise everything is a ring tailed bastard to sanitize for fomites) and the ceilings are higher. ALSO, they are competing with Pho Boi further down the Kingsway toward Metrotown and they are open all night – yup, I have a 24 Pho place a five minute drive from the house now! If I was feeling energetic I could walk there in about an hour.

I remembered you’re supposed to have something salty so I had a small number 15, no noodle, extra veg, and (ripping swears) it was good! Paul had veggie spring rolls as well. It was most pleasant.

Now, one thing you have to know about the Pho Hong is that the women’s bathroom is designed for Vietnamese women, and not traditionally sized settler ladies. The stall is narrow AND compressed; doors swing inward AND JUST BARELY MISS THE TOILET I mean they clear it by a couple of cm, no, I’m not exaggerating, and actually I think it would be pretty funny to hang a camera at the top of the stall and video me getting into and out of the stall, because I collected bruises on many surfaces as they impacted the wall, the tp holder, the door and the toilet, so I was collecting whatever substances and materials previous occupants had left in a right jolly way, mostly with my ass. To say this is not an accessible washroom is the understatement of the century. I mean it’s not the ‘worst toilet in all of Scotland’, but it’s fucking small, is all. I wriggled out of the stall and contemplated how they could have, during the renovations, moved the fucking stall door one foot that away and fixed the worst of the problems for fat able bodied people, but these days I look at everything through a “What would a fat disabled Indigenous trans person say about this” lens and believe you me the least you’d get is an eyeroll and sigh of disgust.

Then I drove us back to my place and we parted, with many kind words of thanks and expressions of pleasure at the company, and I basically collapsed and went to bed early. Called mOm to tell her I’d given blood and to hear her talk about how wonderful Jeff is. I mean, I know, but it doesn’t get old.

Woke up after five am, which is marvellous, since I only remember waking once at ten o’clock to have two very sad and odiferous consultations with the john, got up and made tea (there’s already tons of iced tea in the fridge but I want hot tea) and an everything bagel with mascarpone cheese. Buster wanted to be brushed and wasn’t in the mood to train, so I gave him treats anyway and brushed him.

Not much is happening with writing; song writing continues, always, in the background.

I keep telling myself that I’m not a useless eater if I can donate blood. Paul said I was being too hard on myself. Also, this is ableist thinking on my part and must be expunged, but how? Out of all the horrific bigotries I carry it’s the one that is the most thoroughly internalized. I have to work on it; I have to work on it as I get older and more disabled; that will be difficult, for sure.

Long time fans of Paul’s driving style may be amused to learn that he doesn’t wildly change lanes or speed any more, and he doesn’t bolt out from behind buses and trash trucks or burn out from traffic lights or tailgate or apply the brakes as if he’s trying to flip the vehicle like he useta. His devil-may-care attitude toward centring his vehicle in a lane remains unchanged.

And sometime over the next while, a house filk and a family picnic. Life is not going back to normal. But some things from the before times will return.

Today I am going to see how I feel later this morning and try to find some envelopes of suitable size and robustness for Mary’s letter.

lovely meal

I called Keith to ask him when it would be convenient to take over his birthday presents (three different sizes of baking pan, a new paring knife and precut parchment paper (he uses it a lot for baked meals)) and his response was to invite me and Jeff over for almond crusted chicken, savoury whipped sweet potatoes and green beans. Meat and two veg, how restorative. Keith was quite appreciative of the gifts.

We picked up a tiramisu loaf from Langley Farm Market and proceeded over there. Both of us have been avoiding rush hour traffic so it was a lot like the front gate of hell, trying to get down 10th Ave yesterday at quarter to six. Fortunately we deked north onto 2nd instead of going all the way to Cumberland. Katie and Alex came out to say hi and we sat and ate a family meal at Leo M.’s old kitchen table, and man…. that was good. In attendance kMike, Keith, Kate, Alex (he didn’t eat), Paul, me and Jeff.

There’s some talk of Jeff going to Victoria; pisses me off that they won’t let us stay in our cars. I’ll be here with Buster boy.

another beautiful day at the Foreshore

I SAW A NEW MAMMAL YESTERDAY

Yes, it’s worth yelling about.

And now I want to rant for such a long time, but I won’t. It has a white guy’s name.

I saw a townsend’s vole. And you know what else!? I saw it for perhaps 1.5 seconds as it ran from the water’s edge to the cover of the rushes and IDENTIFIED IT AS A VOLE RIGHT AWAY. No hesitation. Just THAT’S A VOLE at the top of my lungs. Despite the fact it was about twice as big as any I’ve ever seen in life…

Do you know how often I get to see a new mammal? Last time was the bobcat and that was the November before the November before the pandemic.

The critter was EXACTLY as I remembered it when I looked it up less than two hours later. Only difference was it had been tooling around in grey green mud so he was a little closer to the grey green end of the spectrum, not a wholesome plump brown like the illos.

No masks. Paul still wanders WAY TOO CLOSE to people, that man’s going to get himself a faceful of virus one of these days. I try to keep 6 feet, outdoors or no.

Also yesterday I made Paul sit through all the work I’ve done to get a bird list with calls together for us for when we go through Deer Lake Park. We ate Mike M’s chowder, which he dropped off Sunday night and how good it was to see him.

Continued writing, about 500 words yesterday and the same this morning so far.

Buried in ants in the kitchen. Something must be done.

Beautiful walk

Went for a lovely walk in Fraser Foreshore yesterday with Paul and Jeff before it got too hot.

This morning did a shop; time for a cup of tea and an apple turnover.

I got a couple of ‘kudos’ for old stories on Archive of Our Own, and one complimenting me on a single sentence, so it’s nice to know that a sentence which I am not going to repost here because it’s rather risqué is enough to make someone provide spontaneous plaudits.

The two worst characters in Supernatural are getting their own prequel show, and it’s going to be a disaster because John and Mary Winchester should not get their own fucking prequel show. Why? No. Don’t get me started. Anyway. Rifts are appearing in the fan continuum and it’s fascinating to watch. A lot of people who are huge fans of the showrunners/producers are saying they aren’t going to bother with it because …. it’s about John and Mary, who are fucking dirtbags. OK maybe not so much Mary, but wow.

I am still in a very low point but continuing to work on tunes in a desultory way. I haven’t had what it takes to write for ages now, but summer is usually not my peak writing time…

everyone was here yesterday

Prior to all this Paul and I had a lovely walk at Fraser Foreshore. We saw two adults and one juvenile bald eagle play fighting in the trees and making a hell of a racket at the same time, it was quite funny. Parking lots were bung full, we had to park miles from the lot.

I decided there was no reason for Paul to clean up after his own party so after a brief consult with Jeff we threw Paul’s Father’s Day celebration here.

Paul came over first, then Katie and Alex came over next, then kMike, then the kids (those three) left, then Mike came, then Paul left, then Keith showed up and Paul came back and then Keith and Paul left and then Mike left. Nobody was driving drunk at all, like, no one.

Seafood salad consisted of, here, have a green salad (iceberg lettuce, salad mix of seeds and cranberries, heritage tomatoes sliced, purple onion in relatively large chunks, grated carrot, broccolini) and put over top of it your choice of Argentinian prawns, Digby Scallops, or Alaskan Sockeye Salmon. This was 123 dollars of seafood, mostly salmon cause I got two fillets. I know, insane. There’s just enough leftovers for salmon pate tomorrow morning with mascarpone cheese, and we got lemon juice and capers. Anyway, I cooked the shellfish on the stovetop and baked the salmon for 20 minutes at 400. On part of the salmon I put a ‘ground pecans cut half and half with maple syrup’ crust. kMike hosed that shit down like a good thing, and declared it quite fine. (I had a bit.)

Alex had to go home to eat, that’s why he left.

Mike serenaded me on the back deck in the golden hour.

quite inebriated me

no song today

I’ll get my shit together later, or maybe tomorrow.

Lovely… and I mean absolutely life-affirming and beautiful …. walk in Fraser Foreshore yesterday. We took it easy and stopped at every bench to look at the trees and the water. SO MANY songbirds, the forest just rang with their voices.

Fed Paul homemade greek salad, the last of the garbanzo stew and homemade lemonade for lunch, also got a financial errand run.

Katie DROPPED BY AFTER WORK yesterday, I felt like a celebrity was stopping by. Love her so much. She’s just starting to show, she should be off work by Jeff’s birthday.

Live your life like this internet toddler:

Today is Juneteenth. Do not be fooled. As long as Black and racialized people are being shot, unjustly imprisoned and deported in such horrifying numbers in the US, it doesn’t matter what feel-good holidays are signed into law. It’s just more Martin Luther King Day: white people get the day off and Black people get to work two shifts, while the Republicans are doing everything possible to remove their voting rights.

cheerful but lazy

Uh, yup, that’s me.

Temporary crown has not come off yet.

Timmy Ho’s yesterday morning, followed by Time Team… happy sigh.

Fed Paul over at his place yesterday – finished off the Salad Shirazi (finely chopped english cuke, couple tomatoes, fresh mint, fresh parsley, juice of one lemon, a little onion – absolutely amazing, who needs salt?), provided him with chicken curry and rice pudding. He ate it with gusto.

Keith seems to be doing okay. He had a tiny bit of Shirazi salad and Paul hoovered up his leftovers… lol. Keith’s thinking about going back to school. Obviously I am more than happy about this and will approve whatever he chooses to study. Also, offered him shelter/respite if the baby turns out to be colicky or has a bad turn and he needs a decent night of sleep for his own health.

Prior to that we went to Fraser Foreshore Glenlyon side. Paul and I have watched any number of herons do any number of things – shit on our windshield while we’re going down the 401 at 90 kph – make a left hand turn on final descent into an airport on Christmas Day – leap into the air in front of us while we’re bike commuting – FUCK THAT’S BIG – gain three meters in altitude instantly upon taking a massive dump after take off – but we never saw what we saw yesterday before.

The heron landed sideways. It looked like it was doing a sliding tap dance on the surface of the water, and then just flung out its wings and set down. The grace, the total coolth and control… fabulous. Just wonderful. Like Fred Astaire possessed its body for five seconds.

SO MANY BEES: bumbles, honey bees.

Nice people to talk to. and Dorgles.

Amazing, beautiful weather, not too hot in the sun or chilly in the shade. Tide was EXTREMELY low.

Only grit was MUCH NOISE from Parks workers and the local industries.

Today – laundry and a quick shopping expotition.

good news

I’m eligible for my second vax as of Monday

MORE GOOD NEWS

Paul has had his second jab! he did what he said he was going to do which was go to the vaccination centre at the end of the day and ask if they had any jabs left over. So he’s fully vaccinated!!! yay modern medicine.

What do you call feeling wiped out after your vaxx PFIZERS ON STUN lol

AND

I made mac and cheese and Katie came by for a brief visit and I gave her some to take home. SHE ATE IT mOm SHE ATE IT.

Also she’s walking okay, and she took time off, and it’s just one of those things and we should all be glad she was wearing her Dickie’s!! (Heavy work jeans).

just slept the morning away

wheeeee!
Now to get up and eat something that isn’t mostly sugar!

Roasted veggies and boiled corn yesterday for lunch. The veggies came out great (brussels sprouts, yams and zucchini with a spice combo I found at Save On, lemon zest, basil and thyme); the corn was a fermented disaster. Tasted like it had been held at about 35 degrees for a day or so and then put back in the refrigerated environment. No mold, but nasty af.

Actually called Keith for cooking advice about the veggies but he didn’t call me back until after I had it in the oven. The idea that I’d be asking Keith for cooking advice, LOL but that’s parenthood for you, a brace of exploding surprises.

I have now watched 5/6ths of Maximilian and Marie and it’s filmed very dark and foggy, and it just doesn’t seem right. I quite like the principals, and the costumes and fighting and horse-stuff all seems pretty good, but there’s no real understanding of how far Austria is from Burgundy and sometimes it seems to go by a little faster than the contemporary roads would allow. Also, there were a couple of points where I thought well THAT NEVER HAPPENED but it’s the usual Dorothy Dunnett fan grousing about various things. I think they once again did not represent the Spider King properly.

Philip de Commines comes across as a right asshole, too. I did learn that he wrote a huge memoir about his time with the Spider King and is considered a prime source for this period of history, so I bookmarked it in English to look at later.

The crows are yelling at me to put out some food.