Moving day

moving day

moving day

if you can’t pay the rent you’ll have to live out in a tent because it’s

moo

ha oo

ha oo-ving day

Katie rented the truck for today and goes to pick it up at 10 am; I’ll go over to Planet Bachelor this forenoon and help out how I can. Jeff and I are so glad we’re not moving right now it’s quite remarkable.

Here is a lovely poem, with some context.

9,189 9443 words

As we come up on the Inauguration I find myself more and more frightened. I tell myself that Trmp and his people are too stupid to manage an insurrection, but it’s really the grift that’s the point, but I’m still afraid of good people dying, and the number of people in Canada who feel the same way as the Trumpites is huge, and this is a long term problem that will not go away.

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Cartoon of a donkey and an elephant. In the first frame Donkey’s placard reads UNITY and the Elephant’s F*** YOUR FEELINGS. The second frame the donkey’s placard is ACCOUNTABILITY and the elephant’s now covered in rainbows and butterflies, says UNITY.  NICK ANDERSON

arise ye prisoners of doomscrolling

Did a small shop and made borscht. Paul came by with some of John’s filk books, and best of all was Peter Alway’s Introduction to Mountain Dulcimer so I now have a picture of one of my filk friends on a pamphlet about an instrument I own. I’m going to review it again today with the instrument in hand.

Chuck Norris was at the insurrection event in Washington. What a cruel and grasping individual.

Today, while the blossoms still — hey waitaminute

Today I’m going over to Planet Bachelor to assist with moving activities. I have no idea what form that assistance will take but something must be done. Called Keith last night and he said AFTER LunCH so that’s when I am going.

If Nancy Pelosi wasn’t such an aged and normative coward none of the shit in the US would have happened. Trump took advantage and Pelosi cheerfully let him.

Hey mumma! Tumblr screenshot. @bellezalatina: There’s a dish called “Rosca de Reyes”, it’s a cake with slices of fruit. Inside of it, they place a small baby shaped figure that represents baby Jesus. This year, in Mexico, people were selling the cake with figures of Baby Yoda instead of the baby Jesus. So, conservative groups are extremely upset about it, and are calling it a direct attack to family values and religion. So now, Baby Yoda is considered a LGBT icon for making furious those conservative, homophobic people.

Baby Yoda is messing with EVANGELICALS and CATHOLICS now.

 

YESSSSS

recording sesh

Recorded ten songs – archival quality, if I was doing it nicey nice it would be 4 – with Anthony at 12th St Sound this morning. I’ve preposted some already.

Had a fantastic time, will definitely go back.

Katie’s going great guns on getting the rental into shape. She’s a force of nature, that woman.

560 new words today on UPSUN

Honestly I feel really happy right now.

wonderful outing, terrible weather

The weather is heinous, unconscionable, loathsome and ghastly, but it is Vancouver in January, so….

Finished the biscotti around 11:30, borrowed the car just before noon, and delivered biscotti to Cindy (also returned her Christmas themed cookie tin, you always hope they come back but they don’t necessarily) and then drove to Tom and Peggy’s- their car was gone so I left it with the Globe and Mail on their front porch – then went to Planet Bachelor and gave the biscotti to Paul and met Katie on her way out the door (no Alex, he’s at his pop’s) to clean the new place on 15th which will need a new sobriquet, I’m thinking Generations. It is big. I mean this is a big, big four bedroom apartment. Open plan, perfect for a family. I joined her and cleaned two things and loaded toilet paper into all the johns and toured the joint and tried not to make work for Katie.

Then Mike showed up (the one she’s sweet on, not the one I hang out with and who gave us an Oculus for Christmas) and you’re not supposed to jump up and down and howl like a mofo when people lose weight so I said what I always say when people lose a lot of weight I pretend I’m sad and say, “But there’s so much less of you to love,” and his eyes kinda bugged out for a second and he said is it that noticeable and I said, “Oh yeah.”

So there’s me being dashed far from appropriate, and then the next thing outta my mouth is the classic, “You’re timing’s perfect, I just put biffy paper in all the johns,” BECAUSE THERE ARE THREE FUCKING JOHNS four if you count the one next to the laundry room downstairs but that one’s shared – and I guess I realized it was time to go. Did I mention the Jacuzzi? The square dance hall sized covered rear deck? the CHANDE FUCKING LIER? I’m leaving shit out, mOm, so I can ambush you with it later.

He went to her place – Katie cracked up as she thought of him scaring the shit out of the boys using her key. But he was going to help her move some stuff into the house, so that’s the kind of lad he is, immediately helpful and undemanding. And I thought I do not want to be here when he gets back.  I thought I’d pick up sushi but I just didn’t want to, so I went to buy stamps and went to choices and got salad and chocklit and chicken on skewers and made a late lunch and we watched the Saxon Hoard special on Time Team.

Now I’m thinking I’m going to nap and be happy in my sleep for a while, because I can’t tell you how happy I am for being wide awake at the moment. If I can sleep at all for the noise the wind is making, it’s quite unreal. Aw damn, I have to put the food away first….

No Alex

Jeff and Allegra circa 1963

Not so much as a peep out of Planet Bachelor. This paragraph deleted, and there was much rejoicing. I’ve written him a letter, now I have to figure out what I did with the last stamps. Can you believe it? I bought 48 stamps a month ago and they are all gone.

I practiced for an hour this morning, including working up a mandolin accompaniment for “I Guess I Never Felt This Way,” which the kids helped me write while we were living in Montreal. Jesus, such a long time ago now. I wouldn’t trade my troubles then for now, that’s for damned sure.

Visibility outside has crashed from 3 k to less than 200 metres. A FOGGY MORN IN BURNABY.

Time to figure out what the MIT is for today… the Most Important Thing. I’m thinking letters… I have so MANY to ANSWER. Yup.

I’m not happy with my major project for next year, but honestly, if I just record one tiny little thing per day, that will still technically work, and it’s not supposed to be fun, it’s assembling my entire life’s work in one year, so yeah, it’s work. Not everyone gets the chance to do something like that, and most women throughout history couldn’t even read.

The other daily post, that is really really going to be a grind, but 2021 is going to be the year of ‘real content or die tryin’. I’ve posted all the Throwback Thursday pictures for all of November and December 2021 so progress, yay.

Just as an aside, a suicide bomber blew up a substantial chunk of Nashville on Christmas day, but the fucking media is spavining itself coming up with ANY CONSTRUCTION BUT ‘ SUICIDE BOMBER ‘ because that’s reserved for BROWN PEOPLE.

The racism of this society is heinous bullshit.

 

Kinda hoping to see the grandson today

I don’t know if I will, but I hope to.

Part III Lord of the Rings today, unless Jeff bails. A rewatch every two years is too soon.

I want to make flower buns. I did make flower buns. I want to eat flower buns. They are baking. I didn’t set the timer, I’ll yoink ’em out in 15-20

Time for a huge mug of tea while I contemplate what to say to all my letter writers when not too much is happening. I stayed up all night and slept late and I haven’t eaten anything but bread dough and I still haven’t had the tea and it’s hours later.

Note to Jessie, to be conveyed through mOm:

It may surprise you to learn that in the view of this member of your chosen family, you are still formed for usefulness despite your trials. You are a living image of quiet perseverance; I find your continued assertion of your will and mind quite motivating.

a short list

Unca Barry’s first letter came. I haven’t finished it as I intend to savour it but I was snorting with laughter by the second para.

Paul showed up and I drove us to Deer Lake Park where we did our normal circuit at a very good rate of knots, since there was no place to sit down, har har, because there was ice and snow on everything. Nearly wiped out on the walkway surface FARTHEST from where an extraction by ambulance could happen, as I’m grimly muttering I AM NOT FALLING DOWN AND BREAKING MY SHOULDER AGAIN.

My psychological feathers are back in place now that I’ve heard from mOm about the latest HOTM update I sent her. It’s a piece of fluff but that’s what we need these days, and I do love those characters.

Today: More posting for 2021, more writing, run dishwasher, practice, go for a walk, find the other dryer ball, Expanse 5:4, flower rolls. Amazing, I crossed that off the list already and it isn’t even noon…

 

later A THOUSAND BLESSINGS ON THE HEAD OF CINDY who BROUGHT BAKING and IT IS GOOD

 

 

Hullo all

Allegra’s very good week continues! I got my eyes checked (onset of diabetes, BP etc) and they are VERY GOOD for 62 year old peepers. Little bit cataract in one eye, no biggie, the horrific slide in visual acuity has been completely halted, and I do not have vertical heterophoria, something that often accompanies ADD.

Walked to Planet Bachelor – a very pleasant walk, only a tiny spit of rain on the way home – and Keith cooked a vegan lunch, and they talked and I listened about the move, and they are all so excited and happy it’s just blowing my mind. I thought Paul might need some help but Katie, our matriarch-in-training, is acing it. They’re going to double pay for accommodations so they can take their time. I made some notes.

Suzanne’s ex-husband Bill died in the last few days. The story is not mine to tell. I called Suzanne and while I wasn’t so foolish as to think I could cheer her up after her loss, I did manage to take her mind off her troubles for twenty minutes and that’s not nothing. Two of her four kids are in crisis right now and this family news will not help. Please hit me hard if I complain about my children. Not everything is planning, there’s a lot of fate in there.

The family court date did not provide a resolution, and it’s now going to trial.

Mexican Gothic (by a local sci fi / fantasy / horror writer Silvia Moreno-Garcia) is FINALLY at New West library, I go to pick it up today. Jeff has biz in town so I’m hoping to do a brief tour of the retailers of New West to pick up a couple of essentials as well as the book

People are LOVING my Christmas arts! It’s pleasant to have had some fun with it.

Jan M MADE ME AND JEFF MASKS FOR CHRISTMAS!!! along with a card of a giraffe – her consulting animal – covered in scarves – lol – and the interior MERRY FUCKING XMAS which is absolutely lovely.

 

thinking of continuing the dietary excess

I am not prepared to publicly say what I’d do for an xlarge doble doble and a honey dip right now.

There’s fantastic (potential) family news right now about housing for the Planet Bachelor people. A house rental apartment a block from the school? CAN SUCH THINGS BE? Alex gets his own room PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE and the atheist wears out her knees.

Two Daves

Two letters written but not posted today; it’s a Two Dave day.

Jeff’s just asked me to go downstairs and watch a Time Team. Hope it’s something Saxon or Roman. L8r Nope, medieval and Tudor. But really interesting if you’re crazy about remodelling castles for successive waves of improvements in warfare, boom goes the gunpowder.

Alex was here recently and I’m just remembering him being happy about getting a tube shot on the Xenon game and it made me happy in consequence.

Buster was past damp into dripping wet, and filthy when he came back in this morning…. must be horrible to have to clean that crap off with your teeth and mouth blech.

Indian food delivered last night. I was very happy with the quality and quantity for the price. It’s a new place (8 months?)  that does pizza and Desi food Pasifika style, which is like, so Vancouver, it hurts.

Chuck Yeager, RIP. His autobiography is most entertaining.

Letter from Onty Mary, and I’m so glad she enjoyed the paper art I put in with a recent letter, that was cheering.

Today has been set aside for One Grim Task. I do not want this task. I do not want the cascade of tasks that will flow from this One Grim Task. I AM DISGUST, SON.

It’s 10:20 in the morning and I am still not nerved up for this gd task. I am actually hitting the old moral GPS for a recalc from my new position and fuck me if it’s not taking a bit longer than any reasonable person might expect. What is it that a reasonable person following Stoic principles might expect? I said I’d write first PHEW AN OUT, I HAVE AN OUT.

With that I must now turn my attention to the real writing I need to do today, otherwise known as Quarantine Porn. And that works whether I’m talking about the UPSUN universe or my rapidly-winding-down interest in writing porny Supernatural fanfic. (Not all of it’s porn, some of it’s just fluff.)

And if I’m not going to write that, I have to go back out into the kitchen and either work some more on The Dark Book – current section is “the Calendar” and it’s fucking MOLOCH this and MOLOCH that, as he drives his diesel dick through history and messes us all up, it’s just standard issue eschatology schlock, that’s part of the point of the poem though, disjointing the specifically English language over and past and through its various levels of inanity, legalism and perverse vagueness through to a new horrific understanding about what ‘end times’ actually means for the people living through it, and you are among those people, and what the hell is this poem anyway (this last aside for my parents, who have long since given up on trying to understand what it is I’m babbling about and reached this question much earlier) — or work on my master grocery list, and I finally figured how I can get what my grocery list looks like in my head to my actual grocery list that I use every week and reinforces how I visualize and operate in the world, but I haven’t done it yet. So I have work to do to advance this project, which will assist me cognitively as my brain declines and I’m still shopping, and which may have applications for other seniors and TBI sufferers. (I certainly wasn’t able to find anything like it on line.) So yeah, projects, in order, depending on what I’m up for mood and skill wize.

Yup, I’m going to wander off and reconfigure my reality right now, be back in a day for an update or sooner if something interesting happens.

One last thing, the ‘writing light’ in the kitchen died and I asked for help from Jeff  (my shoulder’s frozen…. that was weird, realizing it) and he touched the apparently dead compact fluorescent and it illuminated and it made me think of pOp. Also Jeff is quietly amazing, the best kind.

The unexpected postcard

I haven’t had enough
Can’t ask me to say when
Can’t ask me to resist
Won’t come my way again

It’s not that I am helpless
Nor that I am compelled
But that I have no words for
A way I’ve never felt

a long guitar and harmonica talking instrumental break

When you feel like you’re past hope
Past any chance for redemption
Perhaps some satisfaction
That life would get my vote
Then love comes into view
Like an unexpected postcard
Saying everything is beautiful
And soon you will be home.

fiddle on the last four lines, harmonica drops out

yes this is a destiel filk, tune exceeding dangerously sappy C&W, and it’s going along with the fic I’m working on. I am so cheesed with myself; I don’t want to leave the house, and there’s been a letter to pOp sitting there on the kitchen table for the last day. Also I’m supposed to make like lady bountiful to Paul, holed up in his motel. Tea, and beans, and whatnot.

Countdown to a US Civil War

Forty days. The world already got slammed by a pandemic. So I was right, who cares. To be right without helping set the world right isn’t enough, until you understand that no single person can do it anyway.

I’m not alone and the world will eventually get ‘better’. What that world will look like no one knows. Not even someone raised on the future, like I was, can know.

I got a phone call from Alex yesterday and after he told me that he played with Henry with magnets and it was big fun at school, he requested cinnamon buns with no glaze.

Can do little critter, can do. And I will. Daughter is collecting them after work today, so about 1 pm I will start the dough.

later again

Tom’s in hospital. He’s on his cell phone though, so it’s not like he’s incommunicado or currently dying. Glad I called Peggy and learned these tidings, which I communicated to the Keith for their household.

 

word count on fic 15466

graphic shows sonic the hedgehog’s two eyes gradually growing together to form a single huge eyeball

 

current mood

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shown is a lightly smirking woman, having won a beaver handling contest I’D FUCKING SMIRK TOO not that I’d ever have her simply incandescent skill set.Image

@zhaabowekwe posted this, saying that she’s still badass and one of the most fluent Anishinaabemowin speakers