Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
Yesterday’s count was 864 words.
brOJeff has identified the best webcam of all time. WALRUS CAM. Right now it’s coming up dawn, but a beachful of walruses will be a sure remedy for woe.
The boys dropped by on the way to paddling at Widgeon Creek yesterday. They ate up some food and we had a nice chat.
Today I have to cook up some salmon.
The interview went well enough, and it seems a pleasant place to work. I was quite sore when I got back but it is a completely manageable commute (although it feels super weird to be going to the same old station as I did when I was working at Xantrex).
I wrote about 100 words yesterday.
Keith came over and we watched Big Trouble in Little China, which is about one quarter of an awesome movie and whose design elements never quite gell properly. Still, very entertaining, and rather different from other movies made in 1986.
Score! mOm and Jeff and I are watching Grace and Frankie at about the same rate, which is like the first time we’ve been at the same stage of watching a show in like, forever. She adores all the leads, as do we.
I wish the sun would come out… what a difference it makes!
Facebook seems to be down. Hope it stays that way.
Got a wonderful and welcome email from Donna about the circumstances of the Circle Dinner being cancelled. I am so heartened by her kindness in taking the trouble to let us know. My thoughts are with David and I am thinking with gratitude of his health care providers, who really went above and beyond.
And now, to return to work on the novel or something like it.
I’ve already made wordcount (over 1000) today, so now I’m thinking about working on churchy business and making something for the Circle Dinner tonight. Sue’s going to give me a lift.
And that’s about all. I had a lovely time with Katie and Alex and Jessica and Ellie at the Quay yesterday, but she hasn’t sent me the pics yet…. sadface.
Also, VERY SORE from yesterday’s walk. Five more days until I see the specialist.
I have a job interview on Monday.
It is Suddenly Summer after a long spring. It wasn’t forecast, but Vancouver got the May 2-4 weekend we’ve been longing for. Normally, we have overcast in May. This weekend was rilly glorious.
No cpap, no writing. I did get the disgusting hell hole that was the front hall where the litter pan was mucked out, ran some laundry (and used the line to dry, yay!) and hacked away at The King Will Never Die (the BB King memorial song, which is, as frikking usual, morphing away from me into something else.)
Jeff took me to brekkie.
The agent for the landpeer comes over this morning and we re-up on our lease. And why not, they aren’t raising our rent, which in Vancouver is better than winning a lottery because then all your friends and relatives aren’t bugging you for cash, but you still have more in your pocket.
Time to go make three days of wordcount.
Yesterday I wrote 1700 words, only 1200 of which will end up in the novel unless I tweak them hard.
Keith came over and blitzed through GoT after taking me for a walk (we went to the Twist and got beer, which Keith kindly carried home, which is good, because I am very sore), and I made bread rolls, which was pretty much all I had to do to get Keith to come over. (I think in some ways Keith considers my cooking to be pretty good.) The rolls are incredibly dense and chewy. I will have to do that again, this time when Jeff’s here and before they vanish.
1.2 hours.
Margot and Buster are irritated that Jeff’s door is closed. Margot mewed as loudly as she could to wake me up this morning, which is not very loud but reasonably effective when she’s jamming her face under my door (the gap is very big.) Margot’s in the living room right now and Buster is on the top bunk sleeping in my suitcase.
Back to writing. Pharos and George are working their way through a long to-do list. mOm is enjoying it and so I wonder what I’ll dream up today.
Still feeling very loved from last night; it was good to be with everyone, and getting a ride home from your son and not having to worry about how he drives is very pleasant too.
Alex is very vigorous. I got to hold him and bounce him a couple of times but really he’s all about his ma.
Archie Panjabi is getting her own show. Yay! Hopefully it won’t be crap.
666 words today.
Paul and Keith hosted our Mother’s Day dinner, Katie and Alex also being in attendance. I didn’t take any pictures, but I have lovely mental images now of Alex confidently and speedily crawling while carrying things and jamming them in his mouth, showing a mastery of multitasking one normally doesn’t attribute to a seven month old infant. Of course my notion of normal doesn’t really apply. Once a grandmother, imagination takes wing, hyperbole becomes common speech, modesty goes skinny dipping with the paparazzi, and sanity departs on a baby-powder scented puff of wind.
wonderful meal
I felt completely punched out after giving blood, and collapsed early. I forgot to put the cpap on, just fell into bed.
Mother’s Day dinner at Paul’s on Monday night, the earliest we can herd all of us into one corner.
I couldn’t write, I couldn’t work on the church project, I was swithering like a’ idiot, so I said it’s a Mental Health Day and when Paul called and said, “Let’s give blood” I said “What a great idea but I can’t stand it for today. I’m coming to your place with my mandolin on my back.” So I walked over there and it started to rain just as I got to the stairs and he left the front door open and I went up the back stairs so he had to go lock his front door and we had a good laugh about that and then I played Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked for him, which he hadn’t heard before. I left him the lyrics and chords, and played it enough times that he started to work up some guitar and I started to practically bleed out my finger ends. It hurts to type today, bwa ha ha. Then we played our way though a couple of Oscar Brand air force tunes, I played my way through the In the Lineup for the Ferry song (I had played it through once and this time he could play along) and then we dawdled and noodled and messed about for a couple of hours, him marvelling that I FINALLY have the intonation problems sorted out on Otto. He’s been out of sorts since GAFilk and he’s now perfect (gotdamn that floating bridge!!! it’s the one thing Peter C. did when he was making Otto that I hate) and if anything he’s louder and more resonant than before. Then I played Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked AGAIN a couple of times because I’ve shifted how I play it a bit, and was now comfortable enough that a) the tune as sung was actually sounding a bit more like the recording and b) the chord structure still doesn’t sound like the recording but it’s better. Then I told him that if we ever play it when Katie and Keith are present for music night they will be singing along with the choruses – Katie and I had it as part of the ‘get going’ music mix for the café – and Keith knows it from the opening titles of Gearbox’s video game Borderlands, which we used to rewatch all the time because it’s like the best opening title in gaming.
Then he fed me lentil soup and beer and crusty white bread toasted with butter and a Non Refrigerated apple – the last apple he served for me nearly made my back teeth pick up their skirts and flee, it was so durn cold – but I admired his new fridge, for a net cost of $175 he got a bottom drawer freezer Kenmore with the door hung the right way although he did nearly spavin himself getting it up the stairs and he now has to replace all the brand new nosing for the stair treads ’cause they all have divots in them now. (It looks like an alien dragged its nasty bits up to the first floor.) Apparently Keith hated the old fridge and did handsprings when he saw the new one and realized that HE wasn’t going to get roped into hauling it up the stairs (his job is very physical) or getting the old one out.
I told him about Replens, as Lady Miss Banjola had told me about it, and how along with eye drops the advice given ensured my life was a better place, except it’s FRIKKIN expensive and could he find eight packs in the States for me and he said he’d look.
We discussed putting together a book of family stories from his side of the family, while his mum’s still with us (doing fine apparently), as inspired by mOm’s numerous efforts, talked about some flying he’d been doing (he’s enjoying the soaring in Enumclaw, and of course I crack up every time I hear that name, for all the wrong reasons.) We talked about Keith and Katie and their marvellous young lives and challenges, the retirement party he went to at the Shark Club (where, apparently, the last pleasant drink servers in the lower Mainland have taken refuge) and the highly excellent noms he ingested there.
Then he took me for a quick shop including healthy food and unhealthy noms and beer AND helped me haul in groceries. If there is a nicer ex in the whole universe then whoever has him / her isn’t publicly bragging.
Then at home we watched a couple of titles from the second season of POI and I turned the steak into itty pieces and cooked it fast with mushrooms and lots of onions and chili seasoning, not too much, and so to bed, where I got 2.2 hours on the cpap and am now ready to start another day, and maybe get a little more done. Maybe. Not a betting woman normally.
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.
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.
I’m in cleaning mode, so I’m skipping church (hey, it’s a miracle I feel like cleaning, church would only interrup’ things.)
.5 hours last night, 1.2 the night before. No writing. Day cards are the Devil and the ten of Pentacles.
HTW dowsing…. Found out about a woman named Hannah Adams who wrote a book of comparative religion in 1817 in which she deliberately avoided pejorative terms in describing heathens (haw haw), Muslims etc. No surprise that a man who would find such a book interesting would have Quakers, Baha’is, atheists, agnostics and Unitarians among his descendents.
I am wiping my face from mirth. From my ancestor’s diary.
Banbury
On April 10th I (ed this is the I-VII day marker instead of the pagan days of the week that Christian diarists use, not him saying “I”). Took leave of our relatives and friends at Banbury and started 3rd Class, Lydia and I 1 1/9 each from Banbury to Birkenhead. Paid for Perambulator as excess of Luggage 2/6 and nothing for either of the Children. When we reached Birkinhead about 8:10 PM, crossed over to Liverpool for 4 pence altogether and took up our abode for the night at J. McCarthy’s, Victoria Temperance Coffee House, Number 1 Queen Street. Had but little rest through the night from Bugs, etc. Were glad to see the morning light. Paid also 1/10 for Porterage at Liverpool.
so….
ahem.
What WAS the ‘etc.’? In context, it was probably kids barfing. But imagine if you will, sticking your toe into the slipstream of history, and inventing a story. A murder mystery that takes place between the etc. and the Were glad to see the morning light.
Perhaps some of the antiques and books he collected were haunted. That would be fun. His evening being interrupted by raising a demon or finding a alchemical map sewn into the binding would be interesting. Maybe a little too Warehouse 13 and The Librarians and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural and True Blood and I could probably think of others I’ve watched along that line.
Or he and his wife intervene in a dispute which does not concern them.
I bet if I thought about it very hard I could come up with a dozen different story ideas.
It’s not even 8 am and I’ve made word count already. I think I’ll go make some breakfast and coffee.
1.8 hours last night. I cleaned the tube on the machine so I’m feeling much better about it.
Someone I used to work with got the job I really wanted. I am very happy for him, and even happier for me, because I am writing, and I don’t want to stop. And I would probably stop or slow down if I was working full time.
Yesterday Paul and Mike and Keith took me out to dinner at the Indian Bistro on 6th. It was absolutely lovely, and the okra dish WAS PHENOMENAL. So glad Paul ordered it.
Tomorrow night, Musical Evening at Paul’s, and the night after that, Circle Dinner at Heather and Ian’s for church. Then church on Sunday. The weekend looks busy. If the weather is good there is always the possibility I’ll go to Wreck on Saturday. If I feel like being too exhausted to go to the Circle Dinner that is, so, no.
The last episode of Justified was amazing. The last scene between Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins is breathtaking. They did it right.
Back to writing… Kima just squeezed Pharos out and has returned to the surface to check unheard messages.
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.)
Keith has done his download. Paul and I broke up years ago, but that doesn’t really set a timetable for when Keith processes it, so that is what it was about. My final comment to him was, “I understand it takes a while to process things, and you might wish to consider talking about it sooner than later.” So, all good.
No hours logged last night. I honestly think I forgot to put it on, which is weird, because I loaded in more distilled water. So I feel a little sludgy this morning.
I think I will make waffles.
Saw Louis Malle’s Crackers with Keith and Jeff yesterday – it is a most wonderfully strange movie. Many aspects of the script you couldn’t get made today. Wallace Shawn as Turtle is amazing. Donald Sutherland as the would-be supervillain is hilarious. The scene where he’s expertly blowdrying his hair had my eyes popping. The film is not very highly rated and I enjoyed it anyway, mostly because I had no idea what was going to happen next. Also, a young and sizzling Christine Baranski wears a startling array of lovely lingerie, and that by itself is worth seeing.
