Category: Family

Moar beer!

Picked up some Phillips Hop Circle IPA on the way home from our walk yesterday.  I was actually napping when Paul called; we got Phyllis’ letter to the post office, and walked, and I deposited a cheque, and returned home to get some spaghetti into us and watch our Tuesday TV.

And oh, the walk.  I have NEVER seen so many wild seals at once.  At one point, directly in front of the discovery centre, there were five seals, all facing into the stream, and quite close to shore.  We also saw the N American variant of the Common Merganser, a breeding pair of them, and heard their bizarre call at least once (I had to look it up to confirm) and we saw another breeding pair of ducks which were much smaller and which I could not for the life of me identify.

I got some video of them but damn they were far away.

We also saw a real range of dogs including the world’s oldest and mellowest pit bull, who sweetly accepted a pat.  Paul insisted on buying me gelato, so I insisted that he buy the lime mojito (So Tart, and the mint flavour at the finish, So Divine) and I got Pannacotta, which is wimpy of me I know.

2.9 hours!

beer!

Paul brought Goose Beer IPA back from the States for me, and we had a lovely long chat about various subjects.  He’s OVER THE MOON about being retired, and I’m very, very happy for him.  When he first got the job at Air Canada I was very happy because he’d had quite a choppy job history up until that point and I remember saying that he now had a fighting chance of being able to retire on more than a pittance, and now it’s happened, it’s really real. And he so richly deserves it, because that man put a lot of his life and pain and grit into that company and the safety of the people who fly in those aircraft.

.7 hours last night, what’s up with that.

Cleaned my room yesterday! Buster used the opportunity to come in and pee on stuff, but fortunately it was stuff I was throwing out or immediately washing, so Saul Goodman.  The beautiful wood floors now shine, I’ve consolidated seven boxes into two, and now I need to move all the filk I discovered (holy MOG there was a lot of it) into the binder(s) allocated for it.  BUT I found the Kathy Mar songbook for her concert at FKO which I had been looking for since I went, very happy about that.

I found 33 dollars in change and bills while I was cleaning, netting $5.50 per hour.  Just trying the brightside, here.

Next on deck getting the three loads of laundry put away.  I suspect my best bet is to s-can 50% of the clothing that comes out of the dryer today.  I don’t have enough room, and while psychologically I can never have enough cotton knit dresses in beige, possibly it’s time to turn them into something else, like a donation to a charity.

After that my desk, and an indexing of my craft, cable and paper stashes so I know what I have and can quit buying cute little notebooks.  I found so many yesterday that it is not funny, nuh-unh.

I have to figure out which writing I’m going to give the interviewers on Thursday. This is not going to be difficult, I just have to ensure that it’s the correct tone for the task.

I recently had reason to confront how I am a complete frickin’ coward about SJW issues, even when they are in my face.  Blerg.  PLEASE DON’T SAY SOMETHING TRASHILY RACIST AND THEN SAY I’M NOT RACIST MY BEST FRIEND IS BLACK BECAUSE you will make me intensely uncomfortable and I won’t actually do anything about it.  I got some good suggestions from my twitter pals – the white ones.  The POCs stayed the hell out my mini meltdown, for which I can only say thank you.

Shaking my head.

Jeff has returned from the land of the fOlks, and they remain bloody marvellous by all accounts.  I have received an envelope, for this relief much thanks.  And now I’m going to storyboard my day, which has some bicycling in it whenever the rain lets up.  And yes mOm I will wear my helmet this time.

 

 

Sundry and various

Got a package ready for ex MIL Phyllis so she’ll finally have pictures of her new great grandbaby.  Didn’t manage to get it into the mail, that’s for today.

3.9 hours on the cpap, in two stretches.

Jeff texted me to remind me about the garbage and if you can believe it I was already done!  I have brushed up my toes.

Went to see the gals who gave us Autumn, who transmoggified into Buster, and gave them all the contact deets so they can come and see him anytime. Rode over there on my bike to feed Ayesha and on the way back and JUST MISSED the vet’s office so I couldn’t pick up kitty malt for Margot, who seems to have quite a hairball to deal with.  She’s quite clingy and for the first time in about four years spent the night with me on my bed. Buster tried to scare her off but she wasn’t having any.  While I was riding (in the pouring rain, meh) a four year girl chided me for not wearing a helmet.  Everyone’s a critic.

Paul seems to be in the best mood you can imagine possible, which probably has something to do with retiring.  Yup, he put in his paperwork and joy was exceeding unrefined-like. They gave him money to buy his own goodbye eats with and he said POSITIVELY NO DONUTS and fed everybody about $150 of healthy food, which he says his soon to be former coworkers fell on like piranhas.  Nope, not even a deli tray – all healthy stuff.

He is currently in Seattle and he’s promised to bring me home some craft beer.

Watched one of the Bourne movies last night and noodled along to the music trying to deconstruct how you make a tense soundtrack.  I don’t normally write in modulations but soundtracks are full of them.  I will have to think on this thing.  It’s definitely a skill.

Did not go to church.  Sue was rehearsing in north Van and I just could not get my ass out the door.  But I did go cycling later, so I’ve got that going for me.

I practiced mandolin quite a bit yesterday. I did not do any writing or editing.

Bean paste

Among other things, that’s what Katie fed me for lunch yesterday.  Alex dumped a coke all over our booth, the little bugger.  Argh.

I got a call back from the company I most recently interviewed for.  I will be gang interviewed by 4 lots of people over two hours.  Once again, I’m prepping in all seriousness, but I’m not going to be downcast if I don’t get it; I’m qualified for the job and I need to remember that, looking for other work.  Look for how it went next Friday morning, unless I post Thursday afternoon late.

0 hours on cpap, I actually forgot to put it on last night.  Tonight I shall try again.

Walked 4 k yesterday; I was about crippled when I got home, but hey, 270 calories were burned.  It was raining, and Alex slept through the whole thing.

Changes and exits

It’s not my story to tell, so I won’t tell it. Suffice it to say that someone dear to me is experiencing anxiety and disquiet for very valid reasons, and I feel my presence really helped move things along a good path and reduce anxiety, an’ that’s what friends are for.

Spent the night away from home, 4 hours on the cpap anyway so I feel quite perky.  Keith says he needs to talk to me about things and stuff for reasons, and that I’m going to be very upset.  Katie and Alex are coming over later this morning.  O don’t I have a lot to look forward to.

Back to the address to the troops.

Walkies

Paul and I had a simply lovely walk down at the Quay and then he treated me to sopa de tortilla and hot chocolate, both of which were simply scrumptious (Paul owned to being impressed at how fast I demolished the soup).  We didn’t give blood, thanks to things&stuff because reasons, but there’s an appointment later this week.

I broke down and made an appointment to get a crown, having previously thought that handing over a month’s income was a bit much and then I realized I was being a moron.  I can borrow the money, I can sell stuff to cover it, I can put it on my credit card.  It really hurts – I’m in constant tooth pain – and we KNOW how this story goes.  Until the tooth comes out, it’s all downhill from here.  And it’s all because there was a piece of metal in a pancake at IHOP two years ago.  Shit.

Doxie sent me another scanning unit, which took a charge promptly and which I am about to test.  DOXIE HAS AWESOME CUSTOMER SUPPORT Y’ALL and considering what a tempestuous clown I was asking for support it goes double.

Keith and Paul and Jeff and I hung out after the walk.

Tarot reading yesterday with a friend.  It was essentially the same as the last one, in that it said “Shit’s gonna fly, everything will be okay at the end.”  More specifics don’t seem to be coming.  The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.

Katie is hopefully coming Friday, with Alex, to cut my hair.

Why you shouldn’t buy a Hummer

It just seems like the end of civilization to me.

2.2 hours.

Civilian tilt rotor aircraft?  All I can think of is the maintenance.

Keith came by yesterday and pumped up my tires and did a pre flight check on my bicycle.  I am now ready to do a shop via bicycle.

I’ve gotten back into practicing every day, which means that every once in a while I fondle my callouses.  We’ve booked another musical evening at Paul’s for the 17th of April. SO looking forward to it.  Sue and Brian can’t come (already got some answers back, waa.)

Crappy maintenance and poor planning on the part of SFU crash the hopes of single women trying to get a career together.

They put filk music in quotes and rilly rilly pissed me off. A lot about this article is if not wrong, then wrongheaded.

moar sun

1.5 hours on the cpap.  Yesterday Paul and I ate lunch on his front deck – I had having a most severe craving for European style weiners (for about the last month) and he providentially had some.  Jeff and I don’t buy any kind of weiners at all these days since they are basically a commercialized form of waste. Paul and I left the beer in the fridge and drank mineral water instead.  Paul wasn’t quite feeling up to giving blood, so I’ll book into the next clinic in New West next week.

Day before yesterday we had a blanket on our laps like old folks on the ship deck, and yesterday it was so warm and pleasant we didn’t have to.  Oakalla was so nice Paul took his shirt off (he has long since lost the power to embarrass me) and I contributed to the Caucasoid Hairiness Factor with my legs.  We looked for frogs and didn’t find any, and I identified a Towhee for passing strangers.  We didn’t see any other interesting birds, but we heard the m-e-e-e-e—–p bird in the bushes.  It makes a sound of plaintive disgust, sort of “I am sad and irritated and not energetic enough to make more than this soft little noise” – and I sure wish I knew what it was.  It was definitely warm enough for snakes to come out and Paul was pretty sure he saw one.  The last snake I saw that wasn’t a pet was a baby that Robof9 and Patricia and I saw on the stairs at the old Xantrex building up the hill.  Anyway it was a glorious walk and exactly the right length.

I have unlocked the achievement of getting an appointment for the specialist, and it’s in April, barely.  With not driving a standard so much (I’ve only driven Jeff’s car twice since I figured out what was wrong), and changing my gait just a wee tad, and putting a support pillow in the right place when I’m sleeping, and never, ever running, I can say I feel much better.  I also completely stopped taking any painkillers for most of the last week to see where I was, and I am pleased to say that I’m managing okay in the mornings.

I think what is happening is the cpap is actually getting me oxygenated enough at night that I can heal.  I do feel better.  The only thing that’s worse is my eyes, and I’m going to drill down a bit on that problem next.  I’ve had dry eyes since I was in my 20s but I’m thinking a humidifier in the drier months of the year, maybe one of the personal jobbies for my room, might be a good idea.

Jeff was supposed to go to the fOlks’ but he is going to be very busy with an unanticipated technical challenge.

No Alex yesterday!  How fast we get into habits.  Hopefully I’ll see him sometime this weekend.

 

ow

Katie and Alex came by to do laundry, eat pork stir fry which I had providentially cooked up that morning, and drink coffee, and Paul showed up to take me for a walk but was only too happy to take us all in his car, which involved much shovage and shrinkage on Katie’s part.

Somewhere in there the kitchen clock fell on my head and shattered, and I have a hummingbird egg on my head.  Getting hit by a clock when you’re 56 just seems a little too on the nose, doncha think?

So we 4 went to the Quay, and walking like my pelvic girdle done come apart, and grateful for the prop of the stroller, I got 2 k in, and then, joy of joys, Paul treated Katie and I to the sopa de tortilla at the Quay (best soup that isn’t phở for many miles).  Then I came home and I would have liked to have collapsed, but Alex was here so I sang to him and watched him career about in his Jolly Jumper (which was the reason the kitchen clock got dislodged, but oh well it’s still running although Jeff had to pull more glass out of it this morning.)

Church was okay.  The speaker had wonderful things to say about feeling like an odd person out, but a man in the congregation kept talking and it was hard to hear what was going on sometimes.  Also, the amount of tunage has dropped away to practically nothing, which is in my view somewhat farcical.  I didn’t hang about for the soup lunch.

The xray result should be back soon.  I have a note in to call the doc.

I have a rather troubling new symptom; the numb patch on the bottom of my foot more than doubled in size in the last twenty-four hours.  This is the first time the paresthesia has gotten significantly worse since my initial recovery from the L5-s1 injury, and what really cheeses me off is that I have been making a tremendous effort to get more flexibility happening and my symptoms get worse.  (I have been doing various exercises for my hips and back).  FML, as the kids say.

If I keep being this fragile I have no idea what will happen come May when I’m expected to do childcare several days a week.  I imagine I’ll adjust, but it’s a terrifying prospect that I might put my back out again.  Also, it’s by no means settled where this childcare will happen….

 

 

Sore

KatieAlexFeb15Walked 4+ km yesterday and my back feels okay but my pelvis is trashed.  Only managed the CPAP for an hour and a half .

Alex is so cute!  Yes I was walking around New Westminster yesterday, and although I have like $60 in my account until more funds arrive I simply had to have a Chronic Taco (Katie and I split one, it was SUPER DELICIOUS).  They cost a bomb but they are simply loaded with nutrition.

As a member of the League of Practical Women I purchased Katie some WD40 which immediately got used to desqueak the horrifically squeaky wheels of the stroller.

Pic back at the apartment.

Note: Baby drool smells GHASTLY once it dries.  I came home and thought, gosh, that’s …. what’s that….. and then ran to change my shirt.  He is Tom Drooly, f’sure.

Not much to report

Went for a short walk and fed Paul lunch yesterday.  Paul’s in good shape and told me a couple of hilarious (non-safety related) stories about his work.  I used to post them, but now I know that lawyers lurk everywhere.

I have a project to complete for church today and then hopefully I can head off to Victoria with a clear conscience and the ability to actually walk through the terminals.  Going up stairs for some reason is easier than coming down.

Unless of course Jeff wants to go first, in which case I’ll stay back and monitor cats.  I’ve already let Buster out, he was wild to leave the house.  He caught a mousie yesterday, which is now living in Jeff’s room in a box (Buster is generally kept out of our rooms as we’re not entirely sure he’s gotten out of the habit of pissing on things he wants to mark.  I can no longer put laundry in the bathroom as he soddenated one of my favourite dresses.)llllllllllllllllllL0 ,555555555555555555555555555555555

\’]2333ll  <—————Buster jumping up to greet me and mashing my keyboard.

Miss Margot is still good for a handful of fur every single day, and she’s getting increasingly cheesed with me and if I make eye contact with her for more than half a second she lollops off under the dining room table and hides.  However she cannot resist the table top as a sleeping / puking spot (dollar sized circles of grit, no hair), so I pick her up while she’s unconscious and for the first thirty seconds she’s too sleepy to put up much of a fight.  Don’t worry, those velvety paws turn into razor shanks when she’s so inclined.  Jeff pointed out that she’s sharpened her claws up and down the eastern side of his bed frame, heavy sigh.  Buster, if allowed in to his room, tips stuff off his desk and takes over his chair.

A Valentine for Vancouver

CPAP for about 4 hours.  Wonderful, textured, entertaining dreams. I feel more energetic.

I may go to Mike Beach today if the weather improves as much as it’s supposed to.

Alex and Katie were here yesterday for laundry, recording lullabies and scanning family photos.

Why me? Why Vancouver?

For almost ten years, my ex’s request to be transferred to Vancouver by his employer sat in some HR equivalent of development hell.  Nothing happened, and given the desirability of the posting and Paul’s place in the line, nothing was expected to.  Then, three weeks after our family followed his employment from Montréal to Toronto, he got word to report for work in Vancouver in 72 hours’ time.  Yeah. We did two interprovincial moves in five weeks.

And he smiled.  He’d applied for three weeks of vacation at exactly the same time, and couldn’t be forced to start work until it was finished. Thus began our family’s transition.

We put everything we owned in a truck trailer — including the vintage motorcycle and sidecar that Paul later sold so we could buy a house – and sent it on its way. We grabbed the kids and the cat and flew to Victoria and dropped the kids off with the grandparents, and then we spent two weeks lining up a car, a place to live and schooling and drivers licences,

We laboured in that little golden slot of weather that we get sometimes in late October, when the days are deliciously crisp and cool, the air smells wonderful, and the sun on the mountains makes you think you’re living in a fantasy novel.

We wondered why there was a bird we could only hear at intersections.  We said Gag-lard-ee and Anna-kiss and locals choked on polite laughter. We found a house (after consulting an earthquake map for the safest locales) and got the kids settled, and began a love affair with Vancouver that continues to this day.

I can’t speak for the rest of my family, since time has kept us in the same city but no longer under one roof, but the shape and texture and beauty of the city has come to mean home as no other place ever has.  Memories bubble up.

The turbaned Sikhs teasing the waitress to bring them chopsticks in the Chinese restaurant, “What are we, uncivilized?” The silent explosion of flowering shrubs each spring, the lilacs, the rhodos and the cherries. The way people leave their Diwali lights up until Christmas. The Babel of accents and voices on the transit; the kindnesses I have experienced on the two occasions I’ve had car trouble and strangers appeared out of nowhere with cell phones. The ‘four o’clock stripe’ at sunset in the winter, just about the only time you can reliably see the sun. The hundreds of kilometres of lovely places to walk and ride; the hills that nearly gut you in the summer and cause articulated buses to splay out like drunks in the winter.

Watching my son do Winter Karate Training on Jericho Beach, marching in his gi into the water; paddling among the herons on the Pitt River, and then nearly dying of the effort required to get back to the dock when the tide was making.  Sunsets and sunrises of transfixing beauty.  Dealing with raccoons, skunks, coyotes, deer and bears, and once, the authorities had to tranquilize a cougar, mere blocks from the house.  Running into herons in every part of the city.  Once I startled one as I came around a corner on my bicycle and nearly fell off as a six food wingspan abruptly flung wide in front of me. The stairs at Wreck Beach and the 60’s vibe that greets you at the bottom.  Sadness at the ancient trees wrecked by a storm in Stanley Park; joy to see the statue of Lord Stanley the first time and read the beautiful words inscribed on it.  Asking Headwater to come play on the back deck for my brother’s birthday, and what an amazing concert that was.

There are things I’ve learned to dislike about Vancouver, but complaints are cheap.  I’ve learned to love my splendid city, to want to know more about her and the people who were here before the settlers came.  It was a happy accident that brought me here, and I’ll be staying here as long as I can.  Vancouver has given me a church community I cherish, co-workers whom I now consider my closest friends, and music and love and really phenomenal craft beer in abundance.

It seems strange to have been born on one coast only to find my heart’s home on the other, but Vancouver is a place that has taught me to respect the playful grip coincidence has on any human life.

Many songs

So I have written down four additional songs, and I’m working on a blues tune called Don’t you Weep, which is a pisser because no matter how I try I cannot figure out how to render it; it’s played in E but that results in so many accidentals that the mss looks like birds crapped on it.  However, on playback it is sounding really good, and I’m having very little trouble with the tempo.  I now have to readjust everything because I forgot a verse but fortuitously I remembered the last time I had a song this difficult and I’m not putting in the lyrics until the very end, because if you cut and paste in Finale AFTER you’ve put in lyrics they follow around the pasted part and you have to completely redo everything because the lyrics and notes are tied together.  This results in very bad swearz.

I thought I heard Jeff up too and there’s a light under his door.  We’re not sleeping good.  Tonight and last night I used the Cpap for at least four hours.  I like it and then bam I can’t stand having something on my face and literally sit bolt upright and claw it off.  Blergh.

Katie and I went for a shop yesterday – she needed to do a HUGE shop to get as much food into the house after the rent got paid, and I needed a medium sized one.  And, I put gas in the car for what is probably the second time since I sold Ziva.  Anyway I left a bag of groceries at her place and Dax delivered it, which is good since I get crabby without cream for my coffee.  I bought Alex a teething blanky – he’s a chewy little boy.

There continues to be a wave front of disturbances in the Force regarding childrearing techniques.  Jesus fucking Christ people, Katie was raised in the benign neglect corner of the attachment parenting spectrum.  It goes like this: If the parents love each other and the children, feed -starting with breastfeeding- and clothe and house and vaccinate the children, align the children within their families with those who are most like them and like them most, and refuse to injure them with genital mutilation, hey, job done.  We didn’t allow babies to ‘cry it out’ because that means ‘HEY KID YOU CAN BE BLOWING A FUSE AND IN PAIN AND NOBODY GIVES A SHIT’ which means ‘WHY DON’T YOU GROW UP TO BE AN ADULT WHO NEVER COMPLAINS ABOUT WORK CONDITIONS OR HORRIBLE RELATIONSHIPS.’  And you may anyway, but that’s not the way we planned it.

Now Katie is trying to draw a line in the sand with incommonlaws about this, and I burst into tears while driving hearing about it because of my benign neglect attachment style and all of my Dredded Feelz.  Alex is an infant child; if he’s so active he leaves bruises on his caregivers that’s just the way he is; I had no idea my grandchild was going to be a little hairless mountain gorilla, but since he is in most respects normal I’m not worried about it.  I don’t worry because he doesn’t want to cuddle with me now; he will when he’s two, or ten, or NEVER and it’s for me to give him what he needs now and not get all judgy on his mom about how she’s not letting him cry it out.  He doesn’t like to be still.  If I hold him I stand and either walk or rock, and the second he gets yippy I hand him back.  It’s not a point of pride to me to get him to BEND TO MY FUCKING WILL; it’s a point of pride to expect his mother to know what the hell she is doing with her own gorram kid. Thus endeth the rant.

Now I am going to finish my coffee (paradoxically, it will help me go back to sleep) and play another Bejewelled game (I have now opened all the games and am waiting to collect about four more badges) and maybe even finish that damn song, and maybe even try to put the mask back on.  Sigh.

Today’s sermon is about disability.  I am not missing this.  I’m doing coffee next week, I just checked the list. Thank god it’s a google shared document now, siphoning my way through emails sucks.

 

Why won’t you die? (It’s a song, don’t worry)

Here it is…

Also, I thought I’d lost a different SG1 song, and it turns out I haven’t.  I’ll have to construct a new tune for the verse, but the chorus (the most important part of the song) is still firmly lodged.

Yesterday was an editing as opposed to writing day, but I still ploughed through some stuff on section 2, mostly in the “minions find the hologrammic skeleton” section.  I also did laundry, cleaned up cat puke and cat litter, baked a banana cake, ran the dishwasher, talked to a bunch of my friends on the phone and drank far too much coffee.

I think it’s possible I had the CPAP on for as much as four hours last night.  I get very dry eyes and it’s hard to swallow.

Buster is just as affectionate as ever.  Apparently he enjoys my skritches.  He has learned how to scoot his ass across the floor to scratch his bum where the surgery was, since it probably still itches like fury, and whenever he does it I burst out laughing, for never did I see a cat so locomote.  He can get up quite a turn of speed.  When he still had the cone on he was dreaming about cleaning himself in his sleep.  (Paw twitching, tongue coming dreamily out in licking motions).  He has finally policed himse’f up to the point he no longer smells, which is probably a relief to everyone.  He’s still pestering Margot, and yet they sleep in the same room, every day.

I will be getting chicken and chili ingredaments today for my various activities today – Jeff got home from various work related stuff so late I didn’t feel like going out.  Kids are going to Victoria, yay!  My mOm is kvelling herself into a little groove there, I’m quite sure.

a visit

Keith and Paul came over yesterday and we watched chunks of Ken Burns’ The Civil War and went for a walk in the glorious sunshine. It was lovely to have Keith here.

I made chocolate chip oatmeal flax cookies. And now they are gone, surprise surprise.

I found this article on weight loss really interesting.

 

And, for Midnite Moving, this looks kinda interesting as well.  Mostly because it helps solve the problem (by reframing what’s possible) of how George moves electricity around his body when he doesn’t have, you know, organs.

It’s early, but I think I’m going to go for a walk.  And….. I did go for a walk.  The weather is quite pleasant.