Category: Family

New victims

Poor Margot. We’ve locked the cat door and Keith and Paul let her out last night not knowing she wasn’t going to get back in again until I got up around 5:30 (a good night’s sleep).

I have discovered that I am a lot more sentimental than I thought.  Keith got me a Mother’s Day card, which would have been sufficient, but also a gift card.  I burst into tears.  It’s just so nice to be loved.

Then we exposed them to Rick and Morty. NEW VICTIMS.

I am full of plans about what I’ll do when I’m off work again.  I do feel a lot more confident about the job hunt; I was doing things wrong and I admit that now, so it will go better.  I have a lovely new resume which should help, and I’ll be tailoring it a lot more.  It’s true, the bots looking through resumes don’t give a shit about me, and the po faced mental midgets who sort through them after the bots have done their jobs can’t assemble a sentence without turning into bleating morons.  However, it’s a game, it has rules, and I can’t win if I don’t play by the rules.  The rest of this paragraph has been erased on the strenuous and plaintive request of counsel.

On my list of things to do is a concert at Wreck Beach.  Don’t feel bad if you’re not invited.

Gratitude

Rev Samaya did her thang at church yesterday, and it was a wonderful, chatty sermon on gratitude.  In gratitude for the weather gods lightening up, I actually got Jeff to examine the gas mower and get it running (after sitting idle all winter I didn’t find myself competent or comfy with doing that, and I am very glad I did the mowing yesterday because the grass was getting big enough to hide hunting cats in.  I also made meatballs.  They are quite tasty, Jeff appears to approve.

It was a restful weekend, and I’m ready for more training.  I think I’m getting my feet under me, but I should not be over confident….

Cousin Alex fed Keith and Paul yesterday, which was awesome.

Here I am at the end of another week

It is NOT as if time was crawling when I was unemployed, but now it’s going so fast I’m feeling like every second is a blur of paper.

I am making stupid mistakes and good catches at work.  I hope it averages out to continued employment.  You just don’t get a team like this every day… everybody is so civilized and hardworking (compared to me).  I could whine about the variability of it, but that’s what food is like.  Prices go up and down in the cycle of the seasons and nothing stays the same.

One of my fave coworkers is off in her homeland visiting rellies. I miss her because she is one of the most intelligent and yet sunny tempered individuals I have recently met. (I keep wanting to introduce her to my son, which would be grossly inappropriate in so many ways). I miss her because the most administrative portion of her job fell to me in her absence and it’s fussy and important.  So, nervous.

I am going to work on crochet and forgiveness this weekend; along with some stuff I should have attended to ages ago.  Although I am tired all the time, certain kinds of energy I didn’t have last fall have come back into my life.

I am having better communication with people I am intimate with, and that makes me calmer.  I don’t feel like everybody should be able to read my mind any more.  I know I can be a sore trial as a friend sometimes, when I’m not expansive and entertaining.

Jeff loaned me the vehicle yesterday.  I got home much faster than usual and it made a big difference to my mood all day.  I am very grateful, especially since it did inconvenience him.

Keith is apparently hiking off to Edmonton in mid May.  I will miss him, but he’s at the point in his life when he’s going to take off and adventure, and that’s good.

I learned from Katie that the baby will take her last name.  That was a calming bit of news.  I had lunch with her on Sunday as I was checking out.  It was a blessing to see her.  She’s still not showing; yet the ultrasound shows what looks to be a very robust looking kiddo.

Rob W phoned last night and we talked writing.  I don’t know what makes me an expert, except that I do more of it.  Volume is not necessarily a good aspect of production – think farts and you’ll know what I mean.  And yet it is by writing crap that we open the channels to the good stuff.

Well, off to find clothes and bus tickets and get out the door.  Boss lady is back today and much activity is in store.

Cuppa Joe serves the best hot chocolate in the city.  Srsly.

I has a gladsad

My son is going to check out Edmonton for work.  I am very pleased, and also just downcast.  If he likes it he will probably be gone by the beginning of May, and if he doesn’t, he’ll be unemployed, which he has not much use for at all.

He and Paul are away so I have to do cat care tonight on the way home from work.

Time to get dressed and be off to work.  I’m dressed, it’s just the wrong clothing.

I have another homily in May, Theology at the Movies.

 

Lazy Sunday

Spoke to Katie yesterday, she sounds quite well, which is always good to know.  She cracked up as she recounted how pOp’s reaction to her gestational status included the gem, “And the worst of it is I’m now sleeping with a great-grandmother.” … which is a variant of what he said when he found out I was knocked up with Keith.

She asked me if her favorite stuffed toy had survived her childhood.  Blank!  I only kept a few.  I’d be buried in them had I kept them….

Church this morning.  It’s about food security, so I will be asking Jeff if I can borrow Mr. 2.

Science and biology on the march…

A good week

I’ve had another great week at work; we’re doing a bunch of training for a new computer system and after Epicor’s Avante it’ll seem like roasting marshmallows and drinking beer.

And I got paid.

Gotta like that!

I descuzzed the kitchen surfaces (except the sink, Jeff got to it  before I did) and now am contemplating the agony of getting on the floor and cleaning out the fridge, which smells like Something Dead, since bending knees and back does not suit me.  I have had to learn how to step down off the bus all over again; if I lead with my right foot I nearly collapse on the ground from the pain, so I have to remember it’s left foot first.

Jeff and I are very much enjoying Downton Abbey and recommend it.

Coming up – last episodes of Warehouse 13, the season ender for Justified, more Archer and hopefully more Rick & Morty.  And Game of Thrones starts up again tomorrow night.

I need to transfer some music onto my phone to relieve the tedium of the bus ride, and also maybe some TED talks or books on tape.  Apparently the Dunnett novels are all available but of course I haven’t found a free one.

I opened up the novel again and worked away at it for a bit last night.  I’ve booked the Easter weekend to do nothing but write, but that’s two weekends away.  Maybe I’ll even finish it; there’s a novella length single scene I have to write for close to the beginning of the book, and it’s going to be hopelessly and most soppily romantic, so I’ll have to really be in the mood.

Haven’t heard from Katie lately, but apparently she’s not throwing up constantly any more, so yay.  She lost a lot of weight, poor lamb, and that is never good.  It’s as well that we’re made of tough stuff.

I answered the door today to a couple of Xtian types wearing my screaming blue “I am on the side of the scientists’ t-shirt, which I acquired from a geekgrrl at Conflikt VI.  Happy days! Declined their dead tree, have enough of my own thanks.

It has been more or less unremarked that the first climate change refugees left their Pacific Island this week.  Very sad.

The global banana crop is about to fail due to a pathogen which has now been found on every continent. Also, sad.

 

 

Weigh in

I hadn’t weighed myself in a while, but my clothes were getting tighter, so I was delighted to see from the scale this morning that the weight I lost after I broke my shoulder has stayed off.  Now I’m getting ridiculous amounts of exercise, since I have to walk a minimum of 2 kilometres a day through terrain plus two sets of transit stairs just to get to work, so I expect the weight will stay off.  My hips and back are better; my knees and feet are shouting things ungodly at me.  I’m sleeping better and staying up later.

Jeff has commented that he’s getting interesting pings from various muscle groups now that he’s back exercising regularly with his new rowing machine.  One of these days I’ll check it out but I’m never wearing shoes when I’m downstairs…

Many hugs to Jeff for letting me borrow the car yesterday after my phone freaked out and I ended up being late getting out the door in consequence … I brought home some treats.

The family that ________s together…. 

In one of those bizarre coincidences, I mentioned the cave of Chauvet in my last homily, and until she broke her ankle, our speaker this Sunday was to be a woman taking as her text Werner Herzog’s unbelievably amazing Cave of Forgotten Dreams.  Since she can’t do it, we’re subbing in three church members talking about their creative paths, and I helped one of them since he was being put to it on short notice and he said he was feeling apprehensive and I gave him some advice.  He appeared happy to get it (my enthusiasm is a substitute for skill sometimes) and I await with pleasure how he will deal with the creative challenge of a minihom. So I would have enjoyed the booked homily and will definitely enjoy the substitute homily, and that’s pretty much how she goes at church.  Which reminds me, I should scare up a ride.

Benedict Cumberbatch will be taking on Hamlet in 2015, live somewhere in England.  Sigh.

Currently watching: Archer Vice (interesting, but no longer quite as funny), Rick and Morty (most recent show? the last two minutes took me to an unanticipated height of awesome), Justified (Boyd Crowder, how you do blow things up!), Downton Abbey, NCIS, NCIS Body Count, CSI, Person of Interest, Castle, plus the occasional Frontline and 60 Minutes.  I’ve pretty much given up on White Collar, mostly because those whackdoodles at Netflix don’t appear to want to stream it to my profile, and Jeff’s burned out on Burn Notice (ha!) although I still want to finish the show.  Person of Interest continues to be the show that Jeff and I are most likely to halt on the PVR so we can talk about the issues they are raising.  It’s a show that demands close attention and thought, and Root walked the dog Bear last episode.

Jeff is trying to get caught up on March Madness, otherwise known as the Squeaky Squeaky show from the sound of all those basketball shoes squeaking on those nice wood floors.

I wonder if two zone bus passes are available yet?  I’ll need one of those.  I do think longingly of getting a car, but I’ll be better off in at at least three ways without one.

Happy Friday to you all!  The port strike is over, although the drivers are still plenty choked.

 

No comment

Katie is feeling so crappy she may be visiting the ER today.  I hope she takes a minute to text me.

I won’t be commenting any more about work unless something really interesting happens.  And since all I’m doing is working and sleeping I suspect my blog will be even more boring than it has been lately.  Unless you hear otherwise, I’m happy.

Schnitzel for dinner yesterday.  The greek salad that came with was full of moldy vegetables.  Sigh.

There’s a Cuppa Joe’s café in the complex where I work.  I now have a place to go when I’m early for work, which, when the weather is inclement is a big deal, because there’s no shelter from the bus stop to the office.

Jeff looked at me yesterday and said, “I guess the laundry is winning.”

Heritage Grill

Paul dragged me out of the house last night.  I wasn’t feeling up to performing (I actually thought I was coming down with something) but I wanted to check out the Heritage Grill Monday night open mic; when we arrived around 7:30 the room was FULL OF UKELELES. It was remarkable; it was a slo-pitch for ukes, and the full effect was entirely charming.  Paul and I had stupid grins on our faces that lasted until a couple of performers had done the open mike thing; a guy came up who had nothing to say and a peculiarly distressing way of saying it.   I pumpkin out around 9 pm these days so Paul gave me a lift home.  Thank you for foodicles Paul! it was yummy.

I am waiting to hear back from my best recent job interview and have another interview today.  I haven’t stopped looking, but man, it’s hard!

 

I forgot to mention; we heard frogs in Oakalla on Sunday afternoon.  Spring is here!

Under my breath

Yesterday was redeemed by painkillers, friendship and wordcount.  1100 words yesterday, got Katie moved into an apartment in New Westminster.

I’d like to thank Randy and Rob W for helping with the move in the absence of Paul and Keith. The family heirloom furniture has been safely moved.

Glad I went to bed at 8:30 last night, Margot woke me up looking for breakfast just now.

 

 

Longitude

I highly recommend it.  8 out of 10, would watch again.

350 words yesterday.

Today is going to be a bit of a write off, what with having volunteered to tidy coffee after church and helping Katie move.  I haven’t even figured out how I’m going to be dealing with driving a one ton truck in the mass of snow we’re supposed to be getting today.

Keith called yesterday.  Sounds like if he doesn’t land one of the ‘work on a farm’ gigs in Australia he’ll be back within a few weeks.  He actually sounded miffed that he wasn’t able to assist Katie movie, which you have to admit is sweet of him.  Then he is sweet, biased as I am.

Life etc.

One foot in front of the other

I have interesting news, which I am waiting to share on the go-ahead of the other folks involved.   In the meantime, lip is zipped.

620 words yesterday.

Katie is moving out of her dad’s place on the 2nd.  I have rented a truck.  It’s going to be interesting, but it shouldn’t be that hard of a move, provided we get at least one other person lined up.

 

 

Parade’s End

It was a perfectly nice BBC/HBO 5 parter.  HBO, so, of course, boobs.  I may have to look for the books it was based on; Ford Madox Ford was a feminist when that really wasn’t a popular view for a man to take, so good on him.

Word count yesterday was spiffing.  I will complete the book in less than two months at this rate, at which point I’m actually going to EDIT it instead of pronouncing it done and shelving it, and then I’m going to find a decent agent (I have some ideas) and if I can’t sell it, I’ll self publish.

When I’m no longer actively writing it, I’ll go to my next project, Tarot for Atheists, and finish that and see if I can get it published (it will be easier than this one, for sure), and then when that’s done, I’ll probably self-publish my homilies. (Homilies, Essays, Rants and Reviews).  Then there’s Broad Hints, which includes my ephemeral writing and then A Filker’s Life for Me (all my filk tunes and lyrics in book form), and A Sacrifice to Chronos (all the other songs worth keeping). After that, there’s Child Rearing for Anarchists, whatever materials I’ve put together for the anti-racism workshop (The Racist in Recovery, with free embroidered hankie for those white women tears, dearies).

Cough, which had been much better, is now suddenly much worse, so I’m glad I’ve got DMDE cough medicine in the house.  For the first time in my life I’m actually measuring the dosage.  Next dose at ten am – I’ve been up since quarter to 2.  Don’t know if it’s the moon, or the coughing, or my brain spinning with what new idiocies my characters are up to (reading Michel’s dialog aloud with a Montreal accent made me start coughing again) but sleep has been hard to come by these last few nights.

Fetched home some schnitzel yesterday for supper.  Lost my keys and Jeff found them.

I am so glad Keith is having a good and educational time in Australia.  I am so happy and proud, I just can’t express it enough.

Word of the Day:  rebarbative.