Category: Family

Didn’t get the job

Oh well, there’s always another one, right.

Keith got told yesterday they were going to be reducing his hours and 18 hours later had another job.  A more effective way of saying ‘FUCK YOU’ is difficult to imagine.   He was quite pleased with himself and got mom’s fusilli and slow cooked spaghetti sauce as a reward.

Also, the new Homeland, which was awesome, but I like any Homeland where Brody and Carrie have face time.

Carrie is getting MOTION SICKNESS from all the aftershocks in Masset.  I don’t think she wants to be living there any more.  Time to inspect the earthquake kits again.

 

 

Letters from friends

Something wonderful…. my mOm’s newest project. She has collected all her letters to her two female best friends (Sue and Elizabeth), along with all the letters she kept that they sent her, into yet another enormous book, and I am ‘not exactly proofreading it’. What I am discovering is that the kids and our extended family and I are CHARACTERS in this opus, and I am wandering through the early days of childrearing and the blasting back and forth to Montreal and Toronto and the early days of the move here with wide eyed interest. One third of the time: I have no recollection of that event. One third: Yes, that’s exactly how it happened. One third: W T Fffff?. Occasionally my mother makes censorious comments about some stupidity I have committed and makes nervous comments about stuff she finds scary (all in a tone which would make Jane Austen proud) but when it comes to the adoration g’mas have for the grandbabies she takes a back seat to NO WOMAN.  Keith and Kate are beautiful, obedient, intelligent, kind, observant, loving and adorable in every way.  As Keith remarked at lunch the other day, “What happened?”  Nothing dear, you are still all of those things.

Unsuccessful cheesemaking

Is unsuccessful. Sigh. I have a big clean up in front of me.  On the plus side, I just pulled some more home made chocolate chip cookies out of the oven.

Had a salmon dinner with my new extended family last night.  Since the Katie’s pinnacle of DO NOT WANT  exboyfriend may read this I am not going to provide kidlet names, but it was awesome, even if I got tired really fast.  I got to drive them home. They are EXTREMELY CUTE and reasonably well behaved.   NEVER underestimate the power of a large and robust cardboard box to maintain the interest and imaginations of four and five year olds.

Brain hurts

It’s like a slap in the face to get up and realize there’s NO MORE SUN.  But hell, it’s October.  And October is SOME OTHER PLANET Month. (Obligatory Joe Hall reference).

I’m off to put gas in Ziva, maybe even for the last time as the plates expire at the end of the month and I’m not renewing them.  I will collect Katie and bring her back here for laundry and other mischief, and then churchy type stuff in preparation for the Board meeting tomorrow.

I am working on three new songs simultaneously.  One of them is because I downloaded a free app which allows me to strum chords I couldn’t play tanked up on painkillers, meth and ketamine, one of them is vibrating rapidly back and forth between being George’s theme (Lady of the Deep Waves) in my imaginary show and being something sad from the Game of Thrones universe, and the other is a Celtic style “Go forth and be happy” kinda tune.  I must be driving Jeff nuts, I’m practicing for hours every day and unfortunately it’s rather hard for me to write songs without actually, you know, like, singing.

I am contemplating the list of things I’ve put off with misery.  I’d like to trade that in for some feisty action and a dirk to slit the gizzard of my procrastination but the friendly NPC at the counter is NOT helping.

I’m enjoying having a phone that allows me to post pix directly to my blog though, I think it instantly made it more fun and interesting.

 

Visits.

Visited with Sue this morning to help her download from her daddy’s funeral. He was 102.  Meshuggas about the inheritance; waiting is.

LOVELY visit with Mike last night (funnily enough I’d been kvetching to Paul, with whom I was practicing yesterday, about how MIKE WUZ NOT RETURNING MY CALLS WAHWAH) and he called around 8 and I kinda forst him to let me come over.  I brought Otto and sang Theo’s Theme and John Scalzi’s Blog and Compost and Grateful and It’s Just So Nice When Someone knows your Name, and Lemming’s Twofer, and the first verse of Wanted to Believe, and Mike sang the drop D version of Dylan’s Tangled up in Blue and another song, I can’t remember which.  We talked about various things, including how trying work is for him right now, and how the insomnia really doesn’t help. BUT HE FOUND THE TAYLOR.  His parlour guitar was lost in the move but he found it again, and so me happy.  I was VERY BAD and drank two beers, which made me so drunk I collapsed on the sofa and slept from 10:30 til 8:30 the next morning.  Two beers.  I always was a lightweight, but this was ludicrous.  Also worked on Rozo for a while, her shoulders were a reticulation of weenie little knots.  While I was there Mike called Brian and I got to talk to him for a while.  There is nothing like the sound of a friend’s voice, yanno?

This morning I came home and promptly started brekkie for Jeff, being melon and bacon and pamcakes, and then Sue called and I went off and had a second breakfast of more coffee.  Also, getting checks signed so I can pay some churchy bills. Then I wandered into a sign shop and ORDERED the John Caspell Memorial Pinball Parlour sign for reelz this time, and then my other errands got shunted aside as I had to trot home due to the coffee.

Now I am looking up the language of flowers on the internet for a bouquet I’m buying for the minister tomorrow and as soon as I change my clothes – ew, slept in my clothes, what am I, frosh at some scummy college??? – I’ll be off to buy a floral bouquet, pick up some more spray paint, and buy some eggs and butter to get going on some biscotti.  Roast chicken for dinner tonight.  MMMMM chicken.

I cooked a pork roast the other night with basil and lemon thyme from Suzanne’s deck garden.  It was nommy too, although Jeff owned that it was a little overcooked.  We did agree that pork roast should be roasted, it doesn’t cook right in the crock pot.

Paul and Keith are off to Seattle for the long weekend.  Katie is doing cat care this time; I should call her.  The only reason I know she’s alive is from her facebook comments.

Miss Margot has been extra barfy.  I need to brush her very very thoroughly and give her a lot of kitty malt.

SO LOOKING FORWARD TO SINGING NEW SONG FOR MINISTER.  he he.

Disturbed night of sleep

I woke at 2:30 and stayed awake for a couple of hours, then slept again.  I woke up and thought “I know what time it is – it’s 9:30!”  Then I checked my computer and it was 9:25.

Jeff has YAY made more coffee, so I think I’ll stagger out into the kitchen and review my to do list.

I had a lovely long chat with Keith last night.  He had a wonderful time in Toronto and had many stories to tell of old friends and family.  He very much enjoyed hanging out with Peter and Sarah, and said that getting Kaileagh and Sophie into the same room was pretty funny (they are both high energy wirey blondes with attitude).  Grandma Phyllis is about the same as always, only a little less mobile, but she must have been very happy to have so many of her family and family friends about her, given that she’s had two dreadful losses in the last few years.

My new song on Otto is NOMMING ME BRAYNZ!  It uses 7, count ’em, 7 chords, all in rapid fire succession, and also requires finger picking, so it’s at the outside edge of my ability to play.  Oh Muse darling you are a cruel and uncaring personage.

I continue to await with interest the comments of the minister on the new toon.

 

WEEEIRD

So I go outside with Otto to work on what is rapidly shaping up to be Theo’s Theme (for the evol villein of Midnite Moving Co).  Within four bars, there is a robin FLYING TOWARD ME AND CALLING MADLY.  Robin then perches in a tree, never removing gaze.  Robin attempts to keep up with me in the music generation department, getting louder but eventually quitting in disgust.  Then it moves to the dogwood, and then the top of the tree stump.  I felt uncomfortable and went indoors.  Despite everything the tune is sounding great and my finger picking is coming along nicely.  I think I’m kinda the Meg White of mandolin players, althought that’s definitely a slap to Meg.

Keith and Paul should show up shortly with corn and tales of Paul’s mom’s successful nth birthday (I can’t remember exactly and I don’t know if she’d thank me to…) I hear another family turned up en masse, which should have rendered things much more festive and apparently were awesome in that Keith got to see Peter, his oldest friend.  And the vampire family!  woot.

Also, this morning Margot tried to get into the dryer  Man, how HAS she lived this long?

Productive day of errands including two overdue ones.

RIP Herbert Lom

Died in bed at 95 in London.  May his memory be blessed with laughter and tears.

Stupid bill re recriminalizing abortion did not pass; the Minister responsible for the Status of Women should be escorted from the Commons in the electoral equivalent of chains.

Although the title and the illo are THOUGHTLESSLY hyperbolic, this is a good article about privilege. 2020 says Hugo Schwyzer turned out to be rillllly problematic, but I’m leaving this here as evidence of progress, and it’s amazing given the drubbing he took that this writing is still available

I have a very heavy day of appointments and church related work in front of me.

VCon starts, I’m not going.  All I will do is spend stupid amounts of money on clothes.  Hilariously, RobW called me last night to complain about the Vcon website; this does not bode well for how good the con will be.

Paul and Katie and I had a lovely walk in Deer Lake Park on Wednesday; we saw a dozen frogs, a juvenile eagle, a Douglas squirrel and possibly a baby bunny, who did not linger to make our acquaintance.  I got some video of the frogs but it’s basically a streak heading for the rushes.  I also got a pic of the Douglas squirrel but not at very high resolution, even though the little guy POSED in TWO SEPARATE POSES for me.  We also picked up a hawk feather, which I stuck in Margot’s fur when I got home and resulted in a couple of charming pictures, one of which I posted to twitter. 2020 says that was a flicker feather, not a hawk feather, no kidding.

I’m going to ask Jeff to help me figure out how to post pics directly to my blog through WordPress, although possibly not today.

After many months of being okay, my temperature regulation at night has gone off the rails.  I have acceptably ordinary physiological reasons for this but waking up poaching in my own bed a couple of times a night is harshing my mellow.  This too shall pass.

Yet another sports figure is being accused of sexual and physical abuse of youngsters in his care.  The way it’s being reported in the press is quite bizarre.  I guess we’ll let the courts sort it out; the reporter had more than half a dozen affidavits detailing misconduct in hand before writing the story, and while we all know that there are false abuse allegations, it’s not the way to bet, especially since we’re talking about a Catholic residential school for falsely imprisoned young aboriginals.

Raincoaster just tweeted that an alarm went off close to her and a stern voice is speaking in German.  Helluva way to get woken up, unless of course she was already awake.  She and I trade tweets in the middle of the night fairly often.

What’s up on facebook:  18 billion reposts from reddit, mine among them, and people commenting about the things that make them upset – relatives dying abruptly in car accidents leaving young children, angst about how this is the first time her only child is out with the non-custodial parent on a football game day, the fact that 27 million people globally live in slavery, and me attempting to get a copy of (this poster). 2020 says it was something cool by Matt Danger but now it’s gone.

Put those Mennonites and Quakers on the rotisserie….

…. this is what I want my mother to knit me for Christmas.   And no, she doesn’t have to, and I’ll be fine if she doesn’t.

 

Just remember folks, I wrote a song once in which I said, “And my heart’s an 88” and I WAS referring to the forward cannon on a Panzer.  So nobody should be too surprised if I get all gooey over some artillery themed slippers.

Oddiculosis

I am full of weirdness.  Just found out from LTGW that he used the Thousand Sided Dice to come up with his twitter name!  He was thrilled with it… I’m just glad it’s Substantially Complete.

Paul’s Birthday celebration is tomorrow.  I took the liberty of inviting half a dozen people to it… also, I’m thawing salmon, always a good idea for a bbq.  Sadly, all the cherry wood charcoal is gone, so we’ll have to suffer without it.

I am having to deal with the stupidity of the UPS store Beacon gets photocopying done at.  I FraCKING HATE BEING TREASURER.  I’m going to run away to Courtenay, see if I don’t.  Actually, Jeff and I very briefly discussed this and whether it really happens will be in the lap of the gods.

Okay, back to contending with busy people who don’t keep good records.