Category: Family

I salute thee cherished female progenitor

My mother kept an email correspondence going with her cousin Reck for about ten years, until shortly before he passed this past spring. I have just edited 150 pages of it (it’s 800 pages in total) being the portion just before and just after Obama was elected. IT IS AMAZING. They talk about politics and family history and philosophy and ethics and Reck casually mentions that he emailed Malcolm Gladwell regarding an idea – which may have contributed to his thinking when he wrote Outliers. And my mother defends atheism with a verve and trenchancy I could only dream of emulating. Just feeling blown away right now.

Bobcats

this spot used to hold a link to pics of bobcats in Calgary HAHA WHO KNEW THAT LESS THAN A DECADE LATER I’D SEE A BOBCAT HIKING DISTANCE FROM MY RENTAL okay back to 2012

Yesterday I saw Katie briefly.  Night before Paul and I went to Jericho after feasting here on pork chomps and green beans and corn and salad.

I was super tired yesterday and napped for a good chunk of the afternoon, with Margot fizzling and burbling and napping with me.  This morning she tried to join me long before sunrise but I thrash around too much so she left and is now guarding my door.

This sentence deleted in 2020 because it makes zero sense.

wonderful dream(s)

Last night, or more properly this morning, I had two wonderful dreams, one about a Vancouver being returned as the land of the people who first lived here, and how different things were (no privately owned cars – you had to share car ownership with housemates or family, and the transit was WAY better (there was an incredible funicular down from Burnaby mountain to the inlet that was like a fricking roller coaster ride) and you couldn’t cut down trees unless you were growing food on that land, and everybody was allowed to keep small food animals if they had the space) and then that morphed into a dream that was a wonderful cross between Dunnett and Martin about a bossy young lady who picked out her husband when she was young and then worked out a plan to marry him when she got older, and how everybody fell in line with her plans including her future father in law because it was easier than arguing with her – oh, she was a sassy little thing, and so cute.   I haven’t remembered a dream in ages, and these two made me happy.

Keith came over yesterday.  He’s been having a lovely time with friends (watching a troupe of actors rehearse on Granville Island yesterday, among other delights) and is considering his next move workwise, he’s still working part time in the lab.  Katie has vanished from our sights but will respond to texts when prodded.  I’m seeing her later this week.

I made curried chicken salad sandwiches for lunch yesterday, they were yummy.

Paul came over and we went for walk and we noodled on guitars.  I am VERY happy with Smokey, tuned to a D chord.  He sounds purty.

Yesterday today tomorrow

Yesterday I bought wedding gifts, tidied, returned and picked up library books, and today I’ll do churchy things and work on the joint project Jeff and I have.  Tomorrow I will get together with Katie.  Keith charmed me yesterday by saying he will attend a meetup for socially awkward people. I have to say that whatever else my kids are they are a constant source of entertainment.

Andrew, you are brilliant

One of my filking fen has this to say on facebutt this morning:
Insurance lawyers were put on earth so that we would learn to love the honesty and ethics of Plaintiffs’ lawyers.

 

Made Peach and blueberry glop for pamcakes.  Which reminds me I should make them.

Happy sigh.  Katie over yesterday, and as is traditional, broke something, in this case the clothesline – full of laundry – onto freshly cut grass.  We will now consider how to restring it.  Spoke too soon.  Jeff doesn’t have to consider, he’s up there rehanging it.  I’ll stay handy in case he comes off the ladder.  AND HE SHALL HAVE PAMCAKES FOR BREAKFAST!

I am going out to Maple Ridge to do something musical today – if it is successful I’ll report back.  If not I’ll slink home a few dollars poorer but happy to have gone for a ride.

I’m probably going to miss meeting up with Patricia today as she was coming into New West, but o well.

BREAKING BAD OMG it is going to a VERY DARK PLACE.  People gwine die.

blah

Unbelievably loud and continuous thunderstorm last night starting around seven thirty – four hours at least maybe longer.  You should have seen Margot’s face as she bolted in the door as the first thunder hit.  Eyes like saucers. Then she stayed right next to my bedroom door all night.

Katie’s here; she cut my hair and helped me run some errands.

Can’t settle to anything…. feeling blah.

A mad wor(l)d my masters

Snoop Dogg went to JaMAIca and came back a Rasta.  He now goes by Snoop Lion and his next album will be entirely reggae.  Tis fabulous news!  Hope he covers at least one Sublime tune…

OMG  I just spent two hours reading RADFem and Transfem blogs and the hate and bigotry are so tiresome and frightening that I went to a Men’s Rights blog for a while to help me get my bearings.

Unclear on the concept – private company tries to trademark Anonymous.

Paul’s back from Ontario, brown as a walnut and sporting a rather luxurious multicolored beard.  He poked his head in briefly last night and it was good to see him in such good spirits!  Then he had to go to work….

Eddie haz a sad.  He hates it when Jeff is gone for any length of time.

Had brekky with the lovely and everblooming Sue, and how good it was to spend some time with her.

Now, back to work.  I have learned that when you’re writing trombone lines, you need lots of places for players to take breaths, as they need more air than any other brass instrument.

 

 

Letter to the Globe and Mail published January 5 1991.

John Allemang’s recent comments on the subject notwithstanding, women who choose to breastfeed do so from the conviction that they are doing what is best for the child.  I was pregnant and/or nursing for almost five years, and I certainly got bored with it, but I never felt trapped, because it was something I chose to do, voluntarily, despite the witlessness and smug, value-laden commentaries of people like Mr. Allemang.

I never flashed my breasts in public because I failed to see how I could advance the cause of nursing by so doing.  Take a poll of real live women who nurse their children, and ask them how they feel, rather than telling us how you think they should feel.  We already know that a lot of men like looking at women’s breasts.  Please tell me something new – that we are perhaps now living in a world where a woman can discharge her responsibilities as a caring parent without getting flak for it.

His last comment about bottles bringing happiness into the world was egregious.  Tell that to a Third World mother who has lost child after child to formula mixed with contaminated water, or the mother whose child has become kendy or brain damaged due to lead-contaminated formula.

Spoon-billed sandpiper chicks, family visit, other

These English birds are critically endangered.  However if you watch this video, the only thing that will be endangered is your ability to survive the cute.

Family visit went really well.  Me happy. We laughed, we bonded, we toured the garden.  As far as we’re concerned if Katie’s beau makes her happy (which seems evident “I’m gaining weight… I know I’m happy”  BF: “Well there’s always that gym membership you paid for and don’t use”) and they speak to each other lovingly and respectfully (which so far they do) nobody is going to complain.  They are now living together, and candidly I am very happy about it.  (“Don’t the young people marry these days?” I remember Grandma saying).

Saw Keith yesterday.  His response to a five minute long rant by the business owner where he worked was “I quit”.  I hasten to add that it was a five minute rant that combined racism and misogyny in such a toxic stew that he felt compelled to leave. (“If he had kept his comments confined to my shortcomings with respect to this customer transaction I could have sucked it up. But telling me that we should stop serving customers of a particular ethnicity?  blecchh.”) I am VERY proud of him.  He’s off finding other work now, and reaffirming old ties with previous employers.

On the ferry trip outbound to my folks’ place I sang and played Otto on the uppermost deck for a while, and three people thanked me afterwards, including somebody specifically calling out the Tapioca Song (and she ASSUMED I WROTE IT.  SCORE!)  But what really did me in was the little  girl in the pale pink dress who scooched up next to me and was trying to sing harmony along with me under her breath.  I wanted to pick her up and stick her in my pocket, but I’ll just have to content myself with noting one of the more beautiful memories of the last while.