Category: Family

Lurkers decloak

the rules keep changing…..

OMFG.  This is disturbing, and yet I found myself laughing anxiously.  Somebody I had NO CLUE follows my blog has emailed me something by way of comment.  I’m paraphrasing massively, but it went like this.  “Next time you’re having problems why don’t you do something useful and strap a bomb to yourself?  I can think of a few handy places to put it, and I’ll even help you with the technical side of things.”  The rest of the email was a charmingly spelled rant about how even insanity is not an excuse for suicide (??!!), it’s for elderly and terminal people neither of which I am and I should be ashamed of myself for talking about suicide publicly.  Oh, yes, I should definitely take your advice and not the advice of people I love, who love me.  Let me just sit with that a moment.

Man, I know a lot of strange people.  The idea of repurposing my private turmoil for a rather expansive (in the gaseous sense) comment on public policy has a certain amount of flair though.  I couldn’t do it, even at the height of my belief that I’d be better off dead…. my rights end where my skin does, and I can’t imagine taking somebody else with me; it’s against everything I still believe.

Anyway, I’ve been lurking in MY OWN blog, which is weird.  Over the years I have had it… have I really been doing this for years and years???? I have said less and less about more and more.  I have been afraid of offending people; afraid of hurting people’s feelings; worrying about what people who already hate me think.  I’ve been afraid of losing my job, making my parents stop loving me, or being the kind of person who gives Unitarianism a bad name.  (I’ve had it pointed out that might not be a bad thing).  I’ve been very very scared.

So I’ll decloak.

I am one opinionated mofette.  ça veut dire mauxfaits.  On va recommencer.  I am going to stop beating myself up and start kicking the verbal snot out of those who more richly deserve it.  I won’t talk about work except to say when things are going well or badly.  I won’t recount personal conversations without the informed consent of the folks involved. I won’t repost emails without permission, this morning notwithstanding and besides it was a paraphrase and further besides he was obviously upset at somebody who isn’t me.  I was just the… lightning rod?  Dude can comment directly on my blog any time he likes… if he doesn’t like, he can take a sex holiday in Enumclaw with my compliments.

Leaving horsefuckery behind…. and yes, I’m against the use of animals for the sexual pleasure of human beings because of this whole ‘informed consent thing’, I’m just being sophomoric and rude…..

Foremost among those I would hear praised, Jeff, Katie, Paul, my parents, Peggy, Tom, Lady Miss B, Sue, Rev Katie, Keith, Chipper and two people who have asked not to be named publicly.  Thank you thank you thank you.  You are wonderful people and I know that you will keep doing what you do, so it’s good to know you are there.

Katie, thank you for telling me that you are and you intend to remain childless by choice.  I was sure I’d never want children when I was fourteen; I wanted kids by the time I was your age.   I think you’re old enough to know what you want.  Keith, haw haw, the joke’s on you.  My dreams of becoming a successful organizm now rest on your creamed-animé-on-tropes-stuffed cranium.  And if I’m never a grandma I’ll be fine; there are enough neurotic white folks in the world already or so I scan it.  One of my other relatives will breed when I’m longing for a baby to spoil.  It’s no biggie.

Back to the real world:

Eddie is wandering up and down the house HOWLING for Jeff.  He cries upstairs, downstairs, and outside (freaked me out, I couldn’t tell where he was; he sounded like he was locked in something).

Yay! Canadian tech for a better world!

Jeff, there’s rice pudding in the fridge.  Maybe you’ve gone off rice pudding but this rice pudding is very superior, and even if you don’t want it I intend to eat every scrap of it before it goes bad; Rozo and Katie already extracted some for their own use at home.

Damn Paul but that was an awesome roast.  I’d forgotten how much I love carrots and onyums done around a roast beast.

Al-Jazeera has been added to our roster of cable stations.  I watched, with amazement, a documentary that didn’t even have a single Arab name attached to it; who knew I’d get a very damning picture of the Latvian forest industry, with lots of lines drawn between the first world’s desire to greenwash everything and the destruction of the last pristine forests in Europa?  Honestly, I want to send an email to the Latvia PM telling him the satellite pictures of the Latvian forests are calling him an asshat and a full bore liar.  Latvian politicians and functionaries are disturbingly smooth voiced and calm, they all seem to speak idiomatic bureaucratese English, and the bigger the lie the calmer they look.  And they are destroying the traditional sustainable forestry operations which are family businesses.  The guy who won the international farmer of the year award was foaming at the mouth showing how all the ‘scientific’ forestry immediately around him – clear cuts all – are causing blow downs on his property and destroying the margins of his sustainable forest.  This is sustainable forestry in Canada.  That’s pretty much what it looks like in Latvia.  Anyway, at the current rate of clear cutting in Latvia- which is going to subsidize DIY homeowners in England, who get to buy wood that has a sustainably harvested sticker on it, sticker purchased by the Latvian forestry ministry from a fucking scam non profit in Britain – they won’t have a forest let alone a forest industry within ten years.  The habitat destruction of rare species is blandly ignored by the politicians because it’s all about employment.  Forestry sustains 40 percent of the Latvian GDP.  They are going to kill their economy.  One wonders, when forestry collapses, what the government will tell their unemployed young men to do.  A social, political and ecological disaster in the making, I’d say.  When the young men of Riga rioted after the economic downturn in 2008, this was the response of the government.  Clear cut Latvia.  Can’t even blame capitalism.  It’s state socialism that is doing the job, ably assisted by the English demand for board feet.

I think of the Ukrainians who froze to death rather than cut down the trees in the parks in Kiev during WWII and I wonder what the hell happened to the Latvians.  Shame.

Oh and I’m working on yet more tunes. Brain full now.

Spag with organic beef ‘n tomato sauce for dinner.

Last night was SO wonderful.  Daughter Katie joined us for all the singing and playing and she was so enthusiastic I tossed her the lap snare I got back from Candace’s over New Years and she tapped and brushed along – so there’s me, Paul, Brian C and Katie formed up in a diamond facing each other and playing and singing our little hearts out. I also hauled out the cajon (box drum, which you can sit on), which sounds GREAT in circle.  AWESOMESAUCE.  With beer.  Mmmmmmm beer.  And the wind —– cried —– MARY.  And tonight, it is FRIDAY NIGHT when we catch up on shows and c’lapse.  I was going to go to a poetry reading but it was cancelled.

Just got off the phone with Paul, he’s booking a truck to help Katie move.  Huzzah! 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am in a lot better shape than I was two months ago.

Weather SUCKS!  I’m skidding in the wet grass when I get out of my car, but since the snow tires went on Ziva is like a rocket sled on rails.  Brian admired her… he said that was his fave year of that model, and like almost everybody he says the spoiler actually made it look nicer.

He has a Les Paul and a whole bunch of TOYS to go with it which make it sound amazing.  Fuzz, Wahwah, etc.  And that tube amp.  Suck up that drool girl.

Happiness washes over me like a cleansing rain….

It was successful

I scrubbed the church banner, I cleaned up stinky containers from the fridge that things had died in (although more work awaits, nice), I did laundry, I wrote out a tune, I practiced for hours before I went to Tom and Peggy’s.

Also

and this is big

Katie has a new place to live.  She’ll be living around Moscrop and Boundary, which is very close to where my work is moving to this summer and about halfway between Burnaby General and Joyce Station.  Moving day will be later this week.  So I don’t even have anything to complain about how she stayed past the automatic three month grace period of no rent!   No whining here, move along.

Funny pic

Lovely caption…

Katie slept over at Dax’s last night.  They are looking for an apartment together. These next two sentences deleted on the insistence of counsel, who is currently shaking her perkily coiffed head and pointing to a sign indicating how long things you don’t want to be reminded of last on the internet.  Yeah, darlin’, I see it.  Oh well.  Katie can’t live here forever, and much though the prospect fails to entrance me, it’s her life, not mine.

Yesterday was not a complete writeoff; I got a couple of things I needed to do done, I went to church (how early do I have to get there to precede Dave T?  The man’s driving 15 times the distance I do and he still beats me!), did set up, watched everybody take my set up apart and make it better (weird and uncomfortable and full of fail on my part, but in my defense my instructions were unclear), took it all down except the basement, ’cause Sue did it for me so I could drive Carol home, (and may I just interject that when you’re asked to do a service on less than 12 hours’ notice – Rev Katie was ill – and you do it that well, you can expect me to be impressed, thank you Sue and an early happy birthday because I will likely forget) – next two sentences deleted involving pee and ice cream; I burned up a piece of paper with all the things I want to get rid of out of my life on it (personal failings) for the Fire Communion, realized that as much as I love the lyrics of Tennyson’s Ring Out Wild Bells, the choon as limned in the hymnal blows a dozer, and you know what? I ain’t writing a new one. We have the best of accompanists in David, but a song leader would be optimal.  I also cooked curried chicken, got in a walk in the blazing sunshine, and took the banner home to be Amazed. Ralph told me I might like a new book he’d heard about called Godless Religion or maybe it’s called Religion without God.  After all, the experience of awe and wonder belongs to all hoomins.

So, did that sentence about the banner irk you?  Amaze is powdered enzyme tucked in with a lot of surfactants.  I don’t actually know the ingredients but that’s my guess.  The old outdoor church banner (which we just started hanging out front again since we have the perfect railing to tie it to and it magically reappeared from wherever it had been in storage) is covered in an unlovely combination of urban grime, Vancouver exterior mold, & soap scum from the last attempt to clean it; suffice it to say that it’s so filthy that the scuff marks are impossible to tell from the dirt.  I hope to clean the banner today, and I so hope it comes out cleaner, and that I can winkle the dirt out of the creases.

(later…. I’ve been consulting experts, and recommendations have been made, incl. GooGone).

I went to Candace’s and collected my music stuff so I can take it to Conflikt.

Spent some quality time with Katie.

Visited with Keith and Paul for a while.

I am extremely sad and upset about something that I can’t talk about here, but I won’t dodge that I’m upset.  I’m autism spectrum and I don’t actually get a lot of the social BS and I shouldn’t bother teasing people, especially when I already know the person I’m teasing is (this observation deleted) and in chronic physical pain.  I would have preferred an opportunity to fix it, but such is life.  It is a loss.  Another one.  I could write a long self justifying rant, but that is precisely what… oh, never mind.  So many other people have that covered these days….

Today, we sing.  Keith has decided to join me and Paul; we’ll be heading over to Tom and Peggy’s this afternoon.  That’s going to happen, period.  Not enough singing in my life and I have to debut two new songs.  I am so happy Paul’s job dragged him out to Vancouver.  I couldn’t invent Tom and Peggy and they are so spectacularly wonderful, I can’t imagine life without them now.

Since my chances of actually getting it all done are minimal, I propose NOT mentioning my list today.  But there are three items on it…. I will report back success.  If any.  Singing doesn’t count; that’s going to happen today without fail.

Full of gratitude

It is so very pleasant to be able to pick up the phone and be able to talk to my mother.  It’s the most bracing luxury.  It is a luxury, a luxury to think that the people and machines that keep the phones running will always be there, will never be distracted by anything else.  And yet bracing, for when my day darkens and my drears get all bleary, I can contemplate easily calling my mother, and even if I don’t call her, it’s still a bracing thought.

Murmle mushy pancreatic implosions of daughterly joy.  Snirf, ack, ptui.

Sunday roundup

I was feeling like I missed Leo and Linda so I made Finn pancakes last night.  Paul stopped by on the way to work and devoured some.  I think he’s missing the kids, I am definitely missing them, and Katie posting that she was sad on Facebook diddint help.

We also sang and played a bit last night.  He sure makes my Seagull sound purty; I’m working on a new tune and it was a treat to work it up in guitar first and then hand the guitar to Paul so I could noodle on the mandolin; there was some tasty stuff in there.

Jeff and I watched the last episode of The Wire; for each part of the ecosystem of the drug trade and city infrastructure, folks die or retire and others take their place; that was the point at which I realized that The Wire is really about corruption.   A corrupt system only needs a bit of corruption from everyone and a whole bunch of corruption from the big players to work; now there’s research indicating that maybe that is how it’s supposed to work. Humanity will always have corruption with it, but how does one cope?  Carlyle said make of yourself an honest man and then there’s one less rascal to deal with, more or less.

Eclipse on Tuesday/Wednesday.

Of the many, many things I am grateful for, having a mother who never made me a sweater like this is one.

It snowed last night, but not enough to matter; I checked a webcam rather than going to a window, does that make me a bad person?

So glad I’m not travelling for Christmas.

The diagnosis game

To protect Katie’s dignity and privacy I won’t go into much of the background stuff.  The foreground stuff is a lot of me shaking my head and going “This is bullshit.” (From disbelief, disappointment, anger, fear and vanity.)  At the same time I’m hearing things I didn’t hear about at the time they happened and I’m starting to understand how parents can wake up one morning and find one of their kids hanging from something or possibly having left town abruptly or maybe just plain old O.D’ed.  “But I had no idea he was so upset!”  Yeah…..  My daughter’s having a crisis and all I can think about is how it affects me – how it makes me look.  How mature!  so I’m really trying to make an effort to not make it about me; it was easy enough to do when she didn’t live with me for the best part of five years.  Now she’s sleeping on the media room couch (why didn’t she go to bed? Bet she stayed up talking to Keith…)

She is feeling better.  She says so.  She’s diurnal again.  She’s painting a lot.  She’s going to Victoria today with her brother.  She swapped my laundry over for me last night so I’ve got clean clothes this morning.

I am also thinking A LOT these days about Elly, and thinking I should get on the phone with her.  She is just about the most loving and sensible woman I ever met, and I hope she can help me with what’s happening, just for perspective, just for asking pointed questions, giving sage advice.

I hope Katie and Keith have a lovely time in Victoria.  She’s taking her easel.

Paste that smile on lucky bastard

Maybe I’m the luckiest person on earth, but I don’t feel that way now.

Katie took me to the reptile house at the King Eddy pet store Saturday and I FELL IN LOVE.  I mean head over heels, you are mine forever, with a Senegal chameleon.  One critter made straight for me and attempted to mate through the glass with my big ol’ hat.  The ferrets made me ill though, their scent has always been too much for me.  Mr. Man at the store said that Senegal chameleons are for experienced reptile fanciers; I should stick with a twenty dollar anole for starters.  Four hundred bones will get me into a chameleon; whatever sex it was it was an extremely personable reptile.

Talked to Dowker yesterday; I’d been going crazy (yeah, yeah, I know) trying to figure out what the name of a song on a mix tape he made for me in 1990 was.  After a lot of backing and forthing it was the written as a Joy Division song BUT released as a New Order song called “In a Lonely Place” which has the best opening drum roll OF ALL TIME.  Anyway, now I can listen to it any time I want, and oh oh oh those cymbal crashes.  Also big time heaping good.

Also found Big Hard Sun by Indio and am learning the song.

Watched Meryl Streep in Dark Matter.  Bloody sad movie.

I’m getting a migraine.  I’m fine until I look at a screen, and then half my visual field gets sucked up into a rainbow and static hole.

Church was okay.  Not a big fan of intergenerationals, but I had to do set up and count, so there I was.  No church on Boxing Day so I suppose I could go to the folks that day.  The kids are making noises about going earlier than that.

There’s loads of yummy leftovers in the fridge.

Keith and Paul and I sang and played last night.  Keith is getting quite feisty on the bass.

That’s about right.

Indeed.

Yesterday my mother celebrated her 75th birthday.  Now if we’d been from the other side of the family we’d have piled in cars and gone to see her and had a damned big party but this is what we did instead. Not a single one of us bought her a present.  Not a single one of us sent her flowers.  Nope, nor a card.

I wrote my mother a poem (picking up from where an earlier one left off) and made all her descendents call her on the phone.  You can call me chintzy, but all I can do is thank my ancestors that they conveyed to our family a very sturdy notion of what is important and what is not in family life.

My mother taught me a lot of things.  In most of these matters she had help from my dad, but not always.

Civility costs nothing.

Get a good education and then worry about what you’re going to do to earn your bread.

Be kindly towards the religious expressions of others.  Atheism will always be a minority opinion so don’t be rude about it.  Bob your head for grace; sing the carols; kneel and stand when you’re s’posed to.  Absolutely nothing about being an atheist gives you a hall pass to be rude about the religious expressions of your relatives; may as well generalize and extend the civility requirement to anybody who isn’t actively trying to kill you.

Given a choice between spending the time and spending the money, spend the time.

Stay busy.

Housework sucks, but the requirement for it doesn’t go away, so learn to do it efficiently and without whining.

Be authentic about what you love even if it looks silly to other people.

Human beings need to touch each other and baby human beings need lots of touching.

Budget the luxuries first.  This entirely counterintuitive take on personal finances has assisted in keeping me happy.

Better two good friends and true than 50 dubious acquaintances.

There’s no excuse for being a shitty driver.

Alcohol and recreational drugs are not necessary for any aspect of life.  Painkillers on the other hand are a must.

Let the medical students experiment.  It isn’t fun but it’s soon over.

Beauty, truth and goodness are everywhere.  So are evil, waste and want.  If you adjust your vision to see the former more than you see the latter, you may not have a more accurate view of the world but you will have a happier one.

Music is important.

Privacy is important.

Don’t fight in front of the children.

There are only a few criteria for determining whether you have been a successful parent.  1. Child survives to breeding age.  2.  Child does not go to jail.  3.  Child stays pretty much continuously and voluntarily employed at job or household tasks and arranges personal life so as not to be dependent on the state.  4.  Child stays out of mental hospital.  5.  Child comes to visit you voluntarily.

If your child meets these criteria, you have been a successful parent and lying around moaning about any aspect of child’s life, from choice of spouse to wacky UFOlogy paradigms, just makes you look like an ass. Bonus points for grandchildren, but you don’t have any control over that.

Your family can never be too big.

If you look hopelessly square and do not attract attention by odd behaviour, people will leave you the hell alone.

Getting old is not for sissies.

Whining is something other people do.

good morning

Katie was here last night and we had a bit oF a wirefest. Keith turned up too. Watching the first season again is astonishing. I know everything that’s going to happen, so I can really pay attention to more of the mechanics and the relationships.

I made homestyle Thai soup yesterday and Keith and Kate and Paul (just passing through on the way to work) devoured it. Then I got really ambitious and made a sort of texmex beef and bean thing. I may further transform it into a casserole.

I was in bed when Jeff & his friends got back from the Canucks game so I don’t know how that went. I am waiting for signs of stirring so I can go have a shower and make coffee.

Things to be happy about

I am happy because I get to drive Jeff’s car for two days so he can ferry his friends to and from the ferry.  Cause my car has you know like four seats. My car, except for the verklimmt idle racing once in a while (up and down between 800 and 1200 rpm) is running tip top, and so smooth and quiet you’d never guess she’s coming up on her 15th birthday.

I am happy because I have a good job with awesome coworkers.

I am happy because Katie has painted a new painting and I gave her all my acrylic paint so she can do even more!

I am happy because when Jeff came home yesterday he gave me a big hug.

I am happy because I have a comfy cozy bed to sleep in, and when it’s raining like this that is a very good thing.

I am happy because I spoke to my mother on the phone for 40 minutes last night.  Not one instant of it was complaining about health problems, and so roll out the double happiness sigil.

I am happy because I thought of a title for something “The Chapel of Extremity” based on something by Brion Gysin and I wonder what it will end up attached too.  That’s the weird thing about creativity.  It’s holographic and you never know what the slice will reveal.

I am happy because when I went to get my computer fixed he said, “Three hundred dolla for fix, sixty dolla for new drive from London Drugs.  Why you no go London Drugs?” Which struck me as eminently sensible, and I will definitely go and spend money there some other time.

I am happy because even if I’m not sleeping more than six hours, it’s a solid six hours.

I am happy because Julian Assange is going to have a publicity field day while he sits in jail in England and wait for the extradition.

I am happy because now I have seen most of The Wire, I’m finding The Wire references everywhere in popular culture and I kill myself laughing every time I find one.

I am happy because Cate Blanchett is going to reprise her role as Galadriel.  And there is going to be a second Sherlock Holmes.

I am happy that Paul bought a new bed.  I wanted to make a silly joke about it, but I won’t.

I am happy that Keith is having good job interviews and hopes to be working full time soon.

I am happy that I am alive, and world is still singing in me.