Category: Family

Elizabeth Wake, a long dead relative, wrote this

Day Dreams

Sitting idly one even
In fanciful vein
Childhood’s wonderland golden
I live o’er again

Beyond the horizon
I see far away
The crimson red sunset
The farewell of Day

How oft I have fancied
Thus gazing afar
Beyond the horizon
The better worlds are

Here shadows may darken
And bleak winds may blow
Away over yonder
If we could but go

There’s sunshine & gladness
And beauty for aye
Across the green landscape
Just over the way

So when the clouds gather
And winds whistle chill
Beyond the horizon
Away o’er the hill

I dream the blue heavens
Are cloudless and fair
And peace like a river
For aye floweth there

Safest happy delusion
For well do we know
Beyond the horizon
No mortal can go

None reach its fair border
Though run we all day
For far as we travel
Tis further away

1800 dollars poorer, I emerged

I have expensive hobbies, by damn.  I went to pick up Ziva and between all the brakes and calipers being replaced (the rear calipers being more expensive as being entwined with the emergency brake) and three engine mounts (which instantly reduced the engine noise on acceleration to a “healthy roar” as opposed to this weirdass growlyticking which a noob like me could mistake for bearing noise) I had to reach a little deeper into my pocket than the original estimate.

Another unintended side effect was that the engine idle revs finally dropped below 1000, which is where it’s supposed to be.  It had been up over 1200 for a couple of months, probably starting when the first engine mount collapsed.  When the car is running perfectly and brand new, excuse me, idle revs are supposed to be 750, but I’d settle for her revving under 1000, as there’s a little issue of gas consumption.  It will be interesting to see if the mileage gets better as a consequence, but even if it does it won’t likely be too noticeable, maybe 20 k on the tank.

Katie and I watched (or she fitfully snoozed through) the first three eps of The Wire.  I shook her awake for the explanation of chess as if it was the drug game; it’s one of the best pieces of writing in the show, and that’s going some.  It was also interesting to see how each character was introduced, not as if this was a first episode, but as if you’re joining a continuing story and it’s your job to keep up.  Of course I noticed dozens of things I hadn’t the first time around.  Like Deadwood and Saving Grace and Homicide, it repays repeated viewings.

Katie’s off at Dax’s now.  She knows he’s no good for her, and still she goes. (Part of his current attractiveness is that he’s living with a young married couple with a two month old babby).   His latest is to suggest that they go to a casino…. on her money.  Her response was “Put the money in my hand and we’ll talk about it” so I guess not all the sane has rubbed off yet.  Sigh.  Given her parental history (mater and pater) of absorbing troubling amounts of abuse and neglect, she could go like this for years, and we’re coming up on 8 years they’ve been spinning around each other like a couple of eccentric Kuiper Belt objects.

Now that I have a car again (I wasn’t planning for her being gone for two whole days) I have a very very very large running around list.

The temporary crown went on without mishap.  I am getting a blast of cloves into my mouth from it every once in a while, and thinking of Katie K every time I do, because she’s hideously allergic to cloves.  I wonder how that makes dental work for her. Anyway I recommend Dr. Katz.  He does precision work and is very civilized, and what the heck else does one want from a dentist anyway.

Birthday roundup

I banged on Jeff’s door at 6 am: “Where’s my present where’s my present where’s my pre—-sent!!!!??”

“Sheesh.  Close your eyes and open your hands…”

“Sheeeeeit!  All five seasons of THE WIRE with special bonus features!”  Happy dance.

Last night Tom and Peggy feasted me (Jeff, Paul, kids in attendance, w00t!) with Roast Beast, roast taters’n’garlic, peas, corn, and Katie brought a fabulous pumpkin swirl cheesecake and Peggy made her unbelievably awesome gingerbread cake.  It migrated home.

Happy happy sigh.

Katie and I walked home from their place – I slept quite soundly.

The Castle episode was loads of fun (I love how Becket does not cave to pressure to ‘believe’) and the House episode WTF!? Since when are patients s’posed to die??

Now I have to go to the dentist to get a crown.  Happy birthday to me!  Also, must get to the krankenhaus and bail out Miss Ziva, who is a very, very expensive habit.

While I was in Pleasanton….

staying in John Madden’s boutique hotel, the Rose, which is GORGEOUS (and John M was actually there in the lobby bar the night we arrived, oddly enough but of course I had no reason to speak to him or harass him so I just smirked)… I had a dream.

About five in the morning the night before I came home, I dreamed that Katie K was taking me to meet a friend.  We climbed the stairs to say hi and the woman took one look at me and started screaming “What is she doing here?  I don’t want to meet her, get her out of here!”  I obligingly booked it down the stairs and out into the street and across the street to a little park, where I sat down on a bench.  I felt warmth next to me and turned my head.

John was sitting there, dressed in black, and hatless (which would not be normal at this time of year… felt like Vancouver on an overcast day).  His hair had grown out a little and he had a much better pair of glasses, but it was John all right – nobody looks, smells and sounds like him.  He commiserated with me briefly on my contretemps, and then, and a couple of times he laughed, that breathless chuckle, and then with that same brainwoosh that had accompanied the sensation of him joining me on the bench, I realized I was dreaming.  I don’t lucid dream, at all, and it’s actually been many months since I had a memorable dream.  As soon as I realized I was dreaming, I knew John was dead, and I was FINALLY getting my visitation dream, which I have longed for.

“What took you so long?” I asked.

He smiled.  And we all know that shit eating grin.  And just like the Cheshire Cat, he faded, and left the grin hanging in the air for a few seconds, and then I woke up.

I’ve been a little teary for the last few days, because honestly I had given up.  Somehow my brain gave me permission to let him visit, and I am so, so glad.  Cried my eyes out at the Remembrance Day service yesterday at church, because I’d been going to say his name and Tom did it for me.

Various

I spent the weekend in the bosom of my family (having declared a mental health emergency) and am feeling much restored.  I’d like to thank Paul for coming over and dragging me off to Deer Lake for a walk and then cooking dinner at Geekhaus AND cleaning up after.  Sanity ++, thank you.

Keith took fireworks over to a friend’s place last night.  I expect a report on the reports.

Katie worked midnights on Saturday and I felt so sorry for her I went to pick her up.

Nasty hydroplane conditions on the hill this morning … really nasty.

clouds of depression and anxiety

Well sheeeeeit, that’s no fun for readers, so perhaps I should just recite bare facts.

Spent most of the day Saturday prepping for what turned into a non event. The one person I figured for sure would come got lost and didn’t make it; a couple of other people who promised to come didn’t show, and it was a very thin crowd indeed. Fortunately the mountain of food was consumed in short order by the folks who attended church the following morning.

I had to open at nine and I couldn’t close until one, so it was another long blank church day.  I am so tired.  Still tired, and work is like a tsunami visible at the horizon, being held in check by the machinations of a government body that isn’t even in Canada. Such are the joys of international commerce in these parlous times.

Came home and Keith was pulling up just as I was and we went to the The Wire-land and stayed there for about four hours as we (Keith Jeff and I) blasted through the last third of the second season.  My goodness.  What an awesome show.  Chris Bauer, who plays Andy Bellefleur the new sheriff of Bon Temps in True Blood, is phenomenal as Frank Sobotka.

Katie called and asked if she could come over and we said sure and then Paul asked if he could come over and we said sure, and we all hung out and Katie and Paul and I went for a walk.  Paul and Katie both stayed over.  I made Katie chocolate milk with whipped cream.  What a weird household I run to be sure.  Anyway I got about thirty seconds left on this before I simply must get going.

I’m so stressed out I’ve started smoking again, but if it’s any consolation this is day three of no beer.  I imagine I’ll stop smoking again when this deck is done, I always get disgusted and stop. Paul just looks at me and Katie with a worried face – nothing could tempt him to smoke again.

I have nothing to be anxious and depressed about.  However, we live in an age of anxiety, and I certainly am feeling my share.

quhat a day

Quhat being Scots dialect for What.

The night before I didn’t contact the volunteers.  I was SO anxious and phobic that I literally could not pick up the phone.  (Most of the time I’m not affected by anxiety to that extent but making phone calls is really hard for me, and I’m trying to work out why.)  I realized that I was a wreck and went to bed.  I got up at 4:30 am, picked out and edited the poem I read for the children’s story, printed it, edited the homily a couple of times more for clarity and accuracy and printed it, went through the undifferentiated piles of emails that are the complete mess that is cooperative ministry right now and found to my surprise that I did in fact know who all the volunteers were (amusingly, Paul was supposed to do set up this weekend but he left town… Luc covered him) and they were all sober and reliable people who of course all showed up.  So my list of cooperative ministry (the volunteers who bop about the church and make things happen on Sunday morning, from the extremely amazing Sally (aesthetics) to the extremely amazing Laura (coffee) was actually accurate!

I even put in all the announcements that Rev Katie emailed me, AND put in a different graphic for the front cover AND got the order of service printed all by about 7:30.  Then I packed everything up, had a shower, and realizing I had a WHOLE HOUR before I had to get to church, so I did the sensible thing and made Jeff waffles for brekky.

Saw Margot crawl into the garden plot and flatten herself to the ground to become ‘invisible’ waiting for the juncos to come back through the quinoa.  Sorry kiddo… you ARE NOT invisible.

Went to church under overcast skies – I was the first person there so there’s that great feeling of unlocking all the doors and turning on all the lights

It’s time to play the music

It’s time to light the lights

It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight.

That kind of feeling, and then getting out the mats for the kids to sit on and helping set up the table for the altar and hauling out the podium and consulting with various folks, and watching as Sandy hauled out the enormous cart Tom made for the sound system. (Brief aside – we have hard of hearing folks in the congregation so we have a bunch of wireless headsets for amplification and all that stuff is in the cart, along with the board and the cabling etc etc.)  Then the greeter’s table is set up, and then parents come in to set up the kids (the older kids were off at a Catholic mass).  And just greeting people…. and then Tom and Peggy and Marnie show up, and music starts happening (12 string, stand up bass and piano).  Getting asked, once again, why it is I don’t consider ministry…. what am I supposed to say?  God told me not to?  I do not have a vocation, peeps!  When you get the call it’s unmistakable.  The only time I get a call that’s unmistakable it always ends badly, with me yelling “You freaking telemarketers, how did you get this number?!”  I’ll tell you why I’m not a minister…. because I read the behavioural standards that I would be expected to adhere to, like not sleeping with parishioners and ceasing to be nude in public on occasion and being somewhat less vivid and colloquial and vehement in my speech.  And don’t get me started on the drugs and alcohol stuff, it’s just unconscionable.  I’m also, not to put too fine a point on it, making the same amount of money as our current minister, who is 13 years out of school.  Ayuh.

Then it all started and it went very well.  I made the aside about being asked about which version of the Bible I was using for the verse and answering “Sheesh, Mom, what difference does it make to an atheist?” which got a huge laugh.  I have a lot of people to email the homily to.

I remember gazing at the congregation during the meditation and seeing Erin shifting her little one around trying to get her to latch, and passing my eye over all the mothers in the congregation and they (and a few of the men, truth be told) were all grinning.  They knew the feeling… after the service I went up to Erin with a mock look of distaste on my face and said, “Baby did NOT get memo about staying quiet during meditation!!!” and all the women clustered ’round her cracked up and chided me, and that’s when I told Erin how many people were smiling with their eyes closed as they heard the baby – I think she was pleased.

Delivering the homily and feeling comfortable enough to wander around the stage instead of staying glued to the podium like I have always done previously, remembering to look up often enough to connect with folks. It was easily the most attentive group evar….

Having all the handouts disappear. Anne in particular liked Carl Sagan’s baloney detection kit; somebody else, can’t remember who, saying that the little List of Cognitive Biases would make for an amazing conversation starter at Thanksgiving dinner.

Bringing strawberry twizzlers for snacks, and helping myself.

Talking, talking, to lots of people afterwards. Giving Carol a lift home in that magical fall sunshine that feels like summer filtered though dreams.

Blowing through the door like a hurricane and frying up the pork and onions for the stuffing, firing up the oven, stuffing the turkey, draping it with four pieces of thick cut bacon, jamming it in the oven, and ignoring it for about four hours. Katie calling to ask me if I’d forgotten anything and then showing up with cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and whipped cream.  (She called ahead and offered!  I am not a failure as a parent! subtext).  I then hauled the bird out once and basted it and put it back in while Katie and I made veg.  Falling asleep on the upstairs sofa and awakening to see that Mike and Rozo had arrived, which triggered another round of Holy Crap, Must Feed People.

Final dinner arrangement;

Me Jeff Katie Mike Rozo:

Turkey with pork, onion, apple, brown bread, sage and garlic stuffing; hubbard squash drizzled with maple syrup, black pepper, garlic and allspice, boiled carrots, mashed potatoes, dripping gravy, green salad and dun tot (egg tarts from Anna’s Bakery OMG provided by Mike & Rozo) for dessert.

I came upstairs and both of the cats were on the dining room table.  Margot was inspecting the last of the gravy…. Eddie looked hideously guilty and was licking his chops rather inelegantly (his tongue was out an inch) but Katie couldn’t find anything missing.  Eddie’s expression made me howl with laughter.

I then bopped over to Planet Bachelor with Katie in tow (didn’t feel like going over there by myself) fed Kira who was most happy to see us, and then came back, watched some tube with the folks, and then announced around nine-thirty that I’d had a most excellent but also most lengthy day and I was going to have to say my goodnights.  Katie slept over and now I’m going to get up and make her a breakfast that will be awesome.

And that was my very long, very happy making, most excellently wonderful Turkey Day.

Today I plan to drink beer and wash clothes.  There IS nothing else on my to do list that I will do today.  Well, actually, if I want to keep things copacetic with Jeff I should clean the kitchen and run the dishwasher.  It’s pretty thick in there.

Oh, I lie.  After breakfast I have to run to the bank and get some money.  I think I may be buying a guitar today.

Heron Woman does it again. I do nothing for days and then explode into non stop action.  It is my way.

And the web swings wide

I am breakfasting with Paul – oatmeal – and drinking coffee.  I know I’m being a slug so I’m encouraging Paul to get me exercising so we went for a constitutional this morning.  Margot thought about coming along for the first little bit but she’s even lazier than I am.

I have been watching the world, and I am not happy with the signs.  I do not trust the future; I’m uneasy in the present and the past is gnawing at me.  Many different waves are coming at me and I am reminded of Loppe’s comment to Gelis, “Buoyancy, mademoiselle, is always an asset.”

I am hoping my mother will get some mileage out of the Henry Thomas Wake diaries – there’s somebody in England who runs a lovely blog who’s interested in them.

The homily is stalled on the notion that if you can’t connect cognitive bias to a story (without stories how shall the people live?) the homily itself will be lifeless and unmemorable.

The hymns, fortunately, are picked out and off to the accompanist, thank you Marnie!

I borrowed Mike’s 12 string Aria electric, and now I’m in the market for an amp.

Tom is working on my subwoofer for the car.  I may have to buy a new one, and it’s my own fault for letting groceries slosh around in front of the unprotected cone.

Now it’s time to get a real start on the day.  I like this getting up and going for a walk.  I do feel very awake.

Paul fixed up my bike so I could give it to Katie and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of her.  She’s been working almost every day though.

I am having SEVERE “the Wire” deficiency.  I love that show, and we can’t get more of it from Zip until we start returning things.

Jeff and I watched the Departed.  That is also a very good watch. Leo diCaprio was so visceral….

Bullet (time) points

  • Migrainy
  • Talked to my mother last night
  • Very tired
  • Too much to do
  • Disorganized
  • Having hot flashes more or less continuously
  • My room is a disaster, although the clean clothes do outnumber the dirty ones
  • I actually cooked dinner last night – potato salad.  Jeff said there weren’t enough onions but that was because I was hoping Keith would eat it.
  • I am not going to Toronto for my vacation in November – I am staying here.  I’m taking Katie cross border shopping for her bday.
  • I am debating whether to cash out of all of my investments, because the end of the world is nigh
  • I am also debating whether or not to buy more musical instruments.  Because, you know, you can never have too many
  • Church continues to be interesting and challenging.  I have a meeting tonight.
  • Work continues to be interesting and challenging.  I have sworn a mighty oath to stop emailing people.  I have to relearn this over and over again.