Category: Family

Wreck yesterday

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In the morning I loafed and lazed, squeezed in a grocery shop, and then reverted to dawdling and doodling; around 1 Mike came and fetched me in the convertible, and then we went down to New West to get Katie and Kashka.  (One half of the reality show girls).  Kashka is covered with ink from her ears to her ankles, including Betty Boop as a skeleton, which is freaky, because Betty Boop’s skull looks exactly how I would imagine Margot’s skull to look.

It was very pleasant on the beach.  There was a kicking breeze all day, and it was not from the usual angle, and pushed the incoming tide up the beach.

At first Mike tried to fly his approx 4 square meter kite but the breeze was so stiff he was getting dragged 10 and 15 meters down the beach, which I watched with the kind of chill consternation which is all you can muster when you’re feeling so mellow.  Then he tried smaller kites, which was much more successful, and provided us all with much in the way of aesthetics.

Liz, Kashka’s ex, joined us.  I’d met her when we were still living at the Augur Inn and really liked her; I still do.

As the tide came in (Mike always checks the tide tables and parked us WELL up the beach) the breeze shifted until it was straight onshore.  Surf’s up kids!  The girls were bobbing up and down in the waves several times – they’d come back out to warm up and then go back in.  I asked Katie if it was awkward to go the the beach with mom and she just laughed and said after ten years she was used to it.  And it’s been ten years since we started going as a family.

Odd, isn’t it?  I got in to waist height and let a couple of waves slam into me, because I wanted to say I had gone in and had some idea of the physical exhilaration of it all, but I’m 50, and the idea of trashing the bottoms of my feet and then having to climb all 407 stairs (counts vary!) had very little appeal, and at the end, the girls complained that their boobs had been thrown around so much they were all sore.  Mmmm… My kind of fun doesn’t have that kind of toll, but that’s just me being lazy again.  Also, Mike and Liz and Kashka and Katie all complained about how much salt water they swallowed.  Ick.

A man with t shirts and beaters went by; one showed a parody of a Starbucks logo with beers and WRECK BEACH instead of STARBUCKS, and the mermaid wearing sunglasses.  Kashka leaped up and said, “I want one!” so I obliged her.  I laughed, “All your mother’s many kindnesses to Katie are coming back for YOUR benefit, how annoyed Suzanne will be!”  But no probs, I’ll be seeing Suzanne later this week to catch up on the buzz.  Katie is living rent free at Kat and Kashka’s, so I am being politic.

I ate the best hotdog ever on the beach.  Those three jalapeños I added made for just the right amount of heat.

I wrote a song on Mike’s parlour Larrivée – no lyrics yet. Which reminds me I should pick up my guitar and make sure the tune is still there.   I believe so.

The GVRD but not the cops were on the beach.

All in all, it was a lovely, lovely day, and I got home around 7:45, very crisp around the edges. Tonight, off to see Patricia for the long promised Cavalcade of Cheese.

One thing and another

Yesterday… I mean apart from getting ZERO done on my life list, I had something resembling a perfect day.  I got to see my kids and Paul as we chatted about the job hunt for the kids (got some things straight). I got fed a yummy tortilla lunch which Paul and Keith and Katie assembled; later I did a kindness for someone which triggered him buying me sufficiency of beer for the nonce.  Happiness is a fridge full of Corona.

I got to visit with Tre.  Logos, but that’s one cute babby.  Battery and Tanya and Jeff and I laughed and chatted and had a very pleasant time while I got the grisly details of the birth, none of which are for public consumption.  The result, a calm but busy 6 week old who developmentally is a month ahead (REALLY strong), is what counts.

Margot couldn’t stand the lack of focus on her, and came into the livingroom to (very ladylike) hork up some grass, because the babby was being changed at the same time…

The weather, after a little overcast, was perfect all day.

Then, hung out for a while not doing much of anything and Mike came by and took me and Keith and Jeff to the Richmond Night Market, where I bought nothing but REALLY GOOD kettle corn, and where I watched my beautiful son metamorphose into a steely eyed killer (there was a mini-midway, and he shot enough pins to get me a little purple bear (not exactly worth the five bucks he paid to play…. but I digress as usual and besides, Miss Margot is eviscerating it as I type, so its purpose has been revealed)) and after we drove away Mike took us to his cefu’s traditional chinese martial arts club (Mike corrected me, Jack is NOT his cefu, Galen is.  Men can be so STERN when you get things wrong) in an industrial park in Richmond (and boy, has he done a pile of work on that place to help Jack get ready) and then I got to watch the north shore skyline etched against a sunset sky while the wind whipped through my hair.  Ah, convertibles. And I cried a little bit, because I am so happy, and so grateful to be living here, surrounded by such loving friends and family. Side note, John Caspell trained with Jack.  Everything is deeply intertwingled.

When we got home, TrueBlood.  Not enough Eric; no Pam, not enough Jessica.  But considering what the first four episodes of the season were like, I am willing to cut some slack.

Can you tell I had a perfect day?

And today, instead of working, I’m going with daughter Katie and Mike to the beach.  My happiness is like a golden thread.

I would like to give special, extra, crunchy golden props to Jeff, who has been leaving the real for real audio of the Apollo 11 mission running for the last couple of days during waking hours.  It’s been an ongoing reminder of why I’m an atheist.

Until we saw the Earth rise over the moon, I don’t think the fundamental unity of human life, and its fragility, had ever been so starkly drawn.  And it wasn’t the Pope or Mohammad, peace be upon him, what got us there.

Satisfying day.

I have really and officially put Weekend’s Over to bed; now I’m trying to make Evening News sound like the way I sing it.  I was very pleased to see how much work I’d already done on that tune; now all I have to do is fix bars 56 through 70, which have both tune and timing issues, add the lyrics, and I can move that one over to the DONE pile.  I Must Admit it Troubles Me is SEVERELY pissing me off, I cannot figure out what time signature it’s in.  I am suspecting it’s in eight.  Two did not seem to work.  Neither four.  Not being able to read music, and having a severe mental block about learning, is a drip drag, mah friends.  Worked more on the atheist liturgy.

Paul came by yesterday with the Eskimo hunters (two pieces of felt art my mOm made 17 billion years ago which I got framed about 10 years ago and stayed at Planet Bachelor until I had walls for them) and also the sewing machine and sewing kit, and took away boxes for packing (he and Keith are moving in a couple of weeks to the apartment downstairs from them) and also a bunch of book donations for Value Village. Thank you Paul!

I went to my bedroom, inspected my underwear drawer for sacrificial offerings, and then went downstairs and measured Jeff’s coffee table.  Then I came back upstairs and cracked open the sewing kit, which can haz LOTS of Velcro.  I love sewing with Velcro.  I took out 5 feet of black nylon strap webbing (for a packsack project I never even started) sewed four inches of Velcro on either end, and then cut up a pair of navy tights and sewed seven pockets and made a remote caddy for Jeff.  It holds ALL the remotes for the downstairs system – all 6 of them – plus I made an extra pocket for the end so he could either put the wireless xbox controller in there or something else.  I phoned him, all excited, because once I’d done the measurements and visualized it, it took less than 20 minutes to do it, and I didn’t have to spend any money on the project because everything was already in the sewing kit.  Except why IS it that every time I borrow the sewing machine I have to wind a bobbin?  I’m not complaining, I kinda like doing that too.  Jeff laughed and told me to sew Holy Moly’s eyes back on if I was feeling so inspired.  So I did that too.

Holy Moly is a part of our childhood.  mOm made this pointy nosed mole cushiony thing with a multicoloured body and big brown and yellow eyes.  He must be 45 years old if he’s a day.  Anyway, Jeff ended up with him and he lives in the AV room, along with baby Cthulhu (from Lexi), Pirate Ducky (from Archie McPhee in Seattle), and Nautiloid (from mOm).  Various other stuffed animals mOm made are peering down from assorted vantage points in the house, including a blue baby heffalump and a knitted baby tiger.

The Ladybones and Katie’s two salon heads are arranged above the hutch in the living room.  If you don’t like severed heads… don’t look up! There’s a little shrine to John in the living room; the embroidered dragon has his earrings sitting in front of it.

The locksmith showed up and we are going to get new strikeplates for the doors, get a new door handle for the back door and of course this is not being paid for by the landlord, but while the deadbolts are okay the doors are trash from having been repeatedly kicked in (oh joy) so they need the reinforcement.  Then we’ll get the alarm system activated, but we figured there was no point activating the alarm when the doors were such a disaster.

What else happened yesterday…. Mike asked what I was doing that evening, and I said, “Feeding you!” and so I fed him and then called Keith to get over.  While I was prepping for and cleaning up after dinner Mike played guitar.  So nice – and he’s learning new tunes!  and then we re-watched Trueblood 3 and 4, neither of which Mike had seen.  Episode three is SO much fun.

I am thinking of doing something I haven’t done for years…. go to a movie by myself.  Harry Potter’s at the Dolphin at 1 pm.  If I get enough work done this morning I will go.

Dominion Day Roundup

Stop gay marriage or straight women will have no husbands!!!! Eeek.

Folks, even if that is all true, how can the accompanying drop in the birthrate be bad for the planet? I love how bigotry gets dressed in ‘utilitarian’ arguments.  That said, any time I detect bigotry in others, I allow myself a quiet moment to reflect on my own.  Sigh.  It is hard to be a grownup.  PS, Mr. Berman (as reprinted by Mr. Klinghoffer), sex toy technology has come a long way since the Roman Empire.  Your concern for my satisfaction and prospect of landing a sperm donor is touching, but completely unnecessary.  After all, the POINT of marriage (the cart, after all, needing to come behind the horse) is BABIES.  And those I can get – did get – without recourse to marriage at ALL.

Oh look, Dan Savage linked to the above noted link and Klinghoffer says that Dan Savage can’t be a good father because he uses bad language!

One of these days I’ll have to find that bit of writing “How to Teach Your Children to Swear.”  What we didn’t teach the kids, back when, was that swearing is a class issue.  The very most self-controlled and self-willed people do not curse, because it shows either lack of breeding or lack of self-control. And self-control, narrowly defined, is a necessary precursor to maintaining control over others.  That’s what it’s all there for.  Swearing as far as I’m concerned is part of the palette of human communication; blunt, uncompromising, emotional, limbic, genuine.  Disgusting, disturbing, vile, creepy and disrespectful, too.  Swearing is a signpost toward the things we find most frightening and, let’s face it, human. As blasphemy, it is anti-hierarchical and owns of no master; as language charged with sexuality and excretions, it voices what we strive to keep silent in daily life; as racial and ethnic slur it speaks to how easily we fall back into our emotional enclaves to lash out at a world of strange/different/smelly&rude.

Best things about Canada.  Apart from Hockey, mea culpa, I’m in.

Look at that… Miss Margot has decided to like raspberry jam.  This is a cat from MARS.

I can now see large swathes of my bedroom floor, but more cleaning and laundry delights await me.  Later I hope to go to the Burnaby Village Museum – it’s free today, and in homage to John, who never paid for a damned thing he could get for free, and to celebrate being Canadian, I thought a step back into the days of my foremothers might not go amiss.

Cinnamon buns are medicinal.

Having said that, I’d better get a batch of bread dough on…. Jeff is highly suggestible about any hinted-at treats.  And I have to sign off so he can update wordpress.  Have a great Canada Day, everyone!

I have finally listened to John and Brooke’s album.  It’s really, really good.  It’s also, coincidentally, among the top sellers on CDbaby right now!  Katie and I listened in the CanCar yesterday.

Like I didn’t have enough planned

I told Tom and Peggy and Paul last night that I wanted to learn every song John used to sing.  They obliged by teaching me two; one was Careless by Nancy Freeman which turns out to be super easy and frikkin awesome, and the other is way harder, because Dave and Tracy’s Gentle Arms of Eden (which I also long to parody, may the Goddess strake me privily) is played at breakneck speed with chord changes to match.  My finger tips have almost completely calloused up again.  It’s like they learned how to get calloused when I was young (I took up guitar at 11) and now when I return to it they get busy.

My embroidered dragon has been located; John’s shirts and his superhero cape have gone back to Lady Miss Banjola, who startled the living mucus outta me by the sudden dramatic change in her appearance.  Yes, she has allowed her sister the hair stylist to apply yellow and orange to selected portions of what’s grown back of her hair, and she looks fabulous, and I mean it.  If I could change my hair like that and look that fabulous I would – well, I’d probably be south of 30, for starters.  I immediately wanted to run out and do the same thing, which is how I frequently feel when Lady Miss B does something… you know, the OOOO SHINY response.

Off to church now.  Keith was over at Jeff’s last night… Katie and Paul and I stayed at Planet Bachelor (singing in the evening and church in the morning = I didn’t want to go home). Katie is in good shape – we played cribbage yesterday, and because she learned to play from Doug and Elly, she whipped our butts.

Dax’ car got struck TWICE by other cars, in the last two days; one was a hit and run, t-boned at a red light.  I will now maintain a discrete silence.

Singing and playing for two hours completely re-set my brain.  And the sun is shining the way it did when I was young, before anything ever hurt me.

Teeth and nail-biting

I had to get the bite adjusted on a lower molar (it still hurts to bite down but not as much) and I’ve got two cavities to re-excavate prior to losing my dental plan.  And I may be in for another crown, but that’s pretty normal, and there is always the possibility that there’s an infection the xrays didn’t show; I don’t care, I just want it fixed.

Landpeer Tony beat at the house with a sledgehammer for an hour and a half Thursday night.  Jeff thought of remonstrating with him and decided it was pointless.  They still haven’t brought me back the keys they took the day they ripped the deck off the house.

I phoned Kim when I got out of the dentist’s last night and the house will be ready Monday.  Jeff will call her and inspect it for move in readiness as he doesn’t work Mondays and then we’ll hire a truck, likely for the first weekend in June, as it’s likely to be too nuts between now and then anyway, not packed, John service, and the generalized insanity of having dozens of friends and family I haven’t seen in years or many moons turn up and need coddling.  I am now to the point where I don’t feel like I’m going to fall off the edge of the world.  I feel a more grim determination that I’m going to do the best I can by my year off, and really really make an effort to finish things.  John kicked my ass many times to be more physically and musically active; strange that he had to die before I felt like listening to him.

A big bag of his clothes arrived; thank you mOm.  I got the frog silk shirt back, thank you for your indulgence Juliana, and I mention his white tiger shirt and his superhero cape.  I will be interested to hear what Lady Miss Banjola would like done with that.  I want the Beacon music shirt but the rest should go to his friends and family.  Also, I am going quite insane thinking of who should get the willie warmer he owned – and occasionally wore, rather horrifyingly – and I kinda think his old housemate Colin should get it but I’ll leave that little conundrum to the family as well.  I can’t imagine Keith wanting or wearing it, or Jesse for that matter, and those were his only two nephews.

Most important thing on my list between now and the 28th is writing John’s eulogy.  There will actually be two, one for public and one for private consumption, but the public one comes first.

Took Jeff to the Keg as a gross act of self and brotherly indulgence.  Today I need to pack, pack and pack again, as well as launder and throw out trash.

I’m having a rilly hard time concentrating at work.  No surprise there.

Still alive

Yet more people have found out about my planned departure and it’s as if it’s the ‘end of an error’ is making people really freeked out.  I don’t want to freak people out. I just want my life back.  Yes, I know it looks like I have a life from my blog, I’m forever doing exciting or at least utterly bizarre things, meeting strange life forms and having thinky-thotz, but I’d like a more interesting life still, and I want to be able to say I did something besides work.  Like create. Continue reading Still alive

Quit my job yesterday

June 19th is my last day.  I’m walking down the road to Jericho Beach Tuesday night and thinking “This is nuts.  How much more pondering do I have to do to know I don’t want to be doing this anymore?”  I phoned Katie and told her, and she provided consoling words.  Then I turned the corner and there was the biggest rainbow I’ve ever seen.  I’d post the pics but rainbows need a good photographer and a hefty lens, neither of which I had.  Then I enjoyed the show at Jericho (Brighter Lights Thicker Glasses, and I can’t recommend them enough) with Peggy (after playing John’s Song and That Godforsaken Hellhole I Call Home), and then came home and told myself I’d sleep on it.  And I did, and I went to my brother and said, “I’m quitting my job today,” and he said “Great!” and then I went in and told NewBoss and then everybody in the building knew and I had a stream of miserable engineers and unhappy techs come by and ask if it was true.

Why?  Because John died.  I knew, after Brian C. quit, that something very fundamental was gone and not coming back.  I knew I was not giving it my best.  And time’s winged chariot is outside my front door honking.  I have an immense list of stuff I want to do and no energy or heart to do it as long as I’m working full time.

Daughter Katie came over last night so I could help her with her job hunt.  I fed her and Jeff chicken thighs in mixed herbs and bouillon, peas, asparagus and tater tots.  Mike came over.

While they were here, Miss Margot jumped up on the keyboards that I have negligently and sloppily left in the living room, and I turned them on, and then Jeff coaxed her into walking up and down the keyboard a couple of times. Katie and I knew, and Jeff and Mike did not, that the keyboard splits and is percussion sounds on the left and piano on the right.  So we were laughing – I laughed until I was gasping for air, and we were all crying and hooting in a most unseemly manner – because she walked to one end of the keyboard sounding like she was trying to compose the climactic piano music for an artistic horror film from the sixties – and then she parked her butt on two keys and just sat there, eyeing us with something resembling resentment and puzzlement, her butt making a chord the whole while, for at least a minute, possibly longer, while Jeff tried everything to get her to walk up the keys.  Then Mike did something that got her attention, and she walked toward the other end, writing a very beautiful and unusual song as she did so, and I ran to get the camera, and all I got was her walking on some percussion and dismounting with a “Bam-dum KISH!” exactly like she was finishing off a comedy sketch.  It’s not long enough to post and the light level is very low, and I’m SCREAMING with laughter and shaking the camera.  I wish I could have gotten the whole thing, it was just about the most amazing thing I’ve seen lately. And it happened in my living room.  Katie, wiping her eyes, said that was the hardest she’d laughed in a very long time.  Miss Margot is a really remarkable animal.  I mean, a cat who eats oatmeal?

You know, if I quit my job, I could train Margot, the clown cat.  I wonder if I can get a false nose fitted for her.  No, some ideas are better left unrealized. Hey, I DID quit my job! But taking a year to train a clown cat, THAT has income possibilities.  I should set the house up for camera operation in every room.  Oh, Jeff!?  Wifi webcam throughout the house?  I know Miss Margot won’t be little and cute forever.

I need a root canal. I hope I can make it through the weekend.  The poison from the abscess is affecting my jaw and tongue.

Barbecue and family ties

Jeff and Paul and the kids and I watched the season finale of CSI, and had a barbecue last night.  It was really great to get the ‘cue out again.  The back yard is still a disaster, but at least it’s flat again.  Paul and I went for a walk and saw some very remarkable houses. Broken marble floor tiles paving a back yard?  This is an odd neighbourhood, but very quiet, and Paul is appreciating peace and quiet right now.

I called Kim yesterday and the house in Burnaby is about 1 week from being  ready for occupancy. Katie’s coming over Monday to help me pack and clean things.

I am not exactly full of energy, but at least I’m not in lying around crying mode, and I consider that an improvement.  Spoke to Ruth last night.  She said a couple of things that broke my heart with pity, but I was expecting it.  Ruth and John had a very special sibling bond, and were always very loving and supportive to each other.  (Well, after they stopped living at home and being teenagers, and we all know what I mean by that.)  And he was her big brother.  I never had one… until John came along. I sure feel like I appreciate Jeff more all of a sudden; it’s showing it in any meaningful and constructive way that remains a challenge.

If there’s anything that can break your heart more than family, I don’t know what it is.

Gizmo went for a walk with Jeff and then decided he found something worth investigating and hasn’t come home yet.

Sad and dreadful news

John Caspell, Paul’s younger brother, known on this blog as Dr. Filk, died today in hospital.  Lady Miss B was in the room when they called the code.  She called us to the hospital – where we had been planning to visit him this afternoon – but it was too late when we got there.  We said our goodbyes.

All of us here are numb.  Lady Miss B’s husband is about to pick her up and take her back to Vancouver; Paul and I and Keith have one more piece of business to attend to and then we’ll be going back on the 9 o’clock.

I am still giving the homily at church tomorrow but I think I will make room for people to say a few words about John, who was, after all, one of the more interesting, colourful and intelligent people most of us will ever have the chance to meet.  It was a privilege to know him.

Back from the Partay

Jeff and I are just back from collecting the Mr. Two from Dundas Street, where it was parked overnight after we hung out at Jim’s party.  Keith came along as well.  A substantial chunk of Jim’s old band was there and they backed me up on Buy Me A Beer, which I managed to get through quite creditably considering how impaired I was, and playing it on the ‘wrong’ instrument, being Jim’s acoustic guitar.  Jim also got me singing An Evening of Serious Drinking.  Oh, those hot wings!  and Otto-man was there, big hugs.  First reunion of the Lunch Bunch in about five years.  We’ve had three out of four multiple times, but not four out of four…. Being me, Mike, Tom U and Jerome.

Anyway, it was a fabulous time and Mike drove me, Jerome and Brian C. home as he had spent several hours only drinking pop prior to going home.   Now brunch and then I’m taking Keith to MEC to go parkour shoe shopping.  Grosses Bises everybody!!!