Category: Family

Lovely dinner at Lexi and Rob’s

Darwin was adorable, and it was very pleasant to watch Keith interact with him for the first time.  Lexi fed us roast chicken and oven roasted potatoes and salad and asparagus.  Katie sluiced back quite a bit of wine; I managed to hold the line at a single beer.

Today I roasted a beast and fed the boys dinner and watched a bit of Battlestar Galactica and did a shop with Jeff and slept in.  I really took it easy… and there’s lots of yummy leftovers for tomorrow.

I feel very happy and relaxed at the moment.

Oh, and we watched Cat  Ballou with Keith.  That was a riot.

Canucks win 3 zip over St Louis. Many horns honk.

I am quite sure all the bars in town breathed a sigh of relief.

Click here for an amazing assortment of zoo pictures from around the world.

Paul stopped by on his way back into town.  His sis and bro-in-law are doing famously – she is starting to do doula work in rural Alberta, which is exciting.  Lois always was one of my fave people.  Their mom Phyllis is also, apparently, well, and my hat’s off to her given what a challenge it is to fly solo when you’re up in your eighties and not so mobile as you once were.

Miss Margot just gave me a demonstration of what Jeff has had to put up with these last few weeks, by climbing up my bare leg with her claws.  I am so proud of myself for not screaming.

Keith is coming over today, and then later we’ll be off to Lexi, Darwin and Rob’s for dinner.  Katie has been contacted and advises she is coming too.

There is a housefilk today (I got the dates wrong) AND a party at Mike’s tonight. Why does all the fun have to pile up in one day?  I wish I could bilocate.  Or trilocate.

CSI has either jumped the shark or is warming it up backstage.  They did a Star Trek knockoff episode, although having Grace Park in the audience was a nice touch. We’ll see if they’re back on the game next week.

ScaryClown liked my word crapstack (which I introduced on this blog a mite ago) and has made it more official sounding by putting ‘metric’ in the front.  Doesn’t a ‘metric crapstack of work’ sound official?  I quite like it.

Beautiful day

I got up at 6:30 yesterday and started work on the canonical list of allegrasongs; I checked the 130 strong list of songs, removed the inadvertent duplicates that had crept in because I keep changing the song titles, I found one missing set of lyrics, added a dozen which I actually know the lyrics to but had never (oops) written down, checked the list of songs again and marked all the ones I don’t have lyrics for; was HORRIFIED to learn that I no longer have the lyrics for “But can she type?” which is an extremely 70’s sitcom theme-styled song about looking for a job in Toronto in the early 80’s. The tune I still have, it’s a swooping cheerful rollicking thing.

As best I can remember:

The customer is always right

and so whenever possible

I try to be the customer

But lately I’ve been looking for a job

and it aint easy

Can’t say how much I wish it were!

But can she type, but can she type?

Watch the paper and the fingers fly

the fingers fly….

Pound the pavement knock on doors

it doesn’t matter metaphors

it doesn’t matter what you choose

They all want to pay you this

and you want to make that

Whatever happens you will lose.

and then in an annoying talking blues style…

they give me tests… on a keyboard dinosaur…. date of manufacture – 1964! Christ, this thing is almost as old as me….

and then I’m missing a verse. Candidly, I suck!  But I just copied what I typed into the data base, so, go me.

Then I remembered a huge chunk of a song that when Paul criticized me about it (he gave me a 10 minute lecture on how I should not write about such disgusting subjects, a view he no longer holds and has expressed contrition for) I put the song down.  What is my problem? (ed.  You think you have only one???)  I respond to criticism much as JRR Tolkien – I either ignore it in its entirety or abandon what I was working on, which in a nutshell is why I’ve never made a nickel from my work.  It’s hardly Paul’s fault if I don’t have an adult reaction to comments. Anyway, angry that I had lost the first verse, I wrote another one, which, I am convinced, is better, or at least has a slick internal rhyme.  Thank you Flying Spaghetti Monster in my brain.

Then, after I whined that I was on a creative roll and didn’t feel like cooking dinner, as I had promised to do, the kids and Paul showed up with Chinese food and we stuffed ourselves, and then Paul and I had the untrammelled delight of watching Katie fall asleep on the sofa WITH A BOOK IN HER HAND.  TV does it again.  Katie watched True Blood and loved it (June, 2009, there will be more!) and then I bought her the first book and she went nuts and has since acquired the rest of the series, some bought by her G’ma (that is mOm’s ‘thug’ name, so’s you know) (I am the Notorious M.O.M.) and some by Dax, who doesn’t need a thug name but has softened my prickly heart by buying my girl books.  I sent a cinnamon bun home with him yesterday for his roommate, just to show that I’m not a hater… and one for him, too.  They are the bestest cinnamon bunses ever, as I melted half a 70% Purdy’s bar into the goo, and I’m saving some for Jeff when he gets home from Victoria this evening because he will not want to miss them.  As promised Robof9 will be getting one today.

Then Paul and I went for a walk, the weather FINALLY having cleaned up and then he went to work and the kids hung around until after I went to bed.  Margot didn’t sleep with me last night, sad face.

Now, to fly out to the living room and clean up the ungodly mess of cables and musical instruments I left like a booby trap, a quick shower, and off to my shiny place of employment.  I had a great day yesterday, and I got really really close to getting something crossed off my list.  Excelsior!!

Visit

Briefly visited with Dax and Katie yesterday, checking out his new rented room right next to the Metrotown station.  The building is owner occupied condos so the building is clean and Dax’s room is really nice.  Then I fed the kids sushi and came home.  Jeff went off and visited with his buddy Rob yesterday, and Keith was here most of the day.

Domestic news

Jeff and I have had to come to the painful conclusion that we are not suited to be long term roommates.  I wouldn’t hand this year back for any money, as I’ve mostly had a really good time and seen a pile of wonderful movies and learned a great deal, but we’re kind of headed in two different directions and there’s no denying that I am noisy and ebullient and sociable and scattered by comparison with my brother.  No end date is set yet for our joint household and there’s all kinds of tactical and logistical stuff to deal with, but please be assured that this is a civil situation and we are continuing to look out for each other’s interests as we get closer to moving day.  As neither of us can support this place alone we’ll both be moving out.  It’s a great apartment with fabulous neighbours – anybody who’s interested in it should let me know….

Friend news

Peter A. has gotten rid of his downstairs tenant.  He is very happy.  She fought with the neighbours.  He was just about to service the eviction notice… and she gave notice. 

Robof9 has learned to unicycle.

Chris S. is going to be dj-ing at the ANZA Club this week.

Tanya is still SERIOUSLY pregnant.  We are rapidly running out of tactful ways to describe her rotundity.

Cris is still a troublemaker. 

Christopher Lee (our chef was named after the horrormeister, doesn’t that rock?) made an amazing shrimp salad for lunch.  It was a masterpiece of yumminess.

Dax has found a place to live.

Carrie is coming to Vancouver in about a week.

Dr. Filk is making music and trouble in Ontario.

Paul’s off to a training course in Toronto on Sunday and will be visiting rellies while he’s there.

Jeff is covered in scratches on his legs from where Miss Margot has decided that if he’s upholstered he must be something she can climb.  Honestly, he looks like he’s gone a round with a bobcat.

Patricia will be going to Australia, I’m so excited for her!

Granny has a cracked rib.  The owie, the owie!

pOp says getting old is teh suck.

mOm denies that she is feeling poorly…. Robaxicet to the rescue!

Trevor is going to New Zealand today – with his wife and two kids under 5.  The horror, the horror!

How’s that again?

Last night when I got home from work there was the same picture I’d left on the screen from the morning – it’s from a series of pictures Cousin Gerald sent me.  It’s of the underside of a dock in the wintertime. Margot walked across the computer keyboard and – I’ve not the faintest notion how – suddenly there was a picture of a person holding up a sign saying “Most of the things you worry about never happen.”  Bizarre.  Then she stood on the brightness key until my screen disappeared, which is a much less entertaining and more cat like thing to do.  Took me ages to figure out what had happened. All of these miracles would not occur if I just closed the darned thing up.

I am reading my grampa’s stories.  I am now up to the point where his family could have taken the Titanic across the ocean but left a couple of days earlier that it did.  One of his near relatives was so famous as a bookseller and antiquarian in England that a letter from America with his name, occupation and country on it – and NO other details – was delivered to him. I find it entertaining that anybody who really wanted to find me could do it in two steps on the internet, but the Post Office would be scunnered if somebody sent me a letter with my name, occupation and country on it. Mind you there was delivery twice a day in England then, and a little more enterprise among the employees.

He mentions another person from his childhood who noticed that the Greenwich Mean Time was off by two seconds one day and reported it by telegram.  He was right, and they said so.

My grampa worked in the Cadbury chocolate factory when he was a boy.

Eddie is eating and going outside again, so he has recovered somewhat from the cold Jeff gave him.  Mistress Margot is showing signs of wanting to go out.  Sigh.

Kitty (and people)

Every morning she climbs up on me and ritually sneezes in my face.  This is, according to the lad I got her from, pretty normal.

She is struggling less and less when I brush her; when she’s about as relaxed as I can expect, I’ll bathe her. Jeff has made me swear a mighty oath that I won’t do it unless he can film the entire thing.  I’m thinking we should film it AND get stills.  It’s gonna be an event.  Now kitty is stalking the power cord for the MacBook.  Now she’s chasing Gizmo off his food dish…. bad plan.

To be able to wake up at 2 am, with her just out of my sleepthrashing range on the bed, instantly purring when I reach out to touch her ludicrously soft fur, is the most beautiful thing in my life right now.  I know I kinda ‘bought a friend’ but there was no guarantee she would even like me, and but she’s showing every sign of liking me a lot, rushing up to me when I come home from work.  She likes Jeff fine, but I’m the one who cleans her and brushes her, so she knows who mom is.

She’s got the boys completely whipped, and it hasn’t even been two weeks.

When Katie was here for dinner two Sundays ago Margot jumped onto the blue exercise ball in the living room.  Jeff reports that she has now jumped onto the ball and stood on it for a second and then jumped off.  I wish I had somebody who could circus train her, she’s got native talent.  The man who runs the cat circus (and while looking for him I found the Charles Mingus Cat Toilet Training Program, apparently written by the bassist himself) says that by watching a cat carefully you can tell if they have a certain bent and then you very slowly and patiently shape the behaviour until they are pushing strollers full of other cats, walking on high wires, walking on their front paws, and doing complicated dance routines with other cats, among the many other bizarre things he’s trained cats to do.

Hm.  Well, I’ve been remiss in reporting the social news.  Dr. Filk paid us a flying visit on Friday, and mightily glad was I to see him, and he found la belle Margot entertaining.

Paul and the kids were by for Sunday dinner and we watched Jurassic Park.  Paul brought the best pork roast, and we had onions and carrots and taters and corn, so it was a real Sunday dinner.

No date with my new friend this past weekend, I’ve been feeling a bit off colour and my foot is still hurting like a b9st9rd so anything involving more than about ten blocks of walking finishes me off.  Yes, I should see a doctor, but for what?  To get told it’s sprained ligaments and I should get orthotics?  I am so tired of going to the doctor and finding out I’m a jeezly hypochondriac.  Given that I’m fifty I’m sure I’ll get bad news eventually but every health scare I’ve had except for my back – which is the same as always, thanks – has turned out to be figmentary.  Actually, I took Robaxicet last night and I had an AWESOME night’s sleep.

Just fixed poached eggs and toast for brekkie, and I am now contemplating a second cup of coffee.  Oh Margot, quit chewing on the cable…..  If you get electrocuted, nobody will be able to tell.

The landpeers have rearranged the way they park their vehicles so I can use the walkway.  Jeff and I are responding by ensuring they have the rent cheques in hand in about fifteen minutes.  It’s actually kinda handy having the landpeers that close.

I handed out biscotti at work yesterday.  Man, I love doing that.

I wish I could blog about work.  But continued employment beckons encouragingly, so I will defer to my more sensible, grownup, beaten down by capitalizm self, and keep my icecream siphon closed.

Speaking of ice cream.  I brought some home last night.  Then I said to Jeff, “Screw this noise… Dessert, it’s what’s for supper.”  Thus my atonement with a nourishing and sensible brekkie today.

The laundry list

Woke up at 2.

Eddie crying in my room again, but this time he let me pet him for about half an hour.

Could not for the life of me go back to sleep.

Did not want to go to work.  So…. tired….

Another commute to work in the drear rain, which magically transmuted to snow on the hill, and they are doing construction and thus diverted us onto a pathway that appeared to be clay mixed with greasy snow.  Almost fell four times on the way to work, again, the worst slip causing me to pull muscles.  Being diverted into a muck heap almost wrecked my shoes.  Complained to the site supervisor that where we were being forced to walk was a safety hazard, you bastard, have a nice day.

Got to work and everybody is asking me why I’m limping.  I wish I knew.  The last time I limped this much my back crapped out shortly afterward.  The pain in the top of my foot is worse when I walk and better when I climb or descend stairs, which makes NO SENSE to me. Why would flexing the foot hurt less?  The pain is markedly less when I do not wear footgear, which means I should hie me off and spend more money I don’t have on orthotics.  I used to get depressed when I was presented with yet another physical challenge, now I just set my jaw.

In the afternoon, Jeff got me at work and dropped me off at David Lam campus where – I had learned that morning – I was NOT going to get a contact lens fitting from my son but from a total stranger.  I stopped off in the campus bookstore and got Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, and a really cool flashcard book about human anatomy, then went to my appointment and then learned that all the grudgy hopeless feelings melted – all Keith had had to do was say I was his mother, and they swapped things around so that I could get the fitting from him.  Got fitted – it was damned thorough – and walked away with saline and two new contact lenses, which fit great and which I wore for about three hours.  My eyes are a bit gummy today, but not significantly more than they are in the mornings anyway.  As we were commuting back home together I read bits of Homage aloud to Keith and the two of us were killing ourselves laughing, because grim as the subject is (Spanish Civil War), parts of it are screamingly funny.

Then Jeff went to a job interview which went well and he can news about it if he wants to, and then on the way home my cell rang and it was ScaryClown, saying OMG new kitty I’m coming over (reMARkable what getting a new animal does for your social life) as ScaryClown is crazy mad insane for cats and then we watched the 1929 ship around the Horn documentary, with ScaryClown occasionally emitting phrases of stunned appreciation, amusement and awe (JUST as I expected).

Then I cooked pierogies and fed them and then we watched some Robot Chicken including one I hadn’t previously seen, and then I went to bed because I keep having insomnia.  Thankfully, not last night.  Miss Margot slept with me voluntarily last night (she got up to explore in the night and then came back to bed) and I slept until just before six.  So I actually feel like a human being this morning, and my son is showing signs of turning into a professional, and a friend stopped by, and tonight I gotta fetch la Margot to the kitty hospital and get her booster shots.

I hope to go swimming with the folks from Planet Bachelor tonight.  I may feel subpar with all these aches and pains, but I still have to exercise and walking is turning out to be problematic.  I mean, bus drivers are stopping between stops to pick me up, how often does THAT happen?

Oh, and I fixed my hat so it sits on my head better.

Oh, and Katie called me voluntarily and without asking for money.  And she asked me for my opinion about her hair, which is like asking Miss Margot for an interpretive dance on the Berlin Air-lift.  I said, “You’re twenty years old and stunningly gorgeous, do your hair however the hell you like!”  Now that’s what I call solid parental advice.

Katie meets the new beast

I think Katie was a little taken aback at just how flat Miss Margot’s face is, but she was charmed nevertheless.  Jeff, Paul, Keith, Kate and I watched the last two episodes of Planet Earth (in High Def, did I mention that part?) and I fed everybody spaghetti and Jeff bought Mayan Chocolate ice cream and Paul brought pie.  Then I kicked everybody out and Eddie woke me up crying and I went to fetch Miss Margot from the sofa, which was where she was when she decided to roll it up for the night.  She is now snoring gently next to my head, while I wonder why I’ve now had two intensely crappy nights of sleep. I need my beauty sleep (yeah, like about a thousand years) to keep my eyes in good shape for today’s contact lens fitting. I should go to work early cause I’m leaving early….

Ick, it’s pouring rain.

busy morning

Off to the clinic for an early appointment, (Jeff gave me a lift) and then I went completely berserk.  Wandered into a cooking supply place, got a bunch of kitchen gadgets I actually needed, and a bunch I don’t but had to have.  Bought a new handbag (basically a black shopping bag with zippers, just barely big enough to hold my laptop).  Bought two stems of white freesia.  Walked from Cambie and Broadway to Kingsway and Broadway.  On the way poked my head into the Luddite’s place of work and got off the perfect line… the Luddite’s boss said, “For me?” when he saw the flowers and I just grinned and said, “No, for him!”  which amused the Luddite no end. He’s much the same as always, except more so.  Of course he wouldn’t take the flowers from me so I got to be a smart ass to his boss AND keep the flowers.  Then I wandered into a mattress store and after telling the guy to wake me in an hour after finding the perfect mattress, purchased two single mattresses with covers, to be delivered next Saturday. That’s so Keith has a proper bed when he sleeps over.  Also, as much as I like the Fjord Queen bed it’s too damned big for my little bedroom, so I’m going to go back to sleeping on the floor.  I have a week to reorganize things so when the mattresses show up I have places to put them.  With that done I walked to the next bus stop and went home, many hundreds of dollars poorer.   But I can julienne things, and I have proper garlic technology, and I found out where to buy a cast iron grill for the oven, and I got two cute little egg poachers and promptly used them to make our lunch (Jeff declared himself contented), and I can now properly clean tea and coffeepots, and I got to listen to the chef in the back (there are cooking classes at the back of the store) shriek and giggle in a most entertaining way. I also got to listen to an openly gay man tell the gal at the counter that the store was worse than crack, and I was in no position to debate the point….

Now:

I assault the bathroom and remove scum and squick;

I do some on line banking to backstop my purchases;

I run some laundry;

I do some mending;

I fix my little green hat so it sits on my head properly;

I review the list of things to do that I made while waiting for the very sweet woman who saw me at a clinic (never get two perimenopausal women in the same room discussing the joys thereof, it’s wonderful for us but murder on the appointment schedule).

It has to be spring.  I got my mo back.

nothing to say

so I’ll just blather.

Checked the Vancouver open mic scene.  There’s nothing I want to do until the 18th of March… I put it on the calendar.

Jeff’s up doing garbage, it being that time of week again.

Watched The Bank Job last night. I quite liked Jason Statham as a venal everyman forced to think fast.

I am going to try to get to work early this morning, the weather was supremely uncooperative yeesterday.  I left 20 minutes early and got there 2o minutes late.  I hope the person who made the decision to put the office at the top of that bloody hill gets a sound caning at some point.

We’re in the Phony War part of the depression.  Nobody but the homeless believes it’s happening.  You can still get sushi and big screen tvs.  China’s governors are proclaiming 8 percent growth this year.  I cannot believe, after closing 65000 factories, that anybody in China or out of it could spout such nonsense.  Global and domestic demand has plummeted.  There are millions of unemployed who left the cities to go back home so as to at least be able to mooch food off their families.  They sit around smoking and gambling and getting into trouble, and this is going to help domestic tranquillity how?

Katie has a plan to move out of her dad’s place and in with two girlfriends.  I know for a certainty this is not going to end well, and I can’t do or say a damned thing about it.  She can’t really move until she has a job, and I have tried to help her with that, including a snotty voicemail to change her equally snotty voicemail message.  If I was an employer and I heard that message I’d slam the phone down and say ‘next’!

Darwin is the cutest baby I didn’t give birth to, but I’m sure he’ll lose that crown when Tanya’s tamaiti is born.

I left Grampa’s stories in Paul’s car, and now he and Keith are reading them.  Bwa ha ha!  My evil plan is working.  That would be the plan where I do things by accident and things turn out well anyway.

I can’t think of anything else and I should shower and caffeinate and swap laundry and depart.