Category: Family

Love and loss

I’d like to light a candle for mOm.  She’s lost a lot of relatives, mostly to cancer, in the last little while.  That and the fall will tend to make you thoughtful, and sad.

Here’s another candle for my cousin Marianne.  I never met her, I only met her brother Rawd, but he was a sweetie, and Marianne was less than ten years older than me when she died.  She was also a really good person…. a mensch.  I’m going to ask mOm for permission to repost her obit.

Here’s one last candle to all those whose love has become loss.

“I’m eating bananas and cream” / Kopper and Katie here for dins

What a scoundrel I am.  I bait Kopper by telling her I’ll cook for her, and then switch and order Swiss Chalet.  We swapped notes on how exhausted we are, watched a little Planet Earth, ate dinner, and then I walked her to the bus.  Once she was at the Brentwood end of the 25 bus, now she’s at the Nanaimo end, but she’s still very close.

Then Katie’s cell phone rang and Katie said, “I’m eating bananas and cream.”  There was a pause, and then she said, a little more distinctly “I’m eating bananas and cream.”  There was a pause, and then she said, annoyed, and slightly louder “I’m eating bananas and cream.” There was long pause, and then she said, “I’m eating bananas and cream.” At this point I am no longer able to concentrate on so much of a syllable of what Kopper is saying, so I yell, “*****!  Tell Daxus to clean the ******* wax out of his ears!”  She said it twice after that.  It was all I could do not to roll around on the ground shrieking with laughter.  The inanity of teenage conversations never ceases to astound.

Photobooth is this incredibly puerile utility on a Mac/food

You just sit there and make goofy faces and take pictures of yourself in a random, blissfully self-centred way, on your MOTHER’S COMPUTER, when you KNOW she blogs!?  Like I never did that.  It’s an unflattering eye, though.

I had a brief and bloody battle with myself, but I owe it to the world to post this picture.  The other five pictures Katie took have seductive beauty and offhand exhaustion, and one of THE WORST CASES of Milton Berle mouth, ever. But you shall never see them, ho ho!

You may perhaps be wondering why the hell I speak in such detail of my meals.  As stated in the raison d’etre of this blog, I write for my mother, and she is continuously wonderstruck and pleased that her abiding distaste, which accompanies her essential competence, for cooking, has not passed to me, and that I actually cook.  Yeah, I get tired every once in a while, but I always climb back on the horse.

This is what I mades for dinner.  Leftover pork roast with sauerkraut.  Oh, life’s hard.  Salad with salt, pepper, half a teaspoon of olive oil, a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, about a heaping tablespoon of finely chopped red onion, one whole Early Girl tomato, organically grown by Paul’s neighbour, and one whole finely chopped red pepper. Damn, it was fine.  And I made homemade gravy and the first yorkshire pudding I’ve made in many a long year.  Damn, that was fine too! Wrong sized pan but I’ll fix it next time…. or double the recipe.  What you can do with eggs, sir, what you can do with them!

Katie finished her homework and watched some NCIS and then left.

I’m feeding Kopper tomorrow.

It’s talk like a pirate day.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

MANY thanks to Mike, who hauled out the massage table last night and put me into that stunned state of mind that accompanies a really long and effective massage.

Katie and Mike were both around for dins last night and I fed them garlic bread, tater tots, lettuce and tomato and onion and sunflower seed salad, and broiled pork chomps and leftover mushrooms and I kinda went nuts at the bakery so we had dessert too.  I bought so much sweet stuff I gave it to Katie to take to Dax.  Katie has a routine now where she does all the homework she gets assigned to do as soon as she gets home on Thursday night, so she can have the weekend to herself without feeling anxious about getting home by six on Sunday to do the work.  She also entertained me and Mike and Jeff with her description of working and learning at hair design school at VCC.  Katie says easily a quarter of the class is ‘spoiled rich bitches who don’t do any work’ and most of the rest don’t have any gumption or ability to work independently.  She took my advice and sized up her colleagues on the first day and sat next to the one with the sweetest face, and now she and Kelly are becoming fast friends and she hangs with a clique of women who really want to be there and are working hard.  If you think hairdressing is easy, try standing for six hours with your arms outstretched…..

There was a skunk in the front yard last night, right at the bottom of the stairs.  Yikes.

From Paul – for Keith

Next time you talk to Keith, you might like to pass him some kudos.
Here’s the skinny: we’re doing Mr. Canoehead coming home from Deer Lake.
Keith’s driving for the first time in a year or two & he doesn’t like the
idea of Canada Way at 18:30 so I say pull into the Esso on the corner &
watch the traffic for a while & if you don’t like it, I’ll take over.
Second time the light goes red for Canada Way he says “Let’s go for it and
I’ll drive along in my own little space,” and starts to pull out onto the road
when this idiot turns left into the station and winds up stopped in the
roadway head on to us.
I say, don’t worry about it Keith & he blithely maneuvers around and heads
south. Of course a few more idiots have to blow by us like we’re going
backwards even though we’re doing the limit, but Keith doesn’t get rattled,
just stays in his lane & asks for advice when he needs it.
Best part of all was when he had to parallel park in front of the house.
We’ve got a space that’s about 7 ft. longer than we are & we’ve got a canoe
on top. To make a long story even longer, Keith, with a little coaching put
rear wheel 2 in from the curb, front wheel on and three feet space in back,
four out front IN ONE PASS no guff folks.
He was pretty proud of himself.

And SO AM I.

Cat / lessons / good news

My mandolin teacher is what I’d look like if I had nicer hair and more of it, put on forty pounds and was 15 years older.  She’s pretty stern.  Fortunately she’s also pretty flexible, and I already know one additional chord, and have a LOT OF FREEEEKING HOMEWORK.  Eddie, who normally ignores female visitors, came out and inspected the living hell out of her, including trying to get under her skirt.  It was quite a performance.

Spartan kitty.

Work continues to have the worst kind of oil, being turm-oil,  but I have laid to rest most of my anxieties and concerns.  There’s still a lot of thrashing around, and I have to move desks for the first time in years, but other than that things are slowly returning to normal, or whatever the new normal is.  When you’ve been through a great deal, you get punchy.

Pig for mOm.

Squirrel mom vs curious dog. Hint, squirrel FTW.

Tuna salad bowl for dinner last night.  Jeff does NOT like the little red cheeses; they are responsible for him wanting to bail on dairy entirely.  Ha, what, no ice cream?  I made enough tuna salad for two meals, and that’s exactly what Katie did, made two meals out of it.  She apparently didn’t want to get out of bed yesterday morning (she was at Daxus’) and he forced her out, coffee in hand, saying, “Yer mom’ll kill me if you don’t go to school.”  That he would even pretend to care about my opinion cheered me no end.  Please note, I am not for killing anybody, although there are about six people I’d like to personally spank, and about a hundred I would like to be paid to verbally humiliate. I’m so good at it I really oughta get paid.  But of course, there’s no room at the standup inn.  Oooh, speaking of Standup, anybody see Marg Cho’s Christian rant?  Most amusing!

Katie K has sold her condo.  This is awesome awesome news, and it made me very happy when I heard it.

I have to pack up my desk today, which means basically that I have to throw a lot of crap out.

I really like Jeff’s kitties, but I wish they were more affectionate. I just want a kitty to curl up on me once in a while.  Like dis.

Ashokan Farewell and who let the bear out

Cousin Gerald, because he appears to have MIND READING on his resume, sent me the MP3 of Jay Ungar’s version of Ashokan Farewell, which is from the soundtrack of the Civil War documentary I’ve been watching.

I publicly express my weeping gratitude!  It’s also meaningful to me because the folks at Jericho Beach Folk Club play it for every ingathering, so it’s already familiar to me.

Chipper THANKS for this… Who let the bear out? Adventures in animal release…..

ADDED LATER

I just learned that Ashokan Farewell was written by Jay Ungar, who played it on the soundtrack, so it’s one of those ‘contemporary trad’ tunes, like the kind Dr. Filk likes so much.

Lee’s army is surrounded on three sides by Union troops

Surrender is inevitable.  Heavy sigh.  Such a gallant army.  Such an inglorious cause.

Anyway, I should drag myself away from the Rebel defeat long enough to comment on chicken breasts, curried rice and salad for dinner last night (v mild curry, due to Katie really not being a big fan).  Jeff’s doing the trash.  It’s all very domestic and boring, and frankly, that’s the way I likes it.  Katie left about 7:30 last night to parts unknown, but she had all her school crap with her and she’s supposed to text me when she’s on her way to school.  I’m not too worried; it would hardly help if I was.

I am now facing the prospect of doing scratch recordings of all the songs I have selected for inclusion in the musical, with some horror.  But it must be done….

Dreams / work / musical

I’m only posting this to make Debbie pout, but last night I dreamed I was in a hot tub with Michael Weatherly and three other guys.  I was naked, everybody else was wearing trunks.  (damn… or something).  And what were we DOING in the hot tub, minds without shame wish to know?  Waiting for Obama.  Yup. I wish I was making this up, but I was waiting for Obama.  Also there was a bit of byplay about Michael Weatherly swimming with dolphins, and he said they had noses like a policeman’s truncheon.  No subtext there, move along!

When we got out of the hot tub, (Obama being a no-show) we realized we were in a Bavarian village, and somebody was trying to get married on a balcony (I saw my old boss François as a groomsman) at the same time there was a movie being filmed about Hitler, and the crew wanted to use the balcony at the same time as the wedding party, and I got out of Bavaria before there was a total riot. Note how all my major concerns of late are shoved into one untidy dream.  Woke up smiling, even if I didn’t get to see Michael Weatherly naked.

Worked late last night.  It’s boring as hell, what I was trying to do, but I tried to do it a week ago and all my scans disappeared, and then I tried to do it yesterday, and that part of the network went offline just as I was trying to complete it, so I stayed for an hour and got it done. The guys in IT are screechingly busy these days what with moves and upgrades but they are still unfailingly helpful and polite, so here’s a blessing on the lot of them.  I will miss them…. after the move I won’t be sitting close to them anymore.  Sigh.

I’m seriously grieving about my job change. It’s LUDICROUS.  I’ve done nothing but complain about it for the best part of ten years, but now I’m realizing I secretly loved it and was just whining for attention.  This makes me feel like an ijjut.  We grow too soon oldt und too late schmardt.

The LHC did not trigger the end of the world; I slept fine last night, as my dreams could attest.

Katie’s here contemplating what to raid the fridge for at lunch.  It’s so cute.  Especially now that I know she’s sharing her lunch every day with women who forget to eat. (Women who forget to eat…. didn’t Rita Rudner have a brilliant line to do with that??)

I’m seeing Mr. Music on Friday and we’re going to run through the tunes; he’s planning on feeding me.  Any guy who has a vault for a pantry HAS to be able to cook; I await the prospect with happiness.  The work too.

Last night I asked Paul, mOm, Mr. Music and Katie ‘what makes a great musical’.  Paul said “The tunes and how it’s put together,” Mr. Music said, “Song, story, presentation,” mOm said, “Singing and dancing!” and Katie said “Pacing and variety”.  I’m going to keep asking people what they think, but I’m using Mr. Music’s useful and terse guidelines for practicality’s sake.

I light a candle for the swift recovery of my former boss Owen’s son Ryan, who’s recently out of surgery.  On a less compassionate note, here’s a little squib for the swift arrival of the plumber; we’ve been waiting for a couple of days.  It’s okay, it merely confirms Jeff and I in our belief that we’d be better served in a different location.  Our own.

The perfect wedding

I guess I have to say that I don’t feel bad at all about being almost 50, because it means I’ve attended a fair few marriage ceremonies.  I have some basis of comparison, then, when I say that Jerome and Shannon’s wedding was the closest to perfect I’ve ever seen.

A marriage, you know, one of those commitments not to be entered into lightly or with no thought.

First, the happy couple.  Hardworking, intelligent, hospitable and good-looking.  Once in a very long while you meet a couple made for each other and when you get the news they’re engaged you get all wiggly like a puppy that something good is gonna be happening and you’re gonna be invited.

The venue: on a near cloudless day, warm with a bit of a breeze, they married outdoors next to the pavilion in Deer Lake Park, in front of about 100 people who had flown or driven from all over Washington or Western Canada.

The bridal party: Three stunning women in beautiful red strapless dresses that they all looked good in and which they would all be able to wear again for a formal occasion.  The groomsmen: two guys who go back to the dawn of time with Jerome, and his twin sister, who, uh, goes back even earlier than that.  Joanna got to wear the same red gown, and the whole party looked great – and happy to be there.

The bridal costume:  While I still think Cheryl’s wedding gown was magnificent, it was appropriate for her age and not being marriage number one.  THIS was a full on girly girl, long train, beads and spangles, white wedding dress. It was exactly like the kind of dress 8 year old girls dream about, and it was quite funny because Shannon is not a girly girl, but she still had the perfect dress.

The ceremony started and ended on time.  I don’t think the bride and groom recited their vows with quite enough intent and dignity, but that’s just me and they still got the job done.

The officiating dude:  He was the possessor of  a clear mellow voice with an English accent and he didn’t rush anything.

The presence of mind of the groom:  While they were reciting vows, a small spider started down Shannon’s face (it had probably joined the ceremony during the picture taking just before the ceremony).  Shannon’s arachnophobia is legendary, and Jerome dealt with it calmly.  She was laughing at him as he tried to clear it off her face because he didn’t tell her it was a spider until AFTER which was kinda the right thing to do if he didn’t want her leaping up and screeching.

The reception hall was exactly the right size and there was an open bar.  No, I didn’t go insane (I am up at 6 am the next day after all) but I got plenty convivial.

The music at the reception:  from the last 50 years, but leaning more towards U2 and Aerosmith and Tom Petty and Tragically Hip and Pink Floyd, with Sinatra and Del Shannon thrown in.  Danceable, hummable, fun.

The guests; fun loving.  The table I sat at:  All people I know and love, or would care to get to know better.  The MC:  a friend of Shannon’s who goes back yonks; he did a good job.  The best man.  Okay, I’m prejudiced, because I really like Sam I Am, but that was THE BEST speech ever.  It was completely loaded with electricity puns.  Loaded.  pOp, if you’d been there even if you would have been roaring:  All of his current and former coworkers were speechless with laughter, not the nervous kind but the kind where you are leaning on the table crying.

Food:  really good roast beast and plenty of other nummy things, in abundance, well cooked.

The dancing:   I was out there with a crowd of coworkers when Robbie B said, “Oh my god Allegra did you see that?” “What, the father of the bride delivering jello shooters onto the dance floor?” “How perfect is that?” “I think it was an epoch making day in Canadian history, frankly, and WE WERE HERE.”

The seating plans:  Weddings with four parents – none of whom really can sit at the same table – don’t necessarily work all that well.  There wasn’t any awkwardness.

Shannon said (she was grinning) during the bride and groom speech that she had made a Powerpoint presentation to the caterers, so you get the impression she’s a disciplined and organized woman.  Well, I’d say it paid off, because Shannon and Jerome made the decision from the outset to throw a memorable party for their friends and family, and they got their wish.  I had a complete blast.  Many thanks to Mike for the ride to the hall and companionship during the evening…. at one point a photographer asked if we were together and we just smirked, while the other folks at the table laughed.  And thanks to Jeff for getting me there, I appreciate that a lot.

Wasn’t that a party…..  If any of my pix turned out halfway decent I’ll post some later.