Category: Family

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Baumfest was awesome – and brief – I got there around 11 pm last night and left at 9:30 this morning.  I feel about as you might expect for 4 hours sleep.   It was wonderful singing “An Evening of Serious Drinking” with Brother Jerome in the circle – I wrote it for his 25th b-day uh… some… years ago.  He still likes it, so that’s good.

There was a SERIOUS baumfire there.  When I came in the fire was throwing heat at least two meters and it was still enough we didn’t get smoked out.  There were beautiful clouds reflecting the almost full moon – I love that cold, polarized light.

Their kids are growing fast and doing well – it was great seeing the kindergarten table and chairs, and the xylophone, getting some use by real children.

Jeff is coming next weekend, yay.

Off to Lexi’s for dins and fireworks now.

Keith was here last night too

Keith stayed over last night, mostly because I kidnapped his Patrick O’Brian book and then started snoring.  Evil I am.  I took him out to dinner and he had tandoori chicken for the first time (on Caesar salad…)

Last night I dreamed that Spike from Buffy was writing a book on how to be the perfect boyfriend.  Most of us spewed out our tea when we heard this, especially when he started lecturing us about it (he went on at length and I sure wish I could remember any of it). We were all dressed in period costume (like a really really bad bunch of Pirates/Aubrey-Maturin/Diamond Age/mid-Victorian cosplayers). We got on a boat and hunted crocodiles.  The inside of the boat was bigger than the outside.

Work is abruptly better because there’s a new hire starting next week.  I cheered up.  Also, my coworkers are awesome – I just thought I’d mention that.  I still wish I could say something about two other departments in my company besides, “If brains were a Botox injection you’d look like a Sharpei”.

Final details

I am pretty sure Paul and I are 98 per cent of the way there to having a separation agreement hammered out.  I just remembered something I forgot to add in (which doesn’t work out in my favour, but honesty is the best policy when the kids are watching). Other than that we’re super close and reasonably squared away about the results.  I can’t say that either of us is happy about it, but we are in agreement about what needs doing and why, and who owes what to whom, and the lawyers have pretty much stayed out of it, so we are content if not happy.

Oh, and Keith didn’t get on break fast enough to pick me up Harry Potter but it’s the thought that counts.

What I’ve been up to

I have completed another section of “the difficulties”.  I find Jericho Beach a most inspiring locale – I may go down there for a day sometime and just sit around and write.

I am adjusting rather better to the shift in workload and priorities.  The customers are being kind as I learn, and my predecessor (he went to a different department) kinder yet.  The new hire accepted and agreed to start July 30th o frabjous day.
I will be heading out for a family dinner with Mike M tonight after I go talk to Paul.

I reread Lilith’s Brood, the Oankali stories by Octavia Butler.

I’m taking a little break from Patrick O’Brian.

My back hurts constantly these days, and my foot is very numb.  Walking helps, as does sitting on the posture ball at work.  I’m having a lot of trouble finding a comfortable sleeping position.

I have been sad for the last couple of days, not so much this morning, thanks to KatieK, a friend of mine whom I invited over for dinner and an earflapping last night.  Those of you familiar with my family’s folkways will know that this is a chat, live and in person, usually unattended by males (or they flee, brows furrowed, into quieter and darker corners, while the womenfolk screech and flap and gabble.)  Anyway, she’s been through what I was through, but worse and darker and different, of course, but she doesn’t waste more than a breath on self-pity before she gets up again and starts assessing her life for the possibilities of happiness.  She’s berloody amazing and I intend to see more of her.
I just wrote two paragraphs about my emotional state, and they were so self-pitying and morose that I’ve done my readers a favour and deleted them.  Someday I’ll look back on this time in my life, shake my head and laugh.  But that time is not now, and it’s not a good time to be writing about it.  Had I the pen of Elizabeth Smart, perhaps, perhaps.

And then, of course, the phone rings, and it’s Keith announcing that he’s picked me up the latest Harry Potter book, and despite the rain and fog, the sun has come out again.

I think I’ll call my mother.

Sundry and Various

Muriel P died on Friday.  I talked to Jim P tonight and he’s doing okay; he and Carly are going to Ottawa for the memorial service on Friday.

I didn’t know her at all, and only met her twice, once when Keith was weeks old, and once at her husband’s funeral.

I am working on a long poem called (the difficulties).

Jeff and I nearly ran over a deer yesterday in Jeff’s car – a young buck wandering across the Gaglardi/University Drive East intersection (and about 30 meters from the last place I nearly hit a deer myself, on the ramp in a thick fog.  Did I jump!).  Jim and Jan have a cougar story, but I’d prefer them to tell the story, so I’ll wait until they send it to me 😉

The sunset is so stunning I nearly burst into tears when I saw it.  I am absurdly sensitive to colours and scenery these days, it’s like everything was turned up maximum gain.

I am so glad to be writing again, and I practiced mandolin for about 45 minutes tonight, too.

Actually bought fresh fruits and vegetables and ATE THEM.  It’s driving me nuts, I’m point two of a pound away from breaking 180.  Hopefully quitting coffee, with all that cream and sugar, will push things in the right direction.

Jeff is here

So about thirty seconds after I went all finger-in-my-eye about Keith not turning up, Jeff turned up MOST unexpectedly and we had a quiet evening of communing about the Aubrey Maturin books and playing with the Mac – he turned me on to another internet radio station called Groove Salad which I much enjoyed.

I have now worked out two mornings in a row and my shoulders feel all trembly from the reps.

Jeff has agreed to take Katie to the ferry this morning. She will meet up with her brother and grands on the other side.

visiting

Visited with Stephanie yesterday and had the great privilege of watching her work on some art.  She had spent an hour an a half being slathered with plaster of paris so she could do a torso mold, and she was making various course corrections in the hardened clay piece and making a stand for it.  As we got to sit out in her gazebo while she was working, it was exceeding pleasant, but wow, it was some hot yesterday. When everything is done she’s going to glaze and fire it, and seeing as how it was already very fine I can hardly wait to see the finished piece.
We also had lunch at Havana.  I had had a very rough night’s sleep on Friday – worst night’s sleep I’ve had in quite some time – so I pleaded intense sleepiness and deked home around 4, and so missed meeting her new boyfriend; you can tell how bagged I was that my curiosity was overcome by exhaustion.  Got home and literally went to bed and slept for 12 hours, having the most bizarre dreams you can imagine.  I was chased by a naked Robin Williams, refereed a discussion between two three year old girls (but I want you to stay fowa my pawty) (but I’m not feewing weww), found out that the entire time I was living at the Augur Inn there was a (cue ominous music) secret room; got shit from Keith for packing his stuff without labelling it and there were more dreams on top of that, mostly involving Paul, although it was all very civil.

Keith is coming over today briefly and then to Tom and Peggy’s for supper, yeah.

Since I finally have a printer I can work on moving some of my books around with Bookcrossing – I can make labelz…

I’m hoping that all the guys I know who are at the Arlington Air Show are having a good time.  The weather has been good and hot.

Lady Miss Banjola is a hurtin’ unit

She broke some bones coming off Jake (her scooter) but is expected to make a full recovery.  Dr Filk has flown to her side to render aid and comfort to the stricken. And make sure she takes her irony supplements – without which, life is completely meaningless, hein?
I am at Planet Bachelor (Paul and Keith’s new digs) for supper, having trundled Keith’s B-day prezzies over here, and we are anxiously awaiting Miss Katie, who’s off work now.

I am still in a very thoughtful mood.  Watching the sun go down yesterday felt really good, and I, like a fool, have commenced the deep thinking that accompanies the start of a new, long poem.

There’s Katie, gotta run.

Sundry and Various

Date from Friday night is not further interested.  Fortunately I am too busy to do more than go, “Hm, damned shame.”

This is a paragraph about how one woman can say to another “Maybe what I need is an 8 inch sub!” and we’re not talking sammitch.

It’s 7:15 and I’ve talked to two gf’s in Ontario already!  Hugs to Tammy, Hugs to Chipper.

Last night Patricia came with me to the Jericho.  She paid her eight dollars to get in but only watched me and two other performers, then went back out on the deck where she found a table with two good looking (merrit of course) middle aged men who didn’t want to finish their beer. Christ, they could have had no conversation at all and I would have liked them under those circumstances.  After we left (and I sang the song I wrote for LTGW at the top of my lungs in Jericho Park) she told me that I was far superior to the other performers and it was worth the 8 bucks to hear me sing Slimfast and Methadone.  OF COURSE this does not need to be true for me to be irrationally pleased. It was a very fun evening and I laughed my ass off.
Keith’s birthday books arrived on Monday and with his permission I devoured them.  It’s good to have maps of the action in the Patrick O’Brian books.
Colin’s visit was a very low key success. He took a lot of self portraits with my laptop, some of which were quite startlingly funny.  I wanted to post one with the title “How I lowered my IQ 45 points without even trying” but I don’t have his permission, and I’d flog somebody that posted a pic of me like that, so discretion prevails.
Mike M called from Wreck Beach yesterday…. if I hadn’t committed to go to Jericho, I would have gone to Wreck in a heartbeat, ’twas a glorious day.

Work bites the parasite riddled butt of a moribund goat and it’s going to stay like this all summer.  Fortunately there is a point at which things will twitch feebly back into their previous configuration or something like it, so I am trying to be philosophical.  In fact that about covers my life right about now “Trying to be philosophical”!