Later, yesterday.

Long about 4 Katie magickally appeared with Kelsey in tow.  Kelsey is her bestest girlfriend from school (you know how fast friendships blossom in school).  Katie wanted what was left of her Kaylee costume (you will have to scroll down to see it) and she literally bounced in, hugged me, grabbed her costume and left (and I got two insubstantial Kelsey hugs in there as well.)

Katie had been all sad and freaked (I am going to school… I know no one… I will have no friends).  I said, “Sit next to the girl with the nicest face.  Not the best looking one – the one who looks nicest, most pleasant and friendly.”  So she did and now she’s hanging with a hard working hard playing crowd, just up her alley.  And having fun, too. That 70 bucks I spent on that costume seems to have paid dividends.

PS.  She’s done something with her hair.  It’s darker brown and sort of ripply all over.

Soon I will go off to Famous Foods and get the last of the food I need for the awesome festival of roast fowl and tubers!  Swossage meat for stuffin’.  Hm, mmmm.  Great! It’s after 8 am and they are open…. time to get going.

My third oldest joke:  “Why does thanksgiving come a month earlier in Canada?”  “Because we have less to be thankful for!”

I still haven’t been to see Tom, but I’m still stuffed up and I dread making him sick.  Sicker.

astonishment!

Keith spent the night.  Today, the dentist and the running around which accrues with Thanksgiving meals.  I’m just waiting for Keith to get back from 7-11 and then…. waffles with strawberries, and cream for our coffee.  Keith arrived, realized he’d forgotten the eggs, and then departed again.  That’s what 4 hours of Assassin’s Creed into the small hours can do to your brain, folks!

Eddie is trying to sleep on my bed again; I left my door propped open last night so he could.  Oh, that’s odd – Eddie just whacked Gizmo over the nose for no reason I can see.  Lightly, with no malice, but Gizmo jumped down from his usual perch on the back deck.

For four years or more I’ve been talking, on and off, about the collapse of civilization.  I guess the thing I keep forgetting is that a collapse generates heat and no light.  People will HATE.  They will hate the wrong things, for the wrong reasons; they will hate and kill.  Watching what people are saying during McCain Palin rallies makes me ill, but Canada’s no different in any meaningful way, we just don’t have a focal point for it yet.

I hope that we can ride out the global economic storm without all migrating back to the ranches of our prairie ancestors; I’m a city girl, and I don’t want to leave.  But human migrations have a merciless logic, and the time has come to start making back up plans, and I am just too citified and lazy to face it.

steamed lamb

….actually I ate kleftico and then the Luddite and I popped over to Hastings Steam and Sauna. This time, it being ever so much colder outside than the last time, I steamed for a GOOD long time, and now my back feels much better, thanks.  It’s kinda odd doing something like that with somebody you’re no longer romantically involved with, but as usual the Luddite cracked me up any number of times, and it was all very light hearted and fun, and he’d never been so it was pleasant to introduce him, and this time I remembered to get an extra towel because once my hair is wet there’s simply too much of me for one towel, and it’s only a buck extra.  None of the evening was planned; we didn’t even know where we were going to eat until I got in his pig of a 1980 Toyota diesel truck (I tease, I’m actually quite fond of that vehicle, although I don’t know how much longer the Luddite will be able to stretch not replacing the windscreen).  And it’s only 10:18, so I’m going to sleep and something tells me I will sleep well and long. Oh, and he had Ecuadorean chocolate with him.  Looxshury!

ScaryClown dines here

ScaryClown was here for dinner; he was fed buffalo sloppy joes, and he had seconds, lord love him. Also, I received from the mysterious and everedgy Mike (everybody’s favourite chinky chinaman) a call which said, “Guess where I am?” to which the answer could only be “Wreck Beach, you wretch”.

I send glories and posies, firelight and starlight and the light of the borealis, the light of the sea in the night as your oar goes through it, to Chipper, and she knows why.

I light a candle for Juliana and her efforts, and her album.

I light a candle for Carrie and her peregrinations.

For Tanya, and she knows why.

For Patricia, and she knows why.

For Peggy, in her trials with Tom and her usual daily challenges; I quail at the notion of carrying such a load myself, and can only love.

For my mother, and her traversing the dual canyons of the annual checkup and the dead and dying relatives; for my father in his travails without question or comment.

For my grandmother, may she pass into machine intelligence and live forever in the annals of my family, for gold, for good, forever.

For Mr Music and the sleeping giant he imagines into life.

For my cousins; Alex, Alyssa, Darcy, Shauna, Katherine, & John, and Gerald, of course, and his kin.

For my coworkers, Salmon Man, Cristian, Prashant, Jeff, Jenn, Hardeep, Joe, Gianna, Dale, Andy, Heather, Mike B, Mike M, Sandy, Robof9, Peter T, Al Karim, Francis, LTGW, Lindsay, Mel, Graham, Inne, Jeff, Bill.  Chris and Ky and Zari of course.

For the downstairs tenants, may they increase in health and strength.

For my Unca Dave, may he live forever in song, story, fable and myth.

For Lucile.

For Lois, Ruth and their close kin.

For Lady Miss B and her loved ones. For Dr. Filk, Swampy and Maggie.

For Suzanne.

For the ladies (and for the occasional lad) who lunch. All hail Dunnett.

For Spider Robinson and Academie Duello.

For Tammy.

For Rev Katie, and Pope Mary.

For David J. D. and the hard road he set me on,

For Alan.

For the hidden, the unreal, the unseen, for the lies which spin themselves into truth, the stories which harden into tradition, the festivals which anchor human life from one season to the next, a candle, and a warning.

For Keith, for Kate and their dad, Paul, candles, and blessings.

For the people I love and don’t speak of; for the people I hate and don’t speak of.

For my brother Jeff.

Give my head a shake, if I can’t do it for me….

I can really tell I’m upset about no more NCIS – I found myself going to fanfic sites this morning.  And… backing away slowly.  Do I really – I mean really – want to read Gibbs-on-DiNozzo slashfic?  It is to heave.  Gibbs/Abby?  Tempting, but no.  On the other hand, Salmon Guy returned my S1 Deadwood box, so I could go back to Deadwood if I wanted to.

My nose has stopped running and now I’m coughing.  A dry, hacking cough.  The next week will be joyous; I remember thinking about a month ago that it had been bloody ages since I was really sick with something.  Note to back:  Please keep improving somewhat.  I’m experiencing less pain, although I nearly went ass over teakettle down the stairs at Production Way Station yesterday morning when my leg partly buckled, so I guess I need to work on some muscle strength.  Patricia recommends running in water. Anyway, I thought “all those kids will break my fall’ – the station is jammed at that time of day – but you KNOW it never works out like that in real life – the stuff you don’t break bruises to the bone, and my back already hurts, and I don’t do pain well.  I’ve learned my lesson; I have to go down the stairs with my hand floating a couple of inches above the handrail, just in case.  The one day I thought I could go down the stairs in the middle I learned that my earlier caution was entirely justified.  Then I think about my grandmother, and I figure it’s time for me to shaddap.

Tonight, Sloppy Joes, if I can remember to ask my bro to get nice, structurally sound buns for dinner, and spaghetti if not.  Can you believe it? Katie came through and the macaroni is all gone AND she ate dinner.  Honestly cooking to make leftovers around here is hazardous. We either get bored of it or it vanishes into Katie’s piehole before we even have a chance to get bored of it.

I light a candle for Tom, who’s back in hospital.

I light a candle for Jeff, for being understanding.

Today, in anticipation of funds, I got all high on consumerism

And bought a phone, because it was PISSING ME OFF, yes, I think in a week I will still feel that vehement, that I couldn’t get hold of my son when it was mutually convenient.  The next time Keith arrives I will present him with it – I already called him to tell him.  I also bought beer.  I thought of taking a cab home, and then my conscience stabbed me and I took the bus.

Then I got home and there was a check for $6K and a night out waiting for me.  And Katie, dreamingly expecting to get fed.  So out with the leftover pork and sauerkraut (life, she is so hard) and yet more tater tots and homemade cheese sauce with steamed cauliflower. and the leftover mushrooms.  Note how little in the way of dessert I’ve been mentioning.

Katie left (of course!) and Jeff and I watched the Ken Burns documentary on the Brooklyn Bridge.

It’s raining like mad out there, in fitful, cranky bursts, with long lulls, like a teething child that you’re just putting to sleep.

I hope that you are someplace snug and warm right now.

recovery mode

Watching Sarah Palin struggle to assemble an English sentence while Joe Biden marshalled his talking points and droned through them was just about the most painful thing I ever subjected my eyes to.  Nor have my ears quit sulking.  Honestly I’m going to take a fresh look at Adam Sandler, I may have misjudged his talent.  The low point was “Her reward is in heaven” which just about had me barfing up my guts.  Biden wasn’t nearly as embarrassing but the idea of him being president after an assassination is just wretched.  The comments about marriage had Patricia muttering “Coward” to Biden.  I writhed in uncontrollable embarrassment and dismay (I do that, causing Patricia to ask me repeatedly if I was okay) but got through it in time to realize that two measly beers and the BEST DAMNED SMOKED GRUYÈRE evah were enough to put me in a sort of tryptophan coma and I slept for a couple of hours until I realized, on groggily awakening, that I wasn’t at home (strange cats closely inspecting my feet helped).  Then P called me a cab and I went home and – amazing! – changed into my jammies and then fell into bed like a downed Douglas fir.

Let me describe the Gruyère.  It was cave aged and smoked.  Little crystals of intense cheesiness blended into a smooth authoritative but restrained crumbly heavenly aroma and mouth feel.   The whisky cheddar was good; the incredible Port Salut almost liquefied.  And those crackers!  God, those are the best cheese crackers, I have to get some and then figure out where I store them so I don’t eat every single one as soon as the box comes home.  The cavalcade of cheese â„¢ abides in the West End – all is right with the world.  There is no political problem that cheese can’t solve, I tell you.

Tonight, The Con.

In passing

Unca Dave is expected here this afternoon.

Scarlett Johannson got married – in Canada no less – & Paul Newman died.

I light a candle for Cindy, who said, “You amuse me,” on the phone last night in a tone of voice completely free of sarcasm, when I explained something to her about the way my mind works. (I was also being the world’s largest wuss, but she was okay with that too.)  We discussed how she and a bunch of other fans got into Bridge Studios the day Atlantis died and she has pics of herself standing in the gate.  Happy swoon.  I’ve been in Bridge Studios, back in ’05. Given what’s happened since, some of the comments I made in October 05 are pretty funny.   (Like, the comment about how Katie loves to fix hair???)

I also get to think about what I’m going to say at the panel on Friday night.  Yes, I’m going to a con, Vcon to be precise, and I’m going to be on a media filk panel.  Should I tell them that my secret to writing media filk is to go to the internet, download every scripted reference to the character and then find likely rhymes?  Seems kinda mechanical, but that’s how I wrote Clem, full title Just Call me Clem.  (Clem being a demon from Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

For breakfast – BLTs.  I don’t know why, except we had all the ingredaments in the house at one time.  For dinner – roast beast with veg.  Why?  It’s Sunday, and a family elder is coming by.  There’s chicken soup on the stove and I’m thinking of making refrigerator cookies.

Watched Starter for 10.  It’s a very good hearted movie, and if you love 80’s Britpop/late new wave you’ll drool on the soundtrack.  The movie is well shot, well-scripted and laugh out loud funny in spots.  Also, Dominic Cooper is bloody gorgeous.. and he’s in Keira Knightley’s new movie the Duchess, which makes me want to see it more.

My watch working again is making me happy.  Being registered to vote makes me happy (I had completely dropped off the rolls, which is perplexing).  And now, I’m going to practice my mandolin, do some paperwork, pay some bills, laundrify, and get another song written down…. and see if we can get to the end of season five of NCIS.  Yes, we’ve been watching rather a lot of it, and I’m really liking Michael Weatherly’s take on DiNozzo more and more.  He kinda grows on you.

It’s a beautiful day…. Mike was going to take me to the Wreck, as it’s supposed to be beachy today, but Unca Dave is coming. I am in a really good mood.  I assume it’s the weather, nothing else has changed.

“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.

A death in the family / a dream

Carrie reports that her doggie Mabel has crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  In response, all I could do was forward a copy of a Hallmark card poem that was on a card Lois (Paul’s youngest sister, a woman of uncommon charm, wit and sensitivity) sent me when Bounce died.  If I had any clue who to credit this to, I would, but it’s copyright Hallmark Cards, card S81-4, and I post it because out of all the things you can say to a person whose animal just died, this poem does it the best I know of so far:

They will not go quietly,
the pets who’ve shared our lives.
In subtle ways they let us know
their spirit still survives.
Old habits still can make us
think we hear them at the door
Or step back when we drop
a tasty morsel on the floor
Our feet still go around the place
the food dish used to be,
and, sometimes, coming home at night,
we miss them terribly.
And although time may bring new friends
and a new food dish to fill,
That one place in our hearts
belongs to them….
and always will.

Last night I dreamed I was supposed to meet up with some people, and I trusted somebody else to get my bag.  We got off the train (not the Skytrain, the subway in Toronto) and poof, no bag and everybody looking hangdog.  I said, **** this noise, got back on the next train, figured out where to cross sides so I got on the train I’d just gotten off, and at the end of the car there was a big pile of unattended gym bags, and the first one I opened had my bag in it.  There are a lot of messages in this dream, and on the whole I’m pleased with it.

Up at 4 – it’s now almost six and I’m about to pull cheese scones out of the oven.  The aroma is now well-nigh overpowering.  I put the last of the fresh basil in them.  Sigh.  It’s winter in Vancouver.  The overcast has started, and it won’t lighten up until April.  Time to hunker down and do some healthy baking.  I found a recipe for home made power bars the other week and I should dig it out and start making them.  And as for unhealthy baking, maybe this is the year I commercialize my biscotti?  I’ve had lots of people tell me they’d pay for them.

A head full of buzzing noises, a tummy full of yummy

Mr. Music fed me last night, and what a meal… Tuna couscous, home made corn meal muffins (he made me take a couple home to Jeff). home made instant mint chocolate cake, and Corona, and some white wine, and hummus and bread and red pepper for appies.  I went staggering out of there thinking it was a little late to be finding a wheelbarrow and somebody to roll me home.

I sang (for his thumbs up or thumbs down) the first pass of the music that I want to put in the musical.  He approved of most of it, but that was not the upshot….

More FREEEEEAKING HOMEwork.  My task, in between practicing my mandolin so I don’t get all embarrassed next Wednesday when Anne comes back, is to view / listen to one ‘representative’ musical from each decade from the 20’s through the 70’s, and the stage version NOT the filmed version, because even I know that these are separate disciplines and I’m writing for the stage.  I feebly commented that I want to do a musical pastiche with only the most paper thin excuse for a plot, but Mr. Music seems to think I am capable of more than throwing together the millennial version of the King of Jazz; he pointed me at Oklahoma! as being a very close to perfect attempt to meld story with song.    Anyway, I have the list written down somewhere and after I have finished digesting both that wonderful meal and the bolus of simple but time consuming suggestions I will start hacking away at it.

I did tell him I’m expecting this to take at least a year.  I still have to work full time and do laundry.  And now I have to go see every piece of musical theatre in Vancouver over the next year, so I can see what’s happening in contemporary musicals….. sigh.  Who needs spare time?

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.

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….