Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
More meetings. Last night’s was awesome… a planning meeting for the 5th September service, which I’m abruptly helping with.
There’s no beer in the house, and Jeff and I are going to leave it that way until the weekend at least. I am finding my crabbiness has increased somewhat, but not enough to be too worried about it.
Katie has definitely found a place to live and is now agitating for help moving. I’d say no, but I volunteered already. One of my ongoing personal hazards…..
Yesterday we went for a drive in the open-air chaise (ie the Camaro – pOp was wearing his pimp hat, a broad brimmed leopard velour creation, which added to the carnival atmosphere) and we drove in the country, saw THE biggest patch of skunk cabbage I’ve ever seen (it went on for literally city blocks in depth and width) and went to Dan’s Market, where we ingested treats and coffee and where I picked up treats to bring back to Vancouver, then outside where we fed ducks and chickens and goats (and I petted a duckling, goodness but they are soft, and admired the glossy plumage on the chickens, who looked magnificent), then went to an apiary and picked up lovely beeswax candles, including two I intend to inaugurate the next time I attend small group ministry, and then through the beautiful green and undulating countryside to a greenhouse which specializes in lovely smelling and odd-times blooming plants and thence back home.
After some uninteresting bits we went downtown in Ziva to Village de Valeurs, where I got the outfit I’m currently wearing (brown cords and a very nice top for work) and one other pair of pants for myself (stretch cotton with a vibrant black and floral pattern). Katie got a purse for job hunting (she says it’s not professional to be carting about a skull and cross bones pack), two pairs of jeans and a pinstripe wool blazer so she can have a suit. I smirk when I think she’ll look like Al Swearengen when she dresses up for an event.
Katie cooked supper – chicken Caesar wraps. I never taught her to cook; somehow she managed to teach herself. She apparently does much of the cooking in her household. And further to the comestibles, they had yet more Lion Winter Ale at the Hillside Liquor store the day we came into town, woot.
Generally we are hanging out and being mellow. I have been relieved of doing anything at all for transcription of family books, but will have to work on it back in Vancouver, which is good as I definitely type faster on a keyboard I’m used to.
As you can see it’s excitement central around here, and that is as it should be…. to give you an idea of the parents’ priorities, the pictures on the walls are of grandchildren and pinball machines.
Sixteen hundred dollars poorer, she emerged. And I still need an alignment and the car DESPERATELY needs to be detailed. There’s a lip gloss tube EMBEDDED in the driver’s side carpet like a dinosaur bone emerging from a dig. I also just realized that the dangly thing hanging from the rear view mirror is a beaded toy flogger, and since I don’t swing that way (pitching OR catching), I should prob’ly take it down. But it’s PURPLE.
Anyways… drove ScaryClown home with me last night and we supped on Swiss Chalet that Jeff brought home and drank beers and watched TV. At one point Jeff said something so funny that ScaryClown and I were rendered absolutely helpless. Unfortunately, despite its merits as humour, it is not repeatable, even by me, but please accept my assurances that it was convulsing.
Then the phone rang. I could hear it but Jeff couldn’t (I answer the phone for a living so heard it over the tv noise which was hockeygamish at the time). I picked up the phone, but because it was behind me & I wasn’t really paying too close attention I had the receiver upside-down. Jeff thought I’d gone insane because – well, Jeff thinks I’ve gone insane most of the time, but he’s low-key about commenting – I was picking up the phone and saying hello hello with the receiver upside down – for no apparent reason. He said, brow furrowed, with that crystal clarity people use when talking to halfwits, “The phone is upside down,” at which point Keith and I were actually able to start communicating. ScaryClown at this point was laughing so hard he lost control of his ketchup. Keith said, “Ah. Well, I was going to ask if ScaryClown was still there, but I can hear him laughing, so I’ll be there in 15.”
He and Paul came over (announcing pie and yet another six of Lion Winter, Paul found another source, and commenting that the car looks nice) and we had a very pleasant evening. The highlight was the scary awesome Mt. St. Helens footage. You know that this blog started with me commenting about Mt. St. Helens every other day, so I have a special fondness for it, and will stay fond of it if it stays dormant.
A series of large losses can make a small loss feel enormous. I told Rob I wouldn’t cry until I had a beer in my hand, and I lied then too. I’m crying now, but Jeff is meeting the situation with sympathetic noises and the welcome sound of the coffee grinder. I was going to say more tender things about him, but he’s off in his room now belching so loud something in my room vibrated in sympathy…. still in keeping with the theme, I spose.
There was a brief flurry of amusement last night at Robof9’s going away party while one party member commented to another, “We’re friends, right?” but in reference to facebook.
I now have more than 150 facebook friends. I have met and spoken to every single one of them. Some of them are my dearest friends; some I barely know; some are more other people’s friends than mine. But they are my facebook tribe and I follow their doings, their triumphs and tragedies, the way folks follow soaps. Not so much on the story arc, but man, the set pieces entirely rock.
Livejournal is for filk buddies and church buddies. When I realized that – that was the point I realized that filk is the religion-friendly portion of SF fandom. Because all the most religious people I know who are also fans are also filkers. Things that make you say hmm. And when I say religion, I mean Judaism, paganism, UUism, and Mormonism. We all get together in a room and sing our faces off, and we make sure that people’s dietary requirements, both allergy and religious, are met, and we don’t even talk about it because that would all be beside the point anyway, we’re here to sing and love each other. Livejournal merely supports the meatspace- we are meant to be together, and LJ helps us do that.
Twitter is for people who like the kinds of things I like. Twitter is mostly people I don’t know, will never meet. The most recent person to start following me had two midwife attended births, co-slept, baby carried, tandem nursed and looky looky, she’s a vegetarian. All those things in common, and then, clunk. Uh, no thanks. Personally I fucking hate it when people say they are vegetarian and eat eggs and milk. You’re still robbing babies and eating them, so how does that bring you to fluffy bunnyhood? Either be vegan or be sparing in your meat consumption or be like me, the meat on meat inside meat, with meat on the side, kind of person.
I will be a vegetarian when I have to, and not one second sooner. My brain doesn’t work properly without meat protein and it sure doesn’t work properly without animal fat. Wish it were otherwise.
Now I have to go outside and plant the saplings work gave me for Earth Day. I have a funny story about that but I can’t publish because the inertnets are temporarily forever. I hope Margot joins me. There’s something very comforting about her watching me work.
Last night I attended a co-birthday party with Kat and Kashka and Katie and their friends, which included the following events and observations.
Today, The Dreaded Tapioca Song goes to church.
ScaryClown was here last night to ingest food, beer and ZULU in that order. We had fun. I have seen that movie at least twenty times, and every time it blows me away. Keith was here too.
Today I am being different versions of myself. Off to a meeting in PoCo this afternoon. Perhaps I will go to some kind of social media Tweetup tonight but then again, maybe not. I’m finishing up a couple of songs, you know how it is when you’re hacking away at the ends of things and they take slightly more time than anticipated; at the same time starting things seems to go much faster. nautilus3 is scowling. Then she smiles.
I’m getting the playing callouses back on my fingers.
A friend just emailed me a job listing that sounds perfect for me. I heart my friends.
Jeff cleaned the furnace filter. Unless I can come up with a better word than disgusting, it will have to do. The furnace filter appears to have been manufactured sometime prior to the dawn of time.
nautilus3 will like this. It’s the Gordon Mackay catalogue from early in the last century. The colours and textures and design are wonderful. Colin forwarded the link via facebook.
Went into New West for tp and a grooming item, which for reasons unknown was not at the London Thugs where I expected it to be.
I was calling it London Thugs before Mike started working there. Now when I say it I really mean it.
Deposited the cheque from my grandmother (note on orthography, I have not yet made my mind over whether I am going to drop the que and just call them checks. The only reason I hesitate is that, while I think the American orthography looks better, I want to maintain my Canadian heritage). But Jiminy Christmas, don’t you find it odd that I’m getting birthday checks from my Gran when I’m 51 bleeding years old? I vow to spend it all on beer and chocolate. What a useless, parasitic enemy of the people I am.
I’ve been ruminating over ‘you’re as young as you feel”. I’m siding with it being true, if you’re just talking about your emotions. I don’t know; do older people have more subtle emotions because they’ve lived longer and seen more, and understand more of the implications of things? Or is that utter bs? I saw too many times, over the course of my life, the youngest child in the room being the wisest, not least because she was so uncannily observant. She was Katie Sharpeyes until she was 16. Insert brief grouse. Sure wish she’d call me back, or at least text me that she’s having far too much fun to call.
Damn, I can’t get that row of tequila shots we did out of my head. Yes, Jeff sprang for a round of shots last night, and ah, with the festive. That effin’ princess, Kashka (with what indulgent love I say it) had to have a lemon wedge, as she just can’t tolerate lime. Katie’s crush observed that when somebody else is paying, as a matter of form you take the shot as is. Indeed.
Still in New West, but fast forward to this evening. There is a butcher shop around the corner from Sixth and Sixth. I bought a really good steak there once, and I dashed in. I beheld the liver and my whole body shivered with delight. Yes, that’s just about the most disgusting sentence I could come up with on short notice, hope you liked it, hackneyed internal rhyme and all.
I thank Paul for the transpo into and out of New West… in rush hour, very much appreciated. I get anxious when I run out of toilet paper. I make jokes about it, but I get anxious too.
I cooked the liver, dredged in flour, salt and pepper, in butter which onions had been frying in for a while. I just barely cooked it, and it was so good. Margot got some too, I shouldn’t have, but she was finding my plate more than usually interesting.
Now I feel like sleeping. Life is so good.
I spent a good chunk of yesterday angry and perturbed, but as is typical for me, once I figured out what to do about it, I quit being angry and perturbed. Continue reading Angry and perturbed turns into meh, and then huh, and then te he.
Jeff took me out for wiener schnitzel at Balkan House yesterday. It is a truly superior meal. For the price you cannot beat it.
I have reduced my beer consumption a great deal… but that will get fixed tonight. Today Katie is 21 and I’m taking her to Drink in New West with a bunch of her friends. I don’t think I’ll stay too late, drinking with your children’s friends is like saying you don’t have friends of your own. At least it’s one bus ride home, for both of us.
My brain turned to mush when This Guy called and said school stuff will prevent him from seeing me this weekend, but then my brain started functioning again as I went into planning mode. Hopefully I’ll see him some time early next week. Cue the evil grin.
According to twitter world famous Canadian writers message each other all the time about incredibly trivial stuff (for example the slug post from yesterday started as a tweet from Margaret Atwood), Nathan Fillion is having a bromance with Seamus Dever (co-star on Castle), and Dita Von Teese just ordered a “thanksgiving in a box” from the American Store in Paris. These little peeps into other people’s lives are kinda cool, actually. It’s interesting to see which celebrities ‘get’ twitter and which don’t.
I follow Stephen Harper; all his tweets ever do is say exactly what he is doing at a certain time. It’s like a GPS for the PM. Never any opinions expressed… just where he is. I know what John would say about that if he was still alive….
A number of celebrities (referred to by Perez Hilton as celebutards) are already in train to be sued by people they have (while high as f*****g kites if the internal textual evidence is to be believed) slandered. Other celebrities somehow think that misspelling every second word and sounding like an ignorant, lazy, disloyal chenozzle is, too use the parlance of happier times, cool. As a single example, Courtney Love.
Other celebs, like Weird Al Yankovic, tweet stuff like this, as of twelve minutes ago… 
Didn’t see anybody famous sitting in First Class. If this plane crashes, I am TOTALLY getting the headline!
Which you have to admit is kinda hilarious, spelled correctly, and provides insight into how he thinks.
John Cleese’s tweets are alternately content laden “I am here with so and so” and funny. Bruce Sterling is always going off about exotic locales in Europa – but this morning he linked to a Pop Mechanics article about Robert Heinlein’s house. William Gibson passes along Amazon reviews from his wife (who must be one of the funniest women who ever lived, if her taste is anything to go by). So yes, I’m enjoying twitter.
Anyway, I’m off to a church meeting. Everybody, as you were.
Yesterday’s birthday feast was amazing and wonderful. Brian C., Tom U., Mike and V., Jarmo and Susana, and Jeff, all took me out. I had much beer and several shooters, and so much ‘appetizers’ that when my burger came I ended up staring at it until it was cold. I love my friends with a happiness that bends time and warps space.
Mike gave me a Ralph Steadman / Gonzo skin for my laptop; Jarmo a home made wooden clock that you have to be a genius to tell time with, and Susana gave me Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November; a very Finnish gift. All in all a satisfactory and entirely unexpected haul.
There was a bunch of other stuff I wanted to talk about but I think my domestic chores are calling. A dog defecated on the back deck (why? and why SO MUCH?) and somebody, probably Eddie, barfed up all over the dining room table. Nothing like pets to keep you in touch with what is real. And it’s better than brooding.
Oh, and Jeff took me out for breakfast…. and I had a lazy day. Now, to work.
So after I left Deb and Jim’s place (such a nice house, but of course like most homeowners they see it as a succession of chores) I drove to London.
It took me from 9 am until 7:15 to drive 506 kilometers. It should have taken six hours, tops. It took from 12:30 to 5:30 to drive from where the 115 meets the 401 to Guelph. Words cannot describe my irritation; the combination of it being the Friday before the long weekend, the weather and the continuous construction along that stretch of road fixed it so that in the words of Dorothy Dunnett, I explored tedium to its petrified core.
I got to Oakridge in time to register, then went to the Greek Canadian Club and arranged to stay at a motel on Fanshawe Park Road called the Lighthouse. At this gathering, there were 400 people… at least … and I didn’t recognize a single soul. Not one. Nobody, uhn-uh, personne. I bought a zipper hoodie with the reunion logo on it for $20, not unreasonable.
But for reconnecting, not so much. Went back to the motel and decided to patronize ‘The Black Pearl’ a watering hole attached thereto, run by a married couple and their hot and hotter daughters. The place is the size of two big living rooms back to back, and the place is closing in two weeks because the owners of the motel did not renew the lease.
It was the last Karaoke Night at the Black Pearl the next night. I filed this away, in case the dinner dance out at the Western Fair building was a write off.
It was. I came, I ate (I’d paid for the fucking meal, after all) I greeted Barb, the one person there I recognized, and my god wasn’t she just the picture of a nicely done up middle aged lady, including having maintained her girlish figure. I drank one disgusting vodka plus sugar water which made me feel like hurling, and immediately drove back to the Black Pearl, where I grabbed a seat at the bar and watched the set up and singing. There was a guy who channeled Frank Sinatra. There was a guy with a voice… well, I told him to his face that if Tom Waits gargled a bucket of gravel before a gig, he’d sound like that. Since he didn’t know who Tom Waits was this meant nothing to him, but the guy standing beside me spit out his drink.
I drank four beers, sang two songs, went to bed. Or tried to. About ten songs have tried to land on me in the last little while (car trips); I wrote out lyrics for one and the rough sketch of the melody for the other, and then worked on the homily a little.
Drove by the old place on Oakridge Drive. The two maple trees are still in the front yard; everything else is different.
Drove by Sue’s old place. It didn’t look any different except the trim is a different colour.
Drove by University Hospital. It has nice new signs that look expensive and are very high off the ground.
Drove by where the Golden Pheasant Motel was, the first place I stayed when my family moved to London. It isn’t there any more. There’s a lot of nice new houses.
Drove down Dundas Street and said hello to ‘the strip’.
Drove past Tak Sun.
Drove past where the Three Little Pigs used to be. It’s still a family restaurant.
Drove past Jeff’s old place on Oxford.
Drove past where I used to live when I was working at the hospital. I moved out of my parents’ place the day of the Jonestown massacre. A fair piece back.
I passed Windermere but I didn’t go up that road. I would have gotten very nostalgic and weepy. I learned to play guitar in the married students quarters when I lived with my parents and they were going to Western.
Had tea and a lovely visit with Phyllis. She is grimly determined to keep as much of her mobility as she can, but it hurts. She is still as keenly intelligent and interested in the world as it goes by as ever she was; nobody just meeting her would give her 85. She looks 20 years younger than that to me. Her cat Smokey is ADORABLE and allowed me to fondle him rather a lot more than most cats will on first acquaintance. I miss MY little furball rather a lot.
Stopped at the Husky on the 401 for steak and eggs and now I’m safely ensconced at Catherine and Colin’s.
My, something sounds like a blowtorch. I must go investigate.
The meal last night was yummy, and myself and Sandra and one of her guests, a fabulously entertaining individual named Clay, had a pleasant chin wag. I recognized him not by his face, which I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing previously, but by the bottle of Grand Marnier I had been advised he would be clutching. We made one toast with the orange elixir, and I only had another couple of beers, so it was a much less libatious evening for me than last night especially when I knew I was both driving and working the next day.
Sandra is the happiest I’ve ever seen her. Last night she took immense joy in sharing a piece of art with me. There are a couple of reasons this is important.
It’s a great piece of art. Within minutes I could relax because I knew I would be listening to it again.
Sandra had an interpretation of the work of art that not a single other person has been able to distinguish. At least according to the internet… I looked.
Her interpretation was amazing. Accurate. Spooky as all get-out.
The work of art had direct relevance to me and everybody in my family.
More when I’ve processed some more.
It appears that the weather will be perfect for transplanting trees (which Sandra needs to do to help delineate a new campsite) and once breakfast is complete we will go deal with it.
The light right now looks very strange, I’m going to walk around with the camera for a bit.
Sandra has a life size walking doll here, a refugee from her childhood which she found in a box in her mom’s attic. I will have pictures at some point.
The colours in Madawaska and environs are so stunning, and so exactly NOT what you get in the fall in Vancouver, that I feel like I’m high just from looking at trees.
After we got going yesterday, Catherine and I went to a very nice El Salvadoran restaurant (ate there last time). This time I said, “I’ll have what she’s having’ and thus ate my first tamale (om nom nom) and I also had a burrito and pupusa. It was really really awesome.
Then we walked along Bloor to Long and McQuade, where I acquired two thunder drums, one of which I donated to Sandra upon my arrival. Then, off to Rentawreck, conveniently at the end of Catherine’s street, and into the car to get to Madawaska.
Today has been a day full of colour, incident, work and fun. The most wonderful stuff that happened today I can’t talk about because I don’t have the permission of the folks involved, but trust me, YOU would have been laughing your ass off in that “I really shouldn’t be laughing” way.
Last night, however, was given over to food. I purchased chèvre with cinnamon cranberries, Raincoast crisps, 73% cacao chocolate, chocolate covered marzipan, Rooibos chai shortbread cookies, and about a pound of almonds, which, along with some very nice potato vodka and the final beer in the fridge, made for a lovely, chatty evening. Sandra introduced me to pickled hot peppers (Indian style) which, tossed in generously over the beef and cabbage curry, made for a wonderful and very fashionably late dinner.
Clem was here and we hung out briefly but he had to get back home to get enough sleep to deal with a root canal today.
Today, after planning her day like a military operation, it all got shot to hell and we didn’t actually follow the plan due to those damned extenuating circumstances and we ended up driving to Barry’s Bay and Combermere, the first for beer, wine, banking and comestibles, the second to get used windows and frames transferred from Vivian’s house to Larry’s house. Larry is Sandra’s special friend, and I got to meet him when we picked him up from his workplace for a late lunch at the Ash Grove Inn, which looks out over Kaminiskeg Lake (and the colourful trees scattered thereabouts). Our companion was another local, a gentleman named Gary who is developmentally delayed. Larry is (in addition to his other gainful employment) his worker. Watching Larry deal with Gary was absolutely wonderful, and also very funny. Gary would rather have fun and socialize with Larry than stay home and watch tv so Larry has tremendous leverage with respect to consequences for behaviour. All I know is I make more noise in restaurants than Gary …. and make more mess eating…. so I am a chastened individual today.
We stopped for a smoke break by the lake after lunch and way off in the distance, I saw a man staggering down the road. First thing I thought “Drunk off his keister.” Larry informed me that the gent had a progressive neuromuscular disease, which really put my current very small concerns into even more stark perspective, and although he did not try to engage any of us, he hung out with us and smoked a cigarette while we watched the scenery and took pictures, which I hope at some point to be able to share. I didn’t take my camera, and now I hear it’s going to rain and blow like a bastard tomorrow, so I may lose my chance to take pics of the colour.
Larry is as good looking as a movie star, ps. He had a full bushy beard and masses of hair until recently, and when he shaved it off Sandra went eep! when she saw him, which must have been amusing.
Anyway, we went to Vivian’s. Vivian had all these windows left over from a reno, and some were to migrate to Larry’s place (conveniently located next door so we walked those frames over but put the glass in Sandra’s Jeep) and some here to finish up a cabin renovation.
The Lodge has had MUCH work of an improving kind done around here. The little slough that bred mosquitoes is long gone; the number of campsites has been increased, there are various new buildings for storage and tools and boats, etc., but the heart of the place is still the same, and I am grateful beyond words to be here.
I don’t think I mentioned the breakfast Catherine made me the other day. Four kinds of fruit, full fat yoghurt and toasted brazil nuts chopped on top. Best breakfast I have had in many moons….
Tonight prime rib and veg. O frabjous day! Tomorrow planting trees in the AM unless it’s really bucketing. Then off to see Deb in Ottawa, woo hoo!
I got off the plane and went straight to Jan and Soon’s. Jan blinked at me and said, “Weren’t you supposed to phone me?”
uh.
I had forgotten how beautiful the underlit sunsets are in this town.
Anyway, life in her household was sufficient for a cuppa, but not really for crash space, as she had hella work to do (I still hung out and we flapped our ears for a couple of hours and she had lots of news, good bad and odd).
So I called Catherine, and we had a very pleasant evening catching up (oooo, gossip about exes, I loves me some of that!) and eating at the Mt. Everest which has berloody awesome food and I had my first Kingfisher in ages. Then we came back here and shot some more s*(t and then I crashed. The wireless here works very nicely. At some point I’m going to ask Catherine for another drum solo. She has a really intense Chinese cymbal that sounds like part of the soundtrack for The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.
While ScaryClown was sending me a link to This I was showing Colin a picture of him stretched out on HP Lovecraft’s cenotaph.
Ain’t the internet grand?
The season closer, which I attended with Paul, Paul’s boon companion Mike J, Keith and Mike, was a barnburnin’, kickass, upsidethehead HOWL of an evening. Three professional musicians on tour (two of them being the Undesirables, a very amazing Canadian duo who TRANSFIXED the audience and the other being David Ross MacDonald, an Aussie who blinked at us when we wouldn’t sing the chorus of his rubato version of Waltzing Matilda because he wasn’t singing) joined the open stage, and the Galley stayed open long enough to serve beer at the break, may it be blessed among restaurants, and apart from it being ass freezing cold it was a splendid evening. Banjo! Mandola! Social Justice songs! a song by Stompin’ Tom Connors about the Iron Workers’ Memorial Bridge collapse! Ashokan Farewell played during the jam session by four fiddles (one of whom played with polish and precision by a ten year old boy), one bodhran, one pennywhistle, two guitars and two mandolins! No fewer than two Bob Dylan songs (nobody plays Dylan at Jericho, it’s odd)!
When Fraser Union, the ‘headliner’, finally made it to the stage, one of them remarked that the headliners had already come and gone. But you don’t go to Jericho thinking you’ll never be upstaged; on any given evening the quality of the musicianship is enough to give you severe pause.
Thanks to Mike J for giving me the musical term rubato and explaining it (he’s a second tenor with Chor Leoni and knows his shizz); thanks to Mike for the lift home; thanks to Paul for lining up for beers for us and loaning me the entrance money because as usual I forgot to get cash.
Bright blessings for the gift of being in that room, where sixty voices, in three and four part harmony, lifted the beams and raised the dust. I didn’t want to perform that night, and I’m glad I didn’t try!