Category: Friends

Singing

I know it’s  very weird to be rehearsing with a band that I’m not part of, but given that Mayhem has constraints (how can Mayhem HAVE constraints) that I can’t get into, because, strangely, reasons involving stupidity on the part of others in foreign climes, I kind of have to.  I suppose that wasn’t really a useful or discursive thing to say.  But I was singing last night and Peggy fed me and Shad an awesome dinner.  I loves me some Peggy.

I am writing, I am editing, and it all goes glacially slowly.  About three hundred words a day and maybe a page of edits.

I am seeing if I can go more than a couple of weeks without drinking.  I no longer seem able to process beer and it makes me really really sad.  It shouldn’t because, hey, water comes out of a tap and that was Adam’s ale, and Vancouver has the best municipal water system in the world, and the tap water is yummy, but I all sad face. Like I want to make a painting of a stubby or something.  Also, there is no chocolate cake in the house.  There should at least be cookies.  And I can always make more cake.  There is a drained lake of beer in my heart that only cake or possibly cookies can fill.

People want to know how much I’m seeing Alexander.  I’m seeing him as much as his mother and I agree seems to be right, and while it could be more, my own dear Grandma didn’t see me until I was walking, and it really helps to keep a sense of perspective about these matters.  If somebody wants my advice they can scarcely get the request out before I’m a-schpraying them, firehose-wise, with a side of and-another-things.  I have concerns of my own, thank the dear one.  Being an introvert Grandma is an interesting experience.

Lessons and light

I light a candle for Sandy.  She doesn’t read my blog any more but she has done more to restore my faith in humanity in the last two years than anyone else I know.

2020 says yeah that worked out.

I light a candle for Tammy, it was lovely hearing her voice on the phone yesterday.

I light a candle for Diane, my editor, who is being gentle but completely firm about the edits.

I light a candle for Jeff, who continues to be awesome in numerous ways.

I light a candle for Keith, who is in a relationship with a person I never heard of before today, thank you facebook.  I imagine I could meet her, but crashing karaoke night is the mark of an entirely sick mom. Unless I wait until Mike gets back from the DREADED BUSINESS TRIP OF DOOOOM, and go with him, flying all casual like.

I light a candle for Katie.  New motherhood and all.  I heard Alex on the phone yesterday, he’s definitely got a pair of lungs on him.

I light a candle for the minister Rev Debra; her puppetry at church last Sunday kept the kids enthralled.

I light a candle for Sue, who is so wonderful.  In so many ways.  When I grow up I want to be like Sue.

I light a candle for all our servicewomen and servicemen at home and overseas.

I light a candle for all the Burnaby Enbridge and pipeline protesters, and all the indigenous people fighting to keep pipelines off their land.

I light a candle for Paul, whom I ran into while I was doing edits at the library in New West yesterday.  It’s amazing how seeing a friend lifts your spirits.  It made leaving the house to concentrate seem like an especially good idea.

I light a candle for pOp, and for mOm, perseverance and good humour make for a very good example.

 

Weird clouds this morning

IMAG0711_1Random Hallowe’en notes:

Bought $28 worth of candy, got rid of all of it.  Most of the kids costumes were store-bought, but one made a Mardi Gras like impression.  No pic… but she said she was a peacock fairy, and yes, that is what she was.

NO MUSIC.  But lots of convo with Lois, and I even dragged the coffee maker upstairs from its place of banishment in the basement.

Birds are too shell shocked to sing this morning.

Score!  One of the kids recognized my mask as being from Assassin’s Creed.

Score! Keith came over and he announced that pufferfish are back in stock.  I loves my boy.

Score! Chili was a massive success, and as it proceeds through the colons of my loved ones, it will move from success to success.

Score! Paul brought apple pie from the Mexican bakery in the Quay. And Lion Winter Ale, duh.

Score! Wrote a filk to Robin in the Rain.

Riding in the rain
I don’t mind the weather
I have got a 12 volt heater
underneath my leathers
dodging all the bicycles and trucks and cars
weaving ’round the drunks as they come out of bars
Riding in the rain
I don’t mind the weather
even when it’s getting dark
I am a commuter in a first person shooter
but I have a place to park! (with apologies to Raffi).

Now I must write.  It’s NaNoWriMo, kittens!

Laundry list

Spoke to Sandy, and how good to hear from her.  She has a strapping German lad as a volunteer now.

Spoke to Lois; she and Paul will visit folks in these here parts for a while and then Friday we’ll have a get together here which will feature MUSIC.  Lovely home made music, yippee!  Jeff please copy.  Don’t know if Katie, Daxus and the GLD will be here, but I will invite them formally and see.

Did laundry, which is good because I was plumb out of towels.

The sun came out! it was most delightful while it lasted.

I think I’m going to nuke a bowl of that beef stew.

Would you believe that close

Oh, man, Jeff would have laughed his ass off if he’d seen me doing the trash yesterday.  The garbage truck comes down the alley one way and then back up t’other, so I had some warning, but I ran around like a hopped up honey badger throwing the garbage and recycling together.  I spent so much time cleaning out the fridge in the early hours of yesterday morning (and by Toutatis, it needed it) that I didn’t actually have things ready to go when the truck rumbled by.  Fortunately everything was in order when they came back up the hill.  And even more fortunately, the lingering smell of DEATH, CORRUPTION AND HORROR in the kitchen should be entirely gone as everything narsty is gone as well.

Yesterday I went to the single most bizarre job interview EVAR.  It was a masterpiece, a confection of weird, a symphony of surreal.  JUST IN CASE I get the job, I shall not describe it further. I was already in New Westminster, so I phoned Katie and she said c’mon by, so I did.

Alexander farts a lot.  He also blew his first raspberry yesterday. (We howled.) He is already lifting his head; he’s average size but holy crap he’s strong.

Then I walked over to the beer store and went home.

I have printed off the first section of the novel and will be mailing it the the editor today.  Heaving sighs.

I am also going to be sending something to Sandra, but she doesn’t read this blog any more so it will still come as a surprise to her.  I still have some t’s to cross.

Ain't he cute???
Ain’t he cute???

 

Margot sad

She isn’t wandering around the house crying, but she’s obviously sad.  She doesn’t even try to resist when I pick her up. Jeff’s on the island.

Church was great yesterday.  Sue gave me a lift to and fro so I helped her set up tables.  Rev Debra’s sermon about Our House (our rental house, but she mentioned that..) was very inspiring, and apart from silent meditation being too short it was a good service.  I cried during Sue’s testimonial.  I never met her equal for being funny and pulling my heartstrings in the same sentence.  I got to talk to Karen, Renée, Glenn, Jean about Jenise’s passing (I bailed or more accurately, quailed, at going to the service but Jean very kindly emailed me to let me know how it was; it was well done and to Jenise’s taste, although I still would have been toast for going), sang my new call to worship for Tom, put tablecloths down (and took them up again) for the coffee hour downstairs.

And watched Dennis make his way to the men’s room.  I didn’t need to help him. He’s 92 and pretty much blind, but one of the great things about Beacon is that it isn’t too badly set up for people with various physical challenges, and he’s just so…. Dennis.  Me Loves Him.  I watched him go along the wall, his white cane tucked into his back pants pocket, because he didn’t need it.  Because it’s His House.  A more beautiful and mundane example of just what the preacher person had been talking about would be hard to conjure.

I know, it’s silly and small, but it just made me feel like the universe was a really good place for about 30 seconds, before I got distracted again.

After I got home I called Rob W to find out how he’s recovering from his knee surgery last week; he’s laid up at his auntie’s place downtown.

Spent most of the afternoon working on Come and Worship on the keyboard, to the point where my SHOULDER started to hurt.  Now I must reset the height of the keyboard so I am in a more relaxed pose at the keys.  I can actually play it in chord mode (there’s only three chords, haw haw) and I am almost to the point where I’m totally keeping the rhythm too.  This will make it much easier to score, too, since there’s a tiny little display on the keyboard which tells you which note on the clef you’re pressing.

Jeff reminded me that it’s garbage day, so I’m off to collect some trash.

Casino night

Last night I went to the Hard Rock Casino and learned first hand how very odd casinos are.  I, Amanda, Mike, Stuart, Ian, Sarah and Otto got together for a simply lovely meal / some drinks.  Catching up with the old Statpower folks was really wonderful, and I’m in a really good mood this morning.  I thought I was going to gamble going in, and after quite the lecture on statistics from Meester Mike, I no want do that.  So I didn’t.  The food at Asylum was standard pub grub, perhaps 10 percent more expensive that was reasonable, so pretty ordinary for Vancouver.

Jeff is off fixing things and making the world a better place.

I’ve already done my homework for my first piano lesson.

Today I’m going to clean things, write things, sing things, dance things, ingest things, and excrete things.  Isn’t it wonderful that the word things even exists.

Always wanted to try it, this just makes it more interesting. Ayahuasca, that is.

Party at our place in December, details later!

Alexander’s First Thanksgiving.

Comments having nothing to do with Alexander:

Margot likes babies.  She doesn’t even leave the room when they cry.  Every time I think I know my cat she reveals unexplored depths of character and personality.

It was so good to feast the folks, including Mike and Casey.  The meal consisted of (because mOm will want to know, not because I am a food porn type): Roast turkey stuffed with parsley, one head of garlic and a lemon, boiled and roasted yams, brussels sprouts parboiled in chicken stock and sauteed in butter, sauteed parsnips, iceberg lettuce salad, stuffing made in the crockpot (sadly lacking onions, but still damned good), boughten cranberry jelly, homemade gravy and possibly the worst – the most gluey and lumpy – smashed potatoes I ever made.  Everybody else ate them so it’s not like they were inedible, they just weren’t choice.  Absolutely no sweets, but white and red wine, plus beer, to go with the meal. I did promise Paul his mother’s lemon snow recipe for dessert but that will wait for our next meal together; he very kindly did veg prep and ran people ’round town and brought wine glasses and suchlike, for which I offer thanks and praise.

Keith got off work early; Katie turned up around 4, so we all sat down together around six.

The carcase, less the sandwich making leftovers, is in the stockpot; I made beef and bean burrito fillings yesterday as well, so I don’t think I’ll have to cook for a while, yay me!  I mean apart from deboning the soup ingredients.

Around 8 Katie got toothpicks, and Casey was in the same boat, so Paul took them home.  For another hour Mike, Jeff, Keith and I sat around downstairs and watched Archer, and then since the boys both work in the morning, off they went.

It was not a spectacular meal, but it wasn’t one that anybody else in our group would have WANTED to cook, so I’m glad I stepped up.  After I could sit down, I had a lovely evening.

 

And Alexander was there.

 

Alexander disapprovesHappy Grandma

Divine decadence

I love my friends.  Mike took me out to dinner (lamb) and pummelled me until I felt a lot better.  I had no idea I was sore! He told me about some of the stuff that’s happening at Schneider and I laughed quite immoderately.

Check out this example of divine decadence, being a chair shaped like a scorpion.

REALLY glad I mowed the lawn yesterday; the rain is going to last 5 days.  So the place won’t look like an abandoned house when we have guests on Monday.

I have a big table for Thanksgiving. My immediate fam in town plus two orphans. (Neither of whom are technically orphans). This totals 9.  We are going to eat like FOOLS. Really looking forward to it, even if I’ll be trapped in a tiled cell with a dead bird for a day.  There will be parsnips.  I found a crockpot recipe for stuffing that sounds nommerful.

 

Did you ever get the feeling…

Batman and Dilbert are spying on ya?

That central Africa would like to drop out of the headlines for a while?

That Kim is Dead?

That I have the wrong hobbies?

That every time you think racism can’t stoop lower….

That you simply cannot have enough hats?

That the answer to this question is frustratingly obvious?

That even when the science is reported correctly, the language used to describe it is so 20th century centric that you want to smash the journalist into roadpaste?

Tonight I’m heading over to Mike’s place for music and mayhem of some description, hope it’s low key.

Two births in one day

I know that sounds strange, but it’s true, and I can’t really talk about the other birth; it’s a creative birth, happened right in front of me, on line, in real-time, and I was a midwife.  And that sounds very self-serving.  I will be still and just post part of what I wrote for the occasion.

 

being a bard

you write even when your heart

can’t be in it

the people depend on

the story and song you bring them

without story the people die

and without song

they don’t remember the story

;

the bard can’t always be there

.

facing illness

rejection

ill-temper in others

and whatever griefs and shames

and inversions of purpose

may be the bard’s

forward

!

you think you have

a dry stick in your hand

you strike the earth and water comes up

and you have a hand on a tree

and sun in your eyes through the leaves

.

The pull of November

November has long been my favourite month.  Most years I get lovely runs of creativity, a spell of anxiety-free gold-spinning  from straw in the form of  song writing. Sometimes it emerges as prose or poetry.  I can feel myself getting that way already, which is good.  It keeps me mentally occupied rather than spending every minute worried about whether Katie (who says she doesn’t want more kids) has a relatively hassle free birth experience.

I wrote a thousand words on the novel (the name of which I must now change… Calamari Boy? Underlings: Part 1? Squid Surprise? Sixers? Who Let the Squids Out? Not Really Human? Something Something George?) in three blocks yesterday, practiced with the filk inflected chorus (and WORD OF GOD WILL SOUND SO AWESOME o yes it will).  Jeff and Jeri-Lynn are two of my favourite filkers, even if Jeri-Lynn’s strong voice pulls me into the tenor line.  It’s like a valence electron popping into a different shell.

I found out what my vocal range is yesterday!

A2 D5!

That A2 sort of depends on what time of day I’m singing, but the upshot is that I can sing tenor or alto, which is good ta know.

The Fountain of Exposition (hereinafter referred to as the FoE) was also at the choral practice yesterday.  Little children are squirmy and screechy, but I was in a good mood and every time he screeched I thought, “ah me, this will be my lot in three years, chasing after a squirmy and screechy toddler!” instead of thinking about earplugs and how I really wanted to fold up like an armadillo, and then I thought about moving to Fort St. John again.  And then of course I’d start worrying about the birth again.  Worry and anxiety are so frikkin useless; the intelligent thing is to channel them into housework or mending or mowing the lawn, or blocking out the arrangement for Just Might Stick Around (which has glued itself, grr, to the inside of my earworm tunnel).  One thing I’d forgotten – Keith was particularly notable for this – is that if you do manage to accomplish the impossible (note heavy sarcasm) and say something that amuses the child, you’re gonna get it repeated, at various volumes, for the next 15 minutes… and sometimes for years.  I enjoy being able to understand the FoE when he talks.  I like to think my auditory fluency is pretty good; small humans can be a challenge but not in this case, especially when it’s so powerful windy today (all kids are drawn like magnets to light switches, fans and power tools, it’s a law of nature.) Dreffle windy (fan blows).  Powerful windy today thar, boys!  (Infectious giggling).

Keith saw the car parked in front of Tom and Peggy’s on the way home and invited himself to dinner.  (Think for a moment how an otherwise reticent individual feels that he is perfectly okay to do that, and it burnishes their reputation for unstinting hospitality yet again.  He gave us a slow clap after we practiced Word of God, and I have to tell you, he never likes anything I sing so I guess being drowned out by other people is the way to go.  Around 7:30 I felt a wave of nausea and exhaustion come over me and begged off.  I had to sit in the car for a bit before I drove, but I was fine when I got home (??!!) and wrote some more.

MUST REMEMBER TO PUT COOKIE TIN IN CAR.

Singing

I have worked up the chords for Just Might Stick Around (it’s in E minor, just like most of Cohen’s tunes).  It amazes me that there is A WEBSITE that has THE SINGING RANGES of various popular singers.  So I was able to google “What is Leonard Cohen’s singing range” and POOF.  All this information, there really is too much of it.

Do you like owls? I do too.  These youngsters are adorable.

Keith came over yesterday and we sat on the back deck in the steadily diminishing sun, and watched Beasts of the Southern Wild (a problematic movie BUT I loved it anyway) and around a store bought roast chicken I assembled baby steamed baby carrots and broccoli, plus when I heard Keith was coming I decided to make garlic bread; the lads fell on it with a will and there’s leftovers for lunch.  At 4 I go over to Tom and Peggy’s to sing and commune with some of the finest, best, most amiable, intelligent and hospitable friends any sane human can ask for.   WE ARE GOING TO SING CAT FABER’S WORD OF GOD IN CHURCH TOMORROW. Means nothing to you, but Tom has been waiting for this day for 10 years.  In his glee I reflexively bask. Cat has written some awesome tunes, which you can read lyrics for here here here here and here, and that’s only a fraction.  A teeny fraction.  She rounds off her accomplishments by being a rather exceptionally pleasant human.

My character George on the subject of death.  “I will continue. My perception of that continuance will not.”

Prior to sings0ngapalooza, novel assembly tasks.

There’s a Vogon Poetry Generator on the interwebs!  Isn’t it cute?

 

See, see the Intelligent sky
Marvel at its big kimshee depths.
Tell me, Liz do you
Wonder why the honey badger ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel groggy.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your sploogey facial growth
That looks like
An egg.
What’s more, it knows
Your frigate potting shed
Smells of Kermit.
Everything under the big Intelligent sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm compost.

Rehearsal was excellent, more of the same tonight.

Church at the beach

Well, I took those 478 steps yesterday to Wreck.  When Mike and I got there, there was an immense fog blowing across Marine Dr.  For maybe thirty seconds we debated going down to the beach, as it appeared a breezy and clammy time was to be had, but by three o’clock the fog had moved across the inlet where it formed an amorphous but solid appearing wall, 15 stories high.

There were alcohol and food vendors there and no cops.  I got a little singed but the sun wasn’t very fierce. Mike brought his Taylor and I brought Otto, and we sang and played, Dylan and other gods and goddesses.  There was a very light breeze and all in all it was very very pleasant.

We took it easy going up the stairs.  I concentrated on breathing and body mechanics to ensure that I didn’t strain anything.  I got home and because I am no fool I showered and changed before bed; that beach at the end of the season is like a very scratchy petri dish.

Damn, it was nice. I tripped on rhodopsin for a while, experiencing that wonderful progression of colours and geometry that happens when you stare at the sun with your eyes closed for at least ten minutes and then cover your eyes.  First, your visual field goes an inky, depthless black.  Then purple, a colour so strong and overwhelming that you gasp as it comes on, fills from the centre to the periphery. Then the centre turns a malignant orangey copper, and from that springs a deep magenta, so it looks like a pop art eye. Expanding out from the magenta is that same inky depthless darkness, now almost deep blue, with teal semi circles radiating out from that centre.  Very gradually, everything turns a pale silvery green; then brittle diamond shaped lozenges of fiery orange, yellow and red, march up and down your visual field like the very finest mushroom high. Unlike every other time I’ve done this, the colour progression repeated thrice before the last of the visual effects died off (obviously nowhere near as strong, but it was interesting to look at even as attentuated as it was). As always, I feel as strong as Jack the Bear after I do that, and I am much refreshed both mentally and physically.

A week or so ago I listened via NPR to the new Leonard Cohen album, so his voice was still in my head when I was in the shower last night.  Michel, one of the characters in the novel, still didn’t have a song, so I was thinking… Michel lived in Montréal for years, maybe a song in the style of Leonard Cohen?  Michel is staying in town simply and solely to get his mitts on Kima, so I thought ….  (and this is not a song a Sixer would ever write.  They do not infantilize lovers; they don’t smile, they don’t wear hats.  So this is what happens when pop culture gets through with Michel.  In real life, he’d say nothing, sing nothing, present her with nothing except himself.)

 

I just might stick around, baby

I just might stick around

Normally after a week I see

Nothing new in town

A light is glowing in your eyes

My very breath is bound

I just might stick around, baby

Maybe I’ll stick around

If you didn’t know you were special, baby

If you didn’t know you’re great

I’d hop a freight, jump aboard a freighter

Tip my hat, say see ya later

But no one else has quite your style

Not your figure, nor your smile

Yes there’s something new in town

I just might stick around