Category: Grandson goo

Okay folks this is a very unsophisticated piece of music but it is entertaining as hell and Alex was INTIMATELY involved with the processing choices. He is not to blame for the abrupt transitions, although I like the way they work. I can assure you that with the exception of Echo and for one subtrack, Wow, there was no processing or compression except what you get when you move an aup file to mp3.

“Do you have a message for your GGMa? Thank you GGma!” And NO I DIDN’T PROMPT THIS other than asking him to say it. I thought my heart would ‘splode.

He played Xenon and got Seven Tube Shots. He’s getting good, it’s wonderful to watch. He watched Gruncle Jeff play Gears of War (“I was told there’d be robots”!) 4 for about ten minutes before he wanted his own videos.

Then I sat him down with Audacity and we did some recording. Part of it is above.

He’s so funny. I just about died laughing, and Katie got a break which included a nap and making supper…..

So, *grandson* for a couple of hours. First out of the gate I ask him to empty out the dishwasher, which he does by removing items one at a time and handing them to me. I don’t have to bend & he keeps up a running commentary which I won’t attempt to summarize.

Then he abuses Edith, my Aria mandolin. He makes some very interesting noises and keeps it up for quite a while without destroying the instrument. Then he wants Chelyabinsk videos, Pompeii, world’s greatest volcano disasters. Then I show him Stella the wonder dog learning to talk.

Which he loves. Then he very seriously tells me about his accident. I gently listen while he tells me that he dropped a pick into Edith. I help him get it out. Then I ask him if I can cut his fingernails because mah gob! ‘skustin’! I get nine out of ten and then teach him to use an emery board. Then he wants a pinball game and he only just turned five but he got 3 tube shots in two successive games on Xenon

and honestly all I want to do is call my fOlks and tell them because they will be thrilled. Xenon is a Meaningful Game for a lot of reasons and watching him dance in his chair along with the game music and telling him it was written by a woman makes me happy.

You have a 5 year old great grandson. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Mine is an evil laugh!

Alex is 5 today. I fed the whole family, Alex and Katie and Keith and Jeff, baked french toast with whipped cream, bacon, tater tots, orange juice, sliced apple and orange, coffee and cold chocolate milk. Alex peeled an apple using the apple peeler from Great Great Granny’s kitchen (Granny Rivett) to keep the family feeling going.

Then we watched Pompeii stuff. Alex’s kindergarten teacher posted on facebook that Alex, while strewing wooden blocks everywhere, said, “Pompeii was destroyed. There was a VOLCANO.”

YAY pOp got my charger back to me. He probably spent about the same amount shipping it as I would have paid to replace it but incidentally I stayed off the internet for most of two days and my room is much cleaner… so….

Sat Alex for the last Wednesday for the foreseeable, since Katie’s group is over. It was pretty low key as my orthotics seem to have given up the ghost and I’m now getting pain in both feet unless I stay off them (doesn’t matter if I’m barefoot or not). I got a little relief wearing my new hiking shoes but walking in the orthotics just about kills me. So we didn’t walk to Robert Burnaby park, went to Eastburn instead, and I bounced Alex up and down on the teeter totter while he screamed in glee. Then his grandfather started bouncing him up and down about five times harder than me and he squished his foot and banged himself against the handles and started crying and once again Paul is like…

 

He wants to toughen Alex up.

 

I wrote a paragraph about how much hate just SEETHES in me when I watch men I love being bullies rather than playmates and fuck it, the internet’s forever.

I’m angry with Paul, and I think I’m going to stay away from him until I figure out how to cope with this feeling. Holding your crying grandson because of something your cograndparent did by being too rough.

Now I can’t remember how he was with our kids, I only see him as he is now.

I’m so glad I can charge my computer again.

The Expanse finale was awesome.

Finally got hold of Mike, he’s travelled five times in the last six weeks and he has no break since there is no one to do the customer service work while he’s gone so he ends up answering emails at 3 am. They’re going to break him, and I can’t do anything about it because work is Mike’s organizing principle at the moment.

Still getting kudos, one a day, on the stories. I’m stalled on the last one. It’s really weird, the emotional stuff is kind of a different tenor to my usual badinage. People are angry and tense and popping off at each other.

BUT OF COURSE THE CONSTRUCTION BANGING CONTINUES, AS IT HAS CONTINUOUSLY SINCE I CAME HOME FROM ICELAND.

Poor Buster. He’s adjusting a bit.

Just ate toasted potato bread with butter and almond butter and my sensorium is happy with my choices about it in a casual sort of way.

I got to see Alex on Mother’s Day.  God, he’s so precious.  He insisted on pinball. We made him wait for 5 minutes (good for toddler souls to learn how to wait) and then he was off downstairs. He played both the STTOS and the Xenon game. We asked him if the creature on the Xenon game is a robot, an alien or a cyborg and he insisted it was a cyborg. Hearing my grandson say sf words while playing pinball HEART GO SPLODEY.

So yesterday I pulled my tarot ‘day card’ at midnight, as one does when one works the graveyard shift, and it was ‘The World’. And so I immediately thought this:

Mark 8:36 King James Version (KJV)

36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

And then I thought, what is my soul?

And the answer came, “My family.”

And I realized I hadn’t seen Alex in a month (or it seems so) and burst into tears.

I came home and watched the Expanse with Jeff, and then burst into tears again and said I have to see him.

So I did.

I came in the door and he ran up to it, grinning and nodding, starkers, because he was about to get in the bath with mom.

I was overcome by tiredness and Katie said lie down on the big bed and sleep, and then she brought Alex, made sleepy by his bath, to lie next to me.

And we took a nap together for 2.5 hours, and at one point I whispered to him that he would be warmer if he cuddled with me, and he said “Yuh” and launched himself at me, but I turned my head and so he didn’t break my nose. He woke up snuffling and crying a couple of times and because Zizi was there he could settle down again.

I don’t ever want it to go that long again without seeing him. I was in physical pain, like glass was breaking in my chest.

Thanks Katie and Alex, you refilled my ‘heart bucket’.

I just took toilet paper to Psych Emerg because the two count’em two HK staff didn’t think an hour old stat page was worth their attention. I fully expect to get into trouble about this, and if I do, I’m going to go back to psych emerg and tell them I got shit for it, and then I’ma buy popcorn.

For I know, since I clear their cache for them, that both the full time staffers on days and afternoons are looking hard like hard hard for better work. Disciplinary measures never looked so good in prospect. Like I said. Popcorn.

Editing progresses. I think, after all this Supernatural fanfic (I’ve written 50K words since the middle of January…. insane, right??) it’s time I quit trying to pull someone else’s canoe to shore.

Some kind soul left a box of jalebi in the cafeteria and in a shameful show of carnal weakness I absconded with one. But only one. Hand to god, only one.

About ten years ago I loaned three pieces of children’s furniture to friends. Now that my grandson is two — and how in the everloving **** did that happen — I asked for it back. The 6 decade old Vilas Maple Kindergarten set has landed! Thank you Rob and Char for looking after it for us! This ten year experiment in non-attachment is now a qualified success. This will be the third generation of Granny Rivett’s descendants to use it.

I’m feeling super lucky this morning to be a grandma. Alex came over yesterday with Katie and now I’ve got my temporary fill of very serious gibberish and sloppy kisses. Rob and Char also returned a wooden xylophone and I don’t know what was more charming, Alex beating on it with a wooden spoon or trying to pronounce xylophone.

He once again insisted on standing on the cat food box and reaching up to the wall phone and calling Zizima, which is his word for his great-grandmother. (I am Zizi, so by toddler logic my mother is Zizima!) Meanwhile back in Victoria, mOm got back from their usual drive in the Camaro out to Dan’s Farm and Country Market to him saying HIYA ZIZIMA! into the answering machine. Her response when I called her. “Still melted in a puddle.”

She sounded happy rather than very inconvenienced by this turn of events, which sounds like what happens to George when he’s upset, so I’ll take that as a win.

We had a brief and inconclusive conversation about trucks and tambourines.