Category: Gross

NOBODY CARES BOUT MAH POOP

except me, of course.

So I was communing with my output in the water closet this morning as one does when one is a hypochondriac like I, and thinking TERRIBLE THINGS ARE HAPPENING TO MY LIVER and then I chanced to remember two facts. One, I’m looking at a perfect 3.5 on the Bristol scale, (so firm, so cylindrical, so fully packed) so relax, ya cheesewit, and second, I’ve been eating nothing but leftover pizza, egg salad with a ton of paprika and half a dozen mandarin oranges for the last two days, so that dreffle bright orange colour is…. nominal.

ah, the relief.

I stopped making masks for a while because Jan in Toronto nearly put her fucking eye out when a needle broke while she was making masks. Mask making involves really large changes in the height of what you’re sewing together and if you go too fast it’s super easy to break a needle. (She’d never had one break….fortunately spouse was home and dealt with the bloodination.)

I realized I was doing it bare-eyed because I don’t have functioning bifocals (I hate them) and realized I was asking for an industrial accident. Fortunately Jeff had a pair but he said the elastic had perished. I learned that I had THE IDENTICAL elastic and both cleaned and maintained the glasses, which are now waiting for me by the sewing machine, so I have no further excuse for my dilatory mask making ways. I also found a bunch of still useful stamps from my granny.  They were on a poster like this.

John H. Talman - Stamps for Sale - Auctions and Retail

courtesy John Talman stamps for sale

I thought pOp would like to know that when I mail him some masks the stamps will be from his mOm, who continues to look out for him, the way mOms do.

 

Starting to think about UPSUN again. Couple hundred words on latest fanfic.

Made raspberry scones this morning.

East Van love

Image

Jennifer Yaeger LPC in Newnan Georgia has this to say

roundup for Thursday

Throwback Thursday picture:

 

 

Roberta on Melody Maid, 1949. south end of barnyard; the circular water trough is downslope and right.

mOm has consumed by latest little puff pastry of a fan fic story and enjoyed it, so there. I cannot bear touching or looking at UPSUN right now so I won’t.  This is a temporary state of affairs.

Lovely walk in the neighbourhood yesterday with Paul; came home and fed him Flower Bread (Balkan style pullapart rolls) and lentil soup, which he removed entirely.

Here’s Helen Branswell on our plague year.

Jesus Fucking Christ, said Jesus Fucking Christ, looking down from heaven at the Korean woman who went to church TWICE AFTER HER DOCTORS TOLD HER TO BE TESTED FOR CORONAVIRUS

Discovery of Witches has been renewed for two more seasons YAH but no release date BOO and of course the whole world will be up in the air as COVID does its thing

June 2005 is up

I got lazy and put the last half of the month under one post.

I wrote 690 words of fanfic yesterday but I’m completely sessile today. I had a ‘bad digestion day’ which was basically me eating a probiotic for the first time in months plus eating cheese and two bowls of lentils in a single 24 hour period and I must say it was windy in here, mighty windy. The cheese & probiotic formed a plug and then the lentils had things to say for about 45 minutes after they rudely and forcefully pushed past the cheese plug, at the end of which I briefly thought of taking a picture and then comparing notes with my pOp but I, even I, restrain myself at the ultimate edge of really poor taste and merely suggest it. Then I nearly passed out. I felt faint for about ten minutes and actually thought about yelling for Jeff but the ghastly weakness faded. I kept my phone close just in case. This much pressure is normally accompanied by high exhaust gas temperature but nope. If Paul ever reads this he needs to know I repeatedly thanked fortune that I had a flush, as opposed to hand pump, toilet, as I would naver have kept up.

That plus the bruised possible broken or cracked floating rib is not making me lively, that’s for damned sure.

I light a candle for a young comrade in Sweden who’s feeling crappy and unloved. I sent him a note to indicate that his crappiness is not evident at least to me.

Katie

Some mornings I wake up at 2 am and get up; this morning I forced myself back to sleep and woke up at 5:30. Like a little kid I lay in bed and thought to myself, “Oh, I hope Katie calls and wants to spend some time with me today!”

Then at a quarter to eight she called and we had breakfast.

It is so easy to make me happy, it’s quite funny.

I’M SEEING MY MOM ON SUNDAY NEXT AND THEN I HAVE A JOB INTERVIEW.

And I’m going to see a doc about my suspected septic thyroglossal cyst Friday next, which is now bobbing around on the bottom of my tongue and which accounts for, get this FOUR OF MY SYMPTOMS.

Pain – generally they only hurt if they’re infected. It’s a completely ignorable amount of pain, which is why I’ve been ignoring it. Turns out you’re born with these suckers and they can literally never do anything to announce their presence.

Dysphagia and an occasional sense that my throat is closing over (WHICH LIKELY IMPACTED MY APNEA MACHINE USE)  – which comes and goes depending on how swollen it is, which makes sense considering it’s attached to the bottom of your tongue and moves when it does. Unfortunately this symptom has been MAJOR in telling me that I’m going demented, so finding out there’s another reason has given me life.

Metallic spit – an occasional sensation, see above, which is accompanied by a nasty feeling at the base of my tongue and a completely indescribable sensation in my mouth when it happens. It was MUCH WORSE during my taking antibiotics in November last and kept up for weeks after. Still happens a couple of times a week.

A previous symptom, not present since menopause – I used to get a large pimple on my neck just where they often push fluids and pus to the surface. Who knew.

Bonus symptom: having to hyperextend my neck so I can feel like I can breathe prior to going to sleep.

There is a less than 1 in 100 chance that there is carcinoma present. These things hardly ever go bad that way, although they can randomly collect fluid so they look like a half-goiter or get infected.

I wouldn’t even care about this birth defect – for such it is – but it’s affecting my ability to enjoy food, sleep and sing, the three major reasons I’m alive, so I’m going to try to get a diagnosis and then see if I can’t have it either drained or excised. I’d prefer drained but it would be entertaining to have a throat scar that makes me look right piratical.

 

and god won’t I look silly if I’m wrong about this, but fOlks, I rilly don’t think I am.

 

 

I love my family.

Getting lots of lovely comments on my fanfic. When people like the stuff you wrote for what you think are the right reasons……

embarrassed (the previous day)

Jesus, what a buttload o’ driving we did that day. Back really took a beating.

Anyway, after a fucking brutal amount of driving we were in a Martian landscape with fumaroles. Pics including video when wifi stops barfing. Stench appalling, colours weird – off kilter. Don’t know how else to describe it really.

Then a briefer but still brutal regime of driving and we were at a waterfall or foss as they say in these parts. Pics to follow. I can’t remember what the hell it was called, and I don’t have to, we’ll all get a map with a pronunciation guide at the end, so I’ve been told.  It was big, it had multiple parts, I bought stamps to go with the postcards I acquired from the night before and jesus that reminds me I should post those two I wrote out and stamped.  Wonder if I’ll remember, I doubt it. Anyways it was compared to Niagara Falls and all of us who have seen Niagara Falls laughed our asses off because Niagara Falls would pick it up and love on it for being so goshdarned cute.

Trip to north of ghastly WC, avoided spending any more tourist money cept for stamps.

Then we went to a farm to table restaurant and I paid forty fucking dollars for a very small fraction of a humanely slaughtered and lovingly raised cow nestled in a tasty goulash that gave me an eyewatering case of heartburn. Or maybe it was before the fumaroles. Only the roll of digital pics will give me the gooooddddammned timeline here. I’m just trying to move it along here so I have a minute to repack.

In the middle there somewhere or who knows really it’s all the most excellent blur, we saw FALSE VOLCANOES. These are formations which happen when a certain viscosity/composition/density of lava rolls out over wetlands. You get these miniature cones which are … well, miniature. I loved them. Pics later, relax.

Okay I’ll try.

Nope, barfed again.

Then we went to a real forest. Some enterprising farming family planted trees on their property overlooking The Lake of Midges for the best part of half a century and when the old lady died she deeded it to Iceland. FUCK I LOVE ICELAND. Short hill, nice view, incredibly tame birds and there will be pics, yeah whatever.

Then. The Darkwood.

I had a really really really bad feeling the entire time I was there. The landscape is effin’ creepy. I took pics, including one I think is the jewel so far, but anyway, it’s not a wood. It’s crumbling towers of evil looking stone, as if ogres and trolls had really been frozen in place and then were subject to ten thousand years of weathering. Another kind of formation from lava on wetland. I could not fucking wait to get out of there and felt much better the second I was gone. The equivalent of Santa lives there but in Iceland the Santa’s Mom will eat you if you’re naughty so I guess…. well anyway things are a little less scary in Iceland now since the government asked people nicely to stop telling stories that made their kids not want to leave the house in December. Wish I was kidding.

Then another foss, including a closeup of a piece of ice melt the size of a school bus, long freaking walk in the wind, unpleasant trek to a WC which the guide said was the worst rest stop in Iceland (ten portapotties, five a side back to back ) – cheerfully – and after viewing the digestive output of a hundred strangers at much closer range than would made any but the most scatologically devoted happy, I was forced to experience something I’ve never had to before; the sensation that some mofo was trying to tip the loo over. I was so terrified I braced my hand against the wall, always the worst possible idea in a port a potty, but it proved that the violent rocking motion which so disturbed my attempt to commune with nature was merely what happened when a two hundred fifty pound man bounded up onto the wooden walkway surrounding the loos.

Imagine that despite my description…. there was virtually no smell. THAT WAS HOW HARD THE WIND WAS BLOWING.

I slunk back onto the tour bus last, kinda wishing I could be hosed down in Dettol first.

Then a long long long long longass drive and we climbed a mountain and took pics and we saw a thousand migrating birds and then came down the other side good god my tummy and came to the city of Elves and saw puffins. SLEEP.

Anyway it was a long day, long driving, much walking and many definitive Experiences.

 

 

today’s non-events

Got into a beatdown with a bunch of one of the most self-righteous pot activists (like there’s another fucking kind) on twitter today.

Come ON I smoke, but I don’t smoke and blow smoke in the faces of the allergic and the elderly, and they’re announcing it’s their RIGHT, because this is VANCOUVER, home of TOLERANCE. Yeah I’ll believe that when Canada gives back the unceded lands, you unregenerate failure of logic. I’m like a homophobe for harshing their mellow. Srsly. Got accused of equivalency to homophobia for objecting to people dousing the entire west end in pot smoke for their stupid fucking 420 festival (which leaves heaps of trash mounded everywhere and they’re all cryface because they didn’t get a fucking permit.) F*ck me!

I realized that when you put asterisks in f*cking swearwords you’re putting a leedle asshole right in the meedle of the word and since when you’re swearing there’s usually an asshole involved, it’s mesmerizingly poifect.

I love Buster, he’s an amazing cat. And he loves me too, I know it. I don’t think Miss Margot cares if I live or die, but Buster does.

My latest piece of fanfic smut has more than five hundred likes (it’s cute and hot, so there)

I’ve written a BDSM scene in the same ‘verse but I’m not happy with it yet. I had to put in about 200 words about how the scene is ‘necessary but non-consensual’ which kinda blows (or not!) since scenes need consent if they’re to resonate with me writing, at all. So it’s like “We’ve talked about this – I hate it when you want me (and need me) to top you but I’m s’posed to read your mind – and topping when you’re angry at your partner is a bad bad bad idea” followed by “Do what ya gotta, man, just hit me really hard.” Oh, and there are minor children in the house while this sh*t’s going down, just to make it even more like real life, and our heroes must deal with the domestic consequences of Daddies fighting. I LOVE A CHALLENGE. After all, continuing to have interesting sex after kids *is* a continuing challenge in real life. People want carefree smut? they can look elsewhere; to me smut always has a cost. Who bears it depends on who’s being responsible, or not.

Not that anybody wants to know, but I’m really not into any of those behaviours in real life. Nagging at volume is sort of where I max out, ask any of my exes.

Continuing to have the poly life discussion with someone. It’s painful. Really painful. I feel like I have my nose up again a particularly interesting window. I can smell bread baking. But no. G*ddamned heteronormative uncommunicative bushwah (on their end, not mine.) But at the same time there’s NO F*CKING POINT to becoming an elder if you don’t understand that real life takes time, opportunities for growth don’t wait, and if you don’t consider who’s going to be impacted by your decisions, your years, your grey hairs and and your learning means squat. I am still 22 in some corner of my persona, for my enthusiasms still have all the joy of my youth; I just can’t write everyone affected by my behaviour out of the script any more. I do from time to time, but not all the time.

Fortunately, since I’m pushing 60 with a broom, I can contemplate my greed like the gorram caged bear that it is. Still here, but not running the show.

Katie is still having a rough time and she and Alex are both sick again.

I am not having a rough time. I feel pretty good, all things considered. I have another two weeks of full time work. If that changes, I’ll deal with it. I actually have a plan to deal with it that I think will make almost everyone happy, at least temporarily.

Rogue One is a fucking fantastic movie. Getting eaten by Disney was the best thing that ever happened to the franchise.

Now to check if my money transfer has come through.

the wonders of Qatar

A man has been arrested for entering Qatar with (and candidly, this is really hard to believe) in excess of 12 kilos of bacon packed in his ass. I’m not going to link to the site, but it shows a picture of the customs officials standing in front of the packaged bacon like it was a pile of seized cocaine. Also, it looks like 4 kilos of bacon to me, but what do I know.

He was selected for special inspection because he appeared ‘nervous and sweaty’. I am amazed he wasn’t ‘ruptured and lifeless’.

In other news the World Health Organization advises you to avoid any bacon which might make it onto the Qatari black market.

I’ve been here since noon

In a couple of minutes they’ll call the flight and I’ll find out if I’ve been sitting here like a fucking idiot for no good reason for the last day. Fort St John is not a fun place to fly to on passes.  PAUL WANTS TO TAKE THE SKYTRAIN HOME.  On April 4.  With no Compass card. My feelings are simple.  He can do what he likes, although with no Compass card he’s not likely to get far, as I laboriously explained to him.  I’m going home in a cab; it’s hours after my normal bedtime and I have hours to go before somebody offers up a bed for me.

later….

Home.  What a fucking waste of a day.  Three flights came and went and I’m not going to FSJ unless somebody pays for my return flight.

Some man was shot dead a few blocks from here.  I don’t think I want to live on this planet any more.

 

 

Deleted Chipper

Chipper, if you’re reading this, quit sending emails.  Talk to your friends.  Quit reminding me how lonely you are by sending detailed lists of how fucked up I am.  It’s quite as crazy as it sounds, so stop. Remember you yelling into the phone at the American Express telemarketers?  While Paul and I had to listen?  Yeah.  I’m asking you to stop in a much quieter voice.

For the rest of you poor sods, some of whom have known her longer than I have:

I have very regretfully had to delete her user ID, as she’s threatened to use it as a soap box to announce my failings to the world (as if I don’t already do that in double handsful on a reg’lar basis, but whatevs.) She has her own blog, that she pays for, that belongs to her. But I’ve had to take that off my sidebar, at no loss to her.  She’s never gotten a single booking referred from this website or she would have phoned me to tell me.

I have happy memories, and I’m going to hang on to them, because they are part of the family lore.

I’d say that one of my issues is setting boundaries, but now that I’m post menopausal and feeling my calling and surrounded by a working model of adult friendship, I’m learning how to do that.  What I experienced was abuse, and nobody else ESPECIALLY NOT THE ABUSER gets to call it civil discourse and gracious hospitality.  If she wants to try to talk me out of how she abused me by sending abusive emails, that’s heading over to the place where the judge gets to make the call, and I don’t want to go there. She said it was very convenient for me that Paul witnessed most of the yelling.  Yes, being yelled at while there was a witness was er, convenient.  Definitely convenient.  That’s the word I’d use.

I should not have visited her while she was sick.  But colds go away. Boundaries stay in place.  I should have rented a cabin and left her to yell at her house (she does that a lot.)

And maybe I was depressed when I went, but I really don’t feel that way now.  I have communed with the spirits, I have walked in the woods, and I feel like helping someone who has helped me. I’m going to help Paul with his Restorative Justice talk, and then I’m going to start writing again on Monday, since I’ve had a nice long, weird, horrible, exciting, heartening and thought-provoking break, and on Tuesday I’ll spend part of my grandson’s first birthday with him, and I’m going to paint a picture of the dream I had, where I was climbing Moore’s Falls.  I will practice my mandolin and cook for my household and try out Terry’s cookie recipe which is so good I could DIE. I will write down more songs, and keep adding to the book of kind words (wrote some more in Cornwall), and prep Theo for surgery (not really but almost.)

I will check in with the editrix of awesomesauce and make a list of friends to call. I’ll do my taxes, although not before I put them off some more. I will continue to live a satisfactory life and when life hands me difficulties and worries, I’ll have friends and family who trust me, and who reciprocate my love and care and trust and appreciation with deeds of shining worth. And words spoken at a conversational volume, because candidly, that was the best thing about going to Cornwall and then getting back to town.

Dropped off

Katie and Alex and I saw humpback whales (two of them) from the stern of the ferry boat yesterday.  It was so marvellous!

The first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning around 3 am was Alex.  He has a memorable face, and such merry blue eyes.  Katie and I had a talk and I told her that I won’t try to pick him up or cuddle him again until he wants me to; I may wait years, or forever, but he’s just not that into me, so I’ll let myself be baby driven.

I was not able to get as much of the mOm-assisted edits done this time and while I’m disappointed I think it will be fine.  I’m not feeling any pull toward writing today so I’ll work on other things instead.

I very much enjoyed driving the Modo car, which is a Prius.  I didn’t enjoy the gas card not working so I have to make sure I get my money back.

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH TURDS. There’s no picture, but some of you ****ers be squeamish.

I took a book by a Christian (Phil Ryan) out of the library.  It’s called After the New Atheist Debate and it’s a sort of Point Counterpoint on the New Atheist positions and the Defenders of the Faiths – including the horrifyingly sexist and racist Theodore Beale.  BUT it contained this gem: Alasdair MacIntyre is paraphrased by Ryan as saying “modern moral debates (are) ‘interminable’ because of the ‘conceptual incommensurability’ of rival positions”.

So here’s a new pejorative term for you

Snotwaffle.

 

Perhaps you would never have a use for a word like this, especially in reference to another human being, but bear with me.  It has a particular meaning and purpose, and it’s meant to be descriptive.

If you beheld a waffle, you might in the ordinary course of events approach it with an eye to its golden brown beauty, utility, edibility and caloric density. But if that eye fell upon a corner of the waffle which had been most callously and vilely defaced by a mighty wad of snot, you would wish to pivot and flee, as having beheld something which got your hopes up and then dashed them to the extent you went from feeling pretty darned good to wondering how the hell you could have mistaken that shine for maple syrup.

When you run across a person, of any gender representation, who appears okay and, you know, a human being, but on closer inspection appears malicious and nasty, and secondarily any person who takes something good and leaves it fucked and far from home and no longer possessing beauty or utility, and who offers neither excuse nor remedy, that person, dear friends, is a snotwaffle.

I guarantee you that an occasion to use this term of opprobrium will find its way to you soon, because this poor old world has snotwaffles in quantity.  And if someone calls you on it, you say, “‘s not awful, why, what do you think I said?”

Being a middle aged fannish woman looks like this

“Oh we’ve never seen anything present with those symptoms before, and candidly if you lost 40 (gained 20) pounds most of the problems – which appear to be in your head anyway – would go away, and here’s an antidepresessant and here’s an antipsychotic since I haven’t destroyed your ability to complain about your imaginary symptoms and there’s another test I’d like you to try. I wouldn’t be using that word iatrogenic in quite that snippy tone my dear.” Rinse, repeat with different doctors, 15 years later get a diagnosis from literally the FIRST DOCTOR WHO TAKES A PROPER HISTORY OH MY GOD. I wish I had heard this story only once. I have heard variants of it at least once a year for the last ten.  I only dodged it by stopping with the prescription mood drugs. I know I would have had a smoother time of it this last while, but life with the mountains ground down to a Vancouver lawn in July and the deep rolling waters turned into greasy holes full of algae ten feet deep / across is no place I want to live.

 

Also, god damn child abusers.  We need to end this scourge.