Category: Domestic Life

Printing out the Valentines

I am almost but not quite overcome by the excitement of my upcoming trip.

Still haven’t got hold of everybody.  This VOIP line is messed up, or nobody in Toronto has an answering machine, or I don’t have the correct numbers.  Or possibly there’s another explanation, but it’s odd, for sure.  Guess I’ll just have to sit in Tammy’s hot tub the whole time, woe is me!!! with a side of snickering.
I am almost, but not quite finished this year’s batch of Valentines.  I am hoping to curry them (courier them???) over to my cow-irkers at the sales & CS meeting, so they can take them to my US cow-irkers later.  The meeting which, once again, I was not invited to attend…. and every year it’s the same thing.  I get all pretend pouty ’cause I wasn’t invited, and then afterwards the participants describe their boredom, frustration and lack of pumped upness in Cecil B. DeMille scale terms. So really it’s good.  And I’m still thrashing my way through a nasty project at work, so it’ll be nice and peaceful while I finish up preparatory to my trip.

Mac and cheese

I taught Keith how to make home made macaroni and cheese.  I asked him to boil up some noodles and he did – rather a lot of them – and he watched me assemble the dish, but now, strangely enough, it’s almost all gone.  This time I cooked it in the dutch oven, and man, what a difference the little crunchy bits at the edges made to the flavour.

Katie didn’t come home last night.  However, I know where she is.

Update

I have got “The Weekend’s Over” which is the scurrilous song I wrote for ScaryClown’s b-day, in the mail to mOm, and I am just finishing up Wish it was mine.  Blues is hard to write down, man  – it is meant to be SUNG not written down in musical notation.  Katie came home to collect her work duds and listen to me play it (I’ve been playing mando for hours today, my fingees are aflame) and she loved it.  Which was nice; she said that should be the next one I record.  It’s going to be a while before I have the money for that kind of thing, but I will definitely be doing it soon.  Every time I teach myself a new chord I end up writing another song.

Even nicer than Katie’s appreciation was her acknowledgment that Dax was being difficult.  The actual words she used were not exactly difficult, but you get the general idear.

I still have tons of Valentines to do – I may have to do some more tomorrow.

Off for a walk

Briefly:

  • I went out to the Golf Course with the folks last night.  We were gargling a liquid goodbye to Darryl and Dave, who had been with the company 17 and 11 years respectively.  I like and respect them both, but it’s Dave I’ll miss the most, because he is a complete sweetie and I ate lunch with him damned near every work day for five years.
  • I gave a neckrub to the guy who hired him away from my employer however; I too can live in hope.
  • I worked the entire table and gave everybody who wanted a neck rub same; excepting only that greedy oinker RobofNine, who’d already had one that day.
  • At the beginning of the day I gave Burnt a package of Buffy Valentines; he indicated pleasure in a deadpan sort of way.
  • The Dalai Jarmo gave an extremely amusing and highly accurate description of what happens when a slender, intelligent and goodlooking female new hire gets dropped into an engineering department.  Punch line, “Every time I turned around, some guy had pulled out a bigger crimping tool.”
  • Paul and Keith came out!  Keith had a Crantini. Paul tried to pay, but I made sure I gave him my share.  Paul was especially happy because there were not one but TWO flying buddies there, being RobofNine and Jeff F., who now works with Susan N., who was ALSO at the Course, and… well, you get the idea that the high tech community in Vancouver is about a thousand strong, and you have to mind your p’s and q’s.
  • When I got home, Keith, who is a marvel among children, had provided Dun Tot from St Germain bakery in Metrotown.  My happiness may be imagined.  No sign of Katie; her door is closed though, and I don’t know where she is for sure.
  • Two cow-irkers gave me detailed and horrific descriptions of why they are now so miserable that quitting without another job to go to seems like a viable option. They are both solid contributors to the org so I am shaking my head.  I just started working with one of them so I only recently came to an understanding of his value.  The other one I only knew by his reputation from other people, but it was solid.  It was a poke in the eye, lemme tell you.
  • One of my other cherished cow-irkers called me an evil genius.  Happy sigh!
  • Brother Jerome was there, as was the Otto-man. However, Tom and Mike couldn’t make it so we only reunited one half of the original lunch bunch.
  • Dave also described his exit interview.  Man, I can only wish I’d been a fly on the wall.

Well, it’s 6:30 in the morning, and unless I actually put on a coat and go for a much needed walk, it ain’t gonna happen.  May you all have a lovely day!

Sundry and Various

Buffy the Vampire Slayer valentines cards for a buck a pop???? Can such things be????  I have since heavily modified my valentines day list, although I still have a hundred of the blessed things to print out this weekend.

My travel derangements are now set; I’m arriving in TO on the redeye Thursday morning, and then I’m going to hang with some early risers, and then go hang with some not so early risers, and then I’m going to… joy of joys…. hang with the most excellent poet Dave Dowker and my buddy Sandy (aka Chipper on this blog).  You have NO NOTION how much I am looking for’ard to that.

I have sung my scurrilous new song to a variety of people, most of whom found it entertaining.

When Paul took Keith and I to the Chong Lum Hin the other night, Sue the proprietress and her husband fed us traditional Chinese soup … not the menu stuff, but incredibly medicinal soup. I only had a teacup’s worth of broth but it was so loaded with vitamins that I could feel my consciousness shifting.  Also they gave me pea greens with garlic, which is really yummy.  The soup is traditionally given to women who have just given birth, and they laughed their asses off when I innocently asked, “Who had a baby?”

Lois news

Sis-in-law Lois has wonderful news; she got to act as a doula for a birth in Brooks, and everything went swimmingly and she managed to get a dentist to pull two very unhappy teeth, so she’s expecting to start feeling really awesome really fast.  Hugs to Lois!

In other news, I am slowly lining up my sleeping derangements in Toronto.  I’m at Tammy’s on Friday and god knows where for the rest of the time.

Way better…..

Peggy Lee….

I thought I’d cheer myself up by listening to Fever by Peggy Lee, and I thought I’d forward the link.

Although I didn’t sleep for nearly long enough, I got up this morning feeling more rested and less pained than I have in quite a while.  Last night I made an honest effort to apologize and make it up to somebody I’ve wounded. I was told that I have Borderline Personality Disorder, that I have no notion about friendship, that I walk through life like a victim, that every interaction is a competition for me and I have to “win”, and that I have a black belt in cruelty and hypocrisy.

So I guess it’s fair to say she’s not in a forgiving mood.  Me, I’m feeling way better.  I tried to make amends.  I listened to her carefully.  Then I went home and asked Dr. Filk if he thought I was cruel and hypocritical, and he pulled a face.  After admitting that he could think of thousands of unpleasant comments to make about me, he simply didn’t buy cruel and hypocrital. Dr. Filk has lived with me for the best part of a decade.  He’s certainly seen me at my worst and I haven’t noticed him sparing the horses when it comes to offering opinions.
Keith, of course, whose commitment to accuracy is both part of his charm and an ongoing trial, said, “Well you’re no crueler than most and somewhat less hypocritical,” which I thought was pretty cool, actually.  I mean, you don’t expect to come off well if you ask your kids something like that.  Haven’t seen Katie to ask her, but it should be really intense when I do.

In the meantime my back and my leg are feeling much better.  And I’m going to do standup tonight!  Actually I’m going to do a little bit of standup and Miss Manners Has Her Say.  Yes, please! No thanks! Maybe later! (as the chorus goes).

Piggy

Glenn and Marilyn were here (geessssshhhh!  how could you tell when allofasudden the blog got more pictorially internesting??) and I fed them a huge pork roast and sauerkraut and steamed carrots and smashed potatoes and homemade gravy and peas and fried mushrooms and green salad and Marilyn brought pie (which I skipped, because I ate like an ogre.)  So I am always happy to see my webmeister who is always trying to get me to make improvements.  Now that I have changed the permissions and can upload stuff from anywhere, I am one cheerful dudette.

Fog….

East Burnaby is very subject to fog; if you look at it, it makes sense.  You can’t see the Fraser in this map but it’s due south, about 2 klicks and about a 140 metre drop down the hill.  The hills in New Westminster are pretty dramatic.

The contours hold the fog as it creeps up from the Fraser.  You couldn’t see across the alleyway at 7 this morning; now it’s twenty after 8 and the fog has crept down the hill; it’s a dayfull of glorious sunshine (and everything covered in rime.)

I read to Paul and the kids last night from my pOp’s letters to his parents; it was hilarious how my father didn’t think I beat my children enough.  However his descriptions of the children’s psychomotor development left me whooping with hysterics and Katie’s comment was, “See, See!!!! I was put on earth to destroy things.”  Ah, me own widdle nihilist.
Watched the latest rev of Pride and Prejudice last night.  It was pleasant – having recently re-read it – to be able to tell the folks which of the amazing lines of dialogue were straight from the book and which weren’t.

As predicted

Yesterday at work was completely and utterly without incident. It was so peaceful and happy that it really was quite remarkable.

The bruise on my calf from where the muscle snapped is now a tennis ball sized navy circle. However, I am walking much better. The muscle that snapped is also the one that the sciatic nerve travels through… no coincidence I suspect… so I’m all twingy and twangy and the foot numbness is pretty bad. Still it’s good to be able to walk faster than a constipated snail and I get fifteen metres at a time when I’m not even limping at all.  Especially on level ground.
Keith just brought me coffee, happy child.  Katie, of course, is absent and hasn’t called.  She must be pretty confused right now.  The next 85 words deleted because they aren’t sufficiently constructive and respectful.

I came back into the house when I missed my bus.  Then the phone rang and Paul said he’d give me a lift.  A week ago I would have passed.  But things have changed, as always.
The other night the kids called a family meeting and essentially read us the riot act.

Her Majesty the Queen charges and commands all persons being assembled immediately to disperse and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business on the pain of being guilty of an offence for which, on conviction, they may be sentenced to imprisonment for life. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN. 

Or to the like effect.  Essentially, they don’t give a shit if Paul and I are having trouble living together; they want us to keep the peace and stay in the house.  Katie isn’t so attached to the house but she’s much attached to peacefulness (rude, unconstructive comment here deleted…).  So now we’re in non-non-divorce territory; we can’t divorce because we aren’t married and we can’t split up because of our extremely convenient living arrangements as itemized by our children, who see their comfortable berth during the next phase of their schooling evaporating if we split.  However, thanks to the wonders of the Inertnest, it turns out that a non non divorce is completely normal, and how couples did things anyways before divorce was popularized by a particularly scummy brand of shyster, operating in cahoots with the MSM.

So, we still have to hammer out a separation agreement and there are other domestic issues hanging fire, but it was very bizarre having my domestic arrangements critiqued with such relentless and dispassionate efficiency by my children; it could only happen to me and Paul.