Category: Domestic Life

Having children is like the sweet spot between a gamble and a sacred trust. I really feel like I got lucky.

Took down the cobwebs in my room and vacuumed, so as soon as I’m out of this bed (won’t be long) I’ll wash my bedding and finish putting stuff back (throwing stuff out….)

The house two doors down caught fire but it was put out almost instantly by the BFD. I mean I smelled smoke and heard sirens at the same time. No injuries that I could see.

FINALLY GOT GAS IN THE CAR. The idea that fifty bucks won’t fill the Echo is repellent to me personally but it is as things are.

My twitter friend Greg exposed me to the band ‘Pigeon Pit’ – folk music instruments, bluegrass and folk and folk rock arrangements and blazingly cheerful social justice lyrics? Yes please and thank you Greg.

Filking/bluegrass practice at Peggy’s last night. Paul came and had less trouble with the guitar than last time, and while the beauty of his voice is dimmed he’s still singing, darn it. He worked his usual Tuesday yesterday as a volunteer but he was obviously a bit bushed – still cheerful though – and moving super slow. Peggy made blueberry pie. I didn’t partake as I’d had enough to eat that day. We tried to see the planetary alignment but only Venus made it through the haze. Paul missed his colonoscopy. He knew it was happening but gapped the prep. Drove him home from filking a little after ten and made sure he got to the stairs but I noted Dax on the back deck so knew he had someone’s help if he needed it.

Talked to Dave on the phone, very encouraging that he sounds a lot more chipper, although his energy level still sucks.

 

I am probably falling prey to the pathetic fallacy, but GODDAMN is it easier to clean on a sunny day, or what.

My room enshinening continues. Didn’t get to the bedding yesterday but until the cobwebs are down and the floors are vacuumed/mopped clean and the rug shaken out it’s probably better to wait. Leftover everything for breakfast, and I still have coffee from yesterday. (Later…. damn that was a good cup of coffee. Once again, no cream, and I put about half a teaspoon of sugar in to soften that ‘sat in the carafe’ taste.)

Lumosity, one top five, Wordle in 4, no words on anything except social media and my blog.

Jeff’s visit proceeds apace. Printer(s?) working again at the fOlks’. Now, BREAKFAST I gots me a busy day. Buster is, of course, being much more affectionate than usual; I left my bedroom door open last night so he could come and go as he pleased but he came in around 2:45 and snuggled for a while. He got down when I asked him nicely so I could go make my breakfast, and about ten minutes ago I popped open the cat door. I said DOOR OPEN, DOOR OPEN, DOOR OPEN with him trotting along beside me and then ‘good boy’ after he sniffed the night air and poked his head out.

4 am and all’s well.

 

I am laboriously cleaning my room – the dust is unconscionable – and I have located my Labyrinth poem from 2004 – I’ve never transcribed it and the damned thing is seventeen pages long. I imagine I’ll be revising it most severely all the time I’m transcribing it.

I ordered delivery for breakfast and supper. That said, I’ve eaten more fruit and vegetables today than I have in any given day in weeks (fantastic assorted fruit cup for brekky and an orange and broccolini) and my digestion is telling me that my liver, while not exactly happy, is now much less inflamed and behaving much better.

I made coffee to go with breakfast and learned that if I don’t smother it in cream and sugar it doesn’t torch my gut in anything like the usual way, so that was a pleasant discovery.

I could have gone to Caspell Junction for lunch but once I realized I was actually in the mood to clean I committed. Now to wash bedding.

He’s off to Saamich.

Today! WHAT’S ON FOR ME

PUT LAUNDRY IN SLIDING CAVES! (drawers.)

CALL PEOPLE TO BE FRIENDLY AT THEM! HULLO FREN I AM FRENNLY! I was thinking locals.

WISH ALAN A HAPPY BDAY. (He’s our Bowen Island Fren and I already did that on facebook.)

GET MY HANDS ON THAT BASS UKULELE because it is highly weird (John Belushi eyebrows) but so am I! SO I GUESS I NEED TO VISIT PEGGY

CURSE MYSELF FOR NOT GIVING KNITTED EEYORE TO MY brO FOR mOm TO REPAIR! (I recently rescued it from the floor at Caspell Junction and washed it, so it’s ready to be repaired.) (I suppose I could try but honestly when a childhood toy that your mother made for you and your sibling is damaged and she’s still alive, the urge to give it back to her and say MUMMY FIX! is still LORGE.)

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! REMEMBERING THAT OVFF IS NOT CARNEGIE HALL, BUT EVEN SO. and no I have no plans to go to OVFF because I’m not getting on a jet again; I’m allowed to be honestly disgusted at the entire prospect of modern travel. I mean if I could push a button and end up at Dave’s front door I’d go for it, but a thousand dollars to be herded and refrigerated and lightly starved and jostled and soaked in some mofo’s cologne and chairkicked by somebody’s badtempered crotchfruit and mocked for wearing a mask, and deprived of sleep, comfort and easy access to a bathroom for the best part of a day and exposed to the Arcturus variant of COVID anyway, which is currently ravaging India and has already turned up in Washington state, and then forced to LONG MARCH through YVR, which is a pretty, useless airport and YYZ, which is just so effin’ big, and then an hour minimum on transit or a sixty dollar cab ride all seems more than my wee brain and iffy mood can deal with. But I’d like to be there. I am weak and lazy.

Hullo Dave!

Due to reasons this blog need not hear, he is dreaming a lot these days, and he has been recounting them. They are eerie and ordinary, the way dreams often are. We have been talking about where stories and creativity comes from, and whether dreams draw at that same human well, and candidly, it’s hard to believe otherwise. Me, I haven’t remembered a dream in weeks, and it was benign, thank goodness. There are enough horrors in waking life; I need not experience them at night.

I can’t think of anything else I want to do. Much love to the handful of people who visit every day! I hope you have a simply delightful day, and a tolerable one if delight is not in the cards.

 

that will be my day. I’ll be calling Paul mid morning about the walk.

Lumosity not great but not terrible, no progress on writing, Wordle in 4.

 

Drunks are such a downer.

Working on a letter to Auntie Mary. In a few minutes I’ll take my morning pills, wait until I no longer feel like throwing up (the pills are bitter as squill), and go get money to pay Suzanne with, for today is a day of enshinening.

Finished S1 of Van Der Valk (the new series) – you can faintly hear the old theme song hiding in the new one! Yes Dave you were right to recommend it.

 

 

Woken at ten to two by my gut; half an hour later I’m shaky and feeling like I’ve been mechanically deboned.

Wordle in 5, Lumosity, one best of, one top five; TB FINALLY some movement at 23,201 words, Instructor at 2179 words.

Alex today. I am hoping to be somewhat less thrawn when he arrives after or around suppertime.

it was a veggie burrito bowl

and NOM and SO FILLING I DIDN’T NEED DINNER. I had a weird turn when we went to the Buy Low for groceries and had to sit for most of it on the stairs outside (got to watch a worker install flashing) but was feeling better by the time we went home and at least got up to help pay for it all at the register. Definitely a lovely experience shopping there – they added a cashier, processed us fast and were very warm and professional. It’s been open for years and it’s around the corner and it’s the first time either of us went. Funnily enough it’s exactly the same distance to either, 1.4 km. If I was walking I’d go to Buy Low because it would be downhill on the way back. Keith said the prices are comparable or better unless it’s Costco.

Alex overnight tomorrow unless it turns out that my ‘turn’ is actually me being too sick to care for him. I feel fine right now but I haven’t tried to get up yet lol.

LEFTOVER BURRITO BOWL AND TEA EQUALS NOM.

So satisfying to eat what he cooked.  Tee Hee.

2179 on Instructor; no progress TB. Wordle in five (it was a hard word…) and two top fives and a best ever in Lumosity. I do feel snappier in the brain than I did yesterday.

 

I am very happy about that today. Laundry continueth. I think Jeff’s gone downstairs to watch March Madness.

Today will be ACHOO.

Alder’s my fucking Kryptonite; I feel like my eyelids are sandpaper.

Finally finished Sinner season 3 (so now we’ve finished because we accidentally started on season 4). I appreciate Matt Bomer as an actor but as Jamie Burns he was the among the most detestable characters ever and when he deleted deleted I was very very happy.

My liver is still misbehaving (as evidenced by my output, sorry to be so blunt). I am trying to eat properly but I feel like I don’t want to eat at all unless it’s bad for me, a sad state of affairs. Started the day with tea and fibre bread and marmalade. Promptly upsidedowned the marmalade onto my dress. Changed clothes.

 

 

Didn’t go out in it though.

Still thinking about that amazing dense, perfectly iced chocolate cake Peggy brought us. She literally can’t eat chocolate, so it is amazing that she bakes it, but not amazing that it tastes so good. Because she is excellent at most of what she tries, and her hospitality is the model and standard against which I hold myself.

Buster is shedding still, sigh, but nothing like Margot good god.

Tuesday we go to see the new cats. Excitement! One of them is already a lap cat and is in training to be a shoulder cat. Words cannot express Keith’s happiness at this. Hoping to get a pic of him with Ryker passed out and the new olde cat on his shoulder WHILE HE’S GAMING for an update of that last gem! ‘Twould be awesomesauce.

330 words on a new fanfic ‘The Instructor’; I am trying to work on stuff for TotesBoned but it’s not flowing at the moment. Also the plotty stuff approaches and I’m fer shit on that.

Three top scores in Lumosity, Wordle in 4. My brain is working.

I’ve been sleeping through the night and almost four hours extra in the middle of the day. Well, the blood test did say I was fighting a viral infection. As for what the air is like in Vancouver, lemme see now….

the peace of glob be achoo

Called Dave, his room has changed. Still no ultrasound. His test results continue to puzzle the specialists, often an unwanted combination of words, but his electrolytes are better. His cats have been fed and watered and he has additional phone numbers if he needs them. My relief is most great.

Jeff has been super helpful and kind the last few days. We actually left the house yesterday, picked up some treats, were the only people (almost 100 percent except for some staffers) wearing masks indoors.

Wordle in three, haven’t done Lumosity yet, 22847 words.

James Hong wore googly eyes on his bow tie at the Oscars. You’d have to see the movie ‘EEAAO’ to understand why that’s even funnier than it is on the surface.

Paul is still in Seattle, he’ll be back eventually.