god this is hard

Well I committed an emotional mistake in front of my grandson tonight and I’ll be lucky if I haven’t scarred him for life. Anyway I decided to show him video of what his mum looked like when she was Riker’s age and there is actually video of her, she didn’t get completely eaten by second baby syndrome and not have any pictures. He got to see John when he was slender and hirsute, and then there was Kaitlyn as a toddler and then Grandma Caspell. I backed out of that and then we watched Keith jump out of an aircraft in a tandem jump – had a video taken as a souvenir, and that was awesome, although thanks to the swipe of the passing breeze across his brow his expression was not always as dignified as he might have preferred in retrospect.

He got to see how red and enormous his mother’s infantile hemangioma was – and how it completely vanished. I had a hemangioma when I was born too.

Then I found the video, before in the brilliant sunshine taking off from Lake Weslemkoon, and after, of the crash at Buttonville Airport that nearly took the lives of Paul, Wally Solotow, me and both the kids – Katie in utero.

Hearing my own voice as Paul took video of the crashed aircraft at the darkened side of the runway, calmly saying that Keith took no permanent harm and that if he was experiencing discomfort he’d be crying, put me in no stable state of mind. I’m fine and I’ll be fine since I have a minor child in the house but I IMMEDIATELY changed the name of the file so I never have to watch it again without a goddamned content warning. Bugger me but that was awful. Of course I knew then that Paul was taking video, but the great river of time had released me from that memory, and now I was watching the lopsided aircraft in the terrible light and there it was in realtime.

I ordered mickey d’s for supper for Alex and then forgot to order Jeff’s burger.

8520 words

didn’t get the wordle this morning

sigh

whiplash feels

Woke up and immediately started weeping about the state of the world; sought to distract myself with internet, checked my email and there was a blessed message from Alex the Gamer via his mother, indicating that he desired to hang out here and have an overnight. Maybe he only cares about the donuts in the morning but apparently I’m the one he wants to see. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have two sets of grandparents close by when I was growing up. I hope I help make him so many happy memories that they all start to blur together.

I need to put together some activities for him, I was very low energy the last time he was here.

Drought in the US is very concerning for food supplies across the planet. I imagine many domestic animals will a) not be purchased, because there’s no fodder and b) be slaughtered early because there’s no fodder. Meat prices have no option but to rise.

Managed the wordle in four this morning – without cheating.

The ladies who lunch and love Dunnett are being quite clear in their comms regarding a Dunnett lunch this year… Zoom or a breezy warmed patio to eat. One said that COVID is still happening no matter what politicians and pundits want you to believe, and she’s quite right. I await the decision of the group. I’m kinda hoping for a patio, but you know me, any chance of a trough and brew and I shake off my bleak rationalizations and get in a cab.

8267 words on Part II.

Jeff got me a two salads a burger and a shake last night. It was very good to eat.

Good morning to everyone except the woman who threatened to call the police on a man taking his daughter to the women’s washroom at Walmart. (someplace in the states).

Steve Bannon got four months. As an abolitionist I can’t approve. As a human being with a wilderness of conflicting political trends inside me, I hope he uses the opportunity for reflection, perhaps some self-improvement.

 

visiting

Keith is with the grands, and I’m sure they are happy to have him. I know he was really looking forward to the visit.

it’s an old pic of him but it’s one of my faves

woke up to 11 (Kingdom of Jesus!!) messages from Reddit but they all turned out to be people agreeing with me so that was okay.

It’s so hot and dry, I pray for no urban fires here in Vancouver. Hottest October 15 since they started keeping records.

7402 words on Part II

I send love and possibility to you all this morning; me, I plan to destroy Jeff’s calm by continuing to pick out the Elementary theme by Sean Callery on my ukulele, repeatedly; mebbe do some laundry, pick up some more meds, work on reading some non-fiction, and layabout moaning gently.

 

little walk

Paul and I took three turns around Hilda Park (a little over half a k) and then I took him to Edmonds Pho. I had beef and beef ball pho with no noodles and extra bean sprouts and he had a salad roll and spring rolls. It was even better than I remembered. (Normally I have the pork chomp).

7038 words on Part II

I am having weird violent bouts of gut raunch and since I’m not eating anything different and don’t appear to be otherwise ill it’s troubling. I was forced out of bed in the middle of night, had paroxyms of pain, and then…. loo de doo, everything fine apparently.

a complete asshole with ties to the CPC is mayor of Vancouver. It’ll be four years of pure hell and the cops running wild on the streets and killing the unhoused, the mentally ill and the drug involved with no oversight.

miscellany of

The US has declared a cold war on China with a recent move to cripple Chinese ability to make integrated circuits using the latest technology.

The timing

  • (10th anniversary of Xi Jinping’s ascension to power, Chinese ‘support’ for Russia (which has softened remarkably in the last few months),
  • tensions in the South China Sea in general and Taiwan in particular,
  • a 30% collapse of the housing market, the shakiness of rural Chinese banks (facing tremendous pressure from angry mortgagees),
  • continuing genocide against the Uyghurs (although China easily knocked down any attempt to discuss it at the UN level earlier this month),
  • home-grown activism (not well reported in Canada) about the continuing COVID lockdowns,
  • worst youth unemployment in many years (always a contributing factor to both war drums and civil unrest)

looks perfect unless you consider how many lives are at stake and that none of this is a freaking game.

I uphold the lives, worth and aspirations of the Chinese people and honour their revolutionary martyrs, cultural figures and great artists. The CPC including the army and its foreign agents currently active in Canada can go fuck it/themsself.

Walked in Deer Lake Park with Paul yesterday, came back for chicken barley soup and iced tea.

I got a fantastic night of sleep; practicing proper sleep hygiene made a sound difference.

6561 words on Part II

Lovely pile of kudos from AO3 in the inbox this morning.

Totally enjoying Sharpe’s Stories!

Hope to call some friends on the phone today and catch up.

I need a picture of the Camaro for Suzanne.

two whole errands

well three with the cat food

we left the house two whole times yesterday and at four o’clock I said something along the lines of being an old crock who can’t deal with errands

6392 words on Part II

New song in the works. I left it for a day and it was still there when I went back, and it’s also completely different to what I normally do (guitar base). I think it’s going to be a song about the dead, for Halloweeeeeen but I don’t know for sure.

This morning on facebook our dear friend Jan from the Junction showed a picture of an egg salad sandwich from a gas station which had an expiry date of OCTOBER 23 today is thE 14TH do you think egg salad lasts that long? I don’t. Bleaurgh. Futurama meme check. (A truck stop egg salad sandwich causes the character Fry on Futurama to er…. see the episode Parasites Lost,  it has much hilarity.

While making a pit stop at an interstellar truck stop, Fry buys and eats an extremely old egg salad sandwich from a vending machine in the restroom. On returning to Earth, Fry and Bender are assigned the task of fixing the plasma fusion boiler, which promptly explodes. Bender is not damaged, but Fry is impaled by a large pipe. Despite the severity of the injury, Fry’s damaged body repairs itself in seconds and the subsequent medical examination reveals to the Planet Express crew that Fry is infested with microscopic worms from the egg salad.)

Thinking this morning…

Yeah when I just-about-mortally-wounded one of the MCs in ‘UPSUN – Sweep Off Those Waves’ my beta reader (my mother) said, ‘BUT SHE GETS BETTER RIGHT?’ and there I was forced to invent a whole new branch of alien medicine to fix her….and yes I am aware how ableist this is. Ableism is proving to be tougher to eradicate in my thought processes than racism and heteronormativity. And she’s not fixed. When someone commits an act of misogynistic terror on you, you don’t just ‘get better’.

 

Fireball

There was an enormous green fireball visible from most of the Pacific NW last night; went on twitter this morning and there’s all kinds of security footage from different angles – it sure lasted a while and illuminated the sky with an eerie green light. If it was aliens they sure blew the landing.

We’re continuing on with the Sharpe series.

Schlep this morning.

6316 words on Part II

I got the NY Times Wordle in 3 tries this morning.

consequences

Geologic time is now.

Putin’s raining down destruction on civilian infrastructure in Kyiv; parks and places children play. Lovely. Also, and this is a first, the Russians have turned off ALL THEIR AVIATION TRANSPONDERS. So unless you’re watching from space you have no idea where the aircraft are going. No bueno.

Mike called around 2:30. Work is coming to a head (he predicts his dismissal with a package from the company IMMINENTLY) and he just couldn’t get away. Jeff still got us burgers and shakes from White Spot, and they were fantastic, exactly what I was craving.

Ryker is sick again (a cold) so no family Thanksgiving this year. I’m just as happy about that, actually.

An academic in Turku has asked people who are destiel fans why they be fans, so I answered.

Buster, while far from completely recovered, has returned to his normal routine. He won’t be allowed out until he’s healed up.

who was in the yard

I could hear stuff getting moved around but I can’t tell whose yard the noise was really in. Half expecting to see Paul’s canoe gone when the daylight arrives.

Jeff got sammiches for supper, they were nommy. Turns out that the corned beef on rye being terrible was just that one time, it was fabulous last night.

Particulates still moderately crappy today.

Heard from Mike; he’s hoping to get some shit done and drop by later today. I’m hoping  it’s nice enough to drink beer and eat burgers on the back deck.

No sign of Buster. Jeff keeps checking up on him and he’ll probably end up at the vet.

I’m semi-participating in Jeff’s SG-1 rewatch. I keep singing to myself while doing it (I wrote A LOT OF FILK SONGS FOR THAT FANDOM Y’ALL) but not aloud, Jeff does not favour me bursting into song while I’m sitting right next to him.

5217 words on Part II, got my guitar and mandolin and ukulele practice in as well. Got the tablecloth down on the living room table again, thanks Suzanne for pitching it in the wash.

Kerch Strait Bridge blowed up (in part) the day after Putin’s birthday – I thought it was the day of, but no, so I’m issuing a correction, mOm. Constructed in 2016 after the First Ukraine War as the dirty-colonial-resource-extraction-megaproject-thumbprint of the New Russian Empire, (V Putin Proprietor), the bridge was the longest in Europe, a technical triumph and a hated symbol throughout Ukraine of Russia’s aggression.

Fixing it is going to be interesting; the Russians didn’t have anyone shooting at them during the construction the first time but they will not have any such assurance as they try to reconstruct, and they have to, because they can’t pull cherries and grain and other stolen agricultural products out of the countryside if they don’t.  (Crimean agriculture despite everything had a bumper crop this year.) Anyway, expect more stuff to blow up. The Russians have got one lane (with crazy amounts of security) on the car side going, or will soon, but the rail line is apparently going to be tougher.

Ukrainian authorities are openly mocking the Russians on social media…. it’s savage and entirely deserved. An example of press coverage. Obviously someone knew about this destruction way in advance if they planned a stamp.

working working working

Completely revised Part I of Totally Boned over the last two days; 151 words added after all the many words I deleted as being a) too precious b) not germane c) funny but in the wrong place d) guaranteed to annoy readers, however happy they made me.

I have also revised what I have of Part II in preparation for some serious work next month (November is the WRITY MONTH).

Tremendously bad dizzy spell yesterday morning at sunup. I spun, I collapsed on the john, I almost threw up, and 45 minutes later I was fine. Better this morning.

Finally mailed letter to Mary.

NOBODY has said a word to me about the poem I posted, but at least the people who read fanfic are still communicating with me. I got a kudo for the story about the camboy and the weed store owner this morning…. It’s very cute, and very sex positive, and it has the single funniest text message exchange I’ve ever written in it, and I’ve turned out a few.

If you’re here early in the morning I’ll be adding more to this post after I do some drug taking (prescribed) and laundry manipulation (mountainous, I have to get the rugs out of the dryer). Great, I’m out of some Metformin, back to the pharmacy I guess.

OKAY that’s all settled.

Buster just came in COVERED IN BLOOD. I closed the cat door and Jeff is dealing with his wounds in the upstairs bathroom. Jeff will make the determination whether he’s going to the vet or not this morning.

I was supposed to see Alex yesterday and it didn’t happen. Heavy sigh. Happy 8th birthday, kiddo.

 

 

wrote a letter

I am finally picking up enough that I can write letters again. Handwrote (in monster script) a letter to Onty Mary and now I’m staring at it as if that will stamp and address the envelope and walk it to the newly restored post box at the end of the next street.

My irritability continues unblemished. The only thing not collecting my ire is the new Star Wars show, Andor, which is absolutely wonderful

I managed to make chicken barley soup yesterday; it has chicken, barley, peas, carrots, onions, turmeric, black pepper and lots of veggie bouillon – but it still isn’t very salty. Barley chows down salt quite effectively. Super filling and tasty.

Today I will make pork chomps, potatoes, & salad for lunch, if I can be arsed.

And on that note I should probably get up and get dressed and get going.

I scored 2196 on Waffle this morning. This is literally 250 points higher than my all time best score and double what I normally get. I STILL HATE THE GAME.

 

what news

What will that Putin guy get up to next? Well, the news commentariat in English is trying to talk about Russian unlimbering nuclear weapons in its desire to secure security as if anything about it is normative or acceptable, and that by itself makes life awkward.

Another bad Air Quality day in the lower Mainland as the #Minnekhada park fire continues. No rain and summer conditions  so no help from the weather.

Apart from running a load of laundry and leaving the house with Paul yesterday was a day of doing nothing OH I FORGOT watched the first four episodes of Andor. Absolutely love the show.

Mall walk with Paul yesterday. Got some treats at Cobbs – four chocolate croissants and two blueberry custard danishes. Damn they were good. Also got some pita bread from the pita bread factory. Still thinking about Paul going to the pita bread factory at Eid and expecting to find one crumb of pita bread in the joint. Men are so cute sometimes.

It’s like all I care about these days is food. Everything else seems suspect.

 

 

lovely time

Peggy made us kale salad, peas, rice, naan and butter chicken and we got pumpkin pie and whipped cream for dessert.

MAN aLIVE i love that woman. She had a helluva week (in a word PLUMBING) but was in good spirits.

Paul was in good shape. The guitar didn’t come out of the case but he sang along and sang the Shanty Boys song. Like many of his songs from the Dawn of Time there’s nothing on the internet that comes anywhere close to matching the tune and the lyrics. At some point, because his variant is so interesting we should probably record it. Closest I could find. Makes sense a historical song from Michigan would turn up in London ON there was a lot of back and forthing.

Otherwise it was Cindy driving things. She sang and played Emerald Green, Vixy’s love song to Seattle (which makes me cry every time I hear it because I miss my people so bad it’s a stone in my shoe and we did an ‘all filkers assemble’ recording of it at Conflikt one time (and I’m crying again lol no). Also she played WWJD (What Would Jack Do) and it really is a fun tune even if I did write it. Also she played JoCo’s The Future Soon and the classic unfilked Mary Ellen Carter.

Then home. I bought beer the other day but I have to stop drinking any, it’s disturbing my sleep.

KEITH DROPPED BY while we were there and he and Jas (this happened the last time too I SMELL A TREND) got into a lively and emotional discussion about Keffals (a transgender Canadian streamer/twitcher treated very poorly) which I stayed the hell out of, mostly because I was entertained as hell (Jas IS extremely entertaining, especially when he starts remonstrating with his mother Cindy.) It is not in and of itself an entertaining subject but the discussion that followed on about ‘what content creators do and how they have to manage the entire internet about their content’ was FASCINATING. i am so freaking glad I’m self-published AND DO NOT HAVE TO MANAGE MY 30 FANS. It’s a miracle. I don’t have the energy to do anything but content create and tweak my twitters or whatever. And call my mOm once in a while. And I really owe Mary a letter.

We also talked about housing. I am so glad Cindy and her kids live in a rent controlled apartment and can’t get demovicted; me and Jeff on the other hand will have to scatter to the four winds if this place goes. We are quite literally paying half market rent here. Serious stuff.

No surprise to Jeff’s sneezles this morning, AQI is up around 70. The woodfire smell is continuous but not overwhelming. Very restless night of sleep for me, the AQI can’t have helped.

Peggy’s today

We’ll be singing and playing, with all the ventilation going as usual. Very relieved to have my booster. I will take her some Yorkshire Gold tea in her own container.

Jeff got me a samwich last night, it was YUMMY. I allowed myself to get dehydrated yesterday and so when I went walking to get my meds I kept feeling like I was going to keel over, but that’s what happens when you don’t eat and drink. I guess my mind was pondering mightier things.

Putin’s annexed four provinces of Ukraine and saber rattled use of Nukes, but against whom is not stated.

On the basis of Lumosity this morning my cognition is back up to where it otta be. I definitely feel sharper. Homemade vegan pizza and coffee – breakfast of champeens.

Apparently a road rage incident started two blocks from mOm and pOp’s house on Wednesday. Sometimes the things we don’t know are just fine. Love how a knife and bearspray constitute weapons in Canada.  REMEMBER FOLKS the only open carry weapon legal in Canada is a cane. GET THE ICE CRUTCH TIP you can rilly mess a dude up with those four way slashers on the bottom of your cane.