Category: Domestic Life

walk in the Park

Paul and I went to Fraser Foreshore yesterday, first time in ages. The park was practically deserted. Although I was quite tired, we went slow and did a full walk. After I brought Paul back here and fed him Mac and Cheese and constructed a salad for us. For dinner I fried pork chomps (very very slowly) and nuked taters and made another salad. It was really good.

Today I hope to drop off some Yorkshire Gold tea at Peggy’s place, pick up additional bp medication and meditate on Reconciliation Day. I also hope to finish Sam Cooper’s “Wilful Blindness” which is a simply terrifying and disgusting read about how Vancouver has been completely screwed up by the international (mostly Chinese) drug trade and the rapacity of the CCP, paired faithlessly by the fucking idiots running both Vancouver and Victoria, and the ludicrously incompetent RCMP.

I’m saddened by how I care more about what’s happening in Florida and the coast than I am by the poor folks in the aftermath of the floods in Pakistan (it’s going to take more than the rest of this year for the waters to recede.) So I went to the internet to see if there’s any good news from there and found some.

As of this morning, there are 1500 dead in Pakistan – at least – and 11 dead in the US from Hurricane Ian.

Coolio, the somewhat shameless misogynist who penned the hip hop classic “Gangster’s Paradise” is dead at 59 of a heart attack.

Lizzo, the equally shameless (but for other reasons) recording artist has played a 200 yo crystal flute while twerking, and on the internet, you would think she had injured white manhood to the core. IF YOU THAT FRAGILLY STAY HOME BUB

Time to do some shopping

I’m in a decent mood, finally, after all the damned EMOTIONS I’ve been having had forced themselves into poetry. I’m not saying it makes the poem better, but I sure wept hard writing it. Absolutely tip top night of sleep though!

I think I asked Jeff if we could shop today and if that’s going to happen I need to get up, take my pills and get dressed, because we usually leave for that about now.

accomplishments

Totally Boned 5165 words

advised Jeff of the rent increase amount – goes up in January.

Watched Dart

restrung the busted d string on the resonator. I will leave it for a couple of days before I try to tune it. It has a split bridge, which made restringing it more challenging than usual.

Advised Suzanne by email about the camera equipment.

Collected a lot of reddit karma points by liking Oysterhead (a band, actually a supergroup which still tours even though they only really ever did one album)

tossed some M&M lasagne in the oven for supper – it’s so tiny the two of us ate it all, so I am bordering on leftoverless!!! this will nevah do. Feel like making a trip to M&M today though, we’re out of their prepped meals and we do like their chickety-pie.

Stayed alive, staved off yucky feelings, made tea.

Since I don’t think I’m going back to bed I’m going to make coffee…. it’s 2 in the morning here.

 

 

another perfect day

Around noon went for a walk with Paul in Everett Crowley Park. First we drove all over hell’s half acre trying to find a decent parking spot at one of the usual parks. That’s how we ended up on the garbage dump park. It’s a good place to go if YOU NEED TO PET SOME DOGGIES. I got very very tired and couldn’t walk any farther very fast. Then we got home and I nuked up some chicken vegetable rice for Paul, and then he hung around. I did his toenails (they weren’t scandalous, like the last time, but they needed to be done). Then I checked my blood pressure which was 105 over 71.

Morty Face by KushMastaFresh on DeviantArt

This is 30 points lower than normal. What in the actual hell is going on. I don’t actually feel good at that blood pressure – I sure don’t feel like DOING anything. Picture shown above is Morty, from the sci-fi animated modern classic Rick & Morty. It’s okay fOlks! you are not expected to watch it or like it; it has machine gun delivery of multiple concepts, not always in the best of taste (that’s one way of putting it, check that face shown above). But I love Morty because he’s grown a spine over the last seasons.

Paul long-term-loaned me John’s resonator guitar.  <—- this after he realized at Peggy’s that he can’t even pull a guitar out of a case without fighting it. I have to add a string but it looks like all the bottle slides I bought attracted a guitar I can use them on. They’re the kind of guitar with a big perforated metal plate attached where the soundhole usually is.

Mike called and released himself from self-jail; he brought his unbelievably sweet new parlour guitar and played nothing but songs Paul knew, which was deft of him, because Paul has happy and enthusiastic about singing along.  He also gave Paul the long anticipated tour of the Delica. Long about five I kicked Paul out (nicely) but he got to have all that social contact and stay the hell out of his own house for the afternoon, which has a crying baby in it. Ryker has a cold and he freaks out when he can’t breathe and so there is much screaming. STILL NO FUNCTIONING FREEZER AT PAUL’S PLACE!! JFC landscum, you need a blunt punt.

above-noted picture is almost 15 years old. That’s Mike and Paul at a minimalist costume party, back in the day

I had ONE Fat Tug last night ENJOY MY ABSTEMIOUSNESS.

Mike finally got to look at Suzanne’s friend Richard’s bag of photography equipment. JFC IT’S A NIKON FE an absolute classic manual camera with one of the first built in digital light meters. AND THE MANUALS for it and the lenses. Cash on the barrelhead it’s worth no less than $250, but Mike doesn’t want it because he’s not a Nikon user. I am currently considering my options, but I think I’ll advise Suzanne before taking action.

Spoke to Keith on the phone. He appears to be doin’ okay.

Currently running a 12% kudos to hit ratio on Landslide – the number’s actually going up. This never happens so I’m finding it weird.

Found out that the Seagull (the one that isn’t Smokey) was put away in E minor tuning so I noodled away on that for a while and I think I may have the core melody of some soundtrack stuff.

Mike said he used to wear a special watch with a pulse ox monitor but he said he had to stop, since it kept telling him that he was dead every night. (Thought pOp would find this amusing.) It came with his new Samsung phone. His new Samsung phone is incredible, the camera alone is goggleworthy. I don’t care, I’ll probably get a simple-phone if I ever live alone again but I’m never having a cell phone again, otherwise.

Mike says his project – his Sisyphean work project – six times now he’s tried to set up a customer service department off shore and six times an internal shift in priorities has moved it. It was in Spain, it was in the US. It was in Costa Rica. This time he just sent his luckless lead tech into the mouth of a typhoon in the Philippines. Anyway, he hopes he survives all the corporate bullcrap long enough to get laid off, with a package, (word is as a French company they’re used to making big payouts to make employees who are now surplus to requirements GO AWAY) and then he’s going to take the Delica and drive across this country and dip a toe in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. Please let me know if you want him to come visit you after he’s laid off, because he IS AWESOME. HE’S SERIOUSLY THE BEST.

Jeff keeps having interesting dreams. I imagine I dream every night, but I sure don’t remember them. I guess I keep it all for waking life.

Then, a stunning variety of products, after which we watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is a good movie to watch while impaired, and Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and James Hong are absolutely amazing in this. I believe I raved about it on my blog the first time we watched it, but it really is a trip to set a wildly inventive and ecstatic movie amid the drab exigencies of Chinese immigrant life. Mike was impressed as hell and said some variant of (with amusement), “It’s a damned good thing they’re speaking mostly Mandarin, if it was Cantonese it would be triggering.” This with respect to the ghastly way Michelle Yeoh’s character treats Stephanie Hsu’s character in the movie. THEN I FOUND OUT THAT Yeoh, Quan and Hsu are going to be a family again in a Disney action comedy tv show? WHO’S WRITING, ALLEGRA YELLS & chomps popcorn impatient-wise.

At some point Mike went home. IT WAS SO GOOD TO SEE HIM.

Worked hard on Totally Boned yesterday; couldn’t stay hydrated. Didn’t practice enough. That will change lol. I need to drink 16 oz of water RIGHT NAOW

I had another perfect day, y’all. I’ll be checking my blood pressure again for sure though. Whatever is wrong with me, it can’t kill my good mood.

it was ‘the last perfect day’

Peggy has completely recovered from COVID – her second bout according to her, but without an antibody test we’ll never know. She was certainly well enough to feed me and Paul roast chicken, spaghetti squash, the least bitter radicchio+tomato salad, and boiled new potatoes with butter, with homemade plum meringue tarts and storeboughten pumpkin pie and ice cream for desert.

A filk never got off the ground. We’re coming up on the anniversary of Tom’s death (a year goes by like nothin’, once again) and Peg’s house is a warren of piles due to trying to get Tom’s excess after death into the correct place and also due to the internal construction (just barely replaced the floor tiles upstairs to learn that every potable pipe in the house had to be replaced. MANY HOLES. HOLESINWALLS HOLESINCEILINGS holes… holes)

The dead wizard in the poem is Tom, of course. He’s been pressing for remembrance, so I’ve been having crying jags thinking about him. The ‘chromatically’ is a musician’s joke, to put colour on a word that is sound.

I was thinking in bed how if I died in my sleep that it would have been the last perfect day – weather good, peace at home, saw friends, peace in the family, got some writing and practicing in, ate yummy food. Don’t know how many days more like this I’ll get – statistically around 7000 – but yesterday was a good one and nobody has to be thankful but me. And I am. Undeservedly lucky and content.

walked with Paul, fed him lunch

Then walked to and from the pharmacy to get my booster for COVID. Everything went very smooth. Stopped at the Liquor store that’s just opened up the street from the pharmacy and got Fat Tug and drank THREE of them and enjoyed that so much I picked up a guitar and started practicing afterwards.

Weather has been wonderful, smoke from fires variable, lower today.

Slept exceedingly well, woke up this morning with my arm sore af, (no surprise there, almost everyone reports it, and it’s sore right up to the side of my neck) but I can also tell that this will lift over the course of the day. And I walked a whole bunch more, on concrete, yesterday, so my legs and ankles are whining.

That picture of Neptune, whoooooeee.

Jeff is taking me to IHOP this morning.

Look what arrived in my mailbox this mornin’ SQUEE > Book*hug preview.

Russian women are being comforted regarding overseas vacations that they can now no longer take their husbands on, since men 18-60 are subject to an international travel ban, with the deathless advice “Swap him for your granny”.

They can ATTEMPT to mobilize 300K new recruits but since the Russian military has already demonstrated that it doesn’t have enough UNIFORMS, RIFLES, FOOD, FUEL AND AMMO for the men it’s already putting in harm’s way in Ukraine, I don’t know what will happen. Russian client states are getting restless; Azerbaijan has already started a brush fire war against Armenia. 300 people dead already, both sides pointing fingers for the continuous breaking of the cease fire.

A couple of kudos overnight, 160 hits on the new story.

coffee and toast

The day has commenced. My cognitive capacity has crashed. Doing my brain exercises the last two days has been horrifying – it’s like there’s a hole where my brain used to be.

Suzanne’s coming today.

I get my next booster shot for COVID this afternoon.

I did manage to wash and dry the towels, run a load of dishes, make tuna salad, work a tiny bit on Totally Boned, and watch some feetsball with Jeff. Had a sudden urge to call Katie just to hear her voice; she reported that Paul has safely returned and that things are well at her place (still no sign of a fridge with a functioning freezer though.)

Kim the landlady has been around a lot. She’s convinced that water damage is what is making the retaining wall next door sag. I don’t know…. Jeff says she wants us to talk to the the next door neighbour’s landlord and we are very leery of that. She dug out a lot of weeds from the dirt expanse known as the front lawn.

brain fog

The brain fog and easy irritability are really bad today so I think I’ll just quietly try to not worry about anything and find something entertaining to watch. It really doesn’t help when the first thing I clap eyes on in the am is Putin nuclear bomb rattling and declaiming the need for a mobilization. Apparently the most common search in Russia right now is ‘HOW DO I LEAVE’.

Forgot to get probiotics when I went shopping yesterday. I may commit more shopping today. Still no sign of the kids turning up for their frozen goods. They are still waiting for a new cat to deal with proliferating mice.

The pizza place turned out to be as good as advertised. It’s a bit farther away than most but the wings were fantastic – much better than the chain brands of pizza – and the pies had delicious crusts, not overcooked, and plenty of cheese and veggies. For Jeff’s gut health we won’t be ordering more than once every six to eight weeks but at least pizza’s back on the menu. We also bought soy cheese yesterday and when the temps drop a bit more I’ll make some soy cheese pizza.

Two cups of coffee did not help. I don’t feel physically bad, just slow. Time for time.

ticking boxes

Got my hairs cut this morning. Love Kimiko at B-Bombshell. Taxied down, transited back. Definitely got my steps in, got there early and there was no place to sit down unless I wanted to spend money, eyeroll.

Shop went reasonably well. The bathroom code for the save-on is 1141# if anyone cares.

My 4th vaccination is booked for Thursday this week. It will be my first mRNA shot.

Just ordered pizza from a new place. We still don’t have a regular decent pizza place since Roundhouse (of sad and blessèd memory) so we’re trying again. They are highly rated, but if they’re short staffed all bets are off.

One load of laundry washed and dried.

some accomplishments

Alex got picked up around noon; Katie drove me to the eye place and I picked up my new/old glasses (old Vogue frames, new lenses); walked home after picking up four veggie samosas at Baba Sweets; I fixed the broken glasses with Sugru. So I did get a fair amount of walking in yesterday and my ankles are telling me all about it this morning.

No comments on the new story on AO3 but 135 hits since I posted it yesterday, and it seems to have spawned interest in the other stories.

Started watching Gentleman Jack. Anne Lister was a piece of work.

Today: we shop at seven and I get a haircut at nine am. SO MUCH INTERACTION I’ll prob’ly come home and collapse, har har.

the little things

Yesterday morning quite early I got a call from Katie asking me if I had cleaned the counters at her place after Paul’s meal. I laughed and said no, but that I had told Keith *how much I appreciated* him being supportive of his sister and suggested that he’d been energized by this. She went ‘ah’ and that was a good feeling. Then I cleaned my own damn counters.

It’s too early to be thinking about breakfast and besides, we have no eggs for french toast. Maybe if Jeff wants some breakfast this morning we can go to Foreshore.

Can’t work on Totally Boned, don’t know why, worked on Landslide instead. 12987 words total on that so far. I finally came up with an ending. Since the threat is over some other threat must arise and be dealt with and then, SMOOCHES. Life is simple when you’re a romance writer.

I love my family. We are by no means the best people on earth but you’re all my people. Special shout out this morning to Unca Dave, who’s passed but whose bathroom installation LIVETH ON, Onty Mary for general stubbornness/agility of mind, Ryker for his goofulous smiles and SIL Lois for general awesomeness.

Reasonably active day

I got through a mountain of laundry, including not forgetting to put the last load to dry; ran errands to the library and the weed store (for edibles, trying to cut smoke for my health), and went with Paul to fetch beer from the Independent Alcohol Supplier and schnitzel from Balkan House for supper. Why? because it was his seventy-third birthday yesterday AND AS A SPESH BONUS I got to speak to Ruth, his sister, as she called to wish him a happy happy. LOVELY. She got my facebook coordinates and promised photos of her trip (she was calling from Northern Newfoundland!!)

Katie went off to the coparent’s for the purpose of stuffing supper into Alex. Why? Because the two of them realized that Alex was running both ends against the middle in terms of his food foibles, so they’re introducing new food and working on his texture issues with family meals. (isn’t it interesting that Katie double booked herself for the evening – I do the same thing so often, thank you ADD.) As long as the coparent is being civil Katie just rolls her eyes. Also saw Mike Rykerdad and greeted him, and I don’t know where I got the idear that his mum’s name is Isabel, it’s Christine. Ryker pretty obviously likes his dad just fine. I did get to dandle and play with Ryker, who was in splendid form, and interacted with civility with Alex about Plants vs Zombies and other subjects, including school. Alex is trying is mother’s patience quite a bit these days, but his haircut is awesome.

The fucking landlord over there STILL HAS NOT PROVIDED A FUNCTIONING FRIDGE. The freezer doesn’t come to temp. Knowing that is enraging, we’re going for two weeks now of this bullshit.

Anyway, sorry for that ill-tempered outburst. So it was just me Paul and Keith for dinner over at their place (I made a plate for Jeff from my leftovers and gave him the fresh bread when I got home) and watched an episode of Sean Bean in Sharpe. Then Keith drove me home since Paul doesn’t drive at night these many long years. Keith and I talked about the diagnosis, but no conclusions or action plans resulted.

Jeff and I were still awake so we watched tv for another hour or so and crashed.

heart rate accelerator

Ran my current fave pair of earrings – 75 dollar Lioness Elise gems with Swarovsky crystals and cultured pearls – through the laundry. One embedded itself in a hole in the drum – that took some doing getting it out and kneeling on a concrete floor, calice tabernak – and the other sent itself to the lint trap. Both survived unharmed as far as I can tell…. they’re clean now, I should probably wear them.

A much better day

Keith told me that he went shopping on foot with his nephew Ryker in the chest carrier and he most obligingly slept through it. I wish I had a picture but >snap< you’re just going to have to imagine it. Ryker is enormous for a 10 month old; his daddy’s over 6’4”.

I spoke to my mother on the phone TWICET and also to Tammy, Dave and Paul. I arranged to get Alex for Sunday/Monday. I got a load of laundry (the towels) washed dried and put away. I put down the other clean rug in the kitchen. I transferred handsoap out of the new container into the old one so Jeff has handsoap in the downstairs biffy. I bathed and washed my hair. I walked 1.5 km to the eyecare place, where I learned that Keith is still very fondly remembered by his coworkers. I learned that my eyes show no signs of disturbance from cholesterol, diabetes or high blood pressure; I was enjoined to keep my AIC under 7 and told to come back every year now. I brought a pair of glasses out of prescription and asked them to cut me new lenses and they gave me such a deal you have no idea. I was so happy at the end of the day I ordered steak and lobster again. I want to you to know mOm that I was thinking of you and our last conversation with every bite.

I send a very gentle hug and a wish for the best painkillers that money can buy for dear pOp who had much pain occasioned by the dentist yesterday. I send a very gentle and equally virtual hug to Peggy, who has COVID again and thus we will have no housefilk on Saturday alas.

I send a hug to Dave through all his ‘birthing a book’ efforts. I send a hug to Tammy and she knows why.

For the rest of my dear readers I extend my warm and compassionate wishes for the best day possible and to keep your chin up if you can. Maybe we won’t get better days in plural, but once in a while we’ll have a good day, like Ivan Denisovich.