Category: Domestic Life

nothing is happening

So it’s okay that I didn’t post yesterday.

Continuing Vera rewatch; watched E1S1 of ‘Sprung’ with Garret Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton and loved it, finally we have a funny show to watch that isn’t all grimdark and serious.

Watched “A Million Miles Away” about the remarkable life story of José Hernández, who began life as a migrant farm worker and managed to become a mission specialist for NASA. Absolutely wonderful; it takes the world’s tiredest biopic tropes and with a light touch, heartfelt acting and a fantastic soundtrack, breathes vibrancy, hope and family love into them and makes them dance like a quinceañera. mOm and pOp let us know if you want to see it; I think you’ll both like it.

If Rosa Salazar doesn’t get an Oscar Nom for Adela Hernández I will be bitter. Bitter I tell you. Jeff pointed out she was the body model for Alita Battle Angel. ZOW

Alex is coming today – and obvs for the rest of the week, too. I got to see him at church but this will be better.

Appointment with Paul tomorrow over noon with an eye specialist.

Hope you’re all going to have a lovely day. Now for more coffee, a scrambled egg or two on toast, and possible I will sit with my coffee and make a list to ignore.

Which will turn into a poem.

Do you have any idea how often that’s happened to me? Ah me, the hazards of a writer’s life. (which is actually a reference to a poem I wrote which started as a list…)

I am not entirely sure what kind of a day I’m going to have, but I’m wearing leakproof underwear, so let’s just say I’ve made minor preparations.

a broad range of reasons to be thankful

I get emails from my mother indicating that her sister now has a functioning phone in her room. (She’s also in with two COVID patients, oh doodie.)

I have spoken to my pOp on the phone this past week.

mOm too.

And Dave.

I went to church with Paul, and he was on time for pickup, and looked fine, and we had a mostly virtual service which was engaging and challenging for me and which Paul suffered through with quiet dignity, and then we went downstairs and ATE DEEP FRIED TURKEY and stuffing and everything else you can imagine; it was yummy and we destroyed it, and Keith came, and Katie and Ryker and Alex came, and I got to chase Ryker up and down SOAP Hall for many minutes. I also helped a tiny bit with set up and take down.

I got to watch Dougie cook the last turkey – it was magnificent. Succulent and fantastic.

AND THEN PEGGY PRODUCED AN APPLE PIE her mother’s recipe AND GAVE IT TO ME FOR JEFF and the great pie wheel in the sky continues to turn.

I am grateful for clean bedding and my many creature comforts. I am grateful for the bracelet Shad made for me and my Marvin the Martian watch that I inherited from John.

I wish I had someone to hug that I wasn’t related to. But I’m definitely grateful for all the hugs I got so far.

he swears he read it

Dave says he read The Game of Kings but the rest of the Lymond Chronicles was just too much of a commitment. If someone gave it to me now I probably couldn’t read it for the first time so I see his point.

Writing seems pointless and yet I keep doing it. I have to figure out what the heavenly character is doing… Crowley writes himself, the bugger. (more GOmens references) Also, Neil Gaiman is sick with COVID right now.

I am not happy about Hamas and the dead Israelis, but that doesn’t stop the Israeli state from being an apartheid pariah with the power of life and death over Palestinians. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. I’d sure like it if North American Jews (and end of the world Republicans) quit raising money for Israel but that’s not going to happen, and I’m a fool to even post it.

 

 

qahveh save me

Qahveh being the original word for coffee, which I only know because of Dunnett. All the threads lead back to her. Of course I can’t get Dave to read l’œuvre but at this point if he ever did I’d have to own up to all the shit of hers that I outright thieved for various aspects of my own work, and how embarrassing would that be. Besides, he doesn’t read ‘light’ fiction as a general rule, although it was kind of him to read Totally Boned. Speaking of which Suzanne is finishing up Totally Boned yes. and yes there are Dunnett squeaks all through TB.

Suzanne is not having a good birthday week. She found out about two weeks ago that her youngest son’s gf was pregnant, but since nobody told S that she was VERY pregnant, the birth announcement this week was a bit of a surprise. Learning that you have a new grandson who’s detoxing in the NICU when you have zero access must be a horrifying experience. mOm asked me to send her a hug and a kind word and I will.

On the plus side, this week somebody sent the most good looking man you can imagine – to offer himself sexually to her – WHILE SHE WAS SITTING RYKER so after she unswallowed her tongue and ungoggled her eyes she said, er, no, and he wandered off to find the woman he’d been prepaid to bang. (This is the kind of stuff that only happens in novels so I’m going to steal the anecdote for a fanfic because he showed up in house slippers and a revealing outfit and said he was ‘auditioning for the bedroom’. I can see it all now, hommina hommina)

ALRIGHTY THEN. and at no point did Suzanne say anything othering about the sex worker. Damn I love that woman. I should get the rugs she washed out of the dryer. The washers in her building are crap and SUPER expensive so she’s ALSO been doing laundry here.

She said Ryker loves coming to Grammy’s house; he gets second breakfast, he has a million versions of Lightning McQueen, CARS runs hot and cold in the background, and there’s a cat to chase. WHAT COULD BE BETTER. He’s learned to say MCQUEEN and he apparently never stops.

I do not have Alex until Tuesday, but I’ll see him for a Thanksgiving meal. Apparently Peggy’s old friend is going to deep fry a couple of turkeys at church and I’m simply overwhelmed at the prospects for catastrophe why I may even bring a camera.

Putin claiming that Prigozhin died ’cause Wagner soldiers were providing in-flight entertainment by tossing live grenades is like an entire Russian army of MOODS.

WROTE almost a thousand words yesterday on an aziracrow fanfic that no one but me will ever look at. Nobody asked for it and it’s fundamentally flawed but I wrote it anyway. The new Brad and Omar story has a shape and I will slowly pursue it.

Laid out my pills for a week just now.

Whatever shall I do with no childcare required of me until Tuesday morning??

Congrats to Leo and Linda on getting the last kid married off (Kevin, and of course I have embarrassing memories from his last visit to us LOL which I will NOT share) and this is all teasing because of course they didn’t do anything but help celebrate!!! it’s not like they hosed’em down and pitchforked ’em to the ceremony…. anyway it’s happy family news and the pics were lovely thank you.

funnies with Alex

Alex just showed me a series of some of his fave youtube videos and there were a couple where the two of us just folded up laughing. (About Chinese knockoffs of well known fandoms and toys… the names ARE PURE FIRE.)

Superlative meal from Rice and Noodles last night. Thank you Jeff

Did something heinous this morning, critiqued someone’s spelling on AO3. If you can’t stand the typos, spellcheck in English for the love of Crowley’s quiff.

BUT IT WAS IN THE FIRST LINE OF THE STORY… I’m actually doing them a favour.

or not. Maybe I’ll get roasted. At least I had the fucking sense not to do it under my own name.

Keana Reeves is dating a wonderful age appropriate woman and I just want them to be happy and never inconvenienced by paparazzi.

Anya Taylor-Joy wore a blush princess gown embroidered with a hummingbird, and her husband took her last name. YES. In a Dunnett squeak, *she could play Gelis van Borselen* (or Katelijne Sersanders god help us) and *this is bride Anya standing on a 15th C Balcony in Venice.* Of course there’s only one person reading this blog who cares about any of this and it ain’t my mOm.

but just in case mOm is annoyed with me for the celebri-fluff, here’s a knitted pillbug from a deeper blue on tumblr:

 

Alex and other things

Alex is helping me feel better every day. Cuddles, jokes, a few words about school. Sometimes we record stuff.

Part of the happiness is watching him and Jeff interact.

Yummy Alfredo from White Spot last night, Jeff had the chicken strips and then helped me finish the Alfredo because for some reason his order didn’t come with fries.

Hoping to get some writing in today, who knows.

Off twitter

I just deleted one of the most bilious tweets I’ve ever tried to post and so, realizing that the end has come, I bid you adieu, twitter. I pay for my own platform so it will feel sad to have an audience of ten instead of 500, but I sing just as hard for a big crowd as a small.

I will delete the account later today. The above is my last tweet. CAN’T DEACTIVATE, DON’T HAVE PASSWORD. So I have to just not look, lol.

I actually ate something healthy just now and I’m feeling awesome.

Jeff emptied the dishwasher.

Got hold of Paul, will hopefully get hold of him again to confirm that he talked to Janice’s roommate. Got hold of him again, told him to call Keith since he can’t raise the roommate.

Alex is blowing up cars with BURNOUT:REVENGE a game from 2005

complaints, kudos, complaints, lists

Nothing to complain of regarding Alex. Some mornings he wants to cuddle, other mornings he wants to go downstairs. Dropped him off in time for school, thought about going to Lordco because one of the Echo’s wiper blades flung itself off and lodged itself so firmly under the other wiper blade that I could still use it but it stuck to the car. This is the kind of luck I always get issued; sloppy but welcome.

Weather seasonal, rainy, not too cold.

Later this morning I have to go to Thornebridge, roust the wasband and tell him his girlfriend’s been admitted to hospital in Seattle after taking the wrong medication for a cold. She has a history of absolutely horrific, interpersonally damaging and completely avoidable meltdowns, usually thanks to hospitals ignoring her when she provides them with a list of what she reacts to. Everyone is calling COVID a cold now I see. I am not saying I hope Janice ups and dies, after all, I wrote “Invective” for her and I always have a soft spot for anyone who provides me with the impulse to compose, I just fail to see why I have to be all tenderhearted about the woman who brazenly busted up a marriage that I didn’t – as it turns out – want to stay in. Alan’s role in all of that got called out very close to the beginning of the end by Glenn, so HI GLENN THE SHIT CONTINUES BUD, same planet different day. So I acknowledge that I’m …. conflicted …. possibly hypocritical …. definitely snarky. Fuck it, have to go to Thornebridge. Nobody OF COURSE can raise Paul on the phone and I’m closest. I told him to go to Strong because memory care is a seamless transition, but the sisters put him in Thornebridge and those of us close to the problem get to watch him decompensate expensively. I loved that man far more than I can say and I wrote songs and poems and stories for him and now I’m wild with what a sting love has at the far end of that long tail.

almost 100 reads on the last story and ten kudos. Only one comment, sigh, but it was a beaut and I shared it with mOm.

This morning I on the downlow shared my distaste for an extremely popular sf/sff novel by agreeing with a poster “so polarizing I don’t have a public opinion about it’ so that’s as subtle as you get. After all, Canadian authors are supposed to close ranks – LOL: define Canadian, I’ll wait.

Jeff TOUCHED the dryer and it started working. Kiss pOp for me mother, he obviously passed the gift down. I’ll probably break it again when I go to load it up in a minute.

Must empty dishwasher.

 

 

Peaceful morning

Buster came out, butted Alex’s shin with his head, and in general greeted him. It was a scattershot day yesterday but in general it worked out okay.

I’d love to do a complete teardown on how I get Alex to and from school BUT OF COURSE this is the internet and I do not want to give total strangers access to how I move an 8 year old around.  He will be 9 in less than two weeks. Isn’t it amazing how fast they grow.

HIS MOTHER SUPPLIED WEEKS WORTH OF SCHNACKEROOS

So many snacks.

Cheese, fruit, yogurt drinks, cookies. A panoply of snackertude.

Now to run the dishwasher so there are plates to serve them on lol.

Writing is on the back burner. I have a con to rehearse for!! I only have 45 more days!! That’s right, November 10-12th I will be at the fully masked con Orycon 43 in Portland! It’s a gencon not a filkcon but there are LOTS of filkers in Portland. So looking forward to it!

In the market for singing masks now.

Other worlds

Off in my own little one this morning, writing mush, just heartfelt mush for Brad and Omar. There are more ways to say I love you than there are stars in the universe. If it were not so we would not keep proving it, we lovers.

There’s no cream, so I’m eventually going to have tea. I’ve already played with Buster and brushed him, gotten some 90 Micron into me, written four hundred new words, had an entirely pain-free morning widdle – which only happens about 30 percent of the time so hey, we must grab these little happinesses as they go by is this not merely a truism but a mechanism by which daily life may in practical terms be a-accomplished?  she stammered… the keyboard barfed up an a so I stuck a hyphen in there and called it done.

I can go from piss to philosophy in seconds, so, do not try me, world! I have the words to roll you back again.

I find myself very blank and unthinking in most ways though. I am pressed on all sides by anxiety, and it is not all my own. So I think this feeling of blankness is an accommodation; if I am not reactive I won’t be making as much trouble. Of course, past a certain point, absence from human affairs starts taking you backward. I’ve spent my whole life, literally my whole life, trying not ‘to have it all’ but ‘to have all that I could reasonably attain without destroying myself as a creative being’, which involves a lot of decisions.

Having children never seemed like a decision. It was ordained. I felt it then, I felt it again as I typed it. The horror of childrearing and bearing that many modern women feel now is alien to me, but not anathema. I was among the last women who didn’t have reproductively impactful amounts of forever chemicals in my body during my pregnancies, so I remove myself from the pool of people who get judgy on modern women not wanting to have babies.  I have always been vocal in my support of the childless by choice. I understand the demographic arguments against the falling birth rate, and I reject them as propertarian and against self-interest (in planetary capacity terms). If I as a science fiction writer can posit three or four different social responses to a globally crashed birth rate (which is inescapable for reasons of deteriorated human health), each with their costs and benefits, how many responses can a whole nest of human civilizations come up with, depending on how resources are deployed? I still have hope, despite the countability of life.

Poems and songs turn over in my belly. something in there is wrathful, and something sad

it’s just gas

my brother said