Category: Domestic Life

ah, ADD

Got to the correct appointment place, but not date. I’ll try again today. I’m not impressed with myself, especially since I dragged Jeff into my bullshit and he ended up driving me across town, but what can I do but keep going?

Chornobyl nuclear plant is without electric power which means that in 48 hours there will be a nuclear accident unless the Russians stop being fuckwits.

Although my admiration for the courage, spirit and inventiveness of the Russian people remains undimmed, what the fuck is going on in Putin’s brain right now, sheesh.

quiet day

2468 words, no kudos.

Yesterday: ran, emptied and reloaded the dishwasher, ran two loads of laundry and put all four loads away. Changed laundry detergents recently and I prefer the scent of the new stuff. I used to believe that my clothes wouldn’t fit in my closet and drawers and it turns out (after I took out the sheets I wasn’t using and put them in the hall closet) that I do. M I R A C O L O. Returned the rolling chair to my room. Cleaned a screen on the volcano. Watered plants. Made coffee and tea as soon as I got up.

Today: I have to go almost all the way downtown for a BP monitor test. Grr. I will be travelling by transit and I’m not looking forward. Need more bird seed. Time to REALLY get up, get going, etc. Happy International Women’s Day.

I keep thinking that Putin will get so mad he’ll set off a tactical nuke and say it’s Ukraine’s fault.

two medical appointments this week

One for the 24 hr bp monitoring, one for a check in at the doc, who’s FINALLY figured out that I have ADD. I could go on at length, but my own rants irritate me so I won’t.

I was hoping to see Mike this weekend to give him the gifts I got him but I never heard from him. People are just feeling like shit.

Jeff and I got dinner from D Roti Shak yesterday. There’s just something about their food that makes me happy… exactly the right amount of spice.

Kozak, a local Ukrainian restaurant which apparently has killer borscht, has a photo of Putin yelling, in the men’s urinal. It got shared on reddit.

I was supposed to get Alex for an overnight this weekend and it didn’t happen, and I was supposed to get a phone call to go swimming with the folks, and it didn’t happen. I’m assuming something screwed up with custody or someone wasn’t feeling well, but as I say, nobody’s telling me anything and I already call Katie more often than she probably wants to hear from me. Do I sound put out? Maybe a little, but I do remember just how hard it was to do ANYTHING when you have two kids to haul around. And I’m seeing Paul regularly so I hear about the kids and everyone sounds fine.

Started following Paul Blinkhorn from Time Team on Twitter and man I’m enjoying it. He’s a rabid lefty with a mouth on him like a token-sucker.

Very happy to report that Dave D is getting another poetry book published.

2309 words on the story. No kudos this am.

I’m going to make coffee and have leftover Trinidadian food for breakfast.

Tea and toast

Got wordle in three this morning, that was a pleasant surprise.

No writing yesterday but the blog.

I’m genuinely frightened by Putin’s war with Ukraine. The West seems clumsy footed and hesitant now the first sanctions have come through.

Poland and US are talking about warplanes for Ukraine. Once NATO sticks its toe in, an armed conflict across Europe seems more likely. I wake and sleep not knowing what to hope for.

 

Who am I fooling

Didn’t leave the house yesterday but I ran the dishes and a load of laundry. Jeff and I keystone kops’d the unloading, I wish someone had been taking video. I also mopped all the salt out of the boot tray.

Jeff left the house and returned with Swiss Chalet. Swiss Chalet has had a terrible hold on my palate ever since I visited my first resto on Yonge Street in 1980 or 81. I was working at the Delta Chelsea Inn – I was a baby, and somehow I ended up running the switchboard – an experience which made me believe it would be twenty years before I ever had the strength to be a manager again – and I’d shoot over there on breaks or go after my shift.

A couple of months back I learned to my horror that the only Swiss Chalet IN ALL OF BC was closing – it’s on Lougheed Highway, and since then we’ve made an effort to grab food from there any time we can. Jeff picked up meals for us yesterday and IT WAS SO GOOD. Then he told me that they are probably staying open and that was really good news. I want to live in a Burnaby that has Swiss Chalet. I’m not saying the food is fantastic, I’m just saying it’s a comfort to me.

While Jeff was out had a practice session so long my fingers are quite sore. ah well, if you don’t practice that’s what happens.

Talked to Paul on the phone; I read him a long twitter thread about how the Russian army didn’t rotate the tires on their armored vehicles and that’s why they can’t get through the mud (obvs more complicated than that). The big takeaway is that the Russian army is so corrupt they aren’t paying for spares or basic readiness maintenance and it’s showing in their performance. (Not so much in the south where they were more massed and the weather is better and the ground more solid.) There is also the problem of what the hell is going on with the Russian airforce. The Ukrainians are still just barely holding their own and given that the Russians have overwhelming superiority in numbers and equipment why don’t they have command of the air? Once again I’m thinking they just don’t have enough spares for operational readiness.

Go go dancers from the trendiest gay bar in Ukraine are now volunteering; the waggish comment on twitter was that we now have ‘battle twinks’. OKAY HE WAS CUTE but he’s got nuthin fer me.

A reminder that Ukraine is the second largest country on that landmass. It literally stretches from New York to the Great Lakes if you lay it on top of a map of NA.

Cried, just cried like a fool, when I saw the video of thousands of Berliners greeting Ukrainian refugees off the train so they could have a place to stay.

Too early for the kudos to come in (that’s around 3 am) but the story is at 2200 words. I’m going back to sleep, three and a half hours isn’t enough.

Not posting about Ukraine today

I’m not an expert and I have no special insight. I will say that I’m terrified for Odessa now. It’s not an entertainment, it’s a million refugees and counting and death, death, death and resistance. Please give money to refugee assistance if you can.

I have a library book to pick up today and intend to do some other wandering around New Westminster.

One kudo, word count on new story now stands at 2K.

My sleep is very disturbed, but my BP was 118/84 yesterday…. yay.

Poem for Russia Today ‘journalists’

As you may or may not be aware Russia Today is a propaganda arm of the Russian state, responsible for (among other things) many of the ‘articles’ which got the honkies in Ottawa and elsewhere so upset. Alexey Kovalyov of Meduza told the workers there to grab everything ‘data’ they can before they quit. (Russia warring on Ukraine caused some of them to rethink their positions, lol.)

The tune is a modification of ‘Take a Nap’

One little thumb drive
Maybe two
Journos, all I ask of you
Before you quit
That den of shit
Load ‘em up
‘Splode ‘em up
Get a grip on it

Because ‘Russia Today’
Is Putin’s propaganda
And it’s no slanda
And it is NOT okay
Screen caps click click click
Before you wander
Over yonder
Download every file that you can grab
And then you blab
To Meduza
And they can tell the world!
(And hopefully keep you out of it.)
PS he’s noodleremover2017 on Telegram

Walked yesterday morning with Jeff to get my prescriptions yesterday and also to pick up Vitamin C and more probiotics (I ran out and I was NOT HAPPY AMIDSHIPS.) All my laundry is put away. I have no idea what I’ll do today but I am not feeling like writing, I can tell you that much. I may make chicken tenders for breakfast, since we have honey mustard sauce.

productive day

Wordle 251 5/6 I LITERALLY didn’t get a correct letter until the third guess, didn’t get another until I guessed the entire word. That one was tough.

?????
?????
?????
?????
?????

A shop in the morning, walked with Paul (at Lougheed – I picked up finishing nails for Suzanne so she can hang pictures over the weekend)  and otherwise ran errands with Paul and fed Paul lunch (more peas chicken and rice THIS TIME WITH GINGER NOM) and looked at one of his boboes and got him to do his blood pressure (worse than mine…. I basically said in a level voice that that was the BP that sent me to the hospital and then he took it again and it was still high but not a crisis), two loads of laundry washed and dried (I get to put them away today lol), finished re-stringing Otto (when the hell WAS GAFilk, seriously, has it been that long and will I ever let it go that long again? the strings were so dead I should have been ashamed to record with them last winter), made some social plans with Suzanne only to learn that things have shifted a little with Katie and she’ll call me when we all get together to swim. Which reminds me the stretch has all perished out of my already super-thin bathing suit. I want to get one like the green and black one I wore when I was swimmin’ in the Dominican Republic, which Tom liked for some obscure reason. So do I want to brave the swimwear store in Metrotown? I can handle Lougheed, but Metrotown is like Tinfoil Central as far as the logie and disturbed of the Lower Mainland is concerned. Okay maybe that other mail further down Kingsway is worse but I never go there.

Keith continues to enjoy his job according to Paul.

This is a lovely although unclear as to the long term outcome story from Argentina.

Protest about the war in front of the VAG on Saturday. Putin’s threatening to use nukes. I’m trying to picture how I’ll be getting myself to write and create if that fucker bombs with poison, and the radiation level’s already up because of the tanks going through Chornobyl and kicking up all the radioactive dust.

Suzanne made things shiny and went home to nap. She’s been so busy with trying to make a living she hasn’t been able to clean her own place since she moved in, and one of her kids plus a girlfriend plus a hound is living there right now so things are lively. (But reasonably peaceful and Suzanne adores dogs and isn’t in a place in her life when she can own one. This poor hound is allergic to grass, can you imagine having to walk on grass in booties cause of allergies. I saw pics; Crooks is as cute as dogs get but beeg.)

One little kudo for an older story this morning.

Off to get my increased meds this morning, think I’ll walk over. The Entidying continues; Suzanne wants to get to the livingroom next since that’s where Master Alex plays and draws.

off colour

I woke up about two dozen times last night, and I kept feeling nauseous, so either I ate something disagreeable yesterday or I’m sickening with something or it’s psychological because I really don’t want to sit in a doctor’s office across the street from one of the busiest emergency departments in the city later today and in all cases having to go to the doctor today is suboptimal but I will go. I’m planning on taking a taxi unless Jeff volunteers to drive me, but it’s close to rush hour for the appointment, so that seems unlikely.

Eggs and coffee for breakfast.

I’ve restrung Smokey and he sounds BETTER THAN AWESOME. I imagine I’ll go downstairs and he’ll be completely out of tune again, but I ran through ‘Gelis and Niccolo’ full chat and it sounds like god giving advice. brrr, lovely. Managed to thank Mike once again in person when he was here ‘tother night for giving me the restringing tool, which is abso wonderful and speeds things up and makes them much less scary.

I am working in the back of my mind on a song, sadly another hymn.

I am not looking forward to restringing Otto, but I have the strings and it brutally needs doing and as far as I can tell I haven’t restrung him since GAFilk. (A brief Really I should find a decent luthier and have the goddamn frets brought down, or maybe I’ll do that myself with a file.

The weird letters on my earlier posts all came back, I have no idea why.

 

Dr. Appt Tomorrow

Today another day of loafing and lazing in lower lalaland.

Ate my leftovers for breakfast, so nommy.

Mike and Jeff and I watched The King’s Man and HOLY JEEZ Rhys Ifans as Rasputin is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. He fights while doing cossack style ballet kicks (obvs not him, some poor body double sod) and the whole ‘he was very hard to kill’  story gets THE FULL TREATMENT like shitbag he was extremely hard to kill. Anyway I think I had to be in the right mood to watch it and I was, because despite it being ahistorical and goofy as anything it was very entertaining and surprisingly well written and didn’t fall down in the fourth act.

Also the montage ‘once there were three cousins who ended up being the leading rulers in Europe’ really makes you think about the Great War in different terms.

There is a lot of fighting and there is a goat. Jeff called the goat’s behaviour well in advance, but that wasn’t too hard. There’s also a sequence that will not leave you feeling great about the safety of elevators that go by hand crank up a massive cliff side (the dialogue of the poor schmo stuck in it is classic).

This is a graphic of the Peacemaker dance. If you don’t know what that is or why it’s important to the ‘me’, relax. It’s just a dance.

brekky at Fraser Park Restaurant

I had the two slice french toast and two cups of their excellent coffee. And their weird but yummy homemade swossages.  Website.

It’s rainy and windy, not an elegant day at all. Certainly not as bad as poor Britain yesterday, lashed by 90 mile an hour winds and some of the scariest airport missed approaches I’ve seen in a while, trees over and bins in the next county and people racing sitting on skateboards while holding shopping bags and getting blown down the sidewalk.

FINALLY got Mary’s letter in the mail.

I have a three day list of tasks in front of me, let’s see how much I can get done now that I have something resembling energy and mood.

Doreen Manuel a Secwépemc woman made these beaded kicks and they are amazing. Support your Land Water Protectors today!

I made borscht

I didn’t put bouillon on the shopping list so it’s not very salty (or busting with the flavourful) but it’s definitely soup, substantial and hopefully digestible. Had it for supper last night, Jeff had some too.

There are now two soups to choose from, since there’s lentil soup in the fridge as well.

Jeff told me to my horror that my crow feeding has attracted pigeons. I put a post it note on the back door to prevent me from putting food out until Monday. I do not want to encourage pigeons unless I’m trapping and eating them too. There is interspecies signalling of food deposition – the flicker called the crows yesterday, it was amazing to watch. Buster, being trapped indoors, spends a lot of time watching birdies, both from the kitchen table and from his cat tower in the corner of the living room.

Today I’m going to slow roast some veg.

I hope to continue along with the dejunking as well; I am staying on top of the clothing situation and have been merrily throwing stuff out that I either never want to move again or don’t want to make my estate clean out. Also, changing strings, getting the posture ball back downstairs into the guest room, maybe even practicing.

Oh, the alarm’s about to go to tell me to take my BP and Metformin meds.

Still haven’t mailed Mary’s letter, how I wish those sons of sea cooks at the Post Office hadn’t removed my closest mail box. The next nearest one is a ten minute walk, outrageous. And inconvenient, I never go along that street on foot!  Fuck them assholes. Grr.

One little kudo this am, most recent story. Still working up situations for the new ones and staring fixedly at the half dozen or so other stories I would like to finish and post.

Watched the first episode of Cuphead; I think mOm and pOp might like it, it’s a total blast from 30’s animation; everything from the character to the sound design and the little blips that faux age the cartoon is pitch perfect. Also, there’s one bit where I was screaming at Jeff to rewind and replay, lovely use of the cartoon form.

Hey mOm, this is the bead rondel that is Jesse’s ‘badge of office’ when he is visiting elderly people in his building. The green background is a tacit acknowledgement that he’s a settler.

 

Here’s a sketch of Beaky (Pharos) when he was newly born. The eyes and ‘freckles’ aren’t eyes and freckles, they’re pigment patches (since sixers are made of muscle that can see lol and don’t have eyes like mammals do). He appears to have 4-6 legs but one of those forelimbs is a social tentacle. He looks so adorable here and he’s one of the crabbiest sentient creatures that ever lived, and once you know his history, it’s easy to understand why.

 

I have guitar strings!

So I picked up mando and guitar strings yesterday, which is good, because when I play “Gelis and Niccolo” I am pulverizing my guitar strings, which start to blister and unwind and go dead. So I shall take the guitar tool which the esteemed M. Mike provided and change my guitar strings with speed and ease. Also Otto’s strings because he sounds deader than Beethoven right now.

I actually picked up the ukelele yesterday and played for a while!

Buster is PISSSSSED that he can’t go outside. Then he cries like a sad kitten, it’s heartwrenching. But he’s still covered in scabs from his last failure to carry the field, and he cost Daddy somewhat with this last ear ding, so we are being brutal and keeping him in. We may break out the catnip just to keep him vivified.

After some very disturbed sleep and a lot of napping I seem to be back diurnal, sleeping until four in the morning YAY. I don’t like it when Jeff and I are out of sync, even when he’s working it’s like we don’t talk for a day and all of a sudden we’re eating supper in front of Elementary….

The kitchen is a nightmare but I can’t find the energy to clean it. (actually I just emptied the dishwasher and threw out the cruft, but that doesn’t make a visible dent lol)

Fed Paul and Jeff pulled pork sammies on brown buns, smashed taters and green beans for lunch yesterday. Paul and I went for a brief walk and toured around and got veggies and went to the guitar shop. I drove.  Although I have not spoken to Keith, Paul reports that he’s loving his new job. This heartens me; his recent previous brief foray into employment left him quite disgusted with the state of employers, like that is hard these days.

Arrests have commenced in Ottawa; when the aptly named Lich was arrested and went on social media to complain about how the jig was up I really enjoyed that.

Duly noted here is the dubious morality under which I may be said to enjoy the arrest of the people who’ve been making Centertown unliveable for three fucking weeks (as of today), when I have repeatedly (in this venue and others) stated that I am an abolitionist, and wish for the amelioration and end of incarcerated punishment, except where no acceptable community alternative is possible. I am still the child my parents raised and I enforce the carceral state in my life and my mind and with my words and actions, but I am trying very hard to turn from such darkness.

I would like to state here that at all times during the last 3 weeks the cops in Ottawa have had ALL THE LEGAL DEVICES THEY NEED TO CLEAR THE STREETS and they didn’t because AND YOU KNOW WHY, DON’T YOU, MR. JONES. Anyway there’s something called a riot act. The activities downtown WERE and ARE a riot. FUCK THE GUY ON REDDIT WHO SAID IT DIDN’T MEET THE CRITERIA, HE WAS A FOOL AND WRONG ANYWAY.

Not only is this political cartoon one of the weirdest and creepiest I’ve ever seen, it would get me pushed out a window in Russia and disappeared for three months of reeducation and weight loss in China, possibly longer than that. @listen_to_me is the source on twitter; it’s a cyrillic alphabet account I accessed through following @alexey__kovalev, an absolutely hilarious giant-testicled Russian journalist who keeps running afoul of Putin and his slavering minions.

Image