Category: Domestic Life

Not much to report

Buster is recovering as fast as cats do; the most recent Call the Midwife literally had me and Jeff on the edges of our seats; I hope to call Paul today and go for a walk, mail Auntie’s letter and maybe do some other boring errand-y things; Russia is putting the finishing touches on its invasion plans for Ukraine; I got a single kudo last night for the most recent story; I partially cleaned out the fridge this morning; Jeff and I did a shop this morning and watched a Time Team afterward.

Have some Margot fuzz.

 

Buster is an indoor cat

Buster had an immense weeping ear infection from a long cat scratch down his ear canal. He’s to be kept indoors and fed antibiotics and gooped for the next ten days. We are both very relieved, and Jeff says he was a brave boy at the vet. He peed in his carrier again, but he does that every time. He’s also up to date on his shots again, so tranquillity abounds, etc etc.

I had to replace ALL the ink in the printer yesterday which would have been even more annoying if I hadn’t previously stocked up on ersatz cartridges and didn’t have to go anywhere or spend any money to make it happen. Part of having ADD is hoarding, and part is being therefore prepared, and the rest is having a million iterations of shit that don’t fit. BUT IT IS OKAY because I finally got Mary’s letter printed and I’ll be mailing it today.

Got my balance ball back and that will make making music a lot easier. I love playing music on a bouncy ball, I can really rock out. While looking like a loon.

Saw Ryker the other day, he’s still an adorable baby with a commitment to sleep that outpaces my own.

Absolutely sweet comment – brief, too – on the most recent story yesterday.

Haven’t received word from Keith about how his first day on the job went.

 

a lovely lazy day

Called friends and family, practiced music for the first time in ages, ran and dried a couple of loads of laundry.

Breakfast is leftovers. Red hot leftovers and tea.

Buster seems to have an injury to one ear. Jeff will look at it when he gets home. I cleaned it and he sat pretty for me while I did it. The stench was unconscionable.

Happy Valentine’s day for those who celebrate. I think I’ve commented enough on it in the past.

Remember the BATTLE OF BILLINGS BRIDGE!

 

feetsball

pOp and brO are going to watch the pinnacle of sportsball this weekend, yup Jeff is going to Victoria this am and will be back Mondayish. Just a reminder that most sports fans are still reeling that the Beagles, Bugles, Bungles and Bangles (as the Cincinnati Bengals are variously and humourously called) were never expected to get this far…

One little kudo this morning. I’ve been plugging away on stories a couple hundred words at a time. Very close to being finished Mary’s letter, hope to mail it today.

a middle aged white woman with medium length hair wears a long, long-sleeved black dress and bare feet

 

this dress, which I bought about ten years ago is now so full of holes and so washed out that I can only wear it as a housedress, is still one of my favourites. I do like cotton knit as a something to make garments from.

I would like to read a newspaper headline through your breast

Said the mammogram technician. Anyway, I have booked one for May, and it’s relatively local, so all is good.

Why isn't there a more comfortable mammogram procedure? - Harvard Health

Yesterday I did two loads of laundry, and thanks to Suzanne the bathrooms are shiny again. She’s settling into her new apartment at Kingsway and Gilley (SOOOO CLOSE) and is probably going to get Alex for an overnight soon, when her apartment’s all shoved back into corners. Katie helped her assemble all her computer-y stuff like a boss.

Slept FANTASTIC. Went to sleep just after 8, woke up around 4. I may not nap tidday, boys!!!

Jeff bought me a burger and shake from Wet Spot, and it was fantastic.

I am very close to being finished writing Mary’s letter but I think it should be at least another couple of pages longer.

No kudos this morning… what a sap I am. One must be motivated from the inside.

Recent uproars on the internet:

person 1 – I ain’t taking my shoes off in your skanky ass house cause your floors are heinous and I don’t give a shit about your cultural constructs appears magically on line. THERE ARE OPINIONS

(this is all part of the editors in NA on line venues looking for ways to shit on Asian people during the Olympics, how rude)

person 2 – I ain’t putting up with your skanky ass shoes in my house because you fucking people walk through broken glass and dogshit and then march all over my new laminate floors and you laugh when I point out the scratches

person 3 – (allegra) I brought orthotic slippers to help me keep my feet warm and keep my balance, if you prevent me from wearing my indoor slippers you’re an ableist fuck and I ain’t enterin’ your skanky ass house (I didn’t actually say this, I never found a venue, so here it is on my own site) and if your floors actually are dirty I won’t fucking care but if there is a shrine in the house of course I’ll take my fucking slippers off do you think I’m a clod, deaf to the songs of the gods?

Vocabulary review: skanky – cheap, dirty, slutty, low-rent, low-class; – ass – added for emphasis.

Got a comment hijacked by a comment bot on Reddit this morning. Didn’t even notice until someone picked it out of the crap pile for me. It’s one of the funniest lines I ever wrote so of course some witless algorithm steals it.

Jeff and I are continuing to enjoy Peacemaker (it is rude, it is funny, it is freaky, it is scary) and Leverage (well written, clips along, very very formulaic and light hearted, which compared to the grimdark we watch most of the rest of the time is GOOD).

Have some Ice from Iceland to go along with today’s fog. It was 5 degrees and rain blowing horizontal, if you wonder why it’s so dull, almost four years ago, May 2018.

Spoke to Peggy

She is doing about as well as expected. The sons can’t help her clean out the house as much as they like because they are householders with children themselves and it’s a lot.

However she’s lined up someone to do the clearout if they can’t, and she’s moved out one tenant (with sadness) and is moving in her son and daughter–in-common-law and their kids (with happiness but it won’t be for a few months) and a different other tenant instead (her house is beeg) so she’s moving downstairs (less stairs, better for her knee (and of course there’s a full bathroom downstairs so no problems there). I approve of all these shifts and changes. I can’t imagine rattling around a house that size without other people.

an elderly cis white woman stares vacantly, jaw hanging open, at the camera
an elderly cis white woman stares vacantly, jaw hanging open, at the camera

I sent this to my mother when she said she’ll just be staring at me the next time I visit.

I changed my bedding!

I restuffed my bolster after washing the cover and tied off the ends and now I am very comfy in bed; the weighted blanket is folded at the end of the bed so I can use it to raise my feet.

Suzanne came late due to my communication error but is here now beating bathrooms into shape.

My next assault on adulting consists of booking a mammogram. Ai Yi. Next doctor appointment February 23.

Suzanne is here today

I missed her. I’m continuing the clearout / reorg of my room. I have a nice long list of things to do today and after my absolutely wonderful night of sleep I think I’ll start with washing my bedding… Nope I’m going to make myself some brekky, eggs I think. Also reheated the fries from the fish and chips the other day. SO GOOD.

3 kudos in my mailbox this morning, all for the most recent story. It really landed well, the kudo to hit ratio is like 1 in 6, which is amazing (it usually ends up being 1 in 10 or 1 in 15). I’m tucked up in bed working through chapter subjects for the next story. I can already tell this new story is going to be book length, I have too many ideas. I want to finish the ‘tree man’ story, the story about the single dad with PTSD from being a respiratory technician during a pandemic, the story about the flooding in November, the alternate universe decameron style story, the massage therapist story, and I think there are three other incomplete ones but I can’t remember the hook.

Poetry is slowly stirring inside me. I’m either going to keep working on the Dark Book or write about allergies.

The siege of Ottawa continues. The siege of Coutts continues. The Ambassador Bridge Siege continues. Fuck ’em all, all those flag flying fools.

 

 

I put all my laundry away

Yes, you read that correctly – except the socks. The socks are going to need their own hour of effort and I will throw away the extras this time…. I have not actually put all my laundry away in several years so I want bunting dammit. I mean HUNG UP and IN DRAWERS.

Found a new restaurant, the Fraser Park Restaurant down on Byrne, which serves breakfast all day. Chris Campbell of the Burnaby Now mentioned it. The meals are MASSIVE; I’m impressed. It also opens super early and isn’t jam packed, and one can always take a walk afterward in the park. Just ate my second breakfast from that meal.

I have to pick up yet another medication today but hey hopefully I’ll stop blowing holes in my eyes, kidneys and brain thereby.  I’m off the diuretic, it didn’t help. God, I hope this works.

 

 

 

look at my STRUGGLE

IMAGINE having three out of five letters correct three times in a row, I thought I was gonna run amok.

Doctor appointment on zoom equivalent today. They send me four reminder notices, I guess somebody finally noticed I have ADD.

The shit on twitter about Ottawa is melting my mind. There are so many cops on the ground right now, from all over Ontario. The antivaxxers LOCKED THE DOORS ON A BUILDING AND SET FIRE TO IT.

Not much writing. Not much of anything. I was so exhausted and braindead yesterday I slept for most of it. Today I’ll do a couple of loads of laundry and finish that letter to auntie Mary, it’s been months.

In our desperate attempt to find a lighthearted show to watch (everything is SO FARKING GRIMDARK DESE DAYS) I prompted Jeff to find Leverage; it’s the same folks who did the Librarians (John Rogers, whom I followed on twitter for a while as He Is Funny but also a little too centrist for my taste LOL like I can expect a showrunner to be an anarchist). Anyway, it is a light hearted show and it’s like Mission Impossible crashed Burn Notice’s party while scraping content from White Collar. The characters are all likeable and the writing is sharp without being brittle, and Timothy Hutton is way better in it than I was expecting (subtle, reactive, sweet, it’s ver’ nice). Christian Kane continues to be every fangirl’s second favourite bi icon….

 

Convoy observation

Keith and I didn’t protest, because there wasn’t a fixed point for the convoy to protest at.

So here, not orderly, is what happened.

The convoy #IvermectinInsurrection gathered in Langley and then drove along Terminal to Main, where it met a crowd of very conspicuous bicyclists around 10:30, 11 am. For an hour the convoy was stalled as everyone milled around and there wasn’t anywhere for the convoy to peel off to. Then the fucking cops busted it up and let the convoy spread out all over downtown – this happened around noon, and at that point all of downtown Vancouver was crisscrossed with maskless white people in trucks with massive Canadian flags honking and driving up and down.

Around 2 pm about 400 of them were gathered at Burrard close to the VAG, where rhetorically challenged people tried to whip the crowd up. THAT WAS WHEN I GOT SCARED. I knew they meant me harm, and it was a foul feeling. I am so glad I went with Keith.

Keith and I went first to Terminal and Main and then to Granville Station to observe and report.

It was fucking sad, and I’m not in a good place today. We had lunch at Earl’s. Apparently I got 4000 steps in (so Keith tells me.)

He had an interview yesterday, hope he gets the job if he still wants it.

Quiet day

Ran the dishwasher and wrote 800 words and called a friend.

I’m thinking of a new fic with a bit of a twist. My English fanfic reader was BACK she even read the SF short story which is not finished. I should finish it, it has its moments. Normally I post finished stories only because my rage when I start a story on line and it isn’t finished is , the robot tale is the sole exception.