Category: Domestic Life

walkies

I had Paul over for lunch after twice around the schoolyard. We had split pea soup and shirazi salad.

Other than running the dishwasher and napping twice since I woke up I have been remarkably slothlike. Glad I got out of the house for a walk. Also, today was the first day I wore my winter coat.

Laundry listing again again

 

 

Well, Jeff and I went for a walk and ran an errand, so let’s tick the box for leaving the house yesterday. I also backed up my hard drive, made myself a fried egg sandwich on brown bread for breakfast, cleaned the stovetop and side of the stove, stayed hydrated, cleared the sinks, finished cleaning off the keyboards and set it up downstairs, put some more junk in the box to go to Value Village, ran some more laundry which is still resting comfortably downstairs, talked to Keith on the phone (part of which conversation involved talking about Keith looking for work, which I’m not convinced would be ideal for him currently) arranged another sleepover with Alex, brushed my teeth and hair, started some letters, decided to completely ignore NaNoWriMo because I’m not mentally healthy enough to do that to myself, threw a chicken pie from M&Ms into the oven for lunch, used my medication holder to demonstrate to myself that I keep thinking I’ve already taken my meds, so I’m really glad I have stopped pretending I don’t keep forgetting to take my meds even after the alarm has gone off, learned that Paul’s gf had a brain bleed – she’s apparently able to talk on the phone and all this happened during the period that she was moving house, which sounds terrifying and inconvenient for everyone involved. Whether this means that she and Paul are still broken up – they certainly were the last time Paul and I went for a walk as far as he was concerned – is unclear to me. Keith doesn’t think so, but I’m on the periphery and wish to remain there. There’s supposed to be a Dunnett event today, I believe. I should be going to it. (ACTUALLY IT’S ON THE 13TH AND THE PLACE HAS BEEN SET)

I’m learning to deal with various different aspects of my recently upgraded Scrivener software.

I for once managed to go back down after rising to the call of the toilet and so managed to sleep from 8:30 to 5:00 am, with a couple of interruptions, literally the best night of sleep I’ve had in ages.

We also finished watching, “Joy Ride,” Dana Gould and Bobcat Goldthwaite’s road movie that got delayed when the two of them went off the road and were hospitalized in a car accident. There’s a bit Dana does in the middle that slows things down but otherwise if you’re a leftist and enjoy challenging humour you will make yourself sore laughing. A rewatch of Master and Commander is planned.

This morning we are going to do a small shop and then I hope I’ll be bright enough to keep working on “Clearing the Plains” by James Daschuk, which is a remarkable text, and which, when I’m up for it, holds my attention without difficulty. If I can’t read today I’ll be trying to clear out the living room in preparation for getting rid of some furniture that won’t be coming with me to my next apartment, because I’m going to go where there are no stairs.

This is a summary of what I learned so far.

The depths of the ignorance, violence and depravity of the settlers never ceases to appal me. Not a new learning.

Thanks to climate change, a large portion of Turtle Island’s Indigenous population at the time of contact was in a state of movement and social reorganization; many nations were pushed into decline or extinction as rainfall and water sources and water courses shifted; many nations amalgamated, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not so much; there were a couple of hot spots of inter-nation violence which were not pacified by the re-arrival of horses; and the trade routes which had been running for centuries got messed up as the groups that had supported them died, lost access to resources, or moved, mostly west and north. TB and other infectious illnesses (once again, this is prior to when the really hard diseases like smallpox flooded across the land) in a pressured and transient population were endemic. It’s possible that in the 13th C a volcano half a world away screwed up farming on Turtle Island. Agriculture ceased being a sure bet so places like Cahokia, which was only surpassed in size later by the settlers’ Philadelphia, emptied out, and for the groups closer to the plains, the buffalo herds looked like a better bet, so many nations coalesced around that resource. And they did all this over the course of a couple of centuries or even less, developing new or borrowing existing cultural protocols that protected their new way of life without destroying the land, an achievement that blows my mind.

Also, across the plains, nobody killed beavers. They didn’t need civilizations capable of moving waterways through engineering. They had beavers.

And what was the first thing that the settlers killed.

It’s a hard read but worth it. That’s only chapter one.

Short walk plus Vietnamese food

Paul and I went for a short walk in the neighbourhood, locating about seven thousand dollars worth of expended fireworks in the process.

While we were on the walk we sat on a bench and just ABSORBED sunshine, because it was an incredibly warm and gorgeous day, and I did the visual purple thing. If you have average colour vision:

1 sit someplace with your glasses off and your eyes closed, facing the sun.

2 wait

3 wait some more

4 at first the light behind your eyes looks orange. Over time the colour changes until it’s a smooth, even, silvery green

5 palm your eyes

Your visual field will FLOOD WITH PURPLE a colour of such magnificent intensity that you’ll go HOLY COW. because seriously, you didn’t know what it is like to recharge the rhodopsin in in your colour vision.

Congratulations, briefly, your colour vision and visual acuity will briefly improve.

Sadly, if you have floaters, you will see all of them while you’re waiting for the rhodopsin.

 

Then we went to Edmonds Pho.

I got the electric piano cleaned off and set up downstairs.  I got the spare acoustic guitar (the one John and Paul gave me that has a huge crack in it because Keith dropped the guitar on purpose (he says not but people don’t smirk if that’s not true) in the driveway at the Augur Inn) and the Johnson mandolin hung up in the racks upstairs because I rarely actually play them. I ran the dishwasher and did two loads of laundry. I think I left a load in the washer though.

I finally got hold of Mike. He is still employed. He is ravaged by insomnia though and sounds at a low ebb.

 

Did I have a productive day?

Jeff brought donuts home after an errand. I ate two.

I got dressed and left the house; Paul and I went for an absolute brute of a walk at Fraser Foreshore. I’ve been wearing orthotics in the house (I have slippers I put arch supports in) and my walking speed picked up most remarkably. Paul was not struggling to keep up but he said I was booting along. Somebody had just put down bird seed so I put it in my hands and let the chickadees do their thing. I now have a 5000mA solar charger on my backpack so I’ll be a powerhouse wherever I go.

I aired out one of the stench suppressors (this one is for my room, there are others in the basement and the basement bathroom) – you’re supposed to ‘recharge them’ in sunshine.

I also recharged my solar light, it was getting limp.

I made brown buns and fed Paul a havarti, roast beest and brown bun sammich.

I received a parcel. My grip strength isn’t what it was so it was an electric can opener.

Did I mention that the day before yesterday I accidentally opened a neighbour’s wrongly delivered parcel and had to wringingly apologize for viewing his Star Trek boxers. One thing I have learned about life is that an apology delayed is murder on the nerves, so I literally got dressed (I’ve been sludgy) to leave the house to apologize.

I am reverting to paper for keeping track of addresses so I have a backup. I’ll be filling it up and then putting it in one of the earthquake packs.

Weather yesterday was wonderful, the park was perfect. I was one of very few people wearing a mask and it was irritating but I’m not exactly doing it for me 100% now, am I.

An elderly woman in Burnaby was assaulted and briefly hospitalized after investigating a noise in her yard. The last time I investigated an outside noise it was a juvenile coyote and a raccoon branniganning up and down the freaking alleyway (the fight started under my window, and I haven’t run across a worse feeling waking up in many years… this was a while back). I definitely won’t be doing it without a stoutte cuddgel and a flashlight anymore.

Somebody left a couple of kudos on a couple of different fanfics.

Somebody let off a bear scare on River Road while we were out walking and it reverberated across Sto:lo in the most unpleasant way and startled me and all the dogs walking in the Foreshore.

They’re fixing the concrete walkway next door

so I told Paul to git on over hyar, they may drop 450 kilos of concrete on his damned plastic canoe (the one that’s heavier than the aluminum one, calice) and I said I’d go walking but that was before I remembered that I had forgotten bread dough for brown buns in the bread machine.

So I had to stop what I was doing, and do that, and now I’m updating you because I’m waiting.

Still so happy Jeff hooked me back up to my twitter account.

The three titles

Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life by James Daschuk (considered a tour de force and foundational text for reconciliation written by a settler)

Unsettling Canada, by Arthur Manuel (Secwepemc Nation)

Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada by Paulette Regan (settler)

I will try to read them. It’s hard to get my ass parked long enough to read, rather than just scroll through the internet, I feel so restless.

Off topic, Suzanne has been here and YAY there’s no more cat barf on the living room floor.

Windy

The barometer is still quite low. The wind is cold and gusty.

Breakfast was thin sliced double smoked pork loin, havarti cheese, tomato and purple onion on a sourdough english muffin. And coffee. And metformin.

I am well rested, my mood is okay (compared to the weekend, mah gob) and I am slowly reacquainting myself with all the twitterers I lost when I lost my first account – which is still there, sadly, but I can’t get into it to kill it.

SFU students will be starting a hunger strike for the climate on November 1. I wish I could give them an ongoing fat transplant but sadly that ain’t happening.

I bought Alex magic markers for the next time he’s here; I thought I had some but apparently not.

Slept a good chunk of the day

I was quite tired after Alex left; normally if I wake up that early I’m back in bed after my first meds of the day (at six am) and I couldn’t nap until after he left at noon.

He left his Among Us stuffie here. It’s very cute. It is also very cute how much he likes that game. Which is apparently oriented to adults.

Mostly he talked about the games he loves.

We watched Free Guy (I took out the boring bits with the fast forward button) and he loved it (this was my third time through). He was bored with anything else I tried to show him.

wakey wakey

Alex went to bed like a lamb at around 8 pm and woke up at 2:15. We’re now on our devices and occasionally conversing. He says he won’t nap, we’ll see.

He and Jeff and I are going to walk over to Timmy Ho’s when it opens.

Buster DID NOT WANT TO MEET HIM. Alex was rueful but not upset.

Last night I asked him if I could touch him and he said you don’t have to ask MELT.

HE’S A MOBILE SLEEPER he moves around a lot.

Letter to Mary stamped and addressed

I added my Disney Princess anecdote to the end of it by hand.

Five loads of laundry done yesterday, SO MUCH and now PUT AWAYING is in that perpetually stalled AfDD place.

Worked quite hard this morning on editing Best Roommate in the World in preparation for finishing it. Pretty much finished editing section 1 (of 5).

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is fantastic. I very much enjoyed it and Jeff said it actually makes sense, unlike the previous outing.