Category: Domestic Life

still no eeg results

I’ll call the clinic again next Monday. Many things slow down over the festive season so even though it was supposed to be ready it probably isn’t, yet.

You know Hudson & Rex is a terrible advertisement for St. John’s, right? One percent of the population is Black and that’s not how the show demographics works…. also…. you know that they have like a murder a year and so in the first episode they blow through the murder rate like theysa going backwards.

Georgia turned blue, but it was the rest of us holding our breath. FUCK MITCH MCCONNELL.

While I’m in the mood, FUCK AIR CANADA.

If that link disappears, it’s to a story claiming that Air Canada is sending influencers on holiday to sunny places to pad their advertising budgets during A GODDAMNED PANDEMIC ….I mean I knew they were slimy bastids but that’s low.

Buns dough is in the bread-maker. I really am fine with never eating white bread again if I can have yummy brown bread buns fresh out of the oven within 2 hours of conceiving the notion.

In 774 AD the biggest coronal mass ejection in 10k years hit the earth. (Per Phil Plait the Bad Astronomer.) If the same thing hit the earth today satellites would plummet, the grid would fail, the internet would fly up its own asshole and choke and it would be weeks in many places and years in others before the power came back on. So thank your lucky stars you only live in an earthquake zone, lol

I’ll be wandering over to Planet Bachelor later today.

Letters to two Daves in the mail today. pOp’s getting a very big sketch of Baby Yoda.

No progress on UPSUN.

Windy day and beet soup recipe

We didn’t get the wind in Burnaby that was forecast yet; I’m assuming the coast got it.

It’s the kind of day when you feel good about grating beets and finely slicing cabbage for borscht.

It’s a dead simple recipe: boil six cups of water (less if you want it SOLID, more if you’re liking more broth), peel and grate three medium sized beets, finely slice a quarter of a head of cabbage, (adjust balance of veg for preferences) & throw them into the water, add a heaping teaspoon of Better than Bouillon vegetarian salt paste, a quarter teaspoon pepper, a quarter teaspoon garlic powder, a little hand ground basil, and it’s food in half an hour of a steady low boil and ambrosia nuked the next day. I chopped some scallions, parsley and yellow pepper to throw on top, and there’s greek yogurt in the fridge.

brO and I were dreading the season opener of the Rookie but it kicked ass. We heard lines of dialogue we never expected to hear from the show. Very welcome change from the overwrought magical bad guy shit at the end of the last season.

I knew I’d have lunchbag letdown from yesterday so I’ve been babying myself today (CBD gummy early in the day – I don’t take them every day) and it’s worked well. I’m halfway through a letter to Dave, finished all my Trotsky Tuesdays for January, am making song lists for stuff I can record and post in two seconds when I’m behind the eight-ball for deadlines, and contemplating the fifty stamps I just bought, uncoiling like two misshapen tentacles over the dishwasher, with a lazy smile.

I can hear Jeff getting borscht, I’ll join him.

 

Reasonably productive day

Shopping; didn’t get to Al P.’s New Years Walk in Trout Lake, le sigh, made pizza, wrote and mailed a letter to my mOm, made biscotti dough, three loads of laundry washed and dried and sort of staged for being put away, recorded Bob Dylan’s New Years Day.

This morning I shall bake biscotti and then deliver it to the deserving and the undeserving alike. Then I’ll probably make another batch because otherwise it’s too much room in the fridge as it chills.

Continue reading Reasonably productive day

Ratrunners and fireworks

Woke up around two with a ratrunner blasting down Kingsway at what sounded like a hunnert miles an hour. And there were bangers in there too.

I can’t find a recording of “Bob Dylan’s New Years’ Day” … so I guess I’ll have to make one.

Yesterday I made borscht and fresh whole wheat rolls and fed Paul lunch. Today I’m supposed to walk in Trout Lake Park for a New Year’s Day celebration but the rain is going to be rude, so I may wear rain gear and boots. If I can be arsed to move.

Rain rain rain

Kind of a gross day yesterday. Jeff and I got takeout breakfast and watched WW84, which was an enjoyable piece of fluff with lots of narrative holes, tropes and clichés.

I think it’s possible I wrote something new; no lyrics yet.

5135 words on ‘The Best Roommate in the World” and a couple of hundred words on a background interview with one of the city managers after the transition.

Tried following up with the doctor about the EEG, office was closed, I’ll try again today. Also wished the cultural competence reader a happy new year.

No Alex

Jeff and Allegra circa 1963

Not so much as a peep out of Planet Bachelor. This paragraph deleted, and there was much rejoicing. I’ve written him a letter, now I have to figure out what I did with the last stamps. Can you believe it? I bought 48 stamps a month ago and they are all gone.

I practiced for an hour this morning, including working up a mandolin accompaniment for “I Guess I Never Felt This Way,” which the kids helped me write while we were living in Montreal. Jesus, such a long time ago now. I wouldn’t trade my troubles then for now, that’s for damned sure.

Visibility outside has crashed from 3 k to less than 200 metres. A FOGGY MORN IN BURNABY.

Time to figure out what the MIT is for today… the Most Important Thing. I’m thinking letters… I have so MANY to ANSWER. Yup.

I’m not happy with my major project for next year, but honestly, if I just record one tiny little thing per day, that will still technically work, and it’s not supposed to be fun, it’s assembling my entire life’s work in one year, so yeah, it’s work. Not everyone gets the chance to do something like that, and most women throughout history couldn’t even read.

The other daily post, that is really really going to be a grind, but 2021 is going to be the year of ‘real content or die tryin’. I’ve posted all the Throwback Thursday pictures for all of November and December 2021 so progress, yay.

Just as an aside, a suicide bomber blew up a substantial chunk of Nashville on Christmas day, but the fucking media is spavining itself coming up with ANY CONSTRUCTION BUT ‘ SUICIDE BOMBER ‘ because that’s reserved for BROWN PEOPLE.

The racism of this society is heinous bullshit.

 

Kinda hoping to see the grandson today

I don’t know if I will, but I hope to.

Part III Lord of the Rings today, unless Jeff bails. A rewatch every two years is too soon.

I want to make flower buns. I did make flower buns. I want to eat flower buns. They are baking. I didn’t set the timer, I’ll yoink ’em out in 15-20

Time for a huge mug of tea while I contemplate what to say to all my letter writers when not too much is happening. I stayed up all night and slept late and I haven’t eaten anything but bread dough and I still haven’t had the tea and it’s hours later.

Note to Jessie, to be conveyed through mOm:

It may surprise you to learn that in the view of this member of your chosen family, you are still formed for usefulness despite your trials. You are a living image of quiet perseverance; I find your continued assertion of your will and mind quite motivating.

a short list

Unca Barry’s first letter came. I haven’t finished it as I intend to savour it but I was snorting with laughter by the second para.

Paul showed up and I drove us to Deer Lake Park where we did our normal circuit at a very good rate of knots, since there was no place to sit down, har har, because there was ice and snow on everything. Nearly wiped out on the walkway surface FARTHEST from where an extraction by ambulance could happen, as I’m grimly muttering I AM NOT FALLING DOWN AND BREAKING MY SHOULDER AGAIN.

My psychological feathers are back in place now that I’ve heard from mOm about the latest HOTM update I sent her. It’s a piece of fluff but that’s what we need these days, and I do love those characters.

Today: More posting for 2021, more writing, run dishwasher, practice, go for a walk, find the other dryer ball, Expanse 5:4, flower rolls. Amazing, I crossed that off the list already and it isn’t even noon…

 

later A THOUSAND BLESSINGS ON THE HEAD OF CINDY who BROUGHT BAKING and IT IS GOOD

 

 

New West yesterday

Went into New West on the bus to pick up ice cream and summat for dinner and to return Mexican Gothic, which was so damned good I understood why I waited three months for it at the library, but also why I had to return it as fast as possible for the next person. On the way home I saw Peggy because she AND TOM drove over and dropped off cookies and Jeff and I ate them all in one go (almond sugar cookies). Sooooo the Christmas I AM EATING THINGS I SHOULDN’T TABLEAU continues.

So Tom is home. He sounds quite vigorous, but he doesn’t get to drive for another month and a half or so.

The big fuzzy hoodies I ordered arrived. I hope people like them and if they don’t they can give them back to me.

Finished the Right Stuff TV show. It’s a little too kitchen sinky to get the full upvote, but I enjoyed it. A second season has been optioned but not ordered.

I hope everyone has a lovely day. I don’t have much planned beyond a walk to the mailbox and add to the 3300 words I wrote on The Best Roommate in the World.

Good morning

Got an absolutely lovely letter and A DESTIEL prezzie of two little badges of Dean saying BITCH and Castiel saying ASS-BUTT from Jan M yesterday, and the Oodies arrived (I went spare and ordered immediate fam something identical for Christmas (a giant fuzzy hoodie covered in cutesy cartoon characters with an enormous pocket)) so I’ll be able to hand them out in time. Jeff got one covered in otters – I got the avocado toast. I’ve washed one and they stay really soft if you put them on fluff dry.

The badges immediately went on the Nyan-Cat hat, which Keith bought for me and has gotten more compliments than any other item of clothing I’ve ever worn, which now bears badges for trans rights, asexual rights, anarcho-feminism, anarcho-syndicalism and DESTIEL. lol

So Christmas wise a great day.

I made cinnamon sticks, wrote a letter to Tammy which I haven’t mailed, watched some TV and had a very low energy day, including no practicing (mostly because I didn’t do it first thing in the morning and next thing I know it’s FEETSBALL of which there is so very much right now thanks to the COVID screwing with schedules.) I did however wash and change my sheets and the duvet cover, and so slept very well last night. Lying in bed with my heart pounding because I forgot to call Tom AGAIN and it was now too late was how my day finished.

Today I’m going into New West to pick up some baking stuff and drop off Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which finally came in to the library and which I must now return immediately so the next person who has it on hold can get it, because it would be rude to keep it until the middle of JANUARY. I read it all at one go in the bathtub yesterday. It was unpredictable without being unfair to the reader, reversed some horror tropes in lovely, finicky, hard-to-accomplish ways, centred brown bodies and minds, and had some really really cool things to say about colonialism and horror. And the monster is so monstrous. Just horrific and smelly, exactly as a monster should be. Plus a resolution totally made for me.  Yup. Noemí is a great heroine and given that the book is a NYT bestseller I have to assume that this sucker’s going to be made into a movie or miniseries, and I can hardly wait. Silvia is the co-author of the book about writing SF/F I recently bought AND she lives in Vancouver AND she’s a Dunnetteer, although she didn’t attend the ‘spit’ she told a friend she might go to, which I attended, so I didn’t get a chance to meet her. She sounds fascinating and a total boss.

We’re rewatching the Librarians. Blasted through the first 3 episodes of Season 5 of the Expanse – totally back on form after a very unpleasant and badly arranged season 4 AND THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE LET NAOMI MAKE PLANETFALL THAT WAS STUPID and not in the books. But it’s great again. And now I have to WAIT again because they only released the first three episodes.

Elementary continues to be our TV palate cleanser. It is the show against which other shows must be compared, much to their detriment. Only POI, Burn Notice first 5 seasons, Fringe and ER come close.

I’m 3000 words into ‘the Best Roommate in the World’. Some addition, some very necessary infill. Don’t worry mOm when I’m up to 4K words I’ll send you the update.

okay COMING UP ON 4 AM when the wifi goes down for three hours so I can write and practice and do laundry etcetera so I gotta go. Everybody look busy! It’s Christmas bustle time!!

rain rain

So the rain of course prevented any chance to see the Geminids; another year no streaks in the sky. Sigh.

Had an EEG yesterday. Taxi there and back (easier now I know with all the fucking construction down on Columbia for blocks around RCH where the taxi stand is.) The part where your hair is coated in slimy goo and it’s time for you to go home was suboptimal, and I didn’t like closing my eyes while a strobe light flashed (I was having trouble talking for about two hours after that – felt like a migraine coming on but I was fine after.) Results over Christmas will take two weeks at minimum, so I’ve diarized to call the doc at year end and find out whether the results are back, then to make an appointment.

I feel very stupid for how much I babbled at the tech. Am I that hard up for company? (nods head yes sadly) I realized what I was doing and asked her questions about her kid and her Christmas after a while and she’s got a toddler who’s bitey so I commiserated with her. Keith had a bitey phase, and passed through it with speed, but Katie was straight up mean about it just as she was coming up on a year and man, when you’re nursing it just sucks so bad. I didn’t mention that though.

I should have had a shower as soon as I got home but I delayed it until I realized that I was going to be showering while Jeff was attempting to sleep. Didn’t sing in the shower for a change, but it’s still noisy. Sorry about that brO.

Finally cleaned the veggie ichor out of the fridge so the kitchen is a much happier place to be. Today I make a vegan veggie pizza for Jeff, he wants to see if it’s different without the milk powder.

The fridge is full of tasty Indian food (the channa masala and palak paneer are so yummy) and there’s a pile of veggie samosas NOM and so the rest of the day was quite nice.

Grocery shop yesterday.

Wrote two songs yesterday. I’m about to go downstairs and see if they actually stuck in my brain.

Booked to record at a studio in New West on January 4. This year upcoming is going to be a challenge, and I hope to meet it.

Re-reading Sweetie’s House of Tentacles – my UPSUN in universe porn novel. I’d forgotten how sweet and funny it is, also how much poor Slider gets misgendered. Worked on The Best Roommate in the World – it’s now 2200 words long, if you can believe it. Poor Jesse, trying to move when he’s still recovering from the last stupid thing a sixer did to get him nearly killed.

Why do I feel like I got nothing done yesterday

I actually did, but when I go back to talk about it, it’s just an ordinary day.

I made art! I practiced my instruments! I worked on a long poem! I wrote 200 words on The Best Roommate in the World! I mailed letters and put some art in envelopes to friends!

I also paid zero attention to my diet and didn’t take a nap. I found out that the hair that’s disappeared out of my pony tail is all from one side, so I’m going to put up two pony tails to try to stop the abrasion on one side. I thought I was losing hair, but this is something else.