Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
I am liking this show SO MUCH AND WE ONLY HAVE ONE EP LEFT wail
Did you know coyotes and badgers have been known to hunt together? There’s video on the internet that looks like the first shot of a movie. Further pics.
Source, Nana Akua, photographing her grandmother’s work. Shown are 24 brightly coloured embroidered balls in a variety of mostly geometric patterns, showing tremendous skill and design subtlety
That balloon we’ve been talking about; it’s gone up. NC2019 is forcing the admissions of 100 people per day in Wuhan and it’s appeared in Singapore and Thailand. Just learned this from Helen Branswell from an article from China that hasn’t been translated into English yet.
I have piteously complained on social media to my much travelled and jet lagged cousin Lexi that her talking about having too much soap has reminded me that I’m out of bar soap. (Jeff will confirm that I tried to buy bar soap on Thursday but it all smelled terrible so I passed.) She will be coming by today to DELIVER SOAP TO THE UNCLEAN how very er enlightened and generous, yeah, thass right.
I made rice & cabbage & peas with chicken in the Instant Post, and it stuck again, but the brown bits on the bottom taste amazing so I’m not sad. Had it for breakfast.
The fires in Australia are killing people, and the death rate from breathing problems will skyrocket over the next few months, I imagine. Have your grab and go back ready! Mother Nature isn’t fucking about.
Absolutely no writing, but I’m plugging away at JS Grewal’s the Sikhs of the Punjab.
Watched Avengers Endgame. I found it quite enjoyable compared to most of the superhero movies out there, a good exit from the franchise(s) for Scarlet and Robert.
Jeff is enjoying the performance of Ned Dennehy as Paddy in Glitch on Netflix. Apparently when he was cast, the director was ‘looking for the best looking actor in Ireland and Colin Farrell wasn’t available’. One can characterize Mr. Dennehy as many things, but good looking in the standard issue way is not one of them. LOL
Also he was Hastur in Good Omens; he was fricking fantastic. His screaming is really epic.
Walked to Timmy Ho’s yesterday with Jeff; I’m well in train for getting 150 minutes of walking in, and when I’m walking Alex to school I’ll be getting a minimum of 300 minutes a week in with a school aged child in tow so I imagine I’ll instantly be in shape for that.
Anyway, I think I’ll head off to Timmy Ho’s again; I really enjoyed that coffee yesterday and what can I say, I’d enjoy the walk before it gets so hot we melt.
This morning, I had the longest facebook messenger convo of my life and it was, with little exaggeration and without getting into personal details, a life saver.
Technology really can overcome distance and give you meaningful connections with people far away.
Reach out to your friends, and you will get and give support in ways you can’t imagine.
We all need each other.
I am grateful and thankful for the love and support of my girlfriends.
Given that this is during a time of the month I usually have insomnia, let’s assume that working full time, putting a cat down, having bizarre and frightening neurological symptoms, living next door to a construction site since May and two personal issues (which I’ve discussed with my intimates but don’t belong on my blog) have contributed to a localized exhaustion.
I feel okay, my eyes are telling me I was very smart to sleep that long; my right eye is not all resentful.
I can hear Jeff playing with Buster in the kitchen. I should get up and take him to breakfast; him putting up with my vagaries the last little while deserves some kind of acknowledgement.
I have met somebody who wears her heart on her sleeve. I’d like her to tuck it away, but I don’t get to make that call.
She got stuck at the airport. She is in the sf/horror fan community, knows about 30 people in common with me and since it’s her story to tell, how she got stuck there, I will stay quiet. Katie let me borrow the car to unstick her, and now she’s either asleep or colouring mandalas. A few of the designs are straight up eyepopping.
Got Keith’s Christmas present to me set up – I regifted the Instant Pot from Mike to Katie; I’ll get it back at Litha.
It never ceases to amaze me how much better my life has been because of the people I’ve managed to get close to. Sometimes I think coupling up is an extended magical joke of some kind. Now I’m old and I want completely different things from partners; less excitement and more being there.
I talked to Katie last night and after I got home and started tidying up a bit I was standing at the sink and I just started crying because despite everything, all the stupid anger I’ve been holding onto, she gets me. And so does Keith and so does Paul. I’m glad they didn’t see me crying. They would have been upset on my behalf, and I’m feeling better than I have in ages.
Now I’m going to check if our houseguest is up and start singing like a chicken if she is because I can get away with that, and Jeff’s not ‘hear’ to plead for the sanctity of his eardrums. He’s supposed to be back today; hope the 5 to 10 cm of snow we’re getting (Erie PA got 6 inches of lake effect snow yestreen, how droll) doesn’t hurt his chances of getting back here safe from Victoria.
I salted all the walkways, I’ll salt the driveway before the predicted snow flies too hard. I put so much salt on the back deck that I can now hear it creaking as the compressed snow/ice starts to let go its grip.
Jeff calls the new Hulu show “Burn Tarot” and expects Jeffrey Donovan to be doing voiceovers “When you’re a psychic,” and you laugh so hard you pull a rib.
Some irritated person threatens to call the Site Leader (basically GOD ON CALL) when you warn them that work requests will be slow tonight because you’re at 50% staffing and your response is OH WOULD YOU PLEASE we’ll need her help sorting through all the work requests that were in the system AHEAD OF YOURS. That was 3/4 of an hour ago. Yeah, you guessed it, no call. Just as an aside I actually paged the Site Leader yesterday and she didn’t answer, so make of that what you will. She probably pulled an Allegra and when she didn’t recognize the number didn’t pick up lollllol.
People who work nights and complain about the workload and do a shitty job and sleep in the ER until 5 am when they wake up and pretend to do more work are on the receiving end of one of your pointier emails.
I have 64 likes on my Supernatural fic and 4 kudos and I’m thinking I KNOW SOMEBODY LIKES MY WRITING and Jeff says my interest in slash fanfic for a show I don’t watch equals zero, interest in MMCo = 100% and you just think squee.
You’ve invented a fanfic universe in which you have a McGuffin to make any character pairing possible (with a lot of effort, but possible).
Your daughter calls and tells you she got a job, a good job, in a union environment, close to home and you’re dancing around like an idjit.
You think ‘I’m actually going to miss this job’. I mean, I quit a month ago and I’m still working here, it’s insane. And some of the people are so much fun, I come in early just so I can interact with them. Others, well, you know how it is.
I’ve almost paid off my credit card debt and I did it with money I earned.
You forget to tell your mother that you received and deposited the cheque she sent you… a month ago.
You watch the Wrong Box again.
I’m putting it in my pile of movies to watch when I’m feeling icky. Because watching it put a bounce in my step. Figuring out that John Larroquette based his performance in the Librarians in part on Ralph Richardson’s tremendous turn as Joseph Finsbury; (so many classic lines among which ‘the playing of games, with balls of varying sizes’ never fails to crack me up), marvelling at Peter Sellers’ false nose and moggy filled apartment (at one point he mops up an ink blot with a kitten’s ass); drooling over the set dec and costumes, which are lovely, and the script (done in part by Larry Gelbart whom you may also know as one of the creators of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and M*A*S*H the tv show, also family faves), the hilarious and stylish music, with a score by John Barry, also a fave of mine (his theme for the Persuaders was one of the highlights for me on tv when I was a teen); John Mills’ voice; the ridiculous train derailment; Tutte Lemkow, the professional villain, and his entirely mute performance as the knitting mad Bournemouth Strangler. Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, and would like a film that amuses without cloying, it’s really, really good.
So yeah… all in all I’m having a good week, and writing 15k words in 4 days was… interesting. Graphomania is a helluva drug. I was literally pacing when I wanted to write and couldn’t, and that’s PSYCHOMOTOR AGITATION folks. Perhaps the sun is coming back and making me twitterpated.
I AM NO QUIT I AM EXTEND SON
I’ll be working until the end of January. The woman I was hired to temporarily replace for medical reasons and to be a casual is now not working for the company, reason unknown. My reasons for not wanting to be there are still in place but I’m getting paid and I don’t have to work weekend days so I don’t care. Steady middies for me!
It’s amusing that I’m awake now. The world is white and quiet with snow, and if I was working tonight my shift would be about to start…. I just woke up.
I could use the money, although I’d forgotten the extent to which commuting in the wintertime is such a fricking drag in this burg.
Getting to and from work the last week has chewed through a bus station mop. But… it only took an hour to get home yesterday.
My characters are sad and so am I. It’s the pathetic fallacy folks.
Also one of them is quitting drinking and I’m walking alongside him for portions of that, which I loathe.
Although I did think of THE MOST DISGUSTING SIXER RELATED GAG I mean I burst out laughing when poor Jeff was trying to watch the Dallas/Tampa game, which was ugly and beautiful and what the hell’s going on with the zebras, and mah God Dak Prescott, but I just had this vision of Sweetie, who is like 3 kilos, being the security guard for the whorehouse, and controlling a patron with the vilest impersonation of Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry one could possibly imagine, and I couldn’t stop laughing because the joke grows organically out of the situation and at this point we could all use a laugh,
because Trump sailed through the Electoral College, and the Republic, tottering after decades of hacking at the Constitution and weak from never dealing with racism and the Civil War, is in full kleptocratic collapse.
What to watch for over 4 years in the US:
Moar racism
Moar war
Higher infant and maternal death rates – this has actually been going on in slow motion over the decade I’ve been keeping track, it’s sickening…
More prison rioting (underreported) as the food in prisons gets worse and worse under Trump’s prison owning buddies
Higher violent death rates, across the board, all kinds – vehicles (road rage), guns, knives, stranglings.
More alcoholism and alcohol related death
More needle drug abuse and higher rates of AIDS HIV infection. More people dying of ODs, pills and otherwise.
Zika running wild in South Florida and the gulf coast and women being forced to carry the fetus to term with no health insurance for a lifetime of need thanks to Republican state legislatures
Hundreds more deaths each year from white people carrying guns, being scared of black people and shooting grandmothers and toddlers but mostly teenage boys who are existing while black
Muslims being burned alive in their mosques. Hasn’t happened yet but it’s going to happen and more than once.
Tripling of deaths in custody. (The statisticians just learned that the number of people who’ve died in custody in the US in the last five years is ACTUALLY DOUBLE what they thought because there’s no reporting mechanism and now the cop unions are trying to prevent any oversight of this statistic at all…)
Diaspora people – Jewish, black and Muslim – who have family and opportunities in Canada, moving here, although they’ll probably need a couple of years of Trump to realize it’s time to get out of town.
Tourism tanks across the US and Trumpites CELEBRATE America for Americans.
Confederates bringing automatic weapons to Pride Days and killing grandmothers and toddlers along with some queers.
Open war on First Nations Land; mass incarcerations and arrests, and Trump’s buddies making money on it.
More legal weed.
Secession talk from more than California.
The Left NEVER calling him President Trump. Just Trump. Or Cheetolini.
Patton Oswalt falling in love again and remarrying. Because honestly, that man deserves happiness.
Sad family note. Young cousin got a bad (not what he specifically and carefully asked for) haircut… but we have a hairdresser in the family and our relations did not have to have that experience. I wish it were otherwise but how often does adult convenience drive the nightmares of small children. I speak from sad and memorable experience here, thinking about Katie and the earring back. I still cry when I think about that, tho’ Katie has long since forgiven me.
A friend asked me what my Christmas Day plans were and I said “Reheating takeout and watching Die Hard with my brother” and now we’re eating at Hal and Cassidy’s, go team!
At some point Jeff and I have to leave the house for supplies, but the urban slushy streets are too disgusting….
I just checked my calendar and my last day is the 23rd; I’ll go in on the 22nd and emerge at dawn into the last two days of schlepping before baby Jesus pops out of the creche and we get 2.5 more months of winter. Good thing I don’t have to buy a damned thing. My dad wants a home cooked meal, my mOm wants me to finish my books and print them, my kids are getting clothes, Jeff’s getting either nothing or something to do with Antarctica, Paul’s getting biscotti and so’s pretty much everyone else. Hm perhaps I should locate blackberry jelly. That rarely goes amiss across the pond.
There are definitely parts of this job I enjoyed. I like nights. Most of the housekeeping staff and managers on nights are civilized and hardworking individuals. The ones who aren’t, well, I’m not going to talk about them. The good ones, I’ll miss of course.
Paul because he is AWESOME drove me to work tonight, for no reason, just because he could. And in so doing improved my mood out of all proportion to the gesture. (Jeff was asleep long since, or he would have been happy to.)
Jeff is BEING SUPERBRO. I am very happy to be living with him right now. Of course when I feel like this (all d’awwwww!) I end up cooking, and what is wrong with that? I’m going to make dough. Only cinnamon rolls can express my feelings at the moment. Maybe schnitzel? Maybe we should do a shop, although the roads in this part of the work still suck. But cinnamon rolls are an important good.
I have learned that I need to wear my orthotics indoors, so I’m going to get house shoes and transfer my orthotics into them when I’m inside. They will never so much as set foot outside the house.
We need to put more dirt down on the front steps, they are unbelievably slippery.
1000 words tonight. I’m at about 31K words on the new Jesse book. Jeff’s helping with assembling MMCo for publication!! so exciting. Course all I wanna do is write. The rest of all that stuff is superbly snoreworthy, at least to a lazy bum like I.
I got 8 and a half hours of sleep today; woke up to Jeff saying it’s good you’re awake Paul and Keith are taking you to dinner! so I rolled out of bed and we went to the Union Jack and had Stuffed Yorkies. I did have a raspberry mojito, but they were on special, and after I had a Shirley Temple, which is different from place to place and the current reigning champeen is served at Brown’s.
Starting to get a routine; come home, stay away until about 9:30 catching up with Jeff and watching PVR stuff, then to bed in two shifts – or one, like today. Up no later than 10, take my vitamins brush my teeth, fix my lunch and out the door I go. Catch the bus at 10:30 and stroll into work right on time. Coming home the buses hook up so well I’m home in literally half an hour.
I drink tea at night. I’m not drinking coffee unless I’m on days. I’ve pretty much had to stop drinking beer since starting to work full time so you can just imagine how in-trim my liver’s going to be by Friday, when Mike’s taking me to a gastropub for dinner.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be going to Keith and Paul’s for breakfast and to pick up my glasses which (fingers crossed) Keith will have been able to fix.
Then home for sleepiebyes and one more shift for the week and then it all starts over again on Sunday at 11 pm.
I have to work 4 day shifts at the beginning of December and days in this job are proof that god hates you so yuck, but it’s all money and there are supervisors to consult when things **** up, so yay.
I got almost FIFTY BIRTHDAY WISHES on facebook and five private email wishes for birthday joy, so don’t let anybody tell you I have no friends, which would include me saying it.
My day card was Justice; my ‘year ahead’ tarot reading was wonderful and involves shitpiles of work, coordination and consolidation.
YES I am still writing, but my regular part time hours will be less of a kick in the goolies, and that won’t happen until well after the beginning of December, so I guess my deadline of December 12 is now officially toast. I do understand a) how I’m going to finish it and b) that it is probably going to be at least 15K words shorter than I was expecting, but I won’t really know until it’s done.
Miss Margot bit and clawed the living shit out of me last night as I was petting her.
My description of her behaviour made Nancy LF. on Facebook advise me to check into this ailment. Jeff and I have noted many times that Margot is not neurotypical. We didn’t think much of it, bu she’s shown every symptom to me except one.
I think whatever is wrong with her is not being helped by Buster’s continual bullying/play requests; she’s definitely stressed.
Diagnosis will be expensive, but she’s obviously unhappy, and something’s gotta shift.
Jeff and I hosted Paul’s birthday last night. I got tired and went to bed at nine (folks came by at two, which is fine, because the Alex was one of them.) Also that might have something to do with the fact I was up at 2 am YESterday too.
Watching Paul with Alex. Alex pretends to feed him chili, Paul pretends to eat it, the two of them laugh like drains. This went on for about ten minutes. I got one decent pic, which mOm already has. He’s laughing so hard his face is almost blurry.
Alex refers to himself as Ack. This is charming. He is now speaking in perfectly intelligible sentences of two or three or four or even five words. Then the next thing he says is gibberish, right about the time you were thinking of boasting.
Nita, Keith, Alex, Katie, Peggy and Tom, Mike and Cassidy and Rob Warner all came by. Plus Cassidy gave preserves to Paul which he will enjoy mightily. Her southern rellies put magic in that woman’s kitchen….NOM.
Alex on his belly watching Jeff fix the deck with a screwdriver, and calling him Unca Jeff quite clearly. Playing with the hose and running all over the yard. Playing with the posture ball.
He was so busy he never even got to play on the pinballs!
Extra special hugs to cousin Lindsay for singing happy birthday to her uncle! That was very cheering.
Happy people eating chili. I made vegan chili and I’m glad, I tell you.
Much very good beer including Dageraad.
Heart full of gratitude, mind full of I HAZ NOT ENOUGH SLEEP.
Thus the pause today on the writing. Back tomorrow, have no fear.
Keith came over last night, in a rather unhappy state. His unhappiness made me cry – I cry at the most ludicrous things these days, but I’m not inclined to feel shame about it – and I stuck to the issue, which was his state, not mine.
We reviewed his life situation for stressors. My very flat recital of them at one point made Keith laugh, which he hadn’t done since he arrived, and concluded with, “And if I know you, not a day goes by when you don’t think, “Is today the day I’m going to lose it?” And then he laughed loud and long and said, “Got it in one.”
His feelings are real and justified against his situation. They are not to be mocked or bulldozed over. I listened more than I talked. I provided advice, but after 10 minutes of mom time, one beer and the first hour of The Right Stuff he was much more regulated when he left.
I told him that he should think about going back to school. He said, “I could teach.”
I was amazed. He actually could, he explained it. I told him to apply ASAP. And to think about school in January. He said, “There’s no money,” and I said, “Commit to a course of action and the means will appear.” Of course that means elders conferring regarding the means, but hey. If people hadn’t helped me out financially for no good reason at certain points during my life I wouldn’t be in the pleasant position of getting to worry about my kids.
When he was born a friend paid for a full astrological natal chart. The results: He is an old soul. He’ll either be a great teacher or a petty criminal, specifically a drug dealer.
Since this was the first time anybody in the woowoo divination game had said anything negative in my experience, it kinda stuck with me. I mean who predicts that your kid will be a drug dealer? Given Keith’s abstemious and cautious nature, it’s probably one of the funniest arrows ventured at the future I’ve ever heard of.
Just in case you’re planning on being interrogated.
Rewatch of Burn Notice (god, I love that show) and ER (it’s a challenging show and I love it too). Thinking about a Homicide rewatch.
Anybody who can see the throughline between Burn Notice and what I’m currently writing …. yeah, it’s there. The supercompetent guy who’s so rarely at a loss. Also I’m rereading Niccolo. Some cross-contamination is inevitable.
Jeff took me to brekky, and after many hints I made banana bread yesterday, and did some laundry and practiced mandolin, and talked to Keith on the phone, and wrote 2000 words in two lots, first thing and around 3 pm.
Today I need to go for a walk quite desperately. If I don’t hear from Paul I’ll probably take a trek over to David’s Market.
Thinking about chicken schnitzel later. It’s cooled off so much that I’m thinking of more cooking and baking. The summer fell off a Labour Day cliff by the feel of things.
