Category: Domestic Life

Sundry and various

Got a package ready for ex MIL Phyllis so she’ll finally have pictures of her new great grandbaby.  Didn’t manage to get it into the mail, that’s for today.

3.9 hours on the cpap, in two stretches.

Jeff texted me to remind me about the garbage and if you can believe it I was already done!  I have brushed up my toes.

Went to see the gals who gave us Autumn, who transmoggified into Buster, and gave them all the contact deets so they can come and see him anytime. Rode over there on my bike to feed Ayesha and on the way back and JUST MISSED the vet’s office so I couldn’t pick up kitty malt for Margot, who seems to have quite a hairball to deal with.  She’s quite clingy and for the first time in about four years spent the night with me on my bed. Buster tried to scare her off but she wasn’t having any.  While I was riding (in the pouring rain, meh) a four year girl chided me for not wearing a helmet.  Everyone’s a critic.

Paul seems to be in the best mood you can imagine possible, which probably has something to do with retiring.  Yup, he put in his paperwork and joy was exceeding unrefined-like. They gave him money to buy his own goodbye eats with and he said POSITIVELY NO DONUTS and fed everybody about $150 of healthy food, which he says his soon to be former coworkers fell on like piranhas.  Nope, not even a deli tray – all healthy stuff.

He is currently in Seattle and he’s promised to bring me home some craft beer.

Watched one of the Bourne movies last night and noodled along to the music trying to deconstruct how you make a tense soundtrack.  I don’t normally write in modulations but soundtracks are full of them.  I will have to think on this thing.  It’s definitely a skill.

Did not go to church.  Sue was rehearsing in north Van and I just could not get my ass out the door.  But I did go cycling later, so I’ve got that going for me.

I practiced mandolin quite a bit yesterday. I did not do any writing or editing.

Ayesha

After church today I’ll be visiting Planet Bachelor to feed Ayesha.

1.9 on the cpap last night.

Helped Sue with a recording yesterday, practiced my mandolin long enough to get sore, and discovered I’ve lost my admin password for my mac.  I have a hint, but I cannot put it in exactly so I’m a little choked.

Sleeping with my door open was a rather noisy experience.  Buster is opening cupboards again.

Not writing, but editing.  Work is progressing.

the disappointment

Only half an hour on the cpap last night.  I could not get comfortable, as I was congested.

Today I learned of the purported existence of a Randy Quaid sex tape, with his wife (of course) and Rupert Murdoch purportedly watching.  I know the disgust response must be controlled, but in this case my homunculus just about launched last night’s spaghetti into orbit.

I am waiting to hear back from the interview with patience.

I light a candle for people I love who are going through a super hard time right now.  Work especially is very hard and causing anxiety and sleep loss.  I know those feels and hope a swift resolution of outstanding problems happens to their satisfaction.

Still pluggin’ away on the novel.  Most recent George quote, “Of course I love human culture! Not all of it equally.”

Paul and I keep booking appointments for blood donation and having to bail… hopefully we’ll get this sorted out.  Keith already donated this month.

This news may be of interest to certain among my readers.  Health of kidneys.

I am going to see if I have the energy to make Belgian waffles for breakfast.

Why you shouldn’t buy a Hummer

It just seems like the end of civilization to me.

2.2 hours.

Civilian tilt rotor aircraft?  All I can think of is the maintenance.

Keith came by yesterday and pumped up my tires and did a pre flight check on my bicycle.  I am now ready to do a shop via bicycle.

I’ve gotten back into practicing every day, which means that every once in a while I fondle my callouses.  We’ve booked another musical evening at Paul’s for the 17th of April. SO looking forward to it.  Sue and Brian can’t come (already got some answers back, waa.)

Crappy maintenance and poor planning on the part of SFU crash the hopes of single women trying to get a career together.

They put filk music in quotes and rilly rilly pissed me off. A lot about this article is if not wrong, then wrongheaded.

Buster’s toy

There was a baby mouse running around the house.  The plan was to let Buster catch it and then remove it, and that’s what we did, but Buster was not amused at the loss of his most interesting and nice smelling toy.

Keith came over to watch the last episode of Ken Burns’ The Civil War and to assist me with giving my bike a once over now that it appears to be spring with very few hints it’s going to go much below freezing over night.  My bike now has full tires and a cleaned and lubricated chain, and the tail light works and I need to get a proper headlamp.

I’m off to the dentist tomorrow to get a chipped tooth looked at.

Sandy’s back from Halifax, and this time she did not have the complete devastation of her water system as a welcome home surprise.

short night

1.8 hours.

 

The appropriate use of force doesn’t seem to get taught in the clown colleges graduating police these days.

Waiting and hoping for a call for an interview.  There hasn’t been anything to apply for in the last little while.

Life goes on regardless….

 

We shall overcome

  • Singing that in church on the 50th anniversary of Selma.  I cried, it was really hard not to.  The minister preached an excellent sermon, and owned from the pulpit our shame and Canada’s in the treatment of the First Nations specifically with reference to the residential schools.  The part Unitarians played in Selma was retold.  In the future, they will ask, were you there, and I will have to answer.
  • 1.8 hours on the cpap.  Feel very crusty this morning. I had strange dreams.
  • The Rogue Folk Club is under attack.  They want to redevelop Saint James complex (the United Church of Canada local diocese) and given where it’s located, half a block from one of the priciest stretches of real estate in one of Canada’s priciest cities, I hardly think bake sales and fundraising will help.  Honestly I’m glad John didn’t live to see it.
  • March 14 there’s a demo against C51.
  • March 11 THEOLOGY PUB.  Rob and I are going again but the steak I felt comfy enough to treat him to is not happening again so he’s coming here first for sour owl jowls and then we’ll have soft drinks at the pub. He encouraged me to download Sketchup and it doesn’t fucking work with my Mac OS version so I am really irritated.  I’ll see if I can put it on the other machine. My irritation is softened by our amusing convo yesterday morning.  Me: Hey Rob, missed you in church last week, are you coming? Him: (sleepily) I was planning a leisurely shower and hop on the bus. Me, looking at the clock downstairs at church: Uh, it’s quarter after 10, hon. Him: I set my clock backward instead of forward.  Me: Showing up in time for coffee is a fine Unitarian tradition. Him: Skipping shower…. inbound!
  • Workshops are how to grow a church, who knew.  This is an in joke.
  • My landpeers are not raising our rent – for the second year running.  It’s like a March Miracle.  This is officially the most reasonably priced detached rental in east Burnaby.
  • I got Reddit gold.  If you don’t know what that is, good, and if you do know, ask me for my reddit username so you can bask in the glory that is my helpful commentary to the angry and sad.
  • My pOp played an extremely hilarious practical joke on me and Jeff, and to preserve the dignity of the everyone involved, I am not talking about it on the internet.  I did however light a candle for it in church and it must have sounded funny to the congregation, because they laughed most heartily.
  • I sent off another thousand words to mOm yesterday and as usual she is agitating for more.  It felt so good to have something to send… that chunk is only half way done.
  • The sun and warmth has been glorious.
  • Jeff and I tag teamed to move the fridge, clean under, beside and behind it, remove the MAT of dust on the fan intake, and once I clean the interior the fridge will be cleaner than at any point since we moved in.  I’m thinking of tackling Jeff to help with the kitchen “cupboards must be examined for stale dated contents” clean.
  • I have to call the city of Burnaby today and ask them where the food scraps container we are supposed to get is.
  • The purple and green screeching iridescent ribbons have gone from my fabric stash to church.  I have spent much time thinking what I should do with them, but finding out that the RE kids are doing a Maypole this year means that I never have to look at them and be sad again.
  • I enjoyed my sewing machine so much the last time I’m going to haul it out again.
  • But probably not before I clear off the living room table, which will probably take a couple of hours.
  • Keith is going to come over in the next couple of days and help me get my bicycle in riding condition.
  • I have an appointment with the bone health doc for the end of April. The MOA who called with the appointment info was a truly delightful person and though the call was brief it left me feeling really good.

moar sun

1.5 hours on the cpap.  Yesterday Paul and I ate lunch on his front deck – I had having a most severe craving for European style weiners (for about the last month) and he providentially had some.  Jeff and I don’t buy any kind of weiners at all these days since they are basically a commercialized form of waste. Paul and I left the beer in the fridge and drank mineral water instead.  Paul wasn’t quite feeling up to giving blood, so I’ll book into the next clinic in New West next week.

Day before yesterday we had a blanket on our laps like old folks on the ship deck, and yesterday it was so warm and pleasant we didn’t have to.  Oakalla was so nice Paul took his shirt off (he has long since lost the power to embarrass me) and I contributed to the Caucasoid Hairiness Factor with my legs.  We looked for frogs and didn’t find any, and I identified a Towhee for passing strangers.  We didn’t see any other interesting birds, but we heard the m-e-e-e-e—–p bird in the bushes.  It makes a sound of plaintive disgust, sort of “I am sad and irritated and not energetic enough to make more than this soft little noise” – and I sure wish I knew what it was.  It was definitely warm enough for snakes to come out and Paul was pretty sure he saw one.  The last snake I saw that wasn’t a pet was a baby that Robof9 and Patricia and I saw on the stairs at the old Xantrex building up the hill.  Anyway it was a glorious walk and exactly the right length.

I have unlocked the achievement of getting an appointment for the specialist, and it’s in April, barely.  With not driving a standard so much (I’ve only driven Jeff’s car twice since I figured out what was wrong), and changing my gait just a wee tad, and putting a support pillow in the right place when I’m sleeping, and never, ever running, I can say I feel much better.  I also completely stopped taking any painkillers for most of the last week to see where I was, and I am pleased to say that I’m managing okay in the mornings.

I think what is happening is the cpap is actually getting me oxygenated enough at night that I can heal.  I do feel better.  The only thing that’s worse is my eyes, and I’m going to drill down a bit on that problem next.  I’ve had dry eyes since I was in my 20s but I’m thinking a humidifier in the drier months of the year, maybe one of the personal jobbies for my room, might be a good idea.

Jeff was supposed to go to the fOlks’ but he is going to be very busy with an unanticipated technical challenge.

No Alex yesterday!  How fast we get into habits.  Hopefully I’ll see him sometime this weekend.

 

Sure hope I get a job soon

  • Got mah hurr did yesterday.  Tried not to stink up the joint too bad, Jeff says I did well – Garnier Nombre 60 ftw.
  • Got out the new sewing machine (it’s been two months) and repaired a dress and made a blankee for Alex when he comes over here out of the fabric mOm gave me. THE NEEDLE THREADER IS MADE OF WIN. And I put it away afterward.  So happy.
  • Off to see the financial advisor today … backspaced over the rest of my comments.  Privacy yall.
  • X Company is a really good show – there will be eight episodes in all, but it’s nice to have a show about the only spy camp in Canada in WWII.
  • 1.2 night before last and 2.1 last night on the cpap.  I will keep trying – it’s obviously worth it at this point as I feel much better in the morning when I do manage to keep it on my head.
  • Somebody used the word pillock on facebook today.  It does apply quite nicely to the person it was applied to, so that all worked out.
  • I have an urge to work on a side project right now, so I think I will.

Now that’s what I call a tiger mom!

Pity she sends her daughter to a Catholic school.

2.6 hours on the cpap last night.  Guess it’s ‘trending’ in the right direction.

Walked 2 k yesterday in the rain.  I was quite sore when I got home and walked up the last hill like an arthritic corncrake, but at least I got out of the house.

Also applied for a job.

Not much to report

Went for a short walk and fed Paul lunch yesterday.  Paul’s in good shape and told me a couple of hilarious (non-safety related) stories about his work.  I used to post them, but now I know that lawyers lurk everywhere.

I have a project to complete for church today and then hopefully I can head off to Victoria with a clear conscience and the ability to actually walk through the terminals.  Going up stairs for some reason is easier than coming down.

Unless of course Jeff wants to go first, in which case I’ll stay back and monitor cats.  I’ve already let Buster out, he was wild to leave the house.  He caught a mousie yesterday, which is now living in Jeff’s room in a box (Buster is generally kept out of our rooms as we’re not entirely sure he’s gotten out of the habit of pissing on things he wants to mark.  I can no longer put laundry in the bathroom as he soddenated one of my favourite dresses.)llllllllllllllllllL0 ,555555555555555555555555555555555

\’]2333ll  <—————Buster jumping up to greet me and mashing my keyboard.

Miss Margot is still good for a handful of fur every single day, and she’s getting increasingly cheesed with me and if I make eye contact with her for more than half a second she lollops off under the dining room table and hides.  However she cannot resist the table top as a sleeping / puking spot (dollar sized circles of grit, no hair), so I pick her up while she’s unconscious and for the first thirty seconds she’s too sleepy to put up much of a fight.  Don’t worry, those velvety paws turn into razor shanks when she’s so inclined.  Jeff pointed out that she’s sharpened her claws up and down the eastern side of his bed frame, heavy sigh.  Buster, if allowed in to his room, tips stuff off his desk and takes over his chair.

Many songs

So I have written down four additional songs, and I’m working on a blues tune called Don’t you Weep, which is a pisser because no matter how I try I cannot figure out how to render it; it’s played in E but that results in so many accidentals that the mss looks like birds crapped on it.  However, on playback it is sounding really good, and I’m having very little trouble with the tempo.  I now have to readjust everything because I forgot a verse but fortuitously I remembered the last time I had a song this difficult and I’m not putting in the lyrics until the very end, because if you cut and paste in Finale AFTER you’ve put in lyrics they follow around the pasted part and you have to completely redo everything because the lyrics and notes are tied together.  This results in very bad swearz.

I thought I heard Jeff up too and there’s a light under his door.  We’re not sleeping good.  Tonight and last night I used the Cpap for at least four hours.  I like it and then bam I can’t stand having something on my face and literally sit bolt upright and claw it off.  Blergh.

Katie and I went for a shop yesterday – she needed to do a HUGE shop to get as much food into the house after the rent got paid, and I needed a medium sized one.  And, I put gas in the car for what is probably the second time since I sold Ziva.  Anyway I left a bag of groceries at her place and Dax delivered it, which is good since I get crabby without cream for my coffee.  I bought Alex a teething blanky – he’s a chewy little boy.

There continues to be a wave front of disturbances in the Force regarding childrearing techniques.  Jesus fucking Christ people, Katie was raised in the benign neglect corner of the attachment parenting spectrum.  It goes like this: If the parents love each other and the children, feed -starting with breastfeeding- and clothe and house and vaccinate the children, align the children within their families with those who are most like them and like them most, and refuse to injure them with genital mutilation, hey, job done.  We didn’t allow babies to ‘cry it out’ because that means ‘HEY KID YOU CAN BE BLOWING A FUSE AND IN PAIN AND NOBODY GIVES A SHIT’ which means ‘WHY DON’T YOU GROW UP TO BE AN ADULT WHO NEVER COMPLAINS ABOUT WORK CONDITIONS OR HORRIBLE RELATIONSHIPS.’  And you may anyway, but that’s not the way we planned it.

Now Katie is trying to draw a line in the sand with incommonlaws about this, and I burst into tears while driving hearing about it because of my benign neglect attachment style and all of my Dredded Feelz.  Alex is an infant child; if he’s so active he leaves bruises on his caregivers that’s just the way he is; I had no idea my grandchild was going to be a little hairless mountain gorilla, but since he is in most respects normal I’m not worried about it.  I don’t worry because he doesn’t want to cuddle with me now; he will when he’s two, or ten, or NEVER and it’s for me to give him what he needs now and not get all judgy on his mom about how she’s not letting him cry it out.  He doesn’t like to be still.  If I hold him I stand and either walk or rock, and the second he gets yippy I hand him back.  It’s not a point of pride to me to get him to BEND TO MY FUCKING WILL; it’s a point of pride to expect his mother to know what the hell she is doing with her own gorram kid. Thus endeth the rant.

Now I am going to finish my coffee (paradoxically, it will help me go back to sleep) and play another Bejewelled game (I have now opened all the games and am waiting to collect about four more badges) and maybe even finish that damn song, and maybe even try to put the mask back on.  Sigh.

Today’s sermon is about disability.  I am not missing this.  I’m doing coffee next week, I just checked the list. Thank god it’s a google shared document now, siphoning my way through emails sucks.

 

The sickening feeling

It turns out that I did NOT move all my previously rendered-in-Songwriter songs over to google drive.  There are a whole bunch missing.  Part of me is really sad; another part is “Now I’ll do them properly” since there were a LOT of things I did not understand about music notation then which I do now.

CPAP wasn’t on for very long at all.  Eyes were not too dry this morning.  I am beginning to understand why many people lose weight when they go on the CPAP.

So I did some writing yesterday, but it was completely flabby, so I am going to prune my verbs and adverbs and see if I can’t do a stirring  -over the top folks! speech.

Whole wheat chocolate chip pancakes for brekky.

Once upon a time there was a woman whose oldest daughter lied and cheated and stole. They were estranged for a decade. The woman lost touch with her grandchild.

The oldest daughter started contacting her.  You can see this coming, and even so, you can’t look away.  She wanted a rapprochement.

No, not really.  She wanted her mother to move across six states, bankrupt herself paying off daughter’s utility bills, put her name on the apartment they all moved into, and then fend for herself when daughter abruptly moved out and married her current boyfriend.  No word of thanks, no invite to the wedding.  Not even a goodbye.  All the woman’s friends said it would happen.  She cheerfully acknowledged it. And she left behind three other grandchildren and her church home for this ninety and nine procedure.

So, under the fundraising title “There’s no fool like the queen of the fools” she’s asking for 2000 bucks to go the fuck home, and although I’ve turned down every one of these appeals for months now I gave her twenty dollars.  And if you really know me, you’ll know why.