Category: Domestic Life

scattered

Feeling very disconnected and scattered, not that it’s stopping me from writing. 285 words so far today, 386 yesterday.

Apple pie and coffee is what I had for breakfast. Forty years ago the father of a friend of Peggy’s said PLANT JONATHAN APPLES and he did, and this year the crop was three hunnert pounds and I ATE APPLE PIE because Peggy. Plant a tree, it’s a beautiful thing, plant a fruit tree, feed my greedy face!!

The family meal was beef stew and garlic bread and apple pie à la mode. Keith donned his new apron and flew around the kitchen on wings. I left the Echo there along with the key for Ruth and John and came home in a cab, everyone was conversating and I didn’t want to break things up.

I believe I have worked out the ending to TB after talking to my mother about it.

I am looking after Ryker on Wednesday afternoon so Suzanne can have an appointment.

 

The fannishness has been fanned

goodomensbutwrong posts today on tumblr, edited for typos and a word change

 

Aziraphale, excited to try out a new joke he heard: Crowley, what do you call a fish with no eye?

Crowley, not looking up: Myxine Circifrons

Aziraphale:

Aziraphale: …fsh

This is spot on for s2 and I found this very funny.

Coffee in hand. 450 words written. WHICH LATER TURNED INTO 2200 WORDS WHAT THE HELL BRAIN.

Subscriber, do you want the new words or do you just want Part II finished and Part III when it’s done?

Keith would like his embroidered apron, I am relieved.

KEITH embroidered in red on black

 

 

 

enshinening etc

one copy of the draft of Totally Boned off to a subscriber, yay.

Suzanne is here, I will have to pay her shortly before she departs

She tooke dovvn alle of coppewebs and foldit laundrie

Still having good feelings about my long talk with Keith yesterday as we were arranging things for his new place.

Saw Ryker briefly yesterday, my god he never stops

Suzanne says we should take the cat tree at Katie’s.

Two letters into my project to embroider Keith’s name onto an apron. It looks like it was engineered by a very delicate orangutan so far, so I’m hoping my plan to rescue it from looking utterly bush league and more ‘artsy’ works out …

Titty smash at hours ungodly tomorrow morning, by which I mean, I must attend at a mammography appointment.

 

 

 

bed desk achieved

Keith got his bed-desk from IKEA – we didn’t have to drive to the Richmond store, but they wouldn’t deliver to Richmond from the Coquitlam store. He fed me meatballs and salad there, which was kind. My only purchase was a rainbow IKEA bag because they’re great for laundry.

He borrowed half of the money for it on family terms (no interest, a time limit for repayment) and I gifted him the other half.

I bought an immense skein of embroidery threads and cannot find the sumbitch now, so I’m quite annoyed because I have an immediate project in mind.

(about two minutes later…. YARGSNARGLE WOOOO) FOUND IT exactly WHERE I LEFT IT which was SOMEPLACE I’D ALREADY LOOKED and it’s a good thing I labelled the box, eh?

THEN I COULD NOT FIND EMBROIDERY NEEDLES found them. THEN I COULD NOT FIND A NEEDLE THREADER. found it. BROKE THE NEEDLE THREADER. threw everything aside in disgust

I read a comment on the r/Guyana subreddit that justifies almost everything I’ve written about my Guyanese characters. I sent the comment to mOm this morning because it cheered me up no end. and I needed it given the embroidery sitch

If you want to read the 75K I’ve written so far in Totally Boned, let me know what font and type size you want it in and I’ll send it as a PDF. You can either beta read it (supply comments) or just read it, I don’t care. CONTENT WARNING. please be advised that while these appear in the novel they aren’t the point of the novel and in all cases personal autonomy is upheld as a non-negotiable value – Non-traditional homoromantic couple – child endangerment and child neglect – queer characters – absolutely unbearably bad family dynamics – sexual assault (in the past, never graphically described) – autistic and mentally ill characters – intersex character – sex-repulsed asexual character – gun violence, described – gun violence, not described – uncomfortable conversations about race and presentation – graphic vomiting and discussions of bodily functions – YOU KNOW, BASICALLY THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF MY HAPPY UPBRINGING – and about as much angst and humour as I can stuff into a story without it ripping ’round the seams.

Full disclosure – it’s at least 30K from the end; there’s a ‘happy for now’ ending in view but I ain’t wrote it yet. But it’s been fun so far!!! I’ve cried buckets over this one, so yes I am somewhat attached, snicker.

off to the showroom

Keith needs to buy some furniture to fit in his new room. We’ll go off to see that midmorning. He’s also setting up ‘the last family meal at the Manor’ for Sunday so I’m hoping Jeff will come.

Weather continues okay, pollen except mold is low.

Laundry done, now I need to put it away. har har

Ukraine has lost a lot of warriors in the offensive. Things are gonna snap.

Tanked all my Lumosity games this morning. I don’t mean to dip but using a trackpad instead of a mouse is kinda bogus and I should stop doing it.

Made more iced tea.

Had my leftover pad thai for breakfast. DAMN it was good. Jeff enjoyed his Mongolian stirfry so we’re putting that restaurant in the rotation. The soup (sort of like Tom Ka Kai but called Coconut soup) was so good I could feel my soul leave my body and then come whooshing back in with a big ass THANK YOU. I asked for Mild-Medium spicing and they NAILED IT so well.

Reviewing my to do list. Amazing how many items I’ve already crossed off.

360 words over today and yesterday.

Just found out that the only Guyanese person I follow on twitter… his dad was a chauffeur. And so is Blossom, so I’m thinking that is one strange echo.

phone calls etc

Long, heartcrunchin’ phone call with Tammy yesterday, so necessary and so fucking horrifying. Families can save or wreck us, that’s for sure. Candles up for her and her mother, and those poor great-niblings whose mother passed from the scourge of drug addiction.

Lovely convo with Dave. His apartment plumbing problems continue; I was about to write ‘his plumbing problems continue’ but virtually everyone who reads this blog would have misinterpreted that one so I had to fix it. Poor guy had to listen to me bloviate about TB, he would have been in his rights to quietly disconnect the call at that point. But I had THINGS TO SAY about writing a romance where there is utterly no sex at all and no prospect of any.

Jeff has returned. Buster ignored him for thirty whole seconds and then indicated that me he, and what a typo lol, might just be a lot happier now that he’s home.

Zibethicus the billionaire muskrat has announced that he may have to have surgery before his cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg, so he’s obviously whiffing already. What a fucking putz.

I am still not okay with the end of S2 Good Omens. I feel like someone has been cruel to me.

Still loving Twisted Metal though.

I’ve actually put some laundry away already. Now to finish in the kitchen and make myself some breakfast and try to pretend that I am a CONTENT CREATOR gordammit.

Useful site. well no not really but

 

 

 

gapped the demo

I must not have wanted to go all that much.

Still writing.

Have said farewell to Jeff, who has departed on his journey.

‘Regular’ fiction publishing continues to be a complete wasteland, wherein any profits to be recovered go to the richest people in the chain and the dregs go to the content creators. Better by far to maintain control of your creation and get nothing, in my view.

BEHOLD THE HORROR

Cover of a cookbook: The Microwave Fish Cookbook by Val Collins

Someone got this published, even though as far as workplaces and roommate situations go, its very existence is a violent crime.

My most popular bleat on Bluesky so far:

gentle reminder that every constraint applied to trans women is immediately and gleefully applied to cis women who don’t meet normative standards of appearance or dress. So all the hairy faced gals, all the bald gals, all the tall gals, all the gals with big hands or feet. Ain’t we all women

I’m about to write a really mushy affectionate scene for TB and it’s going to be amazing, I’ve been thinking about it for days.

*T&*^*( Buster just threw my laptop onto the floor.

He’s now wandering around the house and screaming for Jeff at the top of his lungs.

listography

First, some housekeeping for the site:

On Wednesday, August 2nd, our server admins will begin restarting some VPS servers as part of a maintenance to improve stability of your VPS service. This will cause minor disruptions to your site, which is expected to last for about 10-15 minutes on average.

The maintenance process is scheduled to begin at 7:30AM PST and is expected to last for approximately 8 hours.

Weather continues fine and not too hot. Osoyoos is under less pressure.

Feasted brO with chicken and ribs from Earls, got him croissants from Cobs, and encouraged Suzanne to bring him an Aero bar (she brought him a pack, reserving one for herself!) and then Suzanne came over to collect a garment and a ring she’d forgotten, and we had iced tea on the deck and a good old chinwag for her to decompress after caring for Ryker all day (he was an ambulatory demon who fights diaper changes with all of his considerable strength.)

Spare a thought for baby Ryker who has: lost a two day a week caregiver, has to move to four new locations because his dad’s moved out from his caregiver – his mom, with whom he is now apparently at daggers drawn. Suzanne will still be looking after him but she’s got scant days to get her apartment fit for a toddler and he’ll be moving into a one bedroom apartment after having a four bedroom to literally run around in.

Walked with Paul in Foreshore Park. His Parkinson’s symptoms are bad; one of the possible triggers is TCE (trichloroethylene) and of course over the course of his career fixing things he’s been exposed to enough of that stuff to hurt him especially as TCE is often stabilized with MEK, methyl ethyl ketone, both together being used as degreasers and both being godawful toxic substances.

He’s started the Aricept, and good God, is my heart torn. He’s not feeling a diminution of his dementia symptoms, but he is feeling insight, for the first time in months, into his disease, and it was all I could to stay present with him, and not feed my grief into the conversation, because he’s got enough of his own. I loved him so much – no one can ever know how I felt about him, especially after the kids arrived – and now I have to choke it down to be his friend. He is feeling disoriented and (after I gave him plenty of silence to compose his thoughts) he said he’s finding it harder and harder to follow conversations. His ready smile is gone. He’s still got a sense of humour and deploys it, 95% of the time with kind accuracy, but you really have to listen because his voice is starting to whisper and the Parkinsons makes his face a mask.

He walks around the seniors residence twice a day. He wishes he had a microwave so he could make himself breakfast, oatmeal is what he wants, but he faithfully turns up for their excellent meals. We’ll try to deal with it this week.

He ran a couple of errands by himself yesterday – I could have gone with him but I stayed in the car or ran other errands – successfully, and walked as much he could in the park. I was having a hard time because I can’t dawdle, I have to walk with purpose or everything hurts. And he’s slower than he’s ever been so I am less inclined to walk with him because I’m practically keeling over if I have to move that slow.

We saw a yard long valley garter snake, just shed its skin from the incredible glossy scales, sunning next to the bridge, paces from where I saw the vole. I also got to watch a heron scratching itself on the neck for TWENTY SECONDS. Much relaxation and feather shuffling afterwards  – that was viewed from the observation deck on the river. Paul got to see it too.

And he got lost and turned around on the way back. And he didn’t recognize me until I got within about five metres. It’s not a cruel disease process because diseases just are, in our DNA or in our response to our environment, but it impacts like torture for the sufferers. Fifteen minutes later he managed a bathroom visit and two errands by himself. I want him to be as independent as possible but Christ I worry.

This is a hundred million yo crab in amber.

100 million year old crab in amber, four different views

list

spoke to Dave, he seems in good spirits

helped with the 3 weekends running yard sale again yesterday, where I was told what I was expected (!?) to haul away from Paul’s old room, and where I found Paul’s soaring logbook since he was almost in tears at the idea of losing it (found it in seconds…Paul could describe but not *see* it) then went to Peggy’s, where in addition to being served my healthy whole wheat pasta and green salad lunch by Peggy’s preternaturally solemn granddaughter I heard (after she left) a piece of gossip so extremely

Comic book effect applied to a photo of allegra sloman, a middle aged white woman, showing extreme levels of astonishment and virtually all of her teeth

that I only wish I could share it with anyone who cared. We three sang bluegrass standards and filk of various denominations.

I am going to Orycon; we’ll drive; Cindy will be (inshallah) healing from her first carpal tunnel surgery so I may get to spell her more often than not which is fine because I fucking love that stretch of road as much as I love the stretch of the 401 between Cornwall and London…. There is a LOT of pentup demand for a con after a two year absence so I’m sure it will be a banger for all involved.

The con will be masked. Here are the deets.

a couple hundred words on TB

Osoyoos is about to burn down. In light of that how unfortunate is this?

 

orycon mebbe

Got an invite to ridealong with Cindy for Orycon. I am so goddamned tempted words don’t cover it. I’ll decide by the end of this month, when the rates go up again. It’s in Portland OR in November, so it would sort of be a 65th bday celebration. We’d be driving, I believe. It’s only five and half hours plus rest stops and the border.

I am very much thrilled to report that Keith has found a place to live that he can afford. It’s in Richmond, but I believe it’s above the flood line; at least it’s in a locale two metres higher than the Richmond average (1 m above sea level). I know bunches of stuff about the landlord/roommate but while I have mentioned him in past posts I will maintain a discreet-ish silence going forward.

Praying with all my atheistic inclusivity that Katie and her kids also find a good space.

I’ve only written 100 words in the last three days, but I’m still feeling forward motion so I’m not worried.

I’ve had breakfast and coffee.

Suzanne was here yesterday, the enshinening happened.

Very low energy day yesterday, but I managed to make myself a decent salad and fried myself up some steak strips.

Fire risk in parts of Metro K’emk’emelay are now ‘extreme’.

I’m begging you

Mother Dear Mother

I cannot find the slender black binder which contains the ‘Tales of Grampa”. Please either send it to me in printed or electronic form, or acknowledge that everyone else involved but Grampa is dead now and publish it for the world to see, because Tales of Grampa is one of the best things our family ever wrote.

Alex is the right age now, I NEED THAT BOOK.

Okay technically it’s not required for my physical survival but gloryoski I shore would plumb like that.

Spent a LONG time at Lougheed Mall yesterday with Keith as he acquired a new phone. If -and this is a big if – I need a cell phone I’ll go to Walmart for the flip phone and go to the Bell kiosk for the sim card and activation. Keith also acquired a shower curtain and some other items for his dad and I fed him at Cazba. Lovely food but takes forever. I spent so much time waiting for him that I put together a 125 item generalized list. I also picked up a beautiful new pen – Oomomo has wonderful Japanese pens – and some mini whiteboards with markers – and a pack of Pocky. Managed to stay away from Cobs Bread and the Purdy’s Chocolate. The mall keeps changing stores and it can be quite disorienting.

Keith desperately needs to get some work done on his car, it’s not starting very well. Honestly thought we might be ‘stranded’ (it’s one bus ride home, la).

Had an unbelievably frustrating conversation with him about creativity. He spends all his time worrying about not writing instead of digging in to understanding his creative process and finding tools to support it. I mean, I only found Scrivener a decade ago and before that I didn’t have an app which supports my creative writing the way I need it done. He’s always so infuriatingly vague when he talks about anything personal so after five minutes of flailing, I shut up, assuming he was finding my ‘solutionizing’ patronizing and demoralizing and candidly useless. You know, like the ‘just cheer up’ advice you get from someone who doesn’t understand depression and anxiety and finds your gloominess rude, antisocial and disrespectful.

I checked someone’s name on line after they advertised their cleaning and organizing services on Next Door and they are…. let’s just say whoever the hell she really is, someone with her exact and unusual name has a set of resumes on line which…. er …. don’t line up. They can’t all be right, but they for sure can all be wrong…. so I’m just going to skip over that part where I pay for her advice.

The red canoe is gone out of the back yard, thank you Jeff for making that possible.

I’ve gotten wordle in three tries three days running, I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. There’s been a run of words with ‘B’ in them though, I don’t think that’s unrelated.

Ah, that coffee. Milk and sugar. So good.

And in spite of it, do you know what my bp was this am? 117 over 79. That is absolutely perfect blood pressure and that’s 1.5 hours before my meds so you can understand why I feel a bit weird for an hour after I take them. (But it doesn’t stop me from doing things, I just take it easy.)

I owe Dave a phone call, hopefully it will migrate from my list to reality sometime today.

Zibethicus changed the logo on twitter. Long time nesters there are saying things like ‘EVERYTIME I SEE THAT X INSTEAD OF THE BLUE BIRD IT REMINDS ME TO GO SOMEPLACE ELSE’ Yes Elon, you dun fuct up

I’ve written 773 words over the last two days on TB.

I really wish my energy level wasn’t so variable; but that I guess is the single biggest reason I can’t work full time any more. Plus I’m actually listening to my body and peeing at first recognition that my bladder is full rather than waiting until explosive decompression is imminent.

My pOp said something HILARIOUS to me on the phone yesterday, so I am saluting him this morning WITHOUT repeating what was said. Thank you kind sir, I have been chuckling occasionally ever since. He’ll read this and think, “What is she going on about?” and that too is part of the humour.

I miss Ryker, I need to see that boy.

 

sadface

Spent the afternoon to evening at the Junction covering off childcare and hanging with the folks.  Tuned John’s old twelve string. I want that freaking guitar but someone’s going to have to mess with the action because it is ahem a manly guitar.

Katie is not having much luck finding a place but she’s working hard on it. She keeps apologizing to Alex about it and it’s breaking my heart. She won’t move in here.

Keith cooked a fantastic meal, souvlaki style chicken with the fixings.

I am trying to work on my writing projects but I can’t get settled. Errands today. Coffee God, boot me arse.

some progress

3300 words so far on TB in July. Schlep this morning.

I hope to leave the house today. I am at quite a low ebb and exhausted with worry but somehow I manage to do a few domestic things a day like run the dishwasher and make iced tea.

Another woman relative has been diagnosed with add. Yes it runs in families.

UPS Pilots are going to go out on strike with UPS drivers in the US. You wanna crash the economy, because that’s how you crash the economy.