Category: Domestic Life

Safe congregation policy

As part of our safe congregation policy, everybody in a voluntary or paid position with my church has to be inspected for felonious behaviour by the RCMP.  I had been putting it off (and why not, yecch) but this morning I assembled the letter which allows me to be inspected at no charge, my i.d. and my amour-propre and hied myself off to the Deer Lake RCMP Detachment.

It took 10 minutes.  I was the only person there.  Honestly, I thought it was going to be quite a production, but it was trivial.

Next, I hied myself off to Village de Valeurs, where I purchased a dress, a blouse, and something to replace my bathroom which does not actually have enough fabric to be a modest garment, given my current girth.  I am sure Jeff will be relieve to see less of me as I stagger out of my room in the morning in my zombie like quest for caffeine.

I’m back home and waiting for my new purchases to get out of the washer.

It’s pouring rain; the garden is very happy.

My family can never be too big.

That’s what Gramma Zooss always used to say.  Here’s a couple of Brazilian men who really live it.

The Vikings had a saying.  Better a good foster son than a bad son.

It’s really difficult to describe just how amazing Jeff’s birthday bash was, but it had the following going for it:

1.  The weather which was nothing short of spectacular.

2. The awning – what a lifesaver that turned out to be.

3. HEADWATER.  A simply stunning performance by three extremely talented and loveable young men.  I mean it, to have the pleasure of these guys as working guests was great.  We bought their albums, we laughed our asses off at their between song patter, we listened in rapt silence to their originals and their covers, we loved every minute of it.

4. Wonderful friends and fabulous conversation.

5.  Rob and Kathy showed up with their two kids (6 and 3) and I had to yell at them like an ogress to get them off my neighbours’ lawn, but they forgave me.  Little girl and I danced and drew pictures and played with the thunder tube.

6. Walking into the games room and finding Jeff pogoing to the Dandy Warhols with a small child. My personal high point of the festivities.

7. Jeff excusing me from kitchen duty so I just got a bunch of pre prepped food, which worked out fine.

8. A cooler full of brewskis.

9.  Did I mention Headwater?

10.  Just about everybody who confirmed attendance came, and all the important people – the kids and Paul, Mike and Rozo, Tom and Peggy, Kevin and Rebecca, and Rob and his family, came, and they enjoyed themselves muchly as well.

I crashed out early – I started drinking at noon and between that and the sun I made it to about seven pm before I faded.  Now I have to go have a substantial breakfast and get myself to the staging area for the Pride Parade, as I’m marching with the BCCLA today.  Thank the water cycle it’s overcast, I don’t think I could stand to get fried again.

The weekend’s over

Well, this was certainly a movie rich weekend.  Besides Inception and the inevitable True Blood episode, there was Growing Op and Numb, both hilarious Canadian films with American TV stars thrown in for extra visibility.  The notion of the guy who plays Hodges on CSI playing the paterfamilias of a marijuana farm in the suburbs is brain bending, and he delivers one of the best lines I’ve ever heard in a movie… no, really.  Ask Keith, he was there. Definitely worth seeing. both of them.  Both of them had F8CKING AMAZING soundtracks.  Seriously.

We got the mower back from the lawnmower place (unfixed, may they achieve decomposition in a quiet place) and Jeff mowed the lawn while I edged things and watered the peas and quinoa and whacked weeds.

This weekend we also managed to get Granny’s stamps to the dealer, so between the weed whacking and carrying all the boxes upstairs my back is unbelievably sore.

I read Plantinga’s Breviary of Sin, which Ontie Mary gave me last I was in Victoria.  Very Christian but brilliantly written and very quotable.

I’ve started taking my musical instruments to work so I can practice at lunch.  I am now practicing every day, and I have the callouses to prove it.

Lightning – the Diving Horse.

Elementary, my dear particle

Oh, great. Now we have to rewrite physics AGAIN.

From the same site… Here, have an electric blue worm.

When palaeontologists drink….

Added Book of Eli to the list of movies watched.  Visually awesome, flawed in plot.  Every time I see one of these movies I think… where’s the goddamned food coming from?

Took off work early yesterday to get a massage…. since nobody I actually see on a regular basis is providing one.  Depressing, but there’s divorced life for you.  It’s either pay for it or go without.  Woke up this morning with tingling and numbness in my left hand as a direct consequence of the massage, but everything else feels better.   Massage dude gave me some stretches and reminded me to breathe.  I was testy with him, I admit it.

Memorial service en masse tomorrow.  I’m leaving for the 7 o’clock ferry, we’ll see what everybody else does. I messaged everybody else to either be here at 6 am or find another ride.  I’ll be bringing musical instruments.

I am off to work early to make up for lost time yesterday.

20 parrot tricks in 2 minutes. Just like it sounds.

It’s bloody hot here now.  We go from having the heat on to the air conditioning, it’s truly remarkable.

Train wreck

1.  I didn’t want to be at church this am.  My mOm’s in town.

2.  Nobody else volunteered to open after two appeals by the board member who got a competing (good reason, though) event and so could not open.  So I did.  My training consisted of being told what to do, nothing in writing, and being handed two keys.

3.  I got to the church and discovered that the set up person and both greeters hadn’t turned up in a timely way.  So there I am slinging hymnals and folding orders of service, but the GREAT THING ABOUT BEACON is that if somebody sees you doing something they come and HELP.  So after about ten minutes I was no longer crabby.  I wasn’t there by myself and it was all good.

4.  The service I will not complain about although I could.  There is a reason why intergenerational services aren’t as well attended as other services once you get past the notion that all the kids are there so their parents are too.  Any time I see the little-littles I get all goofy in the smile department.

5.  If you’re closing as well as opening, you have to be the last person to leave.  I put the key in the front door and it didn’t flipping work.  I breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving that the caretaker was on site, conveyed my sad intelligence that I couldn’t lock the flipping front door, and went home and poured myself a very well deserved beer.  Thus concludes the train wreck portion of the morning, with one final comment.  If we don’t do something about the fucking sound system, I’m going to go all Doukhobor at the next church service and either strip naked or torch something or both.

6.  Then conveyed mOm to Katie’s place and exposed her to the many animals there.

7.  Then conveyed mOm to Paul’s place for Tea and Macadamia nut cookies.

8.  Now the smell of roast pork is filling the house.  Aiming to get the roast out about 4:15, 4:30.

9.  Then, I will convey mOm to the ferry.  Then, TRUE BLOOD and TREME.  Life is good.

A Date, among other things

Jeff tells me I am unusually buoyant, to keep trying after so many hilarious (and occasionally creepy, like the guy who put his head in my lap on the Skytrain after I’d told him to bugger off, but I digress) disasters.  I suppose last night gave me a demonstration as to why maintaining a positive attitude is what a person needs to do.  I sure enjoyed myself last night.  It was a cup of coffee & a walk to the salamander pond (they showed up last night, and zow, but there are a lot of them.)   I drove home with the cheerful sensation one gets when one has had a date, enjoyed it, and arranged a second one.  I don’t have his permission to write about him, so I’ll leave it at that.  No, I lie.  He is the single most pleasant person I’ve met in ages – now I’ll shut up.  I have a head cold…. so attractive.

Work is interesting and challenging these days.  I found out that my not having completed a course at work (they have on line courses) rolls up on a report visible to my grandboss and great grandboss.  Never have I felt so motivated to finish something.  Time to get in the car, gas up and get going on it.

The Netherlands-Denmark World Cup game had one of the most amazing saves I’ve ever seen.  It was spectacular.  I can’t find a single mention of it anywhere in any of the sports news and I’m not competent enough to describe it or even remember the defender’s name. (UPDATE.  I changed my search criteria and got “Poulsen’s spectacular sliding save”).  It was one of the Danish players.  I’m thinking of changing my blog topic header to “Soccer, the sport that makes the words “Nil Nil” work as a sentence”.

Damn the vuvuzelas, they make watching the game with anything like true enjoyment virtually impossible.  The BBC is trying to figure out how to strip the noise from the feed.  Go to it, ladies and gentlemen.

The quinoa is two inches tall and the peas have started to sprout.  Everything else is being eaten to the ground by slugs as soon as it pokes its head up.

Margot sits outside Jeff’s door and meows up a storm.  She really does prefer him to me, mostly because he’s home a bit more, feeds her in the mornings more than I do, and he doesn’t brush her.  Sometimes she begs for the brush if she sees it – other times she struggles and complains.  I never know in advance what I’m going to get.

Jeff cut the lawn, after asking me pointedly this morning when the bag and frame for the lawnmower are coming in to the store where I ordered it.  It’s going to be at least another week, which is annoying.  Anyway, thanks Jeff!  It was pretty long.

Be good, all y’all.

Breakfast accomplished, oven being cleaned, laundry on

A small shop done, and it’s only 9:40.  I am feeling accomplished. But there’s a but hiding in that smug statement.

Honestly, I think I need a twelve step program for my relationship with my room.  It’s a sty.  How can a 51 year old nominally sane woman (there are different views….) come to such a pass?  Cazart!

I do have a large enough garbage bag…. I think.  Time to winnow, hoe, and likewise shovel cruft.

In other news, another good rehearsal.  I was scowling at the drummer, Abby, (who has a cajon, woot!) because she wants me to play the guitar the Same Way Every Time.  What, like a professional?  Blurk….  Gig is tomorrow at two, thirteen hundred block of Commercial, see you there!  Oh, and that’s two-ish, because, like, it’s the Drive, and like, it’s Italian Day.

Briefly

Ziva is running on six but hesitating.  Fuel filter?  Spark plugs?  Check engine light comes on within about a two block stretch of 10th Ave and goes off about halfway up Gaglardi hill.

I had a lovely long talk with my mum last night.

Jeff sent me flowers at work, by which one might infer what a joy to be around I’ve been over the last little while.  I don’t care, and my coworkers sure appreciated it, and Jeff is defending his title of World’s Most Awesome Roommate with considerable aplomb.

Tom M at work photoshopped his two tortie cats into Borg costumes.  Unbelievably cute and I’ll post the link to his flickr stream if I can find it.

Betelgeuse ISN’T going to blow up.  Sad face.

I’ve been playing “Mama Got Skills”, my 6 song EP, in the car, and I’m enjoying it past the point that makes sense.  Oh, to have such a very loud sound system!

Asparagus pee… is it real?

Science to the rescue.

In other news, I planted some things that will be (with luck) food later on this year.

Ziva does not like wet weather.  Winter should be interesting.  She also decided to stop her sunroof from working when I showed her off to Tom & Peggy, the little bugger; it’s fine now.

I watched the CEO do something very difficult very well yesterday, and I still can’t believe what has happened to the company I work for…. namely, that the bunch of sociopaths and psychophants (misspelling deliberate) running the company previously have been replaced by sane people.  I was so impressed I thanked him.

I have a gig on Sunday; still not entirely sure how that happened, but I’m not complaining.

Watched Adaptation and loved it.

Yesterday

Yesterday we went for a drive in the open-air chaise (ie the Camaro – pOp was wearing his pimp hat, a broad brimmed leopard velour creation, which added to the carnival atmosphere) and we drove in the country, saw THE biggest patch of skunk cabbage I’ve ever seen (it went on for literally city blocks in depth and width) and went to Dan’s Market, where we ingested treats and coffee and where I picked up treats to bring back to Vancouver, then outside where we fed ducks and chickens and goats (and I petted a duckling, goodness but they are soft, and admired the glossy plumage on the chickens, who looked magnificent), then went to an apiary and picked up lovely beeswax candles, including two I intend to inaugurate the next time I attend small group ministry, and then through the beautiful green and undulating countryside to a greenhouse which specializes in lovely smelling and odd-times blooming plants and thence back home.

After some uninteresting bits we went downtown in Ziva to Village de Valeurs, where I got the outfit I’m currently wearing (brown cords and a very nice top for work) and one other pair of pants for myself (stretch cotton with a vibrant black and floral pattern).  Katie got a purse for job hunting (she says it’s not professional to be carting about a skull and cross bones pack), two pairs of jeans and a pinstripe wool blazer so she can have a suit.  I smirk when I think she’ll look like Al Swearengen when she dresses up for an event.

Katie cooked supper – chicken Caesar wraps. I never taught her to cook; somehow she managed to teach herself. She apparently does much of the cooking in her household.  And further to the comestibles, they had yet more Lion Winter Ale at the Hillside Liquor store the day we came into town, woot.

Generally we are hanging out and being mellow.  I have been relieved of doing anything at all for transcription of family books, but will have to work on it back in Vancouver, which is good as I definitely type faster on a keyboard I’m used to.

As you can see it’s excitement central around here, and that is as it should be….  to give you an idea of the parents’ priorities, the pictures on the walls are of grandchildren and pinball machines.

Strange morning

I woke up with an invention in my head. I don’t think it’s patentable, but I could build a prototype in about 15 minutes if I had the materials, and I’m trying to work out the final proportions to see if it would be useful to more people than just me.  This is my second invention.  The first was a zero gravity bed which would um, meet the safety and utility and mass requirements of such an object.  Needless to say, when they start making porn in space, I’m expecting to get a path beaten to my door.

Sad news from the filk community; a woman expecting twins lost her little girl, after a truncated pregnancy.  I wish to hug my children even tighter.

Katie has an appointment, fingers crossed.

Keith introduced his new female friend to Paul last night, and Paul was giddy on the phone with it.  Big thumbs up.  This is comforting to me; Paul in many ways is a shrewder judge of character than I.

Orphan sloth sanctuary. Prepare for pancreatic implosion. Thanks Patricia!

And what’s this about bishops not reporting to the Vatican?  uh…..

That giant sucking sound you hear is car ownership

Sixteen hundred dollars poorer, she emerged.  And I still need an alignment and the car DESPERATELY needs to be detailed.  There’s a lip gloss tube EMBEDDED in the driver’s side carpet like a dinosaur bone emerging from a dig.  I also just realized that the dangly thing hanging from the rear view mirror is a beaded toy flogger, and since I don’t swing that way (pitching OR catching), I should prob’ly take it down. But it’s PURPLE.

Anyways… drove ScaryClown home with me last night and we supped on Swiss Chalet that Jeff brought home and drank beers and watched TV.  At one point Jeff said something so funny that ScaryClown and I were rendered absolutely helpless.  Unfortunately, despite its merits as humour, it is not repeatable, even by me, but please accept my assurances that it was convulsing.

Then the phone rang.  I could hear it but Jeff couldn’t (I answer the phone for a living so heard it over the tv noise which was hockeygamish at the time).  I picked up the phone, but because it was behind me & I wasn’t really paying too close attention I had the receiver upside-down.  Jeff thought I’d gone insane because – well, Jeff thinks I’ve gone insane most of the time, but he’s low-key about commenting – I was picking up the phone and saying hello hello with the receiver upside down – for no apparent reason. He said, brow furrowed, with that crystal clarity people use when talking to halfwits, “The phone is upside down,” at which point Keith and I were actually able to start communicating.  ScaryClown at this point was laughing so hard he lost control of his ketchup.  Keith said, “Ah.  Well, I was going to ask if ScaryClown was still there, but I can hear him laughing, so I’ll be there in 15.”

He and Paul came over (announcing pie and yet another six of Lion Winter, Paul found another source, and commenting that the car looks nice) and we had a very pleasant evening.  The highlight was the scary awesome Mt. St. Helens footage.  You know that this blog started with me commenting about Mt. St. Helens every other day, so I have a special fondness for it, and will stay fond of it if it stays dormant.