Category: Domestic Life

Saturday morning thotz

I don’t agree with everything this person says about swearing, but I remember reading somewhere that people who are freaked out about swearing are less egalitarian than people who aren’t.  Not particularly safe for work.

Believe me when I tell you this is cool. SFW.

Paul sent around an email yesterday announcing that a court date has been set for the woman who knocked John off his motorcycle.  It had been looking increasingly like nothing was going to happen, but the slow grinding wheels of justice are finally in motion.  May 27th nothing will likely happen except her entering a plea.  Paul will keep us all apprised.

I had a very productive day yesterday; I replaced the burner I covered in melted plastic; re-upped on the lease and gave the landlord six months worth of checks; did a load of laundry, worked on half a dozen songs with Paul and wheedled him into going to the first Tuesday at Jericho for the year in exchange for me working up Erica’s Song well enough to perform it, and man his guitar support is tasty as always), got plates and insurance for the car, cooked chicken schnitzel with quinoa salad for supper (Paul made the salad and insisted on sending me home with some, and it had so much garlic in it it practically triggered an altered state of consciousness); messed with the intonation on my mandolin now that it’s been repaired (sounds okay now); almost wrote a new tune and replaced my bank card which was compromised again if you can believe it (somebody tried to take $500 out of my account in Surrey three days ago and so the baloney alarm was triggered).

I of course find it screechingly funny that my bank knows I’d never take $500 out in Surrey.  Welcome to the Panopticon.

Jeff is likely off to Victoria and will likely be bringing back Andrew, so I have some ‘comfort of guests’ things to do today, not that I mind.  House guests are fun.  For three days, anyway.

Mozart, moods and metal origami

I was a complete frackup this weekend.  I did manage to get some cleaning and laundry done, and I did cook some meals, so I didn’t entirely lay about and do nothing – but mostly I did, while feeling sorry for myself.

Saturday I bought work clothes for our dreaded new overlords have high standards in these things.  I even bought stuff that matched, which is just weird, and it was all solids or stripes, no tie dye. All of it makes me look older than my mother, buy which I mean that it’s all like polyester pantsuits.  Saturday night Jeff and I went to the opera.  It was a masterpiece but the chairs are BRUTAL at the Queen Elizabeth theater and the perfume was a-waftin’.  At half time, despite it being a superlative performance with amazing direction and one tight orchestra, we bailed.  If we could have watched it without being gassed by the fancy lookers in the audience, that would have been grand.  Jeff and I want to go back but we’re thinking a matinee.  The opera was Marriage of Figaro, and honestly, a better introduction to the opera isn’t possible.

Sunday, despite the fact Joy sent me a reminder email that I was supposed to do set up for church, I forgot and came to church late and Jason did all my work for me.  I did a penance afterwards which consisted of drying every last dish that had to be washed out for the annual congregational meeting.  I came home in full bore collapsing mode, I was so upset, and watched Talladega for a while.  Many crashes and a nailbiter finish.  I finally hauled myself up and tidied a bit.  After supper Paul and Keith came over.  I got all weepy and tragic on Paul, who very sensibly responded by hauling out the massage table and working me over until I quit whining, at which point he tucked me into bed (trust a dad to know how to do that right) and went home and then I slept for ten hours.  This is so much more sleep than I normally get that I am thrilled out of my mind.  I haven’t had any beer in the last two days, either.

And just to prove I haven’t stopped taking an interest in cool stuff.  …. metal origami.

Not even with a beer in my hand and a few comments on social media

A series of large losses can make a small loss feel enormous. I told Rob I wouldn’t cry until I had a beer in my hand, and I lied then too.  I’m crying now, but Jeff is meeting the situation with sympathetic noises and the welcome sound of the coffee grinder.  I was going to say more tender things about him, but he’s off in his room now belching so loud something in my room vibrated in sympathy…. still in keeping with the theme, I spose.

There was a brief flurry of amusement last night at Robof9’s going away party while one party member commented to another, “We’re friends, right?” but in reference to facebook.

I now have more than 150 facebook friends.  I have met and spoken to every single one of them.  Some of them are my dearest friends; some I barely know; some are more other people’s friends than mine.  But they are my facebook tribe and I follow their doings, their triumphs and tragedies, the way folks follow soaps. Not so much on the story arc, but man, the set pieces entirely rock.

Livejournal is for filk buddies and church buddies.  When I realized that – that was the point I realized that filk is the religion-friendly portion of SF fandom.  Because all the most religious people I know who are also fans are also filkers.  Things that make you say hmm.  And when I say religion, I mean Judaism, paganism, UUism, and Mormonism.  We all get together in a room and sing our faces off, and we make sure that people’s dietary requirements, both allergy and religious, are met, and we don’t even talk about it because that would all be beside the point anyway, we’re here to sing and love each other.  Livejournal merely supports the meatspace- we are meant to be together, and LJ helps us do that.

Twitter is for people who like the kinds of things I like.  Twitter is mostly people I don’t know, will never meet.  The most recent person to start following me had two midwife attended births, co-slept, baby carried, tandem nursed and looky looky, she’s a vegetarian. All those things in common, and then, clunk.  Uh, no thanks. Personally I fucking hate it when people say they are vegetarian and eat eggs and milk.  You’re still robbing babies and eating them, so how does that bring you to fluffy bunnyhood?  Either be vegan or be sparing in your meat consumption or be like me, the meat on meat inside meat, with meat on the side, kind of person.

I will be a vegetarian when I have to, and not one second sooner.  My brain doesn’t work properly without meat protein and it sure doesn’t work properly without animal fat.  Wish it were otherwise.

Now I have to go outside and plant the saplings work gave me for Earth Day.  I have a funny story about that but I can’t publish because the inertnets are temporarily forever.  I hope Margot joins me.  There’s something very comforting about her watching me work.

Time vs money

I am SO tired of the commute, I’ve decided to buy a car.  Kat has one for sale and she said she would do the cv joint and the muffler for me if I buy the parts and I am very tempted.  It is not a particularly useful car, being, like the MR2, a two seater.  LTGW told me to buy a truck.  This was in the same week he told me I was wearing sensible shoes.  I ended up screaming “Want me to shave my head and start wearing overalls TOO” in the middle of the cafeteria, which certainly made Robof9 laugh.

Robof9 is leaving the Tiled Cell on the Hill later this month.  I am just punched out about that too.

The lights over my desk give me a headache every day.  My eyes are so tired by the time I go home I feel like I’m in a dissociative state.

The weather is cold and windy.  I heard what sounded like ice pellets pinging off my window at 3 am this morning.

Anyway, now that I know I’m getting a car I feel very bad at the same time I am feeling better.  It’s just that I can’t read, play games, watch video on my phone or do anything that doesn’t involve looking out the window to prevent motion sickness whenever I ride the bus.  I can spend two and one half hours a day commuting, or half an hour driving.  I’m 51 and I’ve only got so many hours left.  Translink is not bad for my part of the world, and it’s not their fault that there’s a fucking lake in between me and work.  I am tired of the asinine creature who takes up five seats on the bus with the rude way she occupies the front section.  I’m tired of the men who smell like pee and spilled stuff and the women who smell like air freshener.  I am tired of listening to phone conversations in a babel of languages; I am tired of hearing conversations that make me want to butt in and describe in detail the cognitive biases involved.  I am tired of fucking rude bus drivers (I’ve seen some good ones, but a couple of events in the last month have left me gobsmacked with disappointment and too disheartened to even complain.)  But I should commute because it’s better for the environment.  It would be better for the environment if I jumped off a bridge, too, but that is not in the cards.

The house is shifting on its foundations with the wind.

I want rainbows and unicorns and world peace, and I’m getting dying cats, blue relatives and friends, (this item deleted), (this item deleted), (this item deleted too, sigh), and a bunch of other stuff I can’t complain about.  Currently there are 18 items on the list; most of them I only wrote down so I could add one last item to the list & I FEEL REEAAALLY SHITTY about not being able to DO anything about the stuff that’s wrong.  Oh yeah, Mr. Cheerful Pants, I should just work on the stuff I CAN fix.  It’s all about reframing things.  Well how about I reframe this by breaking it over your head, how’s that work for you?

The only good thing that happened this week is that Mike showed the pictures he took of Rozo in the woods – nude.  Unbelievable.  All that hair, and her standing on a tree stump in Robert Burnaby Park looking like something shot out of a New Raphaelite wet dream.  There was one particular pic, her figleafed with hair, that I want to carry around with me in my wallet so I have something pleasant to look at when things really fuck up.

That’s not true, there was one other thing that happened this week.  I found a website with erotic photos and art that actually has about one in ten pics that I like.  I guess it’s yet another sign that I overshare that my first impulse was to email a couple of links to my daughter.  That’s not funny, it’s sick.

Jeff cheered me up by loaning the car to me yesterday – he stayed home with Gizmo.  I went and got treats after work to cheer us both up.

Now I’m going to do a Tarot reading.  The day can get worse any way it likes.

And every word of it is true

I am Allegra Sloman, and I subscribe to this management decision.

An extremely rare kitty photo for Jeff.

Glenn Close has her genome mapped.

Snails are gonna eat Florida.  Here’s a pic of and article about the critter in question.

When is a species extinct?  You’d think it’s a dopey question, but apparently it is not.

Aggressively massaging its books. Great expression for part of what preceded the collapse of Lehman.  And since there’s been no meaningful regulatory reform, it could all happen again, how very cyclical.

Yes, that Nascar crash was no accident.  To keep ratings high, the Nascar management is encouraging it.  Hope nobody dies.

Yesterday I made spare ribs, and that, candidly is about it.  I hope to have a marginally more productive day today.

I thought today was Pi Day, but apparently there’s some dispute about that.

Sunday miscellanea

Dug out one fifth of the garden yesterday, after an entertaining visit chez Tom and Peggy (Peggy was working) to borrow gardening tools and drop off the busted mandolin.  Anybody who has seen Tom’s garage knows how this is possible.  Paul accompanied me, and there was much mirth and mocking; personally I found the image of the concrete bags which had turned solid enough to form gun emplacement material very happy making.   Tom offered four substantial pieces of wood to frame the garden plot with (I am not turning down ten foot lengths of six by six treated aged cedar for this purpose).  I didn’t need a mattock, but it was so axe murder-y I had to borrow it.  Also, I now have a picture of myself cuddling a meter long spanner, this also being the kind of thing one finds lying about in Tom’s vicinity.  I was also thinking of asking him for sand as I was thinking of doing the potatoes grown in tires thing, but really I only have so much energy, and Jeff has already registered misgivings about my ability to keep up with a garden, which is only reasonable. I volunteered for various of Tom’s plans (mostly holding the ends of things, this being a requirement for most of Tom’s plans).  Tom and I also agreed to split a cartload of topsoil; Paul is going to investigate manure for his little garden plot.

I stopped digging after I twisted my knee.  It appears to be okay this morning, so back to the grind after church.  The dirt I’m pulling up is full of earthworms (also those nasty lawn chafer larvae, which I carefully threw onto the concrete so Margot could mishandle them).  Margot croaked in excitement when she saw the measuring tape.  So shiny ! So crinkly ! So making a wonderful noise as it disappeared into its hole !  She pounced on it but I was able to wrestle it away from her.

Great church meeting yesterday.  Various matters arose and I slept on them; I will be taking a decision later today.  It’s not particularly earth shattering.

It turns out the migraines were hormones.  As my career as a breeder staggers to a close, I suppose I’ll get this crap happening occasionally.  Grr, the mama bear said.  Grr.

When I was a kid I thought my dad was the coolest man who ever lived; he let us watch Laugh-In, he bought gouramis and lizards and four eyed fish (anableps anableps) and painted a stick man on the side of the house and he had a beard and he put up a geodesic dome in the backyard and he had trophies for shooting and he’d been in the Air Force and he could fix anything and he had a succession of unusual cars (Simca, anyone?  original Mini Minor?).  One of the many cool things about him was his taste in music.  (This is no longer the case.. he listens to Muzak now, but we all get old and tired, so I won’t repine).  I used to love it when he played the soundtrack from the early sixties show “Checkmate” – he had the soundtrack album – and it wasn’t until last night that I realized that the Johnny Williams who wrote that score (which is MADE OF OSSUM) is the same John Williams who wrote the Star Wars theme, and many many many others.  Prescient dude, mi papa.

Steak and eggs and coffee for breakfast.

Biscotti are on for the first bake…. I promised some to Tom this morning, and given his many kindnesses I’d better get on the stick.  Can you tell I’m feeling better?

Sundry and various

Paul was back from his flying visit to Seattle, and promptly invited himself over for dinner.  This gave me a chance to break out the lean ground beef from Farmtown, and that is officially that, folks; I am NEVER buying lean ground beef from Superstore again, it’s chock full of gristle and tastes like drek.  I made spaghetti and asparagus.

Garbage day today. Maybe I’ll do something novel and empty the trash in my room.  I haven’t for about 6 months – I scarcely ever use it.  Which sort of accounts for how my room looks right now.  No pictures available.  My camera is broken. My mandolin is still broken.  Candidly, I’m broken too, but nobody cares and you have to keep moving or the clowns will get you.

Jeff and Keith nearly killed me when I mentioned I’d seen a clip from last night’s NCIS.  Keith in particular got pretty scary.  Of course, the more they freak out about spoilers, the more they encourage me to do it… Which caused them to freak out even more about my perceived character flaws.  No, I just can’t ask them, “Can’t you take a joke?” because, uh, they can’t.  It’s a good thing I can take death threats with such good humour.  I take that back. Keith was just threatening to punch me repeatedly in the face.  Which likely wouldn’t have killed me, but very likely would have gotten blood on the new IKEA chesterfield, and resulted in a hospital trip.  Such a nice boy.

Yesterday I saw the BIGGEST EFFING RAINBOW since I came back from the tropics.  It was horizon to horizon, double, and BRILLIANT.  I had already been put into that goofy, happy mood I get in when I see pretty things from the bus, due to the underlit clouds being so very Hollywoodesque, and then got off the bus and involuntarily let out a, “Whoa ho HO!” when I saw it.

I wore my seabluegreen tighdigh tights yesterday.  The sex toy pink ones I will save for a Friday.

Scotiabank Visa barfed on my card yesterday.  I tried paying for something and it went hunh?  So I’ll just cancel the card.  I only need one anyway, and ‘need’ isn’t exactly the right word.  Hard to go internet shopping without one.

Miss Margot curled up next to Gizmo on the loveseat last night.  She keeps trying to sniff him.  (She keeps rimming Eddie while he’s eating – I really should get video of that some time, the sound effects are most droll).  Gizmo is mostly sleeping these days. He got very sucky with Paul last night and Paul, who is aware of his condition, was only too happy to oblige.

Paul brought a killer quinoa tabbouleh over to add to the meal.

Katie wanted to know about my childbirth experiences yesterday.  I told her I was in labour with her for 6 hours.  Six really hard intense and painful hours, although the afterpains were worse with her than the labour, strangely enough.  She wanted to know because the girls were talking about babies. Yes, I know they are women, but still, so young.

Eddie needs his nails clipped again.  So does Margot.  They are currently having a standoff in the door of my bedroom. Eddie is making his protesting noise.

I am to the point where I’m pretending I don’t have a to do list.  My February blahs came late this year, no doubt thanks to the Olympox.  Which turned out so much better than expected; I certainly watched more of it live than I expected to.

I’d sleep for a week if I could find a comfy enough bed.  I’d like to turn off the world and just sleep and sleep and sleep, and instead, in twenty minutes I’ll be showered and brushed and brushed and changed – clean underwear!  clean clothes! –  and standing at a bus stop.

Yup, I’m blue.  The best part is knowing that lots of people care about me and will help.  The worst part is knowing that none of the help will help, and that worse yet is coming, and no one knows what the worse will look like.  All I have to do is live through it, and eventually, I won’t even have to worry about living through it, nature having taken its course.

There.  Seven hundred and fifty words, all more or less off the top of my head.  There may be typos, there may be TMI, but by god, I can cross that off my imaginary list.

Yeah, that about covers it for me.

Gold vs. Gold.

Equality is a chimera, but it must be encouraged to be real.

Bawled my eyes out this morning. I read of an encounter between a little autistic girl and a little Down’s syndrome girl in a restaurant.  The two girls ended up hugging and sitting together to eat their meal while their moms got kinda teary.  Honestly, if I didn’t personally know the woman who wrote it and could attest to her complete veracity, I would have sworn it was one of those darned feelgood stories that veer around the internet from time to time.  As it is I feel marginally better about human beings.

Jeff’s going to write a post about Gizmo.  It’s not much fun; Gizmo is not well.

ScaryClown went downtown with a buddy after the hockey game and he said that insane was the kindest way of putting it.  He’s also never seen so many drunken hot women.

I was 45 minutes late getting home last night because some ffffing idiots had a fender bender and didn’t move the cars down a side street to swap info.  Iggerunt putzes.

The weather is mild, mild, mild; I see forsythia everywhere, and there are already rhododendrons in bloom on the SFU hill.

I just gave more money to BCCLU, and they repaid me by defending the pro life group on the UBC campus.  Oh how hard it is to have higher moral standards than the people we disagree with.  In fact, I’m not sure it’s permanent.  I’ll go back to being a jerk now.

How???? by mentioning the Correction, yet again.

But then again, we need all kinds of brains to make a world.

Mt Laundry has been conquered

Yeah, but that’s not what everybody will be talking about at work.  Sitting down to watch the amazing US-Canada gold medal game yesterday I knew the Canadians would win, but it was a nailbiter there for a while.

Foreigners who have covered 17 Olympics say that when it comes to public drinking at the Olympics, there is no second place.  On that basis I am very very very glad I never went downtown.

Watched Zombieland.  It’s got Sean of the Dead in a headlock for the title of the best Zomcom.  Woody Harrelson is fantastic, and I really liked Abigail Breslin, even if her character nearly gets everybody killed.

The start of the thing before the thing.

Here are the lyrics and here is the song that Katie likes the most these days.  Safe for work and utterly charming.  Katie says the song is about insomnia….  speaking of which she cured her insomnia.  She quit eating sugar.

My chance to dig out the garden plot was yesterday afternoon and it corresponded with the hockey game.  Sigh.

You will note that the blog is having issues

I lost my post from Sunday, and the comments added themselves to the next post.  Jeff and I are monitoring it, but we had a talk this morning and we think it’s a user error (that would be, uh, me) combined with wireless issues, possibly.

I’m really trying to commit to making church a better experience for everybody, so I loaned my Kaossilator to one of the youngsters on Sunday.  He stopped being bored, instantly, and I helped solidify Beacon’s reputation for musicality…

Work yesterday was excellent; managed to straighten some things out and resolve an outstanding customer issue to his satisfaction and mine.  Also closed some cases, always a good thing.  My open case load is approximately 70 right now, but in real terms it’s less than twenty actionable cases.  I have to leave a lot open or they disappear from my consciousness as requiring action.

I think the worst of the software issues is resolved, but the phone system still drops out when I go on break or work offline.  The really weird part is that it can do this IN THE MIDDLE OF A CALL.  The screen goes dark and I’m still talking to the customer… say wha?

Singing didn’t happen on Sunday – too many people cancelled out on the jam.

Now, coffee and a shower, not necessarily in that order.  Hope everybody has a glorious day and gets out in the sunshine.

I need to make a new list.

Jeff is a genius.  The bicycle pump I thought I broke just needed adjustment, the vacuum cleaner from Granny works perfectly (the missing bit was hiding in plain sight) and he helped me with my blog AND picking up the freezer order.  Happy sigh.

Paul and I walked in Deer Lake Park on Sunday and I saw my first turtle of the season.  Yay!

Miss Crankypants sits in her corner

I have lots and lots to complain about.  Like, lots.  But I’ve decided to save my best and purest bile for real live people instead of the intarboobs, and the saddest and teariest of complaints for other real live people, and the horrid consequences of brutal self-examination strictly to myself. Continue reading Miss Crankypants sits in her corner

The second shift begins

All the domestic stuff I didn’t do this week I gotta do now.  I am not expecting unemployed people to be sympathetic.

Jeff’s off to Victoria to assist pOp in watching the Super Bowl.  He doesn’t actually need help, but what’s a Super Bowl game without somebody watching it with you who can chaff you over your lack of appreciation for what turns out to be a good call…. let the yellow flags fly.

I made an inukshuk out of Margot’s fur.  A week’s worth of fur combed from her expensive carcase makes quite an Olympic themed mass of agony for somebody with fear of cats or cat allergy.

Despite everything, I feel very content, and the new coffee from church (my church deals drugs, hallelujah) is very yummy.  Now to borrow or rent a car to do a whole bunch of stuff I need a vehicle for, once I figure out when I’m supposed to do the crap on the list.

Ta hell with it, I’m taking a taxi to work

I am having a very slow start to the day, and I actually felt like blogging instead of lying in bed surveying the ant trap that is my to do list.  My thoughts go in… and they do not come out.

Jeff says I’m crabbier than normal since I started back to work.  It’s the commute. Once I figure out how to make my commute useful, I will probably be less crabby.  I have figured out some of the details on the transfer points (I transfer in different places depending on whether I’m going to work or going home) and I am able to sit all the way to work on the bus, which I was unable to do when I was taking the 145 up the hill.  Also, because it’s not an articulated bus, I have better odds of not being exposed to shippiles of cologne.  And, only one transfer instead of two; and, all in Burnaby so little effect by the Olympics except of course that SFU is a transit hub for Olympic events, but even so I should be as unaffected as is possible in the lower Mainland during the blowout.

Youtube has a video entitled Why I can’t celebrate the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.  It’s six minutes long, heartfelt, intelligent, and very closely matches my feelings.  Except that I’m not paying a nickel, not one red fucking cent, for anything Olympic oriented. When I see the TONS of ads on the bus, I think to myself, in six months the Value Village will be inundated with this hoody and that hat and this shirt and that scarf.  Even then I won’t get it second hand. I did see a cloisonné pin in the Waves coffee house the other night that I actually liked, but once again, I am not spending money on it.

I may end up in a band.  When she told me what the band name was, I burst out laughing and gave a big thumbs up.  More later if possible.  Jeff warned me not to get too invested and it’s good advice (he normally gives good advice…).

I have not written Granny’s eulogy yet.  That plus the Valentine cards should keep this weekend a very busy one… and Jeff is away for part of this weekend so no shopping unless I’m doing the carrying myself.

Work is very funny. I am going flat out and every night there are the same number of cases in the queue as when I left the night before.  And that doesn’t cover the other stuff I have to do.  I have a whole set of tasks beyond that.  And I am fine with it.  I can’t do everything, but I can do something, and that’s what I’m doing.  I am going to reward myself for my entire lack of initiative (actually, it’s an entire lack of worrying) by getting myself some Haagen Dazs on the way home from work today… there’s a Nester’s Market right next to the Cornerstone building now and it’s huge and gorgeous, at least from my bus window, and I am looking forward to spending some money there.

It seems ludicrous to say it, but I’m content right now.  And now, it’s time for a shower and then a quick call to Bonny’s Taxi.

Today is a list

Buy new work drag.  Village de Valeurs, c’est le meilleur! Later.  Success.  Also bought new shoes, but new new shoes, not used new-to-me shoes.

Be supportive of Katie and the gals re the court case.  This involves uncorking the exchequer for a sushi blowout.  I am ready.  I took Katie and Kat and Kashka to Hi Dozo and coincidentally ran into Don Hauka on the way out.

Prep some kind of eats for Ryan’s memorial service, which is tomorrow in the early afternoon.  Remember to take hankies, it’s gonna be brutal.  Even so I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of people I’ve not seen in some time.

Start working on … you guessed it….. the VALENTINES.

Hold myself in readiness for more bad news about Gizmo.  When the diagnosis is sorted out (it’s a laundry list of older cat diseases, and only one has a positive prognosis) I’ll share a little more of how devastating this has been; Jeff is fair to middling bleak and I’m sad about it.

Tell the financial advisor to quit paying out my stipend.  In March.  I wouldn’t mind double dipping for a month.

December settlement – Jeff and I figure out who owes what to whom on a monthly basis.

Bill payments of other kinds, now that that my bank has actually decided to notice the deposit.  I am still so f(((((g peeved about that, and I should really calm down.

Write another CL ad for the church.  That was fun, wanna do it again.

Now I am making the yummiest waffles ever â„¢for Jeff, as he is feeling subpar.

later…. also today I got a 4 gig SD ram card, inkjet printer ink, bread and treats for Kat and Kashka to take home, a book for Katie, a journal for me, dropped into Edmonds Community Centre to see what kinds of fitness classes they have, got a new library card from New Westminster Library, walked rather more than I currently feel comfortable with and visited the bank machine.  SO BAGGED.