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!
Margot just nosed her way into my room; which reminds me, I have to get on my hands and knees and wipe all her eye goop off the doors and walls in those places she normally stands. She has a rip roaring case of ephoria, brown watery eyes.
Her breathing has been a little more stertorous of late. She’ll be better when she is coming and going through her little cat door again.
Today, writing, practicing, seeing the floor of my room.
I still can’t believe I slept through church yesterday. Honestly, I got up when church was already over. I was just so TIRED. I guess the February blahs are doing their thing, finally. The hell of it is, I feel cheerful most of the time. Not a big smiley face Hi How Are You kind of cheerful, just, I’m doing okay and enjoying life, thanks. Also, wearing pirate clothes to church always cheers me up.
I did make word count yesterday. Only 70 thousand more words to go! April 15th is my current deadline for a first draft.
Did I mention I had a phone interview on Friday? I am still looking hard for work, but it’s hard when the work isn’t looking hard for me.
It doesn’t mean anything. But last night Lady Miss Banjola grabbed an overly officious and magically short security guard by the ear and lectured him, which caused him to GO ROGUE and investigate her grandparents’ garage. Lady Miss B appeared and berated him some more, this time with crunchy swears and him running away to his SUV. Before I could learn what was going on, the scene shifted indoors to a Las Vegas style hotel, and she ditched me at what I assumed was a science fiction convention, because Seanan McGuire shimmied by in a dress of such surpassing sparkle and slinkiness that I was forced to rub my eyes. I wish I hadn’t, when I removed my fists from my eyes, she was gone, and I was sitting at a table of quite possibly the strangest and least competent MARKETING people I had ever seen. Not even beer could save me; I woke up.
On another subject, Margot slept with me at least until I woke up two hours ago with my eyes streaming and my throat sore. Yes, the con crud hath landed.
I think it’s the way they combine clumsiness and grace and those big liquid eyes and their dog-like curiosity. Here’s a video.
Eddie was my best friend. He and Gizmo helped me through a difficult time in my life, and having lived (and slept) with them almost every day for so many years it’s difficult for me to comprehend that they’re both gone. Allegra’s cat Miss Margot is sleeping with me now, which is a comfort. She snores like a banshee, but so did the boys, so I sleep right through it.
Eddie’s proper name was Edgar, after Edgar Allen Poe. We got him with his tiny sister, Penguin, in 1997. We had to give Penguin away, for reasons I won’t get into here. After that, Eddie wandered the house howling softly, presumably looking for her. So we got Gizmo to keep him company.
Eddie had a deep bass purr. He loved to have his fur rubbed the wrong way. When we first got him, he had one white whisker, which we decided was his Indian name. That whisker was replaced by a black one for most of his life, until quite recently, when the white one grew back and he became One White Whisker again. Eddie was a tubby cat most of his life, which made his skinniness toward the end particularly sad. I miss you, buddy.
Jeff is as you can imagine, (“Both my boys are gone,” he said last night), and I’m sad too but with nothing like the sadness of someone who lived with a cat from his hyperactive kittenhood into maturity as a sober minded and dignified cat. Who rescued the kitten on at least two occasions. I guess Margot isn’t the kitten anymore, unless we decide we want to break our hearts again and adopt a senior cat. We watched Pacific all day yesterday as it was the only show dark enough to match our mood when we took him to the hospital.
I feel lucky to have known him. He was a very handsome creature. I knew he was dying when he no longer left the room when I sang and played… he always hated the sound of either instrument or voice, and disliked loud tv. The bloodwork we learned of yesterday confirmed it. He had days at best, his mouth sores were making eating impossible and drinking painful. He had a good run, but dammit, too short; a year ago he was so sleek and energetic we had reasonable hopes he’d make twenty.
And now, we must site and dig a grave. He’ll be buried in the towel I set under him to keep him warm and comfortable in his last days, somewhere close to Zeek! and Gizmo, his adoptive brother, and Kira, and Bounce, who has rested here these last fifteen years or so, up against the south fence, shaded by a dogwood, close to the deck where he spent many hours in feline contemplation, lazing in the sun, waiting for Jeff to come home so he could run up and greet him.
SO many awesome things.
Met a lovely man, skated right up to having FEELINGS, and then sensibly consulted girlfrenz on those things I might want to know about in advance. So I had 12 hours of hope, and have gone back to my usual thinking guys are, well, you know – strange, difficult and clueless. And go me for consulting people before saying or doing anything stupid. Wish I could have been like this 35 years ago, but we get too soon old and too late smart.
Concert went great. Travel was within acceptable tolerances. Phoenix Airport is nice, and Atlanta airport is so awesome I want to fly back in there with people who haven’t seen it so I can show it off. Hotel was good, room was good, everything I brought except my space babe’s bag sold at the Interfilk auction, and my Matrix coat is now being rocked by a very hot trans*person who looks WAY better in it than I ever did. I bought Keith a tshirt but made the mistake of wearing it home, so now I have to wash it. I bought myself a cicada hair bob, Gwen’s Box of Fairies album, Cat Faber’s Medicine Show album, and I acquired a copy of my own performance, which is great…
Otto, not so great. He survived the trip but the strings all broke when I retightened them and the strings I took as replacements DIDN’T WORK. They were loop as opposed to ball strings. CRAP. So France and Steve helped me get strings and everything was fine for the concert, except loosening all the strings changed the intonation so bad I now have to get Otto into the shop. The low G sucks dead bears now.
I wrote 3 SONGS ON THE PLANE this morning. Some little muther stole my pen, though, but it was all worth it. One of them is below, I don’t have permission from Peter Alway and DB Cooper (a stage name) to post theirs.
I worked up a fucking awesome bass line for my Gateway filk, plus optional instrumental bridge.
KEPT CRYING during Cat Faber’s singing, because NOBODY does social justice songs like she does.
anyway, a song. I am still buzzing – this week I must avoid con crud, look for work and keep practicing!!!
Lady Miss Banjola
She will stab you with a needle
to guard you from the flu
I will be keeping a trip diary and posting irregularly… I have decided not to take my computer because I simply cannot afford to have it confiscated by the US government. I have NOTHING on the computer which would warrant that, but I’ve been complaining under my real name about the US government for 10 years now. Most hotels have a guest computer room.
If I do write any George stuff while I’m gone it will be cursive, or uploaded to Google drive…. they aren’t likely to confiscate that. I will take my phone and charger.
I pack today. It will be a big batch of weird stuff I take, I hope the TSA and Customs can deal with it all.
I’m going to drop the keys for the business off with the landlord. I have been trying and trying and trying to sell it, and almost 60 people enquired, and I showed it to at least 30 sets of people, but I can’t pay rent any more. I closed the file with Fraser Health yesterday. It has been a year out of my life, and we only operated for three months. I learned a lot, got my heart and my shoulder broken, and I really think I’m a better person. I certainly have more self-knowledge, a lot more respect for restaurateurs. Knowing that I will never ever step through that door again is, candidly, more of a relief than I can say. Anything else I say will be oversharing.
I am practicing and writing every day – music or one of my other projects. That’s really the only thing that counts.
Jeff can handle getting a bolus into Eddie by himself with no difficulty, so I don’t feel like I’m abandoning Jeff over that. Eddie is moving as little as possible to accomplish his goals of just barely eating, just barely drinking, and getting to the litter pan. I’ve taken to leaving a hot water bottle next to him as he was cold to the touch the other day, and lifting him up into the chair he is sleeping in pretty much 24/7 these days. Margot is being very sucky towards us and practically knocked Eddie over with her tail the other day, a liberty he simply would not have tolerated a couple of months ago.
So many people have told me how much they are looking forward to seeing me at GAFilk! I feel genuinely underrehearsed, but I recently read that if you’re feeling nervous, make yourself MORE EXCITED. So I will.
ATL is not currently experiencing delays in or outbound with the exception of international flights outbound. Travel will be icky, but not impossible due to weather.
I’d like to call out Patricia for helping arrange a drinkypoo on my return, and a very warm hug for mOm and Chipper, who have been extra specially supportive beta readers for George, and for Tammy, who provided me with the book that unblocked my last objections to the writing. I have something very specific to say on the subject of first contact, which is that we’ve had 100 years of science fiction in popular culture, and we have to start writing first contact fiction that allows humans to respond intelligently to aliens. Not to freak out or say stupid things. To say, “Cool! Weird! How can I help? What’s in it for me? Where’s your ray gun?” when somebody who really does think globally comes along.
Everybody who can, have a good day!
It’s been a lively couple of days. I’ve been writing hard, practiced almost enough, played at church to sincere and life affirming compliments, showed the shop, made the decision to hand the keys over to the landlord, got into last minute negotiations with guys that came in at Christmas, had a spider drop onto my keyboard and scare the shit out of me, I’ve stopped having nightmares but the insomnia has fired up again, we finished watching Jazz, which made me unhappy because it was SO wonderful, and I received some Buddhist wisdom which allowed me to release a lot of stored animus toward my life and situation. I learned that my travel plans into the US are probably going to be completely fucked up by the INSANE weather ongoing in most of the US – shit, it’s warmer in Alaska – which reminds me of the time that I wanted to get to a con which would have been crucial to my development as an SF writer and 9/11 intervened, except this time it’s all expenses paid and guess what, they’ll WAIT for me, as I don’t imagine I’d be stranded more than two days so I’ll still get to do it. I learned that Pearl, Cat Faber’s octave mandolin (ALSO by Peter Cox) experienced technical difficulties and is now in the shop, meaning I do not have an octave mandolin as a back up if United destroys or loses Otto. (And I know that as sad as that might be, I would just ask for the bits back or get Peter to make me another one, him being obliging that way, if remunerated. Who’s to say the replacement wouldn’t be even more amazing?) This means I would have to do the entire concert on a regular sized mando – which I DO NOT WANT – or transpose EVERYTHING to a guitar, which for a couple of songs would be fine and for everything else would probably cause my nervous system to implode – or sing the entire concert a capella, which would be extremely wearing for my audience. I will be taking Lemming’s advice about packageration seriously. I reproduce it below. Jeff invented the word garbarcage to describe when tv shows are shitty because they have too much arc and too little of what we watch the shows for. Eddie is needing fluids at least every other day, he has started to refuse his meds and he’s gone off his food, although he’s still making the trek to the litter tray. Margot has gotten very sucky, which is unusual. I’m making plans to travel after the shop is gone. I found out that the Squamish name for Thomas Mulcair is “Angry Beard” (okay it’s just one Squamish dude who is calling him that, but DID I LAUGH when I read that) and that it’s too cold outside right now for the Lincoln Park Zoo Polar Bear. I’ve been applying for jobs every day, no response. However, I am relaxed about it. What will be, will be. No use flinching or being rebellious. The leathern thong descends whether I’ve been a good girl or not.
Tip #1: Depending on size of body, sometimes banjo cases work for octave mandolin type instruments. Tip #2: A way to save money on a case AND protect the instrument: Call guitar stores in area and see if one will give you an instrument-size box. A banjo box would probably work. Check airline regs for box measurements before proceeding. They’re supposed to allow some leeway for musical instruments. Invest in some bubble wrap. Loosen strings. Wrap instrument in bubble wrap, inside soft case. Wrap case in bubble wrap. Stuff bubble wrap in bottom of box, put in instrument, put bubble wrap on all sides and top filling box, seal box with heavy 2″ wide packing tape, about twice as much as you need. Pack one roll of packing tape so you can re-pack before you leave to go home. Add handle (easy to make one with tape, or tape on a handle, or tie on some rope. Mark stuff on package with large black magic marker “THIS SIDE UP! FRAGILE: DO NOT BEND. CONTAINS ANGRY ELVES WHO WILL HURT YOU IF YOU WAKE THEM UP” or some such thing. Tip #3: First, find out if the planes you’re flying on all have closets. Second, carry the thing with you, in the soft case, but do wrap it in bubble wrap inside the case. Make sure it’s small enough to fit in the overhead. Go up to the counter and ask if they’ll find space in the closet for your instrument. If they’re crazy enough to want to gate-check it, well, that’s what the bubble wrap inside the case is for, but if they do that, ask them if they’ve seen the “United Breaks Guitars” video, nicely. If you have to put it in the overhead, stuff a large coat or something all around it so no one tries to smash it with their luggage. Again, bubble wrap. Bubble wrap is your friend
Oh, and don’t forget the loosen strings part. Most of the time, no difference, but the changes in air pressure in the luggage compartment plus string tension will eventually cause the neck to break at the nut.
And take along spare strings because one often breaks when you retighten.
Two Miss Margot moments.
1. This morning Jeff and I discussed which characteristic defined Margot better, fluffiness or silliness. Silliness won, despite her striking degree of fluffiness, because she could lose ALL that fur and still be silly.
2. She comes and watches TV with us the instant she hears David Attenborough’s voice. So she’s silly, but she has excellent taste.
Before 6 am I had 1350 words done on Midnite Moving, and Eddie said FEED ME NAOW in such a loud voice it was as if he’d never been sick.
Later on today we’ll go get some more Chinese takeout. The Singapore style noodles at Chong Lum Hin are so yummy.
YAY Jeff, he’s set up the wireless printer; we can now print from any computer anywhere in the house, which is very handy.
Watched the first half of Crumb yesterday evening. A great artist, and a very weird man. His life is full of old records. Following on watching the first 6 episodes of Ken Burns’ Jazz I noted some jazz clips that were in a big subdirectory on the media drive and watched them, including Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt. Not all of it was watchable, but it was all interesting. Jazz really is an immense genre.
Now, Lumosity, practicing for church (I’m singing the compost song), and practicing for GAFilk. Lemming says that you get treated like visiting royalty at GAfilk. That will be an interesting experience, hunh?
No response from any potential customers. I’ll be going to the landlord tomorrow and dropping off the keys. There’s only so much I can do, and I need to walk away and quit spending money on a dream, when I need to move someplace where there’s actually some work.
Walked 2.3 k, opened a credit union account, watched a lot of Longmire, and was much cheered by Eddie’s obvious improvement when Jeff brought him home.
I sure hope I get more sleep tonight.
Person of interest didn’t show. I’m supposed to be meeting with someone else this weekend re the cafe. It’s a numbers game, I have to be patient, etc.
Eddie is basically not coming up the stairs at all these days. He lives in Jeff’s bathroom closet, only coming out to eat and drink and use the litter pan. He’s painfully thin and his hair is coming out in patches and sometimes when he looks at me I get the feeling he’s trying to figure out who I am, then he lets me pet him, calls softly and sadly, and goes back to his hidey hole. Every once in a long while he tries to jump up on something and loses his balance. Since he is still eating and drinking and taking his meds, we’re in a state of watchful waiting but also premonitory sadness.
I’m hoping to score a flu shot today, if I can gird up my loins to get there. Also to pick up the colour printer from Paul’s place and also to do a bunch of other errandy type things.
Customer surveys can be hazardous to your marriage. (picture of a hotel survey)
Video from the cat door at about 1am on October 31. Along with the alien cat intrusions, this explains why Eddie guards the cat door at night. The large object next to the door is not an albino Horta; it’s packing material from a TV box. Next step: install a motion-activated light outside the door.