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!
Looking down over a snow coloured world.
Welp, even the conservatives are going WTF.
Got tons of sleep, but I still have to work tonight, and I only got one day off, because the person I’m training didn’t show up so that will be my fault.
Oh former coworker you warned me.
SO HOT MELTED YESTERDAY.
Watched movies and the second episode of Mr. Robot. Made salads.
Buster’s picked up more scratches.
I didn’t rinse out and drain the milk cartons properly for the recycling, so I feel very guilty about Jeff’s cry of disgust as he was dealing with the trash this morning. I will do better.
Especially since he made coffee.
I’m up to 516 words already so you can probably tell that it’s cooler in Vancouver.
Apart from a bunch of stuff healthwise that I’m not going to talk about because EW GROSS, yesterday was awesome. I wrote 1200 words, watched a bunch of world class soccer, drank beer and stayed the hell out of the sun.
Today Jeff and I are going to do a schlep, and then I’m going to lie around waiting for Mike to take me to the beach so I can at least get in one Wreck Day this year. Alex had HIS first Wreck Day yesterday and Katie nearly spavined herself on the stairs but he loved it and no sun burn. Yay. Hope it’s kiteable, Mike always likes that.
Still no word on when C. (Mike’s buddy) can come home from the US. She already had a work visa here, Las Migras in this country are underfunded fools. A buddy has been waiting 3 years to bring his wife from the Phillippines! Cazart.
The court decisions in the States are blowing up my social media feeds. More work remains. I’m not going to colourize my facebook picture; I’ve got all the goddamned ribbons, medals, encomia and thank you letters I want from the work I have done for equality and if people don’t know where I stand they don’t care enough to pay attention. Also, I’m not an American and we’ve been able to marry like that for a decade now.
One of Joni Mitchell’s former squeezes has let slip that the aneurysm has blown out her ability to talk. I figure if she recovers enough to hold a paint brush she’ll be fine. She’ll certainly be getting the best care.
Back to making lists and getting dressed. I am going to have another good day, I can feel it. Tomorrow, when I’m sore from the stairs, that’s something else.
It is Suddenly Summer after a long spring. It wasn’t forecast, but Vancouver got the May 2-4 weekend we’ve been longing for. Normally, we have overcast in May. This weekend was rilly glorious.
No cpap, no writing. I did get the disgusting hell hole that was the front hall where the litter pan was mucked out, ran some laundry (and used the line to dry, yay!) and hacked away at The King Will Never Die (the BB King memorial song, which is, as frikking usual, morphing away from me into something else.)
Jeff took me to brekkie.
The agent for the landpeer comes over this morning and we re-up on our lease. And why not, they aren’t raising our rent, which in Vancouver is better than winning a lottery because then all your friends and relatives aren’t bugging you for cash, but you still have more in your pocket.
Time to go make three days of wordcount.
It’s precipitating like, very hard, man, in a variety of places, including, according to my correspondents, England. Israel and Norway are also getting pounded.
This showed up in my feed this morning courtesy of Ian Michael Walden
To quote the Two Ronnies – “It’ll be choking ’em in Wokingham, killing ’em in Gillingham, and if you live in Lissingdown, take an umbrella”.
YOINK.
Paul asked for additional support for the Yes, It Continues unpacking yesterday. We also noodled around for a while (quite a while in my case) on musical instruments and vacuumed and swept various surfaces in prep for the party on Sunday…. and Paul made pork stir fry with yellow curry sauce and quinoa and greek salad om nom nom, while I collected Keith from work. Ayesha is a TUB but so affectionate and sweet.
The downstairs neighbours are appropriately chastened that Buster wuz not a grrl.
It would be nice to have a job. This week I started pulling all my lyrics into one place; I know I’ve written a lot of songs. I’ve gotten better at it as I get older. The novel sits glaring at me.
Sandy’s pipes are frozen. My travails, in many respects, are small.
I woke Jeff up about quarter to two to ask him to help me take the awning down before it blew away. We were both pretty wired after that so we watched some TV and went back to bed around three. The wind and noise here last night were terrifying. I don’t think I’d deal well with a hurricane or tornado… this only topped out at gusts of 110 kph.
Sigh. A hundred and forty bucks up the spout. The last one lasted 4 years and this barely survived one season. I’m really disappointed.
This morning I had a remarkable experience while walking. As I stepped out to get a coffee at Starbucks (and strangely, their coffee still sucks) the sun was struggling skyward into a golden haze. One half of the sky was dark and brooding; the other was brilliant gold and white and blue. I could hear raindrops falling all around me, plinking on leaves and plunking on cars and splatting on sidewalk and asphalt, but nothing fell on me or my phone. Then of course it started raining heavier but it wasn’t unpleasant to walk. As I turned onto 6th I was walking almost directly into the sun, and the big juicy raindrops came down like meteors all around me, streaks of white and silver, and none landed on me. I felt like I was playing a very sophisticated game of dodgeball with the whole universe.
There was a certain amount of ugliness at both ends of the trip – I came home day before yesterday – but I’m going to take the high road and not whine about it since it all came right in the end… always a hazard of complaining live, you may look like an ass in real time rather than recollecting the horror with a suitable amount of alcohol to hand, speaking of which, there is none in the house.
It’s a rainy and overcast and not particularly warm day in Vancouver. The alternator is starting to go on the MR2 so Jeff will be babying it until he has a chance to get it fixed. He’ll be off to visit the folks sometime soonish, within the next week, and I’ll be doing the walk on thing to visit them shortly thereafter.
Today, a Costco run. I’ve already applied for all of the interesting looking jobs; now to map out some kind of more useful job hunting plan than I have at the moment, as it is entirely too passive.
I was thinking after we came back from brekkie (steak and eggs… should you care) that I don’t feel like working on George today, so it will be Tarot for Atheists.
Jeff and I braved it twice, once to mow and weedwhack and once to pick up a replacement part for Jeff’s computer.
We watched The Railway Man; Colin Firth was excellent as always.
Yesterday we tried but could not finish Noah.
because he is awesome. Warning, there’s a farmblow in there that just puts my tummy in a knot, but the rest is awesome. It shows a guy playing hard with thin ice.
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.
There has been some of this stuff in my fridge pretty much continuously since I met Paul.
We finished Long Way Round. I loved it. If you love motorcycles, OR love travelogues OR are a fan of Ewan McGregor it’s worth seeing the whole thing.
May I just state for the record that Archie Panjabi is amazing in her role as Kalinda in The Good Wife. She could play Kiaya Khatun or Roxelana Sultan if Lymond ever came to the screen…. that would be so awesome.
Breaking Bad is coming to an end within a few weeks. Here are a couple of articles I enjoyed. Albuquerque.
and also A Pictorial History.
Keith dropped by yesterday. Paul and he have a new tortoiseshell barn cat they imported from the US. Her name is Ayesha, and she does not want to be a housecat. She is, however, quite mellow. I haven’t met her yet and look forward to making her acquaintance when she is better settled in.
Eddie let me clip his nails the other day with only one low wail to indicate his opinion of the indignity.
It’s been rainy and blecchy.
Cpap machine for a couple of hours last night. I took it off when I couldn’t actually sleep with it on. This is turning into a sore trial…
I got a solid night’s sleep (no cpap machine, I just couldn’t).
Check this out…. geodesy!
The weather has decided to be summer again, it’s going to be smoking hot today; the ac is already on.
I paid bills yesterday. It was a relief.
We are through Cadfael and well into The Good Wife. It is a very well acted show.
I am up to 10K words on my Tarot thingee and enjoying it immensely. I have to set up a spreadsheet to try to deal with the interrelatedness of things.
Today I think I’m going to have a mushroom and spinach omelette for breakfast. Cause I really need to use up the spinach and mushrooms, yo. Also, must go to veggie store… all the veggies I pre-prepped so we could have INSTANT HEALTHY SNACKS are, like, gone.
Sue came by yesterday to borrow my fascinator. I have two- the steampunk as opposed to headband one. She is in no fewer than THREE shows this fall, which given she’s fifteen years older than me is a big old YOU GO GIRL. Her energy and acting ability continue to be a joy. And she was wearing me mammy’s scarf whot she knit for her, which cheered me no end when I greeted her at the door.
Paul has taken me out for a couple of walks recently and it’s always nice to go to Deer Lake Park. A couple of times he has providentially gotten me out of the house during the only two hours of the day it wasn’t raining and blowing.
Night before last the thunder and lightning at midnight shook the house on its foundations.
Two more sleeps for more Breaking Bad. The race to the finish is enthralling.
I updated my google plus profile to make it link back to this blog. Or try to.
My shoulder really hurts off and on (I am at an awkward stage of how strong and mobile that joint is, constantly reaching too far and doing too much) and I’m having meshuggas with the cpap machine, but I am letting neither of these things spoil my mood. I do have a new hose for the cpap after my whining. So go me. I’m out of pain pills but it doesn’t seem to be affecting how little or much sleep I get.
Not being able to practice mandolin is making me NUTTY. I mean, nutty.
Saw Despicable Me 2 and loved it. Some of the physical humour is right up there with Warner Bros.
We’re most of the way through the first season of Good Wife and Jeff and I are quite enjoying it. Except when a corrupt member of the legal establishment does something, and then Jeff fulminates. It is terrible having had an honest judge in the family; everything else, real OR imaginary, suffers so by comparison.
I got my running around done yesterday. It was horribly exhausting and it’s fucking hot out there so I came home and collapsed. I should have gone to Andrew’s Pennywake, but I am good for One Big Thing per day these days, it seems, and have to quit overbooking myself.
I am up over 6K words on my new project and once the sun comes up I think I’m going to go find a library to work in – research don’t you know. LTGW recommends that as a working style. I’ll be working on Midnite Moving.
No Cpap last night, I was just too hot and sticky to think about putting the mask on my face, and it smelling like ass doesn’t help.
I had a problem with a technical aspect of Midnite Moving and be damned if the internet didn’t help out. There is now a nanomolecular substance called CARBYNE. Isn’t that cool? Look it up, it’s awesome.