Category: Whining

Friends and relatives

I AM SO LUCKY.  Won’t go into teedails, but I am fortunate to have kindly and discerning friends and relatives.

The hat I loaned to Sue won’t be required.  The writer.director of her fringe show bailed at the last moment.  That must be awful.  I told her to keep the hat until she had taken a headshot, as it is marvellous and looks so wonderful on her.

Shoulder wasn’t bad yesterday after physio but today it HURTS LIKE HELL.  Also I am feeling fluish, so I think I am bailing on church today.

Chipper asked me to drive across Canada with her… I am considering it.

what is the meaning of this candy corn on the cob?

We are already halfway through the second season of Hell on Wheels.  It’s filling up the big empty Deadwood part of my heart.  It is not as good as Deadwood, but, ah, she ain’t Rose, if you know what I mean. And Anson Mount has the most superb range of vocalizations I have ever heard out of an actor.  He can convey more with a single grunt…. or stifled laugh… or sigh of regret… it’s quite entertaining.

Today, Mt. Washmore.

 

Visits and writing

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.

 

 

Hanna kissing Hedy / writing matters

dawwww.

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.

Truck or bus?

I don’t know which one hit me. I did about three hours of light housekeeping yesterday and I am sore all over, not just my shoulder.  I think I need to take it easy and stay in the sling today.

Hey everybody, Chipper is blogging at least couple of times a week at the Red Deer site (link on the right).  It’s lovely to be reminded of all the awesome things going on in the wilds of Madawaska. Mushrooms!  Aurorae!

Orange is the New Black continues to be much fun.  We’ve started watching The Good Wife, which is a great show.  We are also caught up on Ray Donovan and the Newsroom.  Liev Schrieber is so yummy it drives me nuts.  LTGW called the other day (just to say hi! awwww) and I told him that in silhouette Liev is a dead ringer for him cause MAN that dude fills a doorway in the omnomminest way (LTGW knows I’ve been crushing on him since the day I met him, he just rolls his eyes).  Then we talked about what I’m going to do if the fork in the road ahead goes back to paid employment.  He had a lot of encouraging things to say about my network and how I’m not working it properly, and man, I needed to hear encouraging words from a cute guy (okay, my idea of cute).  And I’m still thinking about keeping the shop.  There’s just a lot of rearranging I need to do, financially and emotionally and otherwise, and right now I’m very busted up and blue – a long way from the take the world on attitude I had in March.  Ah, how life plays tricks on one!  But I’m also feeling somewhat more cheerful now that I know I am not likely to have surgery.  Which reminds me, I really have to book some physio.  And pick up a CPAP.  Sigh.  Not being able to drive FUCKING SUCKS.  There I said it.

Of course Jeff has been the soul of courtesy regarding taxiing me around but he’s got a life and he’s super busy with his own work these days (which makes me happy… he’s always learning things). And we still find time to bond over tv and movies.  We rewatched Jack the Giant Killer, it’s a lovely film, almost perfect for the genre.

Yesterday I realized I will have to do some math to figure out what the surface area of my alien’s hair would have to be to have him sail off into the sky like a spiderling.  It’s a hilarious image, I can see him calling OW OW OW into the wind as his semi-sentient hair freaks out and uncoils to full length, hauling him backwards down the beach and then UP UP AND AWAY like a particularly bizarre version of the Flying Nun. Leaving Kima alone with HOOMANS OH NOEZ what will happen?  Probably nothing, she’ll just crawl over to the water and jet.  BAD HAIR!  baaaaaad hair!

Yesterday I made chicken/rice/steamed veg for dinner and then carefully prepackaged the leftovers and labelled them with dates.  Today I MUST clean out the fridge, it’s a horror show.  I don’t want to, but I really otter.

Okay, time to set the timer to do 20 minutes of housework.  (then I take a break).  I learned that at the UFYH site, and it really works.

I quit drinking again.  Very strange.  There hasn’t been beer in the house for almost a month. I don’t think Jeff’s had a beer since the last time we ate dinner with Mike.

Jerome dropped by a couple of days ago!  He showed the most HIlarious video of Lucas dropping off to sleep in his high chair, and every time he drooped his elder brother Brayden would jostle him and he’d jerk awake again.

Margot is spending a lot of time in the cardboard box Jeff labelled Queen Margot I for her.  She’s about the same colour as the box so I keep thinking “What’s the rustling noise!?”

 

 

 

 

Diluted and deluded.

I am going to get help with my new current problem, which is that all the food in the walk in has spoiled thanks to the compressor quitting because I forgot to turn the fan back on when i showed the place.  It’s all my fault, and on my pocket be it.  In the meantime, it has to get cleaned out, and then I have to find a place to put the really disgusting garbage that will arise, and then wash the equally disgusting service dishes, for which I am also soliciting help.  Cannot seem to catch a break, apart from the fact that things are actually more or less okay, I just need to be thankful.

Pacific Rim was a really good giant monsters vs. robots movie.  The script almost went into eyeroll territory a couple of times but solid performances (not excellent, ok) and fight scenes where you could tell what was happening helped.  I loved Ron Perlman’s guest shot, HATED the stupid scientists, who both needed tasing, in my view, and I enjoyed the special effects greatly.  Plot didn’t bear close examination, but oh well.  There are now Kaiju filk songs, yay.

No surgery for me, yay.  Doc says I am healing properly.  I need to give the nerve damage many more months to heal, but I can go get physio now.

 

Back to writing.  George is a bag surrounding computational colloid.  Weird, hunh?

 

One thing and another

Keith and Paul were in the shop today, which was delightful and brief.  I owe Keith money for the beer he picked up last night.  I suppose it being a long weekend and me going to a party tonight (first one in AGESSSS) I should purchase more.  Ziva died – vacuum leaks, more of them, rad problems, sensor and indication problems.  No can get fixed until Tuesday and candidly I am doubting even then.  Sue is going to give me the name of her auto broker.  Ziva has broken my heart and my wallet long enough, I could have bought two decent cars for what I’ve spent on repairs.  Wayne picked up the 50 biscotti I baked for the Hyack Swim Meet volunteers.  I included promo!  This is an improvement.  Also, we are in the flyer for the event, in two places, so instead of spending a hundred bucks on promo I made cookies.  I like dat.  Katie is going on a date tonight and if I say so much as ONE MORE WORD on the subject she’s gonna jam that broomstick up my nose.  Still haven’t mailed pOp’s biscotti, but Katie is leaving early today so I am going to ask her if I can escape to the Post Office to get it mailed off before she goes.  All the fridges are behaving well.  Katie spilled salt two days running and was yelling v. bad swearz, you know, pin a nun to a wall shit. Split pea with ham soup today.  I need to print more business cards. Started watching The Hour with Ben Whishaw (rowr!), Dominic West (McNulty from the Wire) and the exquisite Romola Garai as Bel Rowley.  It’s a Beeb miniseries set in 1956 Britain and everything about it is wonderful.  Abi Morgan wrote the script, which is uniformly excellent and doesn’t make the assumption that viewers are fecking idiots.  We’re up to episode 8 in Band of Brothers.  Also started watching Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks, which is SO TRANSGRESSIVE.  Jeff and I were killing ourselves laughing.  It is a trip to watch black people commenting about white people (and each other) without having to make concessions to hurting anybody’s feelings.  The grandfather is hilarious.  McGruder is a righteous rude boy and anybody who can call Condoleeza Rice a mass murderer to her face is my kinda guy (John is giving me the spectral thumbs up, I can feel it). My news feed informs me that Rob Ford (Mayor of TO) smokes crack.  Now many times in my life I have wanted to accuse any number of political figures of smoking crack, but jeezly hell my darlings, I wasn’t expecting there to be VIDEO.  The roast beef sandwiches have two new fans.  One of them is a climate change denialist and the other is a very entertaining semi-retired gent who put me onto the idea of starting up a cooperative retirement/nursing home.  I think it’s a fan-fucking-tastic idea.

fuck my fucking fuck of a fucking life with a fucking bushel of fucksticks

Geez, my daughter may have some horrific disease, I’m overdue for handing over documents to the church auditor, the shop has been quite slow (although Katie’s friend Jessica is there doing art work on the sidewalk signs,) I can’t get a fucking printer driver installed on this fucking Windows 8, some asshole came into the shop yesterday and lectured me for half an hour about everything I’m doing wrong, another merchant told me that apparently everybody on the street thinks we charge too much money, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I know that at some point (maybe rather later than sooner) sweet Death will come take me none of this would be tolerable.

Oh look, Margot’s chasing a fly, how adorable.

Nope, still feel like shit.

Katie’s next specialist appointment is tomorrow. Any bets she’ll be waiting 6 months for a neurology consult?

Katie is here

Baking up a storm of maple bacon muffins, some of which will accompany to her foodsafe 2 class today.

Keith is going to the grands this weekend, and he will have biscotti in tow if the gods are kind.

Today I am ENDURING THE HORRAH of completing my first tax documents for the church. I will be glad when this term is over, despite all I have learned.

It is astonishingly windy – the recycling bin keeps leaping up and trying to make a run for it down the porch stairs.  The cats really don’t like it the noise.

Jeff says Margot had some kind of fit the other day.  Her eyes were open but she was impossible to rouse.  Then she perked up and was completely normal or as normalz as that crazy little fur machine ever gets.  Obviously I am mildly concerned but when cats are eating and drinking as per normal it’s hard to stay that way.

mOm, you will be amused to hear that Katie just came up behind me and said “can you read that in the dark?” and turned the lamp on.

Long and amusing phone call with Chipper yesterday.  She’s in much better spirits – her wordplay and sense of proportion have been somewhat restored – and she has been the biggest booster of the plan for the cafe.

I suppose I should pick up the phone and apologize to Carrie for our unfortunate text exchange, but I am still a little mad about it and if I am still resentful an apology will just make things worse.

Saw Mambo Kings the other day. I enjoyed the musical numbers and costume design a lot, and Antonio Banderas is a wriggling sack of puppies cute.

Lots of people asked me for the lyrics to my Beacon bday tune, so I am happy about that.

Receipting for tax time for donors at the church is done…. I will also be stuffing envelopes today.

And laundry.  I thought I was all caught up but the laundry basket is telling me different.

 

Katie’s off at the cafe learning about the menu

And I am here at home working away on receipts and getting the printer hooked up to the new computer (Jeff advised, I finally took the advice).

Margot has been defluffed (as if….) and rendered a little less stabby, as I took off some talon action on her back feet.  She barfed all over my Fraser Health certificate plan and now I have to print another one.

This may seem like a particularly asinine comment, but if the way they blocked off Kingsway and 14h this morning is anything to go by, the Burnaby RCMP couldn’t organize an orgy at a porn convention.

This afternoon we bake, and Jeff will be the (hopefully) happy recipient of the largesse.

Peggy is back from China, I am so looking forward to talking to her about it.

I formally dropped out of the Chalice circle.  I am too set in my ways – the first one was so good, and was all about deepening friendship, which thank you very much IS spiritual.  However I was alternately disturbed and disappointed by the materials we were supposed to read, and the presence of two of the long time members of the former iteration of the circle was not a sufficiently  appealing inducement.

Still need the business name registration, waiting until later this week….  sigh.

Erk.

Yeah.  I should never have volunteered for anything at church.  I hope the word no comes to my lips with more efficacy in future but in the meantime I have stopped associating church with awe and wonder and now associate it with work and worry.  Plus I’m no good at it… and of course there’s stuff I can’t put in a public place, boorah.

So I am going to back away from the chalice circle, and finish up, as best as I am able, the work for the church year (I am finishing the receipt data entry this morning) and then traverse the moments between now and the AGM and then pretty much stop going to church.  I was reading the church folly lane book that Latham wrote yesterday, and for all the people who are infused with energy about church thanks to his workshop, what will happen?  All he did was get everybody enthusiastic and the second everybody allows themselves to feel the exhaustion associated with the massive amounts of labour in putting on a 30th birthday show (and I don’t include myself in that because all I’m doing is open church the next day, bringing food, helping set up starting at two next Saturday, and singing a song I composed especially for the occasion which I really should rehearse again for at least half a dozen times between now and then) we will be able to TALK enthusiastically, but to steer the church through a course of transitioning from family to pastoral to program church is impossible with the people and the energy that we have.  Being a small church is in the DNA of the church.  The second we reach a certain size, there’s always a crisis and people quit.  (I am thinking of the RE director debacle we had a few years back and by debacle I’m talking about how we p8ssed all over the covenant we have to be mutually supportive and face our problems with courage and truthfulness, not anything the RE director did).

I have said it before and I’ll say it again.  RELIGIOUS EDUCATION is the engine of growth of a church.  If you don’t tend it lovingly and house it appropriately, you can’t grow the church, because there’s no place for young adults with children to attach to the church.  No young adults, no new members to train in organizational leadership.  No relief for the people who run the church; they get to do the same thing over and over and fresh faces and ideas don’t come in.  Now Robert Latham says you must have a clear sense of mission and then the church will be vibrant, or else you’re just a social club for aging liberals.

Church didn’t do anything to me.  I did it to myself.  I wanted to make things better, make it more welcoming for young people.  Still, we sing old songs that apart from the lyrics are exactly what you hear in other churches, still, we don’t use technology effectively in our services, still, we have no decent RE space, still, we are renters, still we do not challenge ourselves with service content.  We are consistent, we are generous, we are friendly. And we’re old.  Average age on the Board is 60.  That is terrible.  It says everything about our leadership, our energy level, our demographics.

Like I said I’ll keep pledging.   And if I am spared, I’m going to start my own church.  That’s how you really make money in this modern world.  Ask anybody.

Big News, small news, glad news, sad news

I put a deposit down on the cafe yesterday.  So begins an enterprise.

Expert, schmexpert.

The only thing I don’t understand about the rogue LAPD cop Christopher Dorner is not why he hasn’t been caught – he will be, and I cheerfully predict that he’ll go quietly and not die in a hail of gunfire – it’s why nobody’s bought the domain name yet.

My fellow board member Audrey has lost her mother.  She was well into her nineties.  Blind Lemming Chiffon, when we had dinner at Conflikt, said that until you’ve lost a parent you can’t understand what it’s like.  That was also the same supper where he gave me the Ebay overview on what allows him to sell like a master, and where he recommended Searching for Sugar Man, one of the best and most astonishing music documentaries I have ever seen.

Jeff is having pie for breakfast.  He’s a rebel.

I was thinking (as I had another crying bout thinking about John last night) about loss.  I thought, “Ah, so selfish.  It is not my love for him that hurts me.  I will have that forever; I can’t stop loving him just because he’s dead.  I’m sad because he loved me, and he’ll never stop me from falling off a mountain, or give me a lift on his motorcycle, or make me laugh, or sing with me, or feed me or lift my spirits or be a familiar face in a crowd of strangers ever again.  And that is why I am sad.  Not because someone I love died.  It’s because someone who loved me died.”

I saw both of the kids yesterday, yay, and fed Rob and Keith as well as Jeff.  I made pork schnitzel, taters, broccoli and carrots, and there was a tablecloth and pie and two kinds of ice cream, so it was rather festive, even without beer.  I’ve gone off beer again.  There is a medical condition which I’m too polite to whine about in public which improves by about 30% when I don’t drink beer, and it definitely hurts the insomnia when I drink beer.  I just love beer and wish it wasn’t so mean to me.

It’s a fine axemurderer’s fog out there this morning.

Obviously I have a lot of work to do before Katie calls me for our trek up to City Hall, so I’ll get to it.

They also surf who only sand and wade

Still haven’t heard back from daughter Katie about her checking out of the cafe.  I suppose I’ll hear eventually.

More addiction research.    Which reminded me of this:  (Pope, in case you care).

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

 

There was a fingernail paring of moon in the sky this morning, clothed about the waist with diaphanous clouds.

Worked for about five hours over at Sue’s yesterday.  I didn’t quite wear out my welcome, but it was a near thing.  Came home and cooked chicken breasts with cauliflower for dins.  The chicken breasts roasted up like that are so very very nommy.  Now I gotta get my rear in gear and get some brekky happening for me and Jeff.

NOTHER SONG LAST NIGHT.  Compared to the last one which is THE SADDEST SONG EVAR, it is so intensely cheerful it is quite ludicrous.  You know, I could probably write a song every other day for the rest of my life if someone let me.  Oh, right…. I get to do that myself.  Ah well.

Things are unsettled around here again.  Is the household splitting up, and what form will things take?  If either of us get a job, the problem is reduced for a while, but we do both have to have an income of some sort, and so…. it’s a puzzler.  I’m going to cook brekky, try to straighten out a bit of the mess I made yesterday, get access to my epost mailers, run some laundry, and work on my resume, again, since there seems to be something wrong with it.  I did get responses from two job ads but learned in the process I had submitted to an agency, which is just a specialized case of shouting down a well unless there is something on your resume that is a must have for a hot job.

Also, ALLEGRA TRY NOT TO READ THE GAWKER UNEMPLOYMENT STORIES. People talking about having no savings after two years of unemployment is not helpful to your mental health.

Poor Katie

She has broken up with Kyle.  He’s probably going to end up with Izzy.  Good thing they didn’t have kids or I’d have something else to be cut up about.

Still waiting to hear what the damage is on Ziva. If I do not have a vehicle I am not going to be able to go to Conflikt and that screws up Cindy, who was hoping to borrow my vehicle to get her instruments back to town.  Heavy sigh.

If I do have to cancel I’ll donate my membership to a deserving person and cancel the hotel room.

 

Heavy heavy sigh.  I was hoping to have the car packed by about 10 this morning….

 

On the plus side I made Choc Chip Cookies for Jeff.