Category: Whining

Let the good times roll

Blackberry emailed me today to thank me for buying their phone. I responded in a fashion that can only be described as vitriolic.  I also cc’d Robof9 and whined about how I should have taken his advice and gotten an iPhone.

I don’t know why I’m choked, I got the biggest bonus in my personal history for the last year of work.  Makes me feel motivated, let me tell you!

Too bad

I WISH I could talk about work in detail.  There was a communiqué from Finance yesterday that managed to combine Kafka, Jacques Tati and General Nivelle in its spirit, tone and usefulness.  The originator will be receiving one of Allegra’s Famous Emailsâ„¢. Since that about covers it without being too specific or blaming individuals, I’ll let that one go out into the world unchallenged.

Last night Jeff and I had purple potatoes, steamed carrots and onions, and the leftover pork chops.  The purple taters were so om nom nom.  I will do them mashed sometime for fun.

After supper we watched Capitalism, A Love Story which had the usual annoying Michael Moore tics (I prefer people with some dignity so I always hate it when he lets people cry on camera, but that’s me being a frikkin WASP there darlin’) but was otherwise very well done, and if I disliked the crony politicians of the Reagan, Clinton and Bush eras I loathe them now.  The scale of the plunder that has occurred and the short sightedness of it all disgust me to my core.  However, a collapse at this point is inevitable, and Canada and many other places will get dragged into the maelstrom, so everybody learn to grow food.

After the movie, I dragged myself out to the Puddleâ„¢, where Paul, Keith and Katie were also swimming and soaking.  It was very nice to hang around with them.  I didn’t actually swim, I just gave my back some relief from the horrors of being attached to me for a while.  Then I came home and slept until 6:03 in the morning, which is like a frikkin’ miracle.

Also, I finished a song in Songwriter (Walk Away)… the one that goes I have tried to walk away, but my thoughts will not wear shoes, I would pity my poor mind, if I had a mind to lose (which I wrote last summer but seems very apt these days).

I don’t know if any of the foregoing constitutes staying busy or not.  When I see what other people accomplish I feel pretty slow.  Anyway, to horse!  I need to get into work and flatten some paper.

 

What the ?

When Katie and I got off the ferry last night, we noticed a great deal of unsalted/unsanded snow on the roads.  The highway was white with snow; the traction was miserable; I saw three cars in the ditch between Tsawassen and home; a Pacific Coach lines bus tried to kill me at the intersection of the highway and Ladner Trunk Road (as Katie will be only too motivated to confirm, and which I responded to appropriately when the bus cleared my driver’s side mirror by four inches at best) which was also the first place we saw a salt truck; we didn’t see another truck until Fraser and Marine, and didn’t see another one after that.

It snowed another two to three inches worth, and then around 8 am this morning it started snowing again, huge flakes that are falling like rain on tranquillizers.

What happens when customer service interactions go so wrong they go right.

Oh, grrreat.

Migraine sign this morning.  It’s probably from the nifty weather change.  (Last night, graupel mixed with sleet and punctuated by lightning as I came back from dropping Katie off (and thanks for the hairchop, girl!))

On a hunch, I went back and looked at the barometer for my Weekend of Crazyâ„¢and now I have something to else think about, because the barometer did leap and gambol like a spring lamb immediately prior to the wackiness.

I have never been able to get a thyroid diagnosis because the test results don’t support it.  However, just about everything that I’ve experienced in the last little while could be explained by thyroid problems, which occur in my family.  More interesting stuff to ponder I s’pose.  In the meantime, I need to get away from a computer screen, cause, like, that never helps, as I know from experience.

PS I wondered if this was a migraine when I heard about it.  Oh great, my tongue is going numb and I’m getting tingling and numbness in my fingers…..  This is going to be a helluva day.

Most mornings I awaken

to the sound of Jeff tapping on his keyboard.  Sometimes it’s a cat and that staccato defooding sound in some very long-to-be-discovered corner.  Sometimes it’s the smell of a skunk penetrating through the window; sometimes it’s my natural clock, which spits me back out into consciousness anywhere between 2 and 7 am.  Sometimes it’s a leg cramp, and that’s what I got this morning.  I woke to pain pain pain and had a hell of a time getting my foot flat to the ground to get the muscle stretched out and the muscle – the same one I blew out running for the bus the year after I hurt my back – is still grumbling and hot.  Ah, but pain is what tells you that you’re alive.

Daughter Katie came over last night.  I picked her up after work (Dax tried to scare me by materializing next to my car window, but Katie had the kindness to warn me, so I let him know that he WOULD have given me a heart attack if I hadn’t been warned.  He also told me the size of his paycheck, which was respectable for his age and educational level) and then fed her and Jeff home baked schnitzel and veg, and we talked and watched CSI and the Mentalist, which amusingly enough had identical plots, and then we walked up to 7-11 where I got her bus tickets and milk and eggs for myself, waited with her for her bus and then walked home.  Canada Way is so noisy for pedestrians it’s practically deafening; two streets in Jeff and I enjoy a very peaceful little enclave, no barking dogs or noisy neighbours, and yet we’re smack in the center of Edmonds, 10th, Kingsway and Canada Way, all busy arterial streets.  We do get train noise at night as it echoes in the Fraser Valley and comes up the hill; we get the eerie booming noises at night that are actually special effects explosions down in that movie set off of Marine down in the flats; and we get airplane noise a fair bit, although rarely at very low levels, and hardly ever helicopter noise, which scares the crap out of me.

Soon there will be a visit by the rest of Paul’s family to abide for a while in the bosom of the alternative justice system of BC.  I have decided that with all my quirks and drama I’m best off staying away.  My mother is hosting them and that will be the right end of the family to shelter and help them while this goes on; who can say what will happen but I earnestly hope for some closure and a feeling that it’s what John would have wanted rather than a trial and jail for the woman whose inattentive driving killed him.

I am very seriously thinking of either giving Ziva to a family member or selling her.  I have taken so much pleasure in owning her that it may seem a little odd, but if I’m going to be that close to the new location of the office and I can still borrow Jeff’s car occasionally to shop, I should be in good shape to have enjoyed her and then released her back into the wild.  Neither of the kids have evinced much interest because they don’t really have the cash flow.

Ocelots at the Seattle zoo.

I am waiting for Jeff to awaken so I can cook him breakfast.  Finn pancakes and coffee; I’m going to have mine with applewood smoked cheddar.

I have shippiles of work to do today; I have Valentines to create.  I am planning on sneaking into work on Sunday after church and putting them in people’s mail trays.  Every year it’s the same thing.  People are travelling, or they never check their mail trays, and the next thing you know you’re getting thanked for the Valentine on March 1st.

I brought home the flowers Jeff and the folks gave me and they are still gorgeous and sweetly scented.  I know cut flowers are frowned on by some people in my connection, but I will never frown.  Their colour and scent brightened my work area and made many other people happy but me for the balance of the week, and now they’ll be pretty in my kitchen until they’re done.

I send a hug into the ether for Lady Miss B and warm wishes to her hub and miniB, and a big old mushy group hug for Tom and Peggy, my folks and brother (nearly typed bother, and that was NOT my intent), Scott for digging up the name of the psychologist for me, my coworkers Mike Y and Hassan and Kev and Patricia, and I blow kisses at Veronica.  Sneetchy scowling at some other folks for workpain, but I won’t name them. More hugs for Rev. Katie who visited me in sickness and hell that’s what ministers are s’posed to do, and Sue, Carol, Kathleen and Gary for a really good board meeting.  I wish the contractors working on the new building the time, money and safety to do a good job.

I wish a lot of things.  It’s strange to think that this time last week I wished for nothing but cessation of wishing.

Life is good.  I’m going to go work on Dandelions Dreaming now, it’s the best thing I can think of for Peggy’s birthday.  Later today I’m going to talk to Jeff about capturing video from games so I can do something really kickass for Left4Dead/Rising in a Zombieland Redemption, which is the new and deliberately awkward title for my zombie choon, and it may get even longer, at which point I’ll shorten it again.  Such is the creative process; you put your best shit in, you take you best shit out, you put your best shit in, and you shake it all about.

Happy sigh for meals with friends

Man when the hell did I get old enough to have a friend for 45 years?  C’est bizarre, ça.

Anyway, Bonnie has a few grey hairs and perhaps her smile lines are a little more chiselled than I remember, but she is STILL BONNIE, the petite and energetic and outdoorsy and powerfully intelligent friend of my childhood who looks at least 15 years younger than her lying ass birth certificate, and she is a happy person to be around.

We watched pictures of John on the laptop and Bonnie brought a photo album which had pictures of her mom and John and various rellies in happier times.  I took some pics but I won’t post them without permission.

The Royal City Thai restaurant is assenkicken.  They must get by on the lunch trade, the joint was deserted the entire time we were there but the food was nothing short of spectacular.  It was $130 with tax and tip for five hungry adults, there was about one meal’s worth of leftovers, and there was alcohol too… gosh the soup was stellar.  Service stellar too.  Attentive without being pestery.  A find, I must say.

Keith and Kate both came AND I AM SO HAPPY about a) Paul suggesting it and b) how happy Bonnie was to see them and vice versa.  Katie got to see the only surviving picture of John on a skateboard.  I said to her afterwards that alone was worth the price of admission.  Who’da thunk it? Gave Katie and Keith rides home.  Jeff’s subpar and didn’t attend but there’s a whole host of gut wrenching bacteria writhing around the GVRD these days; I hope they don’t sink their little pseudopods into him too far.

Ziva is burning lots of oil.  I should check levels before setting out tomorrow, and I’m probably looking at engine work.  Jeebus, I ain’t paid for the last lot yet.  I have to stay alive, I have two dependents, one metal, one furry.

I couldn’t find the god forsaken USB microphone, so I bought another one.  If the original turns up I’ll give it to Paul.  I tried to buy a slide whistle but they didn’t have one. Twelve on order and no slide whistles, what’s this world coming to. I MUST HAVE A SLIDE WHISTLE. It’s impossible to be a living cartoon character without one.

I can hear Miss Margot’s stertorous breathing. I cleaned her eye gunk this morning and she accepted it with good grace (filled 10 saline soaked qtips with her eye gunk).  The second I tried to clean out her ears, World War Kitty was declared and I beat a hasty, but integumentarily intact retreat.

Anyway I have an appt. with Mr. Methocarbamol followed by a long sleep on the complaisant Millie the Mattress.  Tomorrow morning I’m going to fire up the computer, get the order of service done, and pray to the shade of Ada Babbage that the server reboot contemplated yesterday at work will make a proper workday possible.  Also, I have a one on one with my boss (who is really, really awesome, and I’d say that anyway, thanks) tomorrow.  I haven’t exactly told him anything, but I will, tactfully.  Hopefully before the half dozen or so coworkers who read my blog rat me out.  And no, ratting me out is neither polite nor accurate; I’m just shouldering my responsibilities again, and grace and temperance are threatening to bitch slap me if I don’t stand up straight under the load.

Why you should never talk about suicide on your blog

Thanks Jeff for fixing the blog, it was briefly busted this morning. Jeff continues to be awesome.

Bad language, triggery stuff about suicidal feelings (now blessedly slid by), raw emotion and yet more profanity.  At least I’m not complaining about work.  Fair Warning?

FUCKSTICKS.

I just realized I’ll never get a gun licence in this country now.  Derp.  Herpderp.  bwaaaaaaaaaaaah-ding!  Now I know I was really screwed up.  Even if I’d thought about it at the time (and I didn’t) it wouldn’t have changed my mood (people talking to me and the act of forcing myself to say goodbye to things did that).  I lost my connection to others and they plugged me back in again.  I lost my connection to my sense of my place and ‘re-place-ing’ myself helped.  And if I’d had a gun in the house I wouldn’t have used it to kill myself because after watching 79 billion forensics shows I can’t handle splatter and I would not, no matter how screwed up I was, make that much of a mess, whether in this house, or my car, or anyplace else. Gotta be tidy about it *which given how my room looks is richly comic*.  Also, many horrifying mental pictures of surviving a gun suicide attempt. Thank you internet.

I can look back on it and say what the hell happened? What I really want to do is figure out how to prevent it from ever happening again, seeing as how my poor parents were making travel plans to put me on 24 hour watch if things got worse and they really really don’t need the aggro and pOp hates the lower Mainland with a passion that is normally reserved for eggplant, the Justice Minister, anchovies and reality tv.  And I don’t want to take drugs for depression.  I have many reasons, some good, some bad, for that.  I loved Prozac (except for the 20 pound weight gain, the destruction of my sex drive and the complete absence of songwriting or creativity while I was on it, and the eight months it took my sex drive to come back after the four months I took it) and the Wellbutrin made me even crazier than I already am (just ask daughter Katie about that, she’ll give you a profanity laden earful.)

Quhat was going on there?  For three weeks food had no taste; I went all bleak and completely lost my sense of humour; Conflikt forced me to put the smile on but I crashed really hard afterwards (but of course there was some very intense and emotional stuff in there which left me thinking about death a lot, as I always do when I think about John) *and my ex’s girlfriend, who continues to live rent free in my mental attic, which by itself is enough to make the inside of my skull look like an aerial shot of a train derailment crossed with last year’s pricing model*. John died, Unca Dave died, Granny died, Gizmo died.  Bang bang bang bang.

Seems a bit much to quit going to Conflikt just so I won’t be all wooble sadface afterwards; I’ll have to think on it some more.  I love Paul in my own demanding and unrealistic fashion, and I don’t grudge him any happiness he can squeeze from life, and I am after all the one that forced the sale of the house and moved out; but it was to avoid suicide that time that I took all those steps, and I was clearly and obviously saner afterward, so it was the right thing to do and my regrets are of a practical and not emotional nature.   I just want a public acknowledgment and apology from the manipulative and charming sociopath who *this long and interesting description of his activities deleted on the anxious advice of my inner lawyer – and NO it’s not about Paul but it’s directly connected to my marriage auguring in* – and unicorns are gonna slide down rainbows and poop gold bars (clarn!) before that happens.  There you have it…. one of the REAL reasons I was feeling like offing myself and I can’t even fill in the blanks because El Slime-o might come after me for defamation.  (There are two main others, but I’m sitting with them and will talk to the dude about that next Monday). Wa wa, I’m never going to get closure.

Well sheeeeeeeit. I NEVER WILL.  I never, ever, fucking well ever will get closure.   Will I have to write a roman a clef about that terrible situation to be free of it?  Shall I turn my pain to profit?  By the Grand Hyatt Seattle I Sat Down and Wept? Uh, no.  I promised myself I wouldn’t.  Once again my standards for my own behaviour are giggling in corners and braiding nooses while saying “Shuush.  Shoosh now.”

And it ain’t about me any longer.  I have some context, it’s about the people who’d be alternately devastated, I mean absolutely screwed up for months and months, or really angry at my selfishness, or really pleased that I had killed myself.  Yes, there are people who’d be happy if I killed myself, but yannowhut? Fuck all you fucking fuckers, I won’t give you the satisfaction, and I don’t want to hurt the hordes of people who in fine Canadian fashion, jumped out from the brushy roadsides of the internet and said “Let me distract you with this SOUP!  Ya okay now you’re in a headlock let’s talk some sense into you.”  “I will HUG your bad feelings INTO SUBMISSION – with my brain!”  The point being if you tell people how you feel they can do something about it.  I have a little file of all the support messages I got and I will look at them before I do something stupid like that again.  And I know who I’ll talk to first.

In other news, I have finished the homily and fired it off to my mOm.  The homily takes place 20 years in the future.  There’s nothing like a thought experiment to keep the creative juices flowing.

I have to get the order of service to my coordinator, along with her reading.

Oh, and if you object to my swearing, check this out, also this and this.  I’m fighting pain, I’m using a class marker, and I’m being a good feminist.  If you believe any of that you’re being simply delightful, but at least I am trying to make the point that swearing isn’t bad in and of itself and that my swearing IS a marker for pain, desolation, egalitarian musings, anger, agony and childish attention getting, also sometimes it just livens things the fuck up.

Lurkers decloak

the rules keep changing…..

OMFG.  This is disturbing, and yet I found myself laughing anxiously.  Somebody I had NO CLUE follows my blog has emailed me something by way of comment.  I’m paraphrasing massively, but it went like this.  “Next time you’re having problems why don’t you do something useful and strap a bomb to yourself?  I can think of a few handy places to put it, and I’ll even help you with the technical side of things.”  The rest of the email was a charmingly spelled rant about how even insanity is not an excuse for suicide (??!!), it’s for elderly and terminal people neither of which I am and I should be ashamed of myself for talking about suicide publicly.  Oh, yes, I should definitely take your advice and not the advice of people I love, who love me.  Let me just sit with that a moment.

Man, I know a lot of strange people.  The idea of repurposing my private turmoil for a rather expansive (in the gaseous sense) comment on public policy has a certain amount of flair though.  I couldn’t do it, even at the height of my belief that I’d be better off dead…. my rights end where my skin does, and I can’t imagine taking somebody else with me; it’s against everything I still believe.

Anyway, I’ve been lurking in MY OWN blog, which is weird.  Over the years I have had it… have I really been doing this for years and years???? I have said less and less about more and more.  I have been afraid of offending people; afraid of hurting people’s feelings; worrying about what people who already hate me think.  I’ve been afraid of losing my job, making my parents stop loving me, or being the kind of person who gives Unitarianism a bad name.  (I’ve had it pointed out that might not be a bad thing).  I’ve been very very scared.

So I’ll decloak.

I am one opinionated mofette.  ça veut dire mauxfaits.  On va recommencer.  I am going to stop beating myself up and start kicking the verbal snot out of those who more richly deserve it.  I won’t talk about work except to say when things are going well or badly.  I won’t recount personal conversations without the informed consent of the folks involved. I won’t repost emails without permission, this morning notwithstanding and besides it was a paraphrase and further besides he was obviously upset at somebody who isn’t me.  I was just the… lightning rod?  Dude can comment directly on my blog any time he likes… if he doesn’t like, he can take a sex holiday in Enumclaw with my compliments.

Leaving horsefuckery behind…. and yes, I’m against the use of animals for the sexual pleasure of human beings because of this whole ‘informed consent thing’, I’m just being sophomoric and rude…..

Foremost among those I would hear praised, Jeff, Katie, Paul, my parents, Peggy, Tom, Lady Miss B, Sue, Rev Katie, Keith, Chipper and two people who have asked not to be named publicly.  Thank you thank you thank you.  You are wonderful people and I know that you will keep doing what you do, so it’s good to know you are there.

Katie, thank you for telling me that you are and you intend to remain childless by choice.  I was sure I’d never want children when I was fourteen; I wanted kids by the time I was your age.   I think you’re old enough to know what you want.  Keith, haw haw, the joke’s on you.  My dreams of becoming a successful organizm now rest on your creamed-animé-on-tropes-stuffed cranium.  And if I’m never a grandma I’ll be fine; there are enough neurotic white folks in the world already or so I scan it.  One of my other relatives will breed when I’m longing for a baby to spoil.  It’s no biggie.

Back to the real world:

Eddie is wandering up and down the house HOWLING for Jeff.  He cries upstairs, downstairs, and outside (freaked me out, I couldn’t tell where he was; he sounded like he was locked in something).

Yay! Canadian tech for a better world!

Jeff, there’s rice pudding in the fridge.  Maybe you’ve gone off rice pudding but this rice pudding is very superior, and even if you don’t want it I intend to eat every scrap of it before it goes bad; Rozo and Katie already extracted some for their own use at home.

Damn Paul but that was an awesome roast.  I’d forgotten how much I love carrots and onyums done around a roast beast.

Al-Jazeera has been added to our roster of cable stations.  I watched, with amazement, a documentary that didn’t even have a single Arab name attached to it; who knew I’d get a very damning picture of the Latvian forest industry, with lots of lines drawn between the first world’s desire to greenwash everything and the destruction of the last pristine forests in Europa?  Honestly, I want to send an email to the Latvia PM telling him the satellite pictures of the Latvian forests are calling him an asshat and a full bore liar.  Latvian politicians and functionaries are disturbingly smooth voiced and calm, they all seem to speak idiomatic bureaucratese English, and the bigger the lie the calmer they look.  And they are destroying the traditional sustainable forestry operations which are family businesses.  The guy who won the international farmer of the year award was foaming at the mouth showing how all the ‘scientific’ forestry immediately around him – clear cuts all – are causing blow downs on his property and destroying the margins of his sustainable forest.  This is sustainable forestry in Canada.  That’s pretty much what it looks like in Latvia.  Anyway, at the current rate of clear cutting in Latvia- which is going to subsidize DIY homeowners in England, who get to buy wood that has a sustainably harvested sticker on it, sticker purchased by the Latvian forestry ministry from a fucking scam non profit in Britain – they won’t have a forest let alone a forest industry within ten years.  The habitat destruction of rare species is blandly ignored by the politicians because it’s all about employment.  Forestry sustains 40 percent of the Latvian GDP.  They are going to kill their economy.  One wonders, when forestry collapses, what the government will tell their unemployed young men to do.  A social, political and ecological disaster in the making, I’d say.  When the young men of Riga rioted after the economic downturn in 2008, this was the response of the government.  Clear cut Latvia.  Can’t even blame capitalism.  It’s state socialism that is doing the job, ably assisted by the English demand for board feet.

I think of the Ukrainians who froze to death rather than cut down the trees in the parks in Kiev during WWII and I wonder what the hell happened to the Latvians.  Shame.

Deftly borrowing a suggestion from Lady Miss B

Katie force fed me internet puppies until I gave up.  I declare myself, if not sane, then at least not at imminent risk of sucking on the wrong end of a nitrogen hose, slurping back a castor bean smoothie or committing abutment graffitti with my vehicle, my current top three most favoured methods of self slaughter.

Then the minister showed up and said she’d stab me in the eye if I didn’t cheer up.  No, of course she didn’t do that.  I thought of that afterwards. She showed up with hugs, a piece of church birthday cake and the Beacon blankie. Sitting in a quilt that is specifically for Beacon members who are feeling porely is actually quite therapeutic.

Paul has arrived, having traversed the thickets and brambles of me being just completely fucking crazy over the last three days, bearing a standing rib roast, which you’ll have to admit is a very nice way to get me apologize for being irrational.

I’m just going to keep taking painkillers and apologizing, I guess.  It will be my new hobby, popping methocarbamol, averting my gaze and apologizing.

When I phoned my mother to tell her not to quit worrying because that really WOULD be insane, she said many encouraging words and some actively evil ones.   And that is why she is my mother.  Jeff said, “Are you telling me I don’t have to move?” and started giggling.  I was giggling too.  So surreal.  Long car drives suit me, even if they make me hurt. Then he gave me advice on how to fix what was fucked up with the tv.  Then I dug my dad in the ribs about his suggestion to volunteer at a soup kitchen.  That candidly got my poor tethered goat, seeing pOp has always considered volunteering for suckers (this a guy who volunteered for the Air Force and served during the Bay of Pigs) and so I had to take the suggestion as pOp considering me a sucker…. but it was kindly meant.  Overbooked already pOp, and I simply am too much like Sheldon Cooper to do well with really disenfranchised people.  Something about not really having a clue about my own privilege.  As for his further suggestion to get a dog, I already have one insanely demanding creature, I don’t need two, although having a reason to go for a walk is good.  I will use their largesse to buy myself some mental health, in those expensive installments that are only partly paid for by the plan at work.

I lied

I am actively suicidal.  I have all the motive in the world but since I don’t really want to drive Ziva into a bridge abutment, (I was hoping to give her in one piece to Keith) I have to wait until I get the ‘exit bag’ and the nitrogen tank.  I have an appointment with some highly recommended psychologist, but I’ve had shitty, shitty luck getting anybody IRL to provide anything like service.  My ex’s girlfriend managed to get HER psychiatrist to give me a diagnosis – without seeing me, even ! what wondrous psychiatrists they have in the US! – and my ex’s counsellor indicated (without having a therapeutic relationship with me and on the basis of seeing me once) that he figured I was nutty. Anybody who actually sees me comes to the conclusion that I am drearily sane.   Does anybody besides me believe you can be drearily sane AND suicidal?

I am in constant pain, both physical and emotional.  I have nothing to live for, nothing to look forward to, my fear of death has evaporated and work is the worst of it but of course if I want to keep my job for these last few measly weeks until my package arrives I have to stay quiet about it.  My cat will be looked after no matter what I do, and my kids have another parent.   As Robert Ingersoll once remarked, at its worst death can be nothing more than perfect rest.  Ah, perfect rest.  Sounds like a plan.

I’ve been telling people at work that I’m suicidal AND THEY ARE LAUGHING AT ME.  Maybe they won’t find it funny if I choose to depart this life in the parking garage.

Fuck all y’all.  I am out of here; I’m going home to break the news to the kids and Jeff.

What the ????

It’s raining, it’s dark, I’m a pedestrian, I think I’ll jump in front of Allegra’s car.

I don’t mind pedestrians being suicidal, but puhlease, not during my commute when I’m already running late.

Yesterday Paul and Keith and I went down to Suzanne’s (where stayeth Katie) and had pierogies and chicken for dinner.  Suzanne was in fine form and Katie cooked dinner.  Then I took Keith back to Geekhaus and we watched the last two eps of season 4 The Wire (oh, Dukie, oh Bodie) and all in all it was a very pleasant evening.

I woke up super early and cooked up some oatmeal.  As soon as it clicks over 7 am I’m going to put a roast in the crockpot; Jeff’s been getting stiffed on hot meals and I’m thinking meat and two veg for tonight.

I have started working on another long poem – first in almost ten years – called The Drunkard’s Walk, which is going to be a long meditation about the mystery of human existence as framed by our limited cognition.  And alcohol.

Katie is cocooning.  More I cannot say on that subject.

I had an hour long conversation with a customer last night.  Mostly we stuck to business but at one point he pointed out that he is a Canadian born into an American body, and I owned that in almost 13 years of abusing customers in the service of the alternative energy business I had never heard an American say that.  I was so moved I offered him shelter in Vancouver come the revolution.  He was grateful, and we returned to business.

I am transcribing dreffle Victorian poetry, and there’s this one poem so vilely racist that the backs of my eyes get scratchy just looking at the damned thing.  And in 150 years, if anybody survives, people will be looking at my ravings and know me for a bigoted lunatic.  Sigh.

If everyone needs a goal, here’s mine; I’m training hard to be bedridden.  Because, you know, getting out of bed sucks so bad.