Category: Workt in my garden

cat tree

Buster’s current cat tree is very old and ratty; he’ll get a new one tonight (Suzanne is helping) and we’ll put the old one on the deck. Or maybe it will go straight into the trash, it needs to be completely reupholstered.

Upholstery comes from the Middle English upholder, a person who furnished cloth and mattresses for beds and other furniture. What a weird damned word. Now it’s only used with ‘of the law’ after it.

677 words yesterday on TB, way more than I expected given that I felt crushed when I awoke (air quality was like 250 !!! into the purple zone !! overnight). The air is much better today but still not in the green zone.

Repotted the five little peyotes. It was a lot harder getting five of them apart than two, believe me, but the biggun was pushing roots right out of the pot so it was time. I should water them again later today.

Coffee brings me life this morning. Time for another one lol.

Drew Barrymore is a scab. She crossed the picket line to film an advertisement in Vancouver. HEAVY SIGH.

which one of you incredibly quiet people wants a bsky invite code?

 

I have mailed the letter to my mOm

I felt much better walking up the hill today. I have no idea why. I’ve been feeling so punk. If I write a letter a day I have to mail that and so rain or shine I have to leave the house. The outside is still there. The bush tits flew over my head in the alley, and this year’s black squirrel taunted me in the yard. Collected three more squash and washed them.

Finished sorting the empty seeds from the full ones from the tray of dried sunflower seeds. Many of the seeds in the head failed to set on properly, no surprise as it never got full sun, and fell over and was totally crooked and I know Jeff backed into it at least once so let’s say it never got a perfect shot.  I was a bit worried because I harvested them wet, like SOAKED from two days of rain, but I had to because the raccoons chawed a quarter of the head off, THANKS ASSHOLES. My dodge of putting them on a perforated tray as they were drying seemed to work, and I moved them around when I walked by them, and they dried perfectly, and are now resting in an appropriately labelled sealed envelope, waiting dispersal as gifts.

I started writing a letter to Barry after I mailed mOm’s, but by the third page I began to get the feeling that perhaps I was misplacing the tone a sensible woman of six decades would take in a family letter to a much loved uncle. Upon a re-read, I sounded like I was very nonchalantly in the middle of a WHOO HOO psychotic episode, so I’m shelving that project, likely forever, hey, no harm, no foul, in favour of working on my blog, instead. I don’t know what inspired me to go so Hunter S. Thompson on my own uncle but perhaps it was me reacting poorly to the notion that even after he’s dead, he’ll be a better raconteur than me, so I thought to make up in outrageousness what I did not have in sheer skill.

Phew. Really dodged a bullet. I’ll try again later and perhaps accrue a few possible topics which will be of joint interest with little possibility of causing offence or concern or possibly even consternation.

I need an alarm clock now, as I do not have a phone (why do I want a cop in my pocket) and for the meantime Jeff is loaning me a ‘not working as a phone phone’ / basic electronic minder, with a couple of games on it. That will go off when I need to take me meds, he already programmed it.

The sun has come out. It’s really quite welcome. I’m sneezing a lot; apparently mold allergies are moderate right now. My nose has been runny as well. I’m still feeling very bleak, but I’ve got cheese in the house, is one allowed to feel bleak when one has no fewer than four kinds of cheese in the house and I’m only including that ghastly parmesan on a technicality.

Lunch a cold chicken / green salad, no dressing, no added salt.

My attention span is a little speck on the move, like one of the floaters in my eyes (my floaters have been worse of late), but I’m still managing to dole myself out tasks and do them. Will today be the day of whole wheat bruschetta? Who can be certain? The signs show no favour to one thing over another. It is all a dreadful flux, and we who gaze toward certainty do not enjoy the vertiginous bumps and G-loaded slams between here and there.

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I guess I’m not good at getting up again.

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wringing sweat

Work’t in my garden. f’in hot out there. This involved sweeping up lawn clippings so you can actually see the walkways and driveway, watering the squash, (I could hear them slurping, it’s been ages and I think there may be a single lone pumpkin in the pile) and walking the boundaries to pick up the inevitable logo’ed paper and plastic trash that’s blown in. I also carted the cactus soil and the deck salt out to the locking side of the carport so they aren’t posing a tripping hazard by the back door any more..

Now to collect the clean mats from the dryer, except that I have to sweep the kitchen floor and mop it first, which I am now by the power of mental effort going to try to silently encourage Jeff to do.

later: Jeff did sweep but I hadn’t yet cleaned out the hellhole under the kitchen table, and now you can see all of the floor and it’s all clean, hallelujah. There’s a tiny bit of paper cruft to sort, but I could probably throw it all out and not lose anything. Also: cleaned the extraneous paper cruft from the side of the fridge.

and i am STILL WRINGIN’ SWEAT YEAH

Finally got hold of the doctor and gave her a piece of my mind, but of course it makes no difference. Managed to winkle out a prescription renewal. Why do we need gp’s again, blech.

I’ve already practiced three instruments and done my shoulder exercises this morning. I’ve even written a little. 13,301

u/Zinan took this flying out of YVR this am, check the haze effect on the mountains

ermagerd, somebody I really like on twitter retweeted something nasty I said about Trump and Nate Silver so I am ha ha’ing to myself.

The McDonald’s closest to my house has a worker sick with Covid.

fucking ronald damn his eyes

now it’s time to unionize

Jeff and I never go there, it’s the second worst Ratlands between the Port Mann Bridge and Main Station. (The worst one is right on Main. WHAT A ZOO)

I KNOW that none of you care, but today’s the last day on set for Supernatural after 15 seasons, and the people who guest star are openly weeping about it, and it’s a Thursday, and Castiel is the angel of Thursday, and now it’s over.

mood crashed again

after a couple of days of feeling better I’m feeling iffy again. I think I’ll force myself out of the house to go to a farmer’s market up at Brentwood this morning. Jeff hasn’t shown any interest in going, so I’ll suit up and take the bus, since it’s just one hop.

The pumpkins and the two surviving sunflowers are doing well, and I did get some carrots.  Everything else in my garden sucks because you have to water things. My mOm knows about how to get things to grow but I’m forgetful and lazy and those are two things a farmer cannot be.

Five hundred words on the fanfic. Inexperienced character is being exposed to ETOH, hijinks ensue. (ETOH means al k hall)

Image Erica Henderson, Eisner-winning artist, made this

@ericafails on twitter

THE US IS A FAILED STATE

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Looking Inside Myself, 2002, carved whalebone by Susie Silook, artist of Siberian Yupik, Inupiaq descent

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Rogers, 2012, Post Gazette

Rob Rogers was fired from the Post Gazette in 2018 because all mainstream media outlets in the US are owned by right wing oligarchs

ah the good old days – open in a new tab and it should be (just barely) readable.

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the difference is amazing

On this page there are at least two versions of Toy Town Parade, one corrected and one original, and ain’t technology grand. Anyhoo pOp you should like this tune.

brO and I went for a walk in Hilda Park today, and we got to watch crows feed their babies and one of those crows send an adult bald eagle packing. The eagle twitched its tail in irritation as a crow pecked at it… and it all took place at low altitude so a) we got a great view but b) sadly very brief.

Trees are already growing in the playground, coming up through the mulch. They would have been ground into nothingness by the kids playing, but now they’re coming up in dozens.

I believe – I will know for sure in a couple of days, but I believe one of the bambara beans sprouted.

whine

I haven’t even moved half the dirt yet, but I did move some, and the tremendously amazing Tom L has loaned me what looks like Andre the Giant’s wheelbarrow so the rest will go faster. So more work in the hot sun yum.

The following gem was scanged from Jamelle Bouie’s twitter this am.

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ammonite septum

(Madagascaran Argonauticeras besairei)

Last day….

It was sad to be in that building for the last day.  I moved into that building many years before I started this blog, and now a new and exciting chapter starts (and I’m much closer to Brian C, Tom U, and numbers of other former coworkers who are now at a company ‘across the hall’ so to speak).

We packed up the desks about noon and then went to Joey’s Coquitlam for lunch; then I drove Dustin back to the office, picked up some cleanser and a vase that had been left there, wandered back to my old desk to say goodbye, picked up the yogurt that I’d left in the fridge, and felt a surge of unhappiness.  Then I got home, struggled with the fucking lawnmower for quite a while, said fuck it and did the weed-whacking instead, and then went back, gave it a mighty heave and got the lawnmower running.  Then I finished the lawn.  Since the back lawn grass was wet as a baby’s diaper the exercise provided was kind of extreme; mowing the front yard left me exposed to the sun to the point I thought I’d pass out.

Sweating like a pig, I brushed myself down and then went and got my new stickers for the car (having thoughtfully changed my coverage to include the kids), fetched beer as per Jeff’s request, taste tested a new vodka cooler (cranberry lime) and upon making the discovery that unlike every other cooler I’ve ever had, it wasn’t disgustingly sweet, I purchased some.

Then I planted some seedlings and discovered an ant colony in our compost pile.

I was supposed to go to Tom and Peggy’s to practice, but after the exertions of the day I couldn’t move.  I eventually recovered to the point of cooking toasted ham’n’eggers and collapsed for good around nine without even looking at my computer.

Quinoa among other things

Ack.  Whoever said quinoa was easy to harvest was a lying bastard.  You have to strip the heads, roll the seed pods in your hands, soak the seeds and rinse them about a hundred times (must determine a method that doesn’t involve gallons of water).  They’ve finally come to the point that I can eat the seeds and they taste like raw food instead of a bitter chemical (saponin).  Now I can dry them, all three of them.  (Not true, there’s a meal’s worth in there, besides the seeds I’m saving.)  Anyway I need to know this for the story I’m writing, in my head.

It’s our problem free…. philosophy…..

Work is marginally better.

Another solid night of sleep, thank goodness.

More comments about family and internet and church

I got to see Katie’s apartment yesterday!  We can tell she’s a real New West Girl, she can see the bridge from one window.  She doesn’t think she’ll be cold this winter, but the scarred single pane windows (they haven’t been painted since Tommy Douglas was alive, if appearances are anything to go by) and her remoteness from the furnace lead me to believe otherwise.

Despite the 101 bus going right by her place and despite how close she is to the Skytrain tracks, it’s a quiet house.  She lives there with Mona and a couple of other people in a house sharing arrangement.  Mona’s about my age.  She lives on the ground floor, Katie lives in the attic and some guy lives in the basement.

Daxus is currently living with a married couple who just had their first child – at home.  Katie doesn’t believe this living arrangement is likely to last but I’m sort of hoping it does.

Paul returned safely from Ontario.  He and I and Keith and Jeff supped upon a variety of things including the two cobs of corn I harvested from the garden.  They were tiny but perfect.  Now that I know corn will grow nicely in that location I will plant more next year, and earlier, too.

The quinoa harvest has started; it was either that or let them rot on their stalks.  The first batch is hulled, but by god they are still very bitter with the saponin layer, and most of the grains are much smaller than the commercial variety.  I will have to clean them some more.  I have to find a more efficient way to clean them.

I was invited to Tanya’s and to Baumfest this weekend and as I was feeling quite low I didn’t go.

Church was excellent.  The minister preached of one of the theologians of Unitarian Universalism, Hosea Ballou.

Chipper sends me this disheartening news from the internet front.  Disgusting.

Ziva is running quite rough – she hates the wet.

I have a sound tech for the Social Justice Open Mic.

Grr-thwack

Zombie walk this aft.  Katie K and I will meetup at the Art Gallery and drag our shambling carcasses down the parade route.  I can haz corn syrup and food colouring, and clothes to sacrifice. Oh yes, there will be pix.

Church meeting earlier this afternoon.  I’m an invited guest rather than a regularly scheduled attendee; I suspect I am the Katelijne Adorne of my crowd, and happy I am that there is precisely one reader of this blog who will get the reference.

Leo is whomping up Finnish pancakes in the kitchen.  Lawsy me, and there’s BACOM tooooo. Linda indulged me by watching the most recent Futurama episode with us last night, of which much internet woo, and I have to say “The Prisoner of Benda” is one of the best episodes ever and it’s FULL OF MATH.

Tomorrow, hymn sing at Tom and Peggy’s (ever so much more fun than it sounds, my irreligious pals).  I’m thinking about going into work and doing some documentation, but I bet I turn lazy and stay home and watch depressing movies instead.  Leo and Linda will head out sometime Sunday.

It is my sad duty to report that Katie and Daxus are dating again.  Hence the title of the post. I am keeping my mouth shut (apart from giving Suzanne and my mother a heads’ up, and Paul and I had a brief and eyerolling confab yesterday) and hoping that a cooler head prevails.  It’s too bad that her staying away from him was a condition of tenancy.  As of the end of this month she’s homeless – you read me? – and only Paul is prepared to take her in, as Jeff and I -after a brief and dispassionate strategy session – do not wish to borrow more grief than is already our portion.

Did I say recently how much I love and appreciate Jeff?  He really is Made of Awesome.

The quinoa is as tall as me and four cobs of corn have set on.  I let the peas go to seed.