Writing – Page 14 – Allegra Sloman's blog

Maybe I should leave the house today

I just can’t be arsed. It’s horrible out there, and so nice in here, although I probably need to do a schlep.

Ran the dishes; it was mostly pans that had been sitting around waiting to be fitted in. Once they were all in… dishwasher was full.

Peanuts are all gone, the crows will yell at me. They got the last of the moldy cheddar yesterday MAN DO THEY LOVE CHEESE. Haven’t seen Curvebeak. I am starting to recognize one of the bold ones; I think I’ll call them Fluster.

I need to get some bloodwork done and I don’t want to do that either, although I don’t mind blood draws.

Apart from feeling a little less alert than usual the change up in the medication doesn’t seem to have done anything. A benefit is that I’m taking meds twice a day now, not three times.

Where I sit most of the time I can see the photo cousin Alex took and had matted and framed for me; a yellow tulip standing out against a mass of purple tulips. I can also see a piece of map/squid art Mike gave me, a piece of quilting my mOm made, and roses cross stitched my pOp’s mOm.

Sheets and the bolster need a wash…I hate changing my bed so much because it’s very hard work and it reminds me how weak my hands are and how hard my knees yell even if I kneel on a soft surface.

I wrote to the jury duty people on line and told them exactly why I can’t serve. No dramatics (like I threatened, because I’m dramatic) just … I can’t and here’s why. Within half an hour I was excused duty. What a freaking relief. It just makes me sad to admit that I’m too disabled to work and too disabled to serve as a juror. I feel weak and old and useless and my fOlks will read this later today and go WHAT THE FFFF GIRL ADD TWO DECADES ONTO THAT FEELING !! Yes, I know. But this is all relatively new.

No kudos, word count stuck.

sleep is plentiful

slept literally 7.5 hours last night; I should feel like I can lick my weight in wild bunnies or something. As it is, I have risen, made tea, made coffee, skritched Buster and fetched him some treats, and now I contemplate the morning.

Three incredibly loud bangs of thunder in the late afternoon yesterday.

Two different people read the chicken story last night; I have to wonder if one of them messaged the other and said YOU HAVE TO READ THIS, IT’S ABOUT DEAN, AND CHICKENS or whether it was just one of those magical coincidences. So, two kudos last night and 9375 words so far.

Watched a bit more of Story of Yinxi Palace (our heroine has now met the Empress, who is amused and impressed by her rhetoric and smarts.)

Took Jeff out for breakfast yesterday and now I’m eating my leftovers and drinking coffee. Jeff got sammies from Big Star for supper; half of mine is still in the fridge downstairs. They are very good! Very highly recommended.

Paul tried to coax me out of the house for a walk but I just jellied. As in, turned into a jellyfish incapable of outside perambulation.

Okay, time to get up, prep a week of drugs for the pill holder, (I’m changing what time of day I take a BP med and reducing the dose so this should be innarestin’) and maybe write a few words on some subject or other. The shootyness I was referring to will happen off the page – but it will impact Our Heroes (and Heroine), and lead to further action later because right now? if I get rid of the bad guys then story tension has to come from somewhere else. Maybe some snarky dialogue lol.

Can’t explain

Gotta love that take, sorry lol.

7618 words. One kudo this morning. The Supernatural (2005) character Dean Winchester loves pie. There are over a hundred thousand #destiel fics on AO3; one thousand of them are about or include pie; one of them is mine, and it got a kudo. Food makes us all fools. REMEMBER THAT.

Russian forces are committing atrocities in Ukraine. Twitter IS FILLED TO THE BRIM WITH ATROCITY DENIERS THIS MORNING. Some of them are credentialed journalists. I’d weep, but I’m more inclined to send more money to Ukrainian anarchists serving at the front.

Susan Sontag had a few words for the people who claim that it’s the Ukrainians committing the atrocities. You know, in wartime civilians often take the opportunity to settle scores, but it’s by individuals, on individuals. That the Ukrainian army or any of its forces would do this – when they know they don’t HAVE TO? Russia brought 45000 body bags to the front – they weren’t for soldiers, they were to handle massacred civilians.

German PHO’s are asking that all Ukrainian refugees be tested for AIDS and TB. That actually makes sense as long as it doesn’t turn into an excuse to refuse them entry.

Transnistria is denying that Russian troops are building up along its border with Ukraine. Satellites say what?

Poland, which has responded to white Ukrainians with open arms, has publicly stated that they’ll accept US Nukes on their soil. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, deputy prime minister of Poland, said so within the last 24.

Russian troops in Bucha massacred every Ukrainian man between 16 and 60 and then moved out of the town. Bucha, originally about the same size as Grande Prairie at 40000 people, had already seen most men of national service age leave to either train or rejoin units, so essentially they killed every man and boy who was either in a protected profession or too sick, disabled or unfit to serve. (Eugenics much). Total numbers will likely never be known, any more than Putin’s likely to stand trial at the Hague. Yes, some of those men were likely fighting in civvies, but it was either planned by the Russians or indisciplined troops and either way Putin’s gonna wear this.

don’t break the internet while I’m gone

7539 words, no kudos. Felt absolutely terrible yesterday until just before supper time, at which time I felt much better (I’m assuming it was food rumblies based on, er, throughput and truly remarkable pain) and I’ve felt better ever since. Got my prescriptions delivered and we paid our rent. I also fell for NO FEWER THAN three April fool’s jokes, I must have looked batty to my friends.

For the first time since I stopped withdrawing money from what’s left of my retirement savings, the dollar amount has gone down. THANKS VLAD YOU ASSHOLE

Theo Moudakis of the Toronto Star made this thing:

Rob was here

One of Jeff’s oldest buddies came over for beer, ‘za and March Madness, and all was delightful. It had been so long since I’d seen him that I mistook him for the pizza delivery person, and of course this immediately makes me remember a Supernatural (2005) trope. He’s retired, and I’m so happy for him.

Current count 6620, two kudos overnight. Sad boys are sad right mOm (I’ve been sending her updates a day at a time so she knows what I’m talking about.)

Various things are annoying me this morning. I’m thinking “Should I vent my spleen? or should I just go about the tasks of daily living?” And you know what, I think I’ll just put it down.

stalled, but only for a minute

6102 words total on the story. Hope to get back into it today, still thinking about things.

2 kudos overnight.

Another sleepy day yesterday. Today I need bloodwork and tomorrow a doc appointment and upping on scrips; I’ll be walking over there when the lab opens.

Still thinking about Ryker and his magical little smiles and total body squirms.

Here’s the MP3 (acapella, natch)

of me singing the ‘Russian Major General’ filk posted previously. As mentioned previously the lyrics were written by @AndrejNkv who hails from Edinburgh.

New drawings for great grandparents

Alex drew some quite interesting and scary pictures for GGma and GGpa including an absolute bloody masterpiece called ‘Remain Indoors’ which I don’t even want to sent to the great grandparents because I love it so much. He also drew this in red, black and white, his first time using a paint program on a computer:

It’s gruesome, even with the blood being in the inverted colour of teal! There’s blood in everything he draws. (Not actually, just close.)

We (Jeff and I and Alex) walked to Timmy Ho’s at 7 am and then like idiots left the donuts in front of Alex, who was both tempted and satisfied by the box. We all ate too many donuts; let’s just drop a curtain over that.

He played the 2006 game Burnout: Revenge which involves among other things crashing your car as hard as possible into people minding their own business on the expressway. He slept reasonably well although he rolls over and kicks quite a bit and woke me up a lot. He tried playing the pinball Star Trek but the display was wonky, and he definitely got a couple of tube shots on Xenon. He also played some Tetris on my laptop, his current favourite game Stick To It on his tablet, and some Plants vs Zombies on the xBox. As well as drawing and singing into a kazoo for half an hour, an endeavour which, truth be told, fucking near killed me of boredom and self-control.

We forced him to watch a Cuphead on Netflix; no comment, and to speak to his great grandma, but he was exceedingly polite about it.

At noon Katie whisked us away to Edmonds community centre, (which has zero entry access to two of the pools and the hot tub! Google what zero entry access means) where I got to hold Ryker for most of an hour (have you ever held seventeen pounds of kick, flail and squirm at arms’ length for an hour?) AND soak in the hot tub AND chase Alex around the lazy river. After my two k walk yesterday morning (it was pleasantly warm and not windy, although overcast) the additional springing, leaping, hopping, and flinging babby around during which he regarded me thoughtfully while pinching me and squirmflailed while smiling at me – all that turned my hip regions into a mess of angry meat strings and twingeing bones. Suzanne came too but I scarcely spoke to her after she arrived because Alex wanted to do something in the coldest pool AT the pool and Katie and I were most unwilling. He was once again very sweet with his little brother and Ryker makes anybody baby-positive sag to the ground with sentiment. Truly remarkable to witness. He’s a nice looking kid but he has this way of squirming and smiling that completely turns your own sensorium against you WITH BABBYINESSSSS.

Jeff found some more ‘Shetland’ that we hadn’t seen and gosh but I love that show and also Douglas Henshall is a very attractive middle aged man. Once again when you affix the number of people who die in each episode to the actual population of Shetland (just over 22k on several islands) it’s like the murder rate in ‘Hudson and Rex’; just about as bad as possible compared to the reality.

Paul’s in the US. He’s apparently gone for a week. I could go on about this but those who need to know already know and those who don’t can do nothing, so I am just going to leave it out there.

6076 words total so far; two kudos night before last. Three more this morning.

This daguerreotype of a young woman was recovered from the SS Central America, a ship that sank in 1857 with 21 tonnes of gold. Isn’t she purty? love the dress and hair.

today the enshinening

Okay, that didn’t really work as a blog post title, but the Suzanne the Cleaning Specialist and Carer will be here today and Jeff and I have sworn a mighty blood oath (okay maybe it was coffee and PowerAde) that we’ll clean out the fridge today as our part in the enshinening.

Two kudos overnight; word count stands at 4890; my fave sentence out of the last writing session is

He tried to get in the front seat and she stared at him, a bleak and judgemental reckoning which took in every aspect of his appearance until the impossible happened; he got redder.

They’re about to visit a brothel, but not for any regular reason. Aren’t you anxious to learn why? NB he’s red because he’s sunburned, and not because he’s a tourist.

Jeff and I emptied the fridge of its rottenness (Jeff was the motor). We now have three different kinds of cheese, and condiments. Shop tomorrow I reckon. I am taking a 20 minute break because my back is screaming and then I’ll wipe down the bums of all the containers and plug everything back into the fridge. Next up: scheduling the next clean. (later it’s on the household calendar) I believe according to the Sidetracked Sisters you’re supposed to do the fridge once a month but if we do it twice a year that would be amazing. Suzanne will do it but she’s only marginally bendier than me and Jeff and she does charge extra for that, so …. (Later, still have to clean one piece of glass and wipe out the freezer but it’s done)

and in war news, the tank manufacturer in the former Soviet Union has shut down the line, no parts. Whoever told Putin YEAH SURE WE ARE TIGHT AND GOOD FOR SUPPLY CHAIN ON ARMAMENTS is probably licking out privies in NovySibirsk now under the lazy eye of a guard who’s probably busy wearing out his pocket icon of Our Lady Derzhavnaya in thanks for not being posted to the front.

aaaaaand them damn gritty Ukrainians be torching Russian ships, which are large and invitingly shootable-at and pretty much defenceless given the collapse of daytime air support for Russian assault troops and supply chains… since it turns out that the Ukrainian air force, tiny as it is, is blisteringly effective, and the mobile rocket launchers are STILL BEING OPERATED from inside Mariupol which means that whatever the fucking Russians say, Mariupol has not been pacified.

Tyler Rogoway, whom I started following on twitter some years back (he’s an American military aircraft journalist with Ukrainian ancestors) says that Putin has to quit, because if he wins, he’ll be facing the worst insurgency in the history of warfare; porous borders with hundreds of millions of dollars of modern mobile armaments, and a civilian population armed to the teeth, properly trained and disciplined and bitter af, and people around the world who can’t tell the difference between a sh and a shch will be raising money to make it even worse for the grunts on the ground; while Russians starve and he’s forced to figure out whether to withdraw troops to pacify his own civilians, especially the ones closest to Ukraine who are getting more of the real story. If a billionaire who isn’t a citizen of the NATO countries starts ordering and shipping aircraft to Ukraine man that would be entertaining and horrific — and I want the Russian army to go home and stay there.

Katie’s coming with both the boys after Suzanne leaves.

Kyiv is still Ukrainian

Putin’s a month into his war and he’s achieved so few of his original objectives that some commentators, while not exactly mocking him, are starting to worry that he’s being thwarted, which makes him prone to lash out and be dangerous and threaten nukes, repeatedly. He’s already put at least two hundred children in the ground. Why, if it wasn’t for the wars on the populations of Yemen and Syria, which Russia’s armed forces have helped to prosecute these past many years, and previous Russian outings in Ukraine and Chechnya, I wouldn’t have anything to compare it to.

Learned about SKIF’s, the Ukrainian country/urban tank killer, whose name literally means ‘Scythian’. They’re ferociously effective in modern warfare, cheap like borscht compared to the arms it can kill. It’s a modern day crossbow in terms of its asymmetrical warfare effects – it can take down a person, a vehicle, a tank, a chopper OR – with luck – a jet.

Two kudos overnight, very surprised by one of them; one of the stories I posted to AO3 is a complete outlier because the central character dyad is not destiel, it’s a three person triad that turns into a polyamorous household full of kids, and all this while the lead character is dealing with CRUSHING depression, new fatherhood, and coming to terms with being bisexual. So it has a million feels and some very dramatic and technical sex scenes and it’s not like anything else I’ve posted. (SO it doesn’t get much love.) The other kudo, from another person, is for my most popular fic, which has more than 6000 hits now, and a 4% kudo to hit ratio.

Weather kinda miserable and damp.

very complex ‘tholian web’ migraine imagery just now. It’s probably pollen triggered, it’s just been HORRIBLE, how crappy the allergens have been making me and Jeff feel. I feel brain dead, and then I perk up a bit, and then there’s another puff of cedar pollen and BRAIN DED AGIN. Now it’s a square full of vibrating chevrons; now it’s fuzz. Now it’s fading. dammit I need coffee.

Report has come that one of the Dunnetteers from Toronto has passed of cancer. The kind words are coming in and people are speaking well of the dead; she sounds like she was a superior sort of person and we’re also told she was well cared for, and having been through sitting with Tom (even though it wasn’t much and I didn’t materially assist, not really) I am glad that she was, and that no one stinted on the morphine.

Wordle in three this morning. Somebody I follow on twitter made a hint, that the word seemed apropos today, and that really helped. Didn’t hurt that I guessed the first letter of the word right out of the gate.

R value across Canada has dipped way below one. We’ll still get another surge as the new variant comes through (BA.2) but it won’t be as bad. I feel safer and I’m not as worried about my loved ones, especially my immunocompromised loved ones, but you have to watch the numbers…

Laundry’s all done, now I have to haul it upstairs and put it away. The rug survived being laundered, thank god, often the plastic backing comes off and then Jeff has to disassembled the machine to clear it out.

Time to go back to the world of Omar and Brad and Blossom.

Katie’s making plans to go back to work; I think childcare is going to be split between Suzanne and the (humph, advised not to post this descriptive but possibly offensive soubriquet) other grandma, with me as a backup I guess. There are many advantages to this as one can see, and one can only marvel at Ryker’s good fortune that when so many kids have no grandma’s he ended up somehow with three.

March Madness continues, and I’m adding new words to my conlang, admiring the hairdos of the contestants and their ability to pluck balls out of midair, steal them from each other and otherwise perform feats of athletic magic.

Ted Cruz the douche extraordinaire, brandishing a book which he very obviously has neither opened nor read, repurposed by the lovelies at Working Class History (on finer social media platforms everywhere):

This was a possible Hair Sinister cover:

odds sods bodkins

First, someone has a great eye and an even better sense of humour:

second, the story is now 3400 words long and I know how I’m going to end it

third I have a very reasonable roommate and while I can’t supply any specifics (but mOm already knows the details) (it involves a rug, and extra laundry) I must insist that really Jeff is a very reasonable fellow and I’m fortunate.

I’m doing lots of research for the story. I like learning new things.

Daily roundup

Paul and I went for a longer and faster walk than usual yesterday. The chickadees (probably just one bold chickadee) ate sunflower seeds out of my hand. (they also rocket overhead to get your attention, and the chipping sparrows and the towhees and flickers and crows all get interested. Still as a tomb – the Fraser was like grey glass. We managed to get out during a break between episodes of rain.

mOm got the Among Us art from Alex that I mailed to her.

Pollen count is insanely high.

I don’t know whether it’s the allergens but I’m so itchy and dull-witted it’s annoying to me and everyone around me.

After, I picked up croissants and went to the bank and Paul got Cape Seed bread for Keith, and then we came back here for me to snip THE WORST toenails I’ve ever seen offa Paul. Yes I still perform acts of personal service for Paul, why not, it’s solidarity.

Watched Black Crab (MAN WHAT A BLEAK MOVIE and about a quarter of it is scenes that look amazingly like escaping from Mariupol so that’s kinda disturbing. Noomi Rapace was, as always, fantastic. BUT BLEAK MOVIE don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Today – return book to library, take Jeff to breakfast, wash two-three loads of laundry, empty the dishwasher and try to write at least a thousand more words on the story.

No kudos today, but that’s the difference between Sunday and Monday in a world organized around 5 day weeks.

Medvedev is threatening Poland now how charming

2876 words. Very frustrating, had to delete about four hundred words because I was backing myself into a corner. However I’m in good shape now.

Rained nonstop for a day now, but not too heavily.

Three kudos overnight, two for the most recent and one for the one about crashing a glider in a cornfield.

It’s 5 am… think I’ll take a break (I’ve been writing, playing games and cruising Twitter) and consume some terrible media (Taboo.)

Called Mike last night, no answer.

Russia has demanded Ukraine turn over Mariupol this morning, which is a smoking shell of a modern city. Blowing something up and then demanding it, so adult. They’re preventing people from leaving, but at the same time word comes that they’re kidnapping UA citizens and transporting them to captivity in Russia. The spectre of nuclear war or a nuclear exchange flows over us.

from the Kyiv Independent (a more or less accurate news source) on twitter just now:

Greek diplomat after returning from Mariupol: ‘What I saw, I hope no one will ever see.’ Manolis Androulakis left the besieged city on March 15. He said it was joining the ranks of places known for having been destroyed in wars such as “Guernica, Coventry, Aleppo, Grozny.”

immobilized

Slept most of the day yesterday. I think my eyes are so itchy from the incredibly high pollen counts that I slept in self defense. Once again missed the chance for a walk. Sleeping during the day is not a good sign when you’re my age – dementia is calling! However I do run cognitive tests on myself every day and I seem to be about the same.

1368 words so far, rum has entered the chat. Two kudos this morning.

Russians have started deporting Ukrainians to Russia. Just in case this wasn’t clear, deporting civilians during wartime RILLY looks a lot like GENOCIDE.

Clean sheets really are a beautiful thing. I also washed the cover for the bolster. I am so happy I figured out how to keep both ends of the bolster closed without having to do any sewing. I tie a knot in both ends, it’s that simple. If I don’t, the pillows the bolster is stuffed with come barfing out, usually in the middle of the night. waaa what dat noise… oh.

I am adding words to Bih-Bah, my conlang made out of basketball hoop noises. I always add words during March Madness, when it’s nonstop games for days at a time.

I should go downstairs and let Buster out. He asked to have the door locked last night but he prob’ly wants to pee.

A Katie halloween costume from days of yore

My what big green eyes you have

a few more words

778 words so far on the new story. It’s about a mining engineer kidnapped by illegal gold miners in Guyana and the poor schlub detailed by the company to babysit him in-country until the person to accompany him back to Canada arrives. One kudo on the most recent story overnight.

This is what the haircut looks like first thing in the morning. I didn’t brush it or nothing, it came out my head that way.

I think you all probably know but I super detest Vladimir Putin.

Breakfast at the Foreshore diner

I had french toast an’ swossage and coffee and Jeff had the regular breakfast with bacom and coffee and it was very tasty and lorge. Leftovers in the fridge for pecking on throughout the day.

Horrifying Frontline about Putin’s war. It’s available on line but jesus I’m not recommending it because it put both me and Jeff in a foul and bleak place.

mOm got the story in the email finally. To make reading easier, I am thinking of having a password locked area of the site for people to read stories if they log in but I will leave off thinking of the mechanics for when Jeff is not buried in improvements for paying customers.

Happy St. Patricks for those who drink…

555 words into the new story.