Category: Writing

Suzanne is here today

I missed her. I’m continuing the clearout / reorg of my room. I have a nice long list of things to do today and after my absolutely wonderful night of sleep I think I’ll start with washing my bedding… Nope I’m going to make myself some brekky, eggs I think. Also reheated the fries from the fish and chips the other day. SO GOOD.

3 kudos in my mailbox this morning, all for the most recent story. It really landed well, the kudo to hit ratio is like 1 in 6, which is amazing (it usually ends up being 1 in 10 or 1 in 15). I’m tucked up in bed working through chapter subjects for the next story. I can already tell this new story is going to be book length, I have too many ideas. I want to finish the ‘tree man’ story, the story about the single dad with PTSD from being a respiratory technician during a pandemic, the story about the flooding in November, the alternate universe decameron style story, the massage therapist story, and I think there are three other incomplete ones but I can’t remember the hook.

Poetry is slowly stirring inside me. I’m either going to keep working on the Dark Book or write about allergies.

The siege of Ottawa continues. The siege of Coutts continues. The Ambassador Bridge Siege continues. Fuck ’em all, all those flag flying fools.

 

 

Quiet day

Ran the dishwasher and wrote 800 words and called a friend.

I’m thinking of a new fic with a bit of a twist. My English fanfic reader was BACK she even read the SF short story which is not finished. I should finish it, it has its moments. Normally I post finished stories only because my rage when I start a story on line and it isn’t finished is , the robot tale is the sole exception.

RIP Monica Vitti

Even though it’s a simply terrible movie, I loved Monica Vitti in Modesty Blaise.

Suzanne should be all moved in to her new place. Still working on Mike to hire her as a cleaning specialist. And why not? they’re living 4 blocks away from each other now. I am so fucking happy she’s not on the other side of the bridge although I totally understand why it pained her to give up her beautiful little house with the stunning north shore views.

I’m about 2-5K from the end of the fanfic story with the BC flooding setting. Lots of kudos on the newly posted story last night.

I’m …. I don’t know how to describe it. Pandemic brain got me hard. I’m so ditzy, irritable and lazy I feel gross.

Gorgeous

 

that wasn’t four hours

I got to help a girlfriend, hang with my daughter, make faces at my grandson and get out of the house. I also got to see that cool house in Surrey Suzanne was living at. THE VIEW OF THE NORTH SHORE MOUNTAINS AS THE FOG MELTED AWAY oh my heart. Apparently Keith is going to help Suzanne with her move.

It wasn’t four hours but we did get shit done and she’s got other helpers coming.

By posting this pic on my blog I’m ensuring I’ll be first against the wall when the Chinese walk whistling into Vancouver…. it’s the SS Olympic Bloodbath.

Just said in a reddit comment I HOPE YOUR CLIENT SUES YOUR ASS CLEAN OFF YOUR BODY. lol

My UK fan worked her way through another two stories last night. The consistency is really getting to me.

 

Trolls come out to play

Boy Howdy if you want to get shat on in subreddits ? supporting trans people is def the way to do it.

Still very sore in my muscles but the walkways look great LOL. Weather today involves rude amounts of wind, so charge your devices.

Tiny bits of writing.

Made a really nice bean stew / sorta chili last night. Forgot to seal the instant pot but it cooked up okay anyway. (after enlivening Jeff’s evening. IT HISSETH MOST SCARILY)

One can Heinz veggie beans, two cans diced tomatoes, one can black beans, one cup frozen corn, one can garbanzos, one can red kidney beans. Half teaspoon of cayenne, teaspoon of cumin, many many many shakes of garlic powder, a shake of black pepper, and no added salt.

The astronomers are watching a star blow up in real time, and it sounds really cool, although the event itself is rather warm.

 

Moar effin precip

Moar shovelling today I imagine. It’s supposed to stop today and start again tomorrow, might be as much as 15 cm but my heart misgives me and I think it will be more. AND STILL THERE IS NO SALT IN THE STORES.

Much horror, humour, excitement and a happy ending –  with the fam over in Victoria – yesterday. To preserve the privacy and dignity of those involved I shall say nothing here except that we are all well, and perhaps some of us collected some bruises. I shall also note that in the midst of my hysterics (yup, cried like a baby on the phone with my mOm), when I was first informed of the precipitating event, that I kept my cheese assembled long enough to provide useful and actionable advice to someone under stress, so go me. Everything came out as okay as it can but I sure learned that I’m a hair from weeping and flailing about pretty much anytime.

Jeff and I, partly because of the effin precip, partly because of the news, and partly because (WAVES HAND OVER THE IDEA THAT A MILLION AMERICANS AND QUITE A FEW CANADIANS GOT DIAGNOSED WITH COVID YESTERDAY) did not have a fantabulous day yesterday. I ran the dishwasher and shovelled and fed the birdies but other than that I can assure you I did not do a thing. Okay, I did write 1391 words on the ‘meet cute in the airport during a snowstorm’ story.

Tammy comes to town today to visit friends and fam on her way to Hawaii. Fingers crossed for her travel luck; there’s a break in the weather on both ends but if COVID knocks too many people off work, that plane won’t leave… Like I said fingers crossed. She’s double boostered. If anyone is safe to travel in a pressurized aluminum skin full of plague she is. She just messaged me to say her flight’s still showing on time. With luck she’ll call me a little after noon.

I observe that when white people stick their noses in the ‘pan-Indigenous’ concept it’s usually about control over, grift from and erasure of distinct nations and persons. Only nations can determine belonging and categories of belonging. It isn’t a single, simple concept or law.

I have opened YET ANOTHER PROJECT FILE this one non-fiction. It’s called Common Human Cognitive Issues and What to Do About Them. I realize I have zero experience with that! (actually that’s not true, but it wasn’t peer reviewed, which is a grift anyway) which is why it’s going to be a jolly parody of self-help books.

blurb today

Born in western Mi’kma’ki in 1958, settled in S’ólh Téméxw since 1996, Allegra Sloman works across a broad range of word forms, including written correspondence with friends and family, homilies, ranting, poems, a conlang called ‘bih-bah’ based on the sounds basketballs make going through hoops, twenty tweets a day, open letters, teaching a cat to speak, songwriting, standup comedy, essays, daily blogging, fanfic, parody, and short stories. She is also self-publishing SF novels which are available at leanpub.com/upsun. Much of her material is available at allegrasloman.com under creative commons 2.5.

I’m wearing Loki’s rune after all

This popped up this morning, evidence that I don’t need much inspiration for a poem:

From the yew-grove to the valley of the fallen
I shall travel with my bow, my knife, my faithful dog
Under the light of the ancestors, bright now,
Dancing the heavens, I shall walk with my thoughts
And my shadow, cast green along the snow,
Until the tale of all my deeds is told
And Freya gathers me into her field at last

So, there isn’t just Valhalla. There are two other places the dead go. Freya has a field called folkvangr (pronounced folkwongs, just to mess you up) where she gathers half the dead. The Allfather gets the other half of the noble dead in Valhalla.

 

Tea and toast

Woke up just after three after a restful sleep. Three kudos on my dashboard this morning. Always fun to see what people are reading. Another person has subscribed to my mailchimp account for UPSUN as well. In addition I logged into dreamwidth (the ‘replacement’ for live journal for people who don’t want all their data stolen by the Russians) because I really wanted to read something one of my filk buddies has posted and …. I hadn’t posted since 2018. uff dah. I posted. It was sad having to mention that Tom had died.

Worked on the fanfic a bit, not much. In the portion I just wrote one of the brothers is teasing the other about his new relationship and I very much enjoyed writing that because one of the great wellsprings of Supernatural fanfic is the abiding love (and shittalk) between the bros… it’s very easy to write the shittalk because they are constantly teasing each other (and would die for each other).

Still not experiencing hunger and thirst properly. It’s very strange to be forcing myself to eat, unless it’s something sweet.

The wind is gusting hard and it makes the plastic siding creak in an alarming way.

Ryker’s got a mucousy cold, poor wee tyke. Alex is a snot factory whether he has a cold or not. Just sayin’.

Had to shovel again; the lack of walkway salt was mitigated by the fact that it started raining and melting, so we didn’t get freezing rain. Lawks that was one big raccoon we got through the property night before last though, HUGE pawprints.

It’s very pleasant to no longer be required to run a heater all night in my room. It’s quite pleasant in the house now.

Well, I boiled water but I haven’t made tea, and the toast is still waiting for my work, so time for some foodicles and to start my day. FIRST TASK. Wrestling my weighted blanket back into its cover. This will literally take me half an hour as it’s like a USB cable. First you attach the WRONG zipper, and then you attach the RIGHT ONE, IN THE WRONG DIRECTION, and then omg maybe THIS will work. Heavy sigh. Still haven’t put all my clothes away.

This morning my twitter feed is full of: Trans people commenting (still) on Matrix Resurrections, including the best tweet sized appreciation of it I’ve seen so far; disabled people saying CAN YOU PLEASE STOP TRYING TO KILL US BY NOT WEARING MASKS AND SHITTY POLICY; Glenn Greenwald, may the great Parent of the Universe buy him a fucking clue, saying how twitter doesn’t have the right to eject people from its platform cause free speech, when it’s already been established that it really isn’t. He’s defending Marjorie, by the way. Candidly, clownbag is too kind for that man.

The Cincinnati Beagles won the division (over KC). We did not see that coming. It was a weird game with some patently ugly and bad calls. I mean, how many times is it possible to repeat 4th down?

@ElSangito:

i understand finding matrix 4’s lack of subtlety grating but i would never wanna use metaphors again either if the metaphorical allegory i wrote before got co-opted by far right patriarchal fascists whose whole thing is to eradicate my entire people

 

 

7 am and I’m a tad underslept

She’s only been booted off twitter for a week, but Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bile emissions in twitter form are gone for now thank Christ. One of my faves said good so I wrote a leel poem

alas alas / tis for a week / then once again/  she’ll start to beak.

Then another of my faves said NO IT’S PERMANENT and so…. I bringeth you the newis gladde!

Shoulda put ‘BURMA SHAVE’ at the end of that poem.

Today, a plan of action for all the medical related stuff I have to do. Get my tits squoze for health and science! (Mammogram appointment, the arrangement thereof.) Overnight BP monitoring! I DO NOT WANT IT, NOT AT ALL, EXCUSE ME, because they warn you that you won’t sleep that well, but at least I got my BP down substantially before I’m doing it, which is cheating OR IS IT. Remember that adequate roborative sleep is REQUIRED for lowering BP and then they give you a gadget that prevents you from sleeping properly.

scuse me? Say waht? You’re going to find out what my blood pressure is doing over a 24 hour period during which I have to forego restful sleep, get bent.

Also, getting re-ups on the Metformin and the Crestor and the Inderal. (So glad Jeff nagged me into using a weekly pill organizer, what a difference.) My abdominal pains and brain fog might actually be the Crestor, but didn’t I have that before?? tho’ in general I’m no longer getting side effects (except for the poopiness of Metformin, and I will never forget my convo with mOm about that, it definitely sticks out in the rear view…ahem) from the meds I’ve been prescribed.

Also, a plan of action for THE ADDITIONAL SNOW THAT AN ANGRY DEITY WHIZZED OUT ON US. WHEN WE HAVE NO ROADWAY SALT. grr. AND NONE TO BE HAD IN THE PNW calice tabarnak

I appear to have lost a couple of pounds, hopefully it’ll make that unprofessional ice witch of an RN at my doctor’s office chide me less.

ALSO, more writing, since I’m in the mood again, and I’m in a nicely domestic portion of it. Domestic Alternate Universe (AU) is mah bag. Sleepy cuddles and changing bandages, happy sigh.

One kudo from AO3 this morning, for my second most recent story. That one seems to have landed very well among the fandom. (mOm liked it too)

I keep thinking how weird it is that I literally feel better (less foggy, more energetic) than I have in ages but I really did not get a lot of sleep. Good thing my whole life is configured around my bed. Which I changed the sheets of last night, and restuffed my bolster too. (Had to use my feet, get in there ya goddam pillows.)

Gosh that sounds rude. But it gets ruder still.

“Henry Cavill can stuff my bolster any time. But maybe not with his feet.”

I only say this sexually harassing thing to segue into how Henry Cavill gets sexually harassed (fondled and called yummy etc etc) mostly by young white women bingo callers (callback to Frank Magazine – bingo callers = television personalities) on the tube all the bloody time BUT if I ever met Henry Cavill in real life I’d try to have a conversation with him about his dog (the one he says saved his life) and maybe how he’s a fucking icon for mental health and gaming being an activity for everyone and I wouldn’t say a thing about how his frame is nigh perfect; it’s not the most important thing about him. Nothing about the work, because apart from his grunting and swordsmanship in The Witcher, which is world class, I’m not really familiar with a lot of his oeuvre. He was so very adorable in I Capture the Castle though, I remember that much.

Jeff and I have had a couple of laugh until you cry moments recently. I watched some ads go by on fast forward while Jeff was watching the Rose Bowl and I conflated that Tom Hiddleston and Kate McKinnon were now in a show called the Spy Who Dumped Me. I thought that sounded great and I wanted to watch it and Jeff said, well, you were watching ads for a series of shows and movies on a network and none of the images you saw had anything to do with each other. I felt very stupid but abrumptly we were both laughing our asses off. It was one of those why are we laughing moments. But I try to read meaning into everything and having my assumptions reproved in such a kind way landed as hilarious.

The Spy Who Dumped Me is a 2018 movie with a 6.1/10 rating.

 

lazy running a temperature day

Since I’m not coughing and my sats are okay, this isn’t covid. My appetite is definitely off and in a real shift in my behaviour I keep losing my ability to stay hydrated. I will try harder tomorrow.

Even so I made a tiffin of homemade chicken fingers in panko breading, taters and salad, (FOLLOWED BY CHAPMANS ‘FUCK YOU CUSTOMER IF YOU WON’T GET VACCINATED ice cream) ran and dried a load of laundry, did manage to get the kitchen back under control (it has since escaped), called my mOm, wrote 451 words on the Destiel fic that currently has my attention, read an edit of one of Dave’s poems, said ‘sorry no’ to a New Years Day walk with Al P., laughed out loud at Lois’s Letter at the End of the Year, had a lovely long bath, take my blood pressure twice, commune with Buster (more word training in preparation for getting him talking buttons) and of course there was that shopping expotition at the start of the day. So while I did not have a strenuous day, it wasn’t an entirely unproductive one.

Jeff took care of gravelling the slips of ice all over the damned walkways.

And now I will make my bed and find a nightie and TIMMMMMBBBERRRRRRR

AFTER I DO

THIS but not as 1 like 1 answer because that’s just letting your shit get data mined while you twirl for likes like a fucking overfed bear

Image

  1. either Michel or Kima although you know how much I love Jesse and Raven
  2. The Dosadi Experiment
  3. eh Raven mebbe
  4. wow…. any suggestions mOm
  5. Midnite Moving Co gets a ten episode series.
  6. drafting, editing, revising, plotting, in that order
  7. fanfic, M/M AU Domestic
  8. bildungsroman
  9. Go away and work on something (or nothing) else
  10. My bed. I dunno why. I like libraries and other people’s houses
  11. Dunnett, Barbara Tuchman
  12. what the fuck kind of question is that. Of course I can, I’m looking at the internet while I’m writing. OH YOU MEAN FICTION you fucking elitist. Bite me
  13. I try very hard to write every day, even if it’s just a verse of a song
  14. varies 100-4000
  15. morning, just after I’ve eaten and had caffeine; the middle of the night when things are quiet
  16. plotting jesus god
  17. Eurekalert.org. Never fails
  18. Nah, the chain letters of the internet piss me off.

BISCOTTI HAS OCCURRED

Today Jeff will help me move it to where it’s supposed to be, Peggy’s place, not my greedikum gullet.

Off to the dentist today to see if I need repairs for a molar chip.

Still puttering along on the fanfics. Submitted a poem for publication yesterday. I doubt it will be published but I had a lot of fun writing it and there’s some vivid language in it.

Omicron doubles in 2 days. Apparently the highest testing area in Canada is Vancouver Island right now and Keith’s off to the grands shortly to visit them so I hope he stays in his car for the ferry ride. He is currently employed, and I couldn’t be more pleased, although he sounded bagged the last time we spoke.

Christmas gathering this year will be a) takeout b) at Katie’s c) after Christmas Day and d) just immediate family.

Earthquake this morning off the coast, a leedle one. I woke up IMMEDIATELY after the posted time so it’s possible that’s what woke me, but I doubt it; Jeff knows I slept through when a raccoon dragged the plastic container full of cat food to the stairs and launched it gravity-wards so I probably did sleep throught it.

The only hospital left in Afghanistan that can treat covid just ran out of oxygen.

 

 

nuts!

My Nut Hut order arrived; pecans for snacks, chocolate wafers for snacks, almonds for biscotti and 5 pounds sunflower seeds for the tweety birds.

It’s snowing, immense flakes, banging on down.

Asked Buster this morning. Brush? Treats? Door? Door it was.

Schlep this morning. Biggest ticket item was triple A batteries. Jeff stays back because there’s no reason to both go in. Wore my KN95 masks, as I do all the time now. As much as I love the SUPER COMFY triple layer kitty cat mask Jan Maxwell made for me (her xmas card turned up today as well) the epidemiology is pretty clear, the 95’s are better at keeping other people’s pathogens off you. Checked everything I picked up for sodium and man did I put a lot of shit back.

Black holes can make the suns orbiting them go 31 MILLION KPH. nnnnneeeeeeoOOWWWWW

Made mac and two cheeses with fried onions and capers yesterday… Paul came through and had a big bowl of it; he was dropping off his computer, which is illing, and we hung out and watched/listened to Tripping by Nils Frahm which is  something mOm and pOp’d like it.

Alexander’s computer has been paid for and shipping confirmation received. So exciting! I’ll be rounding up the usual suspects looking for a contribution but I won’t be pressing anyone until my credit card bill comes in.

The Saveon hasn’t had pot barley in stock since August and literally does not know when more will come in. I am aghast. I finally found a soup everybody loves and got no ingredients!

I spent two days in bed after getting the booster shot (same day as the flu shot so yes both arms hurt like hell, nothing today except a tiny ache on the Pfizer side) and finally feel like a human being again this morning. My digestion was SO BAD – I actually sent an email to mOm to complain about it, and apologized …and I was hardly eating. Honestly, I felt worse than I’ve done when I was running a temperature, all my long bone joints ached like I’d been beaten. On the plus side, my BP was 133 over 87 this morning and that’s literally the best it’s been in more than a year.

Jeff has completed his repairs of the downstairs terlet. Rejoice, rejoice!

I am getting super sweet comments on my last fic posted, which is giving me life. Apparently I manifested something that one of the fans has been wishing for for a decade, so that’s some serious fan service. mOm said she enjoyed it. I’ve stopped writing the really porny stuff and now it’s just angsty domestic schmoop.

The three stories I’m working on right now (settings: Denver Airport during a blizzard, BC Highway 3 just after the middle of November, a tourist town in Maine) ARE NOT BEHAVING, so I’m having to retrace my steps a lot.

The floor

In my room….is visible.

I still need to rehang all my clothes, wash the seventeen billion socks that were liberated from being silverfish food and clear off the desk and chairs but it’s absolutely delightful knowing that I’m not going to trip over my IKEA bag full of laundry on the way to the john at night.

More kudos this morning. Completely ignorable babbling about fanfic follows: I’m almost at 6k words for the BC weather event fanfic; 21K for “Snow under Starlight” in which I try a pandemic fic that is turning into an adult version of the kids’ story ‘and then the doorbell rang’, and I’ve got a 3K fic about being stuck in an airport during a three day blizzard,

Continue reading The floor