Category: Writing

Didn’t get out of bed until almost ten, although I was up reading around 9; finished Bob Wilson’s Bios, an sf novel about an extremely poisonous planet.

Paul is frying turkey sausages for the stuffing, and cutting up onions. Pretty soon I have to go downstairs and liberate the turkey from John’s fridge (there was obviously no room at the inn in OUR fridge, and we weren’t leaving it on the back deck…) and clean it, stuff it and toss it on the oven.

I am trying to develop enthusiasm for anything but it’s as if when I’m not at work I’m an unwound clock.

In about 15 minutes Jan and Jim will turn up (presumably with Carly in tow) and then I get to hang out with some of my favourite people.

Katie and John bonded last night over Buffy. Sigh. John and Katie have not had the best uncle niece relationship ever, but it has improved quite a bit since the summer, and that is a relief. Don’t know exactly what triggered the shift in Katie; John is the same as he ever was, only more so, if you know what I mean, and if you know John you know exactly what I mean.

It was wonderful seeing my folks yesterday. Paul’s mum Phyllis called while we were there to let us know she wasn’t spending Christmas evening by herself. I was relieved about that, too.

I imagine Keith is having a great time sitting around in his underwear playing games at Jeff’s. Must start on the books Jeff gave me. The new Coupland looks lovely and it’s set in Vancouver…. the other one is about how men are going to disappear in 125000 years. Is that nearly soon enough? I personally think mass human extinction is a lot closer than that, in fact I may be a participant, but I will examine the evidence.

Have a lovely boxing day, and try not to spend any money.

After a lovely turkey lunch care of my mother we visited with Barry and Jackie and Bonnie and Rani in the sun room, while watching all the birds at the feeders and then we watched quite a bit of Lord of the Rings III on Adrenaline and now we’re about to jump on the boat and come home. All in all a fine visit. Keith’s off to Jeff’s. Sigh. Wonder if I can talk Paul into doing the Pacific Buffet on the boat? Kids made out like bandits, and I got books for xmas, big surprise. Happy Boxing day everybody.

Have yourself a medicated Christmas

As your purse allows,

Numb your brain cells, then sit in a chair and browse

but have yourself a medicated Christmas now.

now we’re home for the holidays

they’ll be squalid days

I know…..

etc.

Got on the ferry at 7 am; Katie slept not at all, Paul was up at 3 am and I slept like the big baby I am until about 5, when Paul came back in. To my utter astonishment Katie came for a hug, so I already got my Christmas present. For me Christmas is about food and family. The ever heightening Mutually Assured Consumption drives me batty; Paul and I deked around Christmas presents for each other with no difficulty, and considering what a curmudgeon he’s being I am so glad. Wouldn’t give me a penny for coffee on the freaking ferry this morning! I had to go back down to the car deck and shake the Subaru out for change, dadgum it. Found and reported a suspicious package but I guess nobody wanted to believe that it was a bomb, so it was still there when I got off the boat. Keith wanted to touch it and I told him not to.

Ate a fantastic meal at Mike’s place last night. Tori gave me a self-portrait, which is a)very fine and b) still there, because in my haste to depart (to get enough shut eye, and get Keith out of there because he was feeling a little under the weather, etc) I left it on the mantel like a dolt. Had to phone back to apologize, but I’ll be back to collect it Monday or Tuesday.

Also Tori had a couple of mixed music playing-off-the-computer music loops which were tasteful and appropriate. Paul and I were really impressed, a solid & eclectic mix of music.

Still can’t believe what happened in Toronto with respect to travel. Paul and I and the kids would probably have been able to get in, but travelling around Toronto would have been a nightmare and flying/renting a car to get to London would have been one of those You Could, But Why Did You Bother stories. Hope to heaven Lexi and her hubby got to Europe and Bonnie got to Victoria – I will phone her sis shortly to find out.

Last note. I am so mad I could take up carpeting with my face. Yesterday Katie logged on, or tried to, to her MSN account and found out it had been hacked and she no longer had access, although the password clue had been changed to If u want ur mail talk to demos_love_all. Using her brother’s account, she checked the profile and demos_love_all@hotmail.com purports to be a man living in Egypt. Anyway, he – or whoever – told her if she wanted her mail back to contact him, and Paul and I immediately said no, and then made a panicked call to Mike, who promptly emailed us something to scan our system with. Katie then was the freaked out recipient of a lecture about computer security (above noted scumbag had not actually messed with her profile) and told to use Mozilla instead of Internet Exploder. Then we checked to see if there had been unauthorized access to anything else on the hard drive, and apparently not. Needless to say we’re all really shaken and cheesed off, and Katie is scared all of her friends will think any nasty emails that demos_love_all writes are really from her. Also, she never wrote down anybody’s email address, so she’s flying blind – apart from her non-bf and a couple of other people she’s no idea what the addresses are of all of her friends. I have memorized everybody’s email for anybody that matters to me so I don’t have to go through this kind of crap if my hard drive crashes. When my hard drive crashes. Heavy sigh.

Much Christmas Joy and Hugs to you all. I wish my brother would get here, can’t open prezzies until he shows up!

Just made myself a hot rum toddy. I am feeling much better now.

Take a gander at it while you can – archives will disappear on December 31st.

(2019 says not)

Off to Mike’s for dins tonight. Haven’t figured out the exact lineup of attendees – Paul has already declared that he’s going to stay home and do revision on the 340, seeing as how he’s actually going to be called upon to fix them in the New Year.

Gave Katie one of her Christmas presents early (she was whining about wanting to open something NOW) so I handed her the Chicken soup for the teenager diary and she promptly locked herself in her room for the day, only coming out to say such things as “What do you think is my best feature?” and OF COURSE I say physical or character, and she says, physical, and I say, because it’s a no brainer, her eyes. (This sentence deleted, because even though Katie doesn’t read my blog she’d flail the mucus out of me if I even hinted at it.) Then she goes back in her room and I can hear her cursing every once in a while because ‘this is really hard’. Then she comes out and asks for a definition of compassion, which really has me squirming until I come up with something half assed, and then she goes back into her room. Some powerful alchemy going on in there, can’t say what the results will be.

Keith, who each day drifts a little closer to being a Buddhist, is constantly yelling at me, usually while he’s playing war games on the computer, to practice a little compassion every day. This is in response to my ill mannered attempts to pound sense into my spouse. (I’m still verbally abusive, I’m just much more crabby about it than I used to be). He’s right of course, and if I can make my way through the thickets of pomo irony, I’m sure a more compassionate heart will be mine.

Keith just crawled outta bed and is taking in Cowboy Bebop, a gift from Who Else, Mike.

Okay, I’ve been putting this off for many weeks now, but I finally have to confess, and it’s crazy making.

My cat has asthma. I really wish this weren’t true, but we went to the vet and the vet gave her steroids in pill form, which she ingested without question in her food, and she promptly stopped making that god awful coughing like she was going to die sound. So then we spent an ungodly amount of money on her puffer. Yes, Kira has a freaking puffer, with a little kitty mask. Keith picks her up every night and administers her meds and then promptly feeds her (associating something nice with something unpleasant). Now I come from a universe where cats are a free good and they don’t cost anything to maintain except food. So the notion that I’m going to be coughing up, you’ll excuse the expression, money for the rest of her natural goes against all of my feelings about how cats are supposed to be. People who like cats – or love cats – or are obsessed about cats – will think I’m an inhuman beast. But really the only thing that concerns me is that Keith is gonna be gone for a week and I’m the one on puffer duty while he’s at my brother’s. Apparently a week of the new LOTR game and sitting in his underwear has more appeal than hanging around here, and who could blame him? Pic is a childhood memory.

Ah, feeling much better. The inaugural soak was really quite wonderfully self-indulgent and there were a lot of folks there. It was good to see the Dalai Jarmo and his lady wife and stepson; also in attendance, Trent, Tori, Mike of course and two of my krewe, being Paul and Keith. Got home about one and didn’t get out of bed until AFTER ten o’clock, which is like, miraculous, or something.

Had a warm human experience with a government employee this morning. For reasons that I REALLY don’t want to get into right now, I need my divorce decree. Jumping Jimmy Christmas, don’t get me started. This is a rant I will simply have to save for the stage; my blood pressure leaps up like a homesick angel when I think about it. Now that means I had to go to the government of Ontario webslight and try to find information. Got it wrong once, then went back to the webslight to find out that there was some not particularly small print and that led to the SEXIEST MAN’S VOICE IN HISTORY SAYING, “Hi. (short sexy pause, I’m not making this up). You ‘ave reach da Central Registry for Divorce. Please leave a message wit’ your name only and your telephone number, area code firs’, and we will return your call as soon as possible. Bonjour, vous avez rejoint…” etc. Honest to Murgatroyd, he sounded like he was recording a message as to which item of clothing I should remove first during our next tryst. I damned near dropped the phone. I wanted to play it for the kids but it was a toll call, and besides, they refused. Anyway, I carefully spelled by name and left my number – this was yesterday, mind – and some bushy tailed female of a certain age returned my call this morning, we had a pleasant and productive conversation and I now have my decree file number, which means I can get a copy. And don’t get me started about what I need it for, you’re gonna have to pay to get in for that story. Except my mom, you can have the story for free.

I know it’s going to strike a lot of you as weird, but I write this blog for two people – me and my mother. I know I have fans – they send me pix, some of which I post – but mostly I write this stuff for me and my Mom. Now I’m late, and my mother is suffering low blog pressure, so I’ll hit send and get going on “Allegra Avoids Christmas, opus 46”.

Sidney Redlitch… that name ring a bell? How about Collignon? He’s da guy who gets his apartment turned upside down by Amelie? The cat in Monty Python (‘he’s on the mend’)? Madmartigan from Willow when the fairy dust hits him? That feeling you get when somebody clearly enunciated one thing, but your nervous system forced you to hear something else? When the universe completely shuts down, restarts, and comes back as a man in blackface singing “Mammy?”

My charisma machine is in the shop, so I’ll have to do some thinking for a change. Sigh. I’m so unused to it. That is what scares the wee-hoo outta me about going back to school. Think? Or “that kind of think” again? I have been constructing a nest for my brain for what feels like a thousand years (some days) and the idea of forcing myself out of it causes me no end of grief.

And when I am not thinking about that, I’m thinking about my shoes. I am really emotionally attached to my shoes and I want to wear them everywhere, whether or not they are appropriate to the occasion, and really I should be wearing other shoes. But I am telling you, at my age, a comfortable pair of shoes is worth diamonds and rubies and all that carborundaceous gaudery that you’re supposed to want more than a decent pair of shoes because it’s inherently more “valuable”. I could be dead tomorrow – I want a comfortable pair of shoes today. Dadgum it. There’s a lot of other things I want today too, and with any luck I’ll get them.

Distributed hugs, TTR and biscotti at the office, with Samantha and Katie in tow, and then stepped into Loughell Mall long enough to realize I could feed two teenaged girls or get the Starcrud card tanked up again, and realized that people come before things so put food into the children, not that it was really food, and went home where I listened to Keith blether on most entertainingly about the game engine in the new Lord of the Rings game.

Now the dreaded Buffy has returned to my screen so we’re in Out of Mind Out of Sight right now. Knee high black boots and a pink on pink floral skirt and a white v neck tee? Okay, I’m confused. Now she’s entirely clad in black leather. That’s more the heck like it. And Angel just showed up, and he is smouldering as always. This sentence deleted but I will mime it on demand, in person.

What amazing bloody bone structure. Too bad he is too old to play my all time favourite hero, Francis Crawford of Lymond. Mwa ha ha. What a lad!

Okay, enough with the spooky coincidences. Saw a great blue heron coming down Cariboo before I went in to work. Yeah, means nothing to YOU. Then I get home and watch Born Yesterday with Paul and Keith (Keith got it from the library for us) and realize that on the DVD are theatrical trailers, and one of the trailers is for Bell Book and Candle, which means that the same day I get this weird kink to see something by Ernie Kovacs it turns up in my living room. Lawsamercy, I’m scared to think what I could imagine if I really put my back into it.

Actually, I know what I’m imagining right now, and it’s simply wonderful. Hope you’re all having as great a time as I.

Off to some ADD Self Help thingee downtown, to be arm candy for Paul I imagine (insert derisive snorts in THIS slot, and derisive laughs HERE please).

If I could say anything I liked to you / it would be about how you have brought / possibility into my life. Vistas / and unimaginable stretches of massed ideas. / A guided tour of the numinous / flashed from your eyes / not reflected / like burning cities seen across water. /

A tool forged and quenched, forged / and quenched. Some heat required / some exchange of blood and muscle / for the offering. /

As I bring my best to the temple / so I implore you, bring your best.

So we may be hallowed / So we may be blessed / Be fed and be the meal / may your bones feed your grandchildren.

I supPOSE if I don’t have anything to say, I shouldn’t attempt to say it. I mean, I can write a thousand words on damned near any subject without actually working too hard, so maybe I should just pick a topic, any topic, and stick with it.

How about a year end wrap up?

Let’s see. Almost a year has gone by during which I haven’t got enough sleep. You will note that my most common Topic is enough sleep, or not enough sleep. And that’s because thanks to my spouse’s mental state and the multitude of joys that is perimenopause, I have not been gettin’ enough shut eye. I’ve tried going to bed earlier, staying up all night, etc., and the dreaded ‘getting enough exercise’ but no dice. I also have RLS, Restless Leg Syndrome, don’t you know, so I kick and jump during the night; and I snore like the creaks of a moving ship, and I thrash, sweat, and grind my teeth like a cute little rock crusher.

You would think that this would be enough to make Paul leap up and say “I am sleeping with a fiend in human form – begone, vile spirit, and trouble me no more!!!” but instead when I ask him what my snores sound like, he says, “I find it oddly comforting.” He sounds sincere and one thing I’ve learned about Paul after 25 very odd years is that he’ll be reticent about his own opinion but he won’t shame himself by lying about it.

It all becomes worthwhile when we (with any luck) wordlessly snuggle the next morning. In the cold grey before dawn, all that skin is like magick armour. Mind you if Paul starts talking the majick disappears pretty fast, as it’s usually a variant on the usual where did we go wrong lament. But in the meantime, I’m not getting enough sleep and my cognitive functioning, always a mixed and variable entity, is completely shot to the place where, in the wonderful words of Rudyard Kipling “the dead crabs go”.

Besides, I really don’t think I’m doing all that bad these days. I’m not nearly as crabby about life but THAT MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE HOT TUB.

Yes, indeed, received the gladsome news that Mike’s hot tub is up, running and able to receive guests; tonight marks the night of the First Annual Post Winter Solstice Soak. Calloo callay, etc. etc. with a yip yip yip arrrooooooo thrown in on the side. Happiness is a friend with a hot tub.

What else happened this year. Well, there was a fair amount of death this year. I guess I’m doing a good job of ignoring anything that doesn’t smite me in the phyz; but I did the eulogy at my grandmother’s funeral and it’s a good thing somebody with some public speaking skills got up there and did something, because the minister blasted through the service as if he was half an hour late for a (deleted… it was funny, but only to me). And I did the Order of Service for Rev Katie’s installation (whip out the Makita! we’re gonna install us a minister!). And I gave a couple of sermons, and work got a whole lot better, and Keith got his green belt, and Paul seems to be finally pulling out of his depression, and we didn’t have to sell the house, and he’s still working for Air Canada, and Katie didn’t go to jail for assaulting that kid, and the next line deleted, and she didn’t get killed or permanently damaged by the car accident, and she’s not drinking and even I’ve reduced my alcohol consumption (why sometimes I go days without drinking a beer, and a lot of the time I’m only having one beer. Tonight is NOT going to be one of those nights. I’ll need beer to fortify myself against seeing certain people naked, and I don’t mean that in a bad way).

I signed up for a comedy course and I have investigated where all the open mikes are in town (my word, but there are a lot of them).

This next paragraph was a self directed diatribe about my weight. I reread it, it bored me, I deleted it.

Now I must do the Laundry that Oozed Across the Bedroom Floor, dejunk enough of this house to get Paul to stand down from the Mental Health Red Alert, buy beer for this evening, sweet talk Paul into buying a phone for Katie, buy a book for my brother, pack off some cookies for Tam Tam, boot Katie’s ass outta bed, cure cancer, formulate and enforce world peace and go dancing with the Dalai Lama. A modest enough plan, and I’ve got hours and hours to do it in.

Pic is something random.

Went for a brisk walk down to Dinosaur Rock with Keith and Paul.

After we got back Katie called and I went to fetch her from the station, and she told me about all the things that she and her non bf (with whom she’s been hanging for a day) have been up to. They had their first fight.

ah, young love.

pic is something random. (I believe taken from the pier at Iona Beach at dusk in the autumn)

Where the scientists post their news.

One of my rave fave sites, filled with wonder and bizarreness, and occasionally, even, good news.

Mt. St Helens Cam

Not much there at the moment, but one of my favourite things to do of an evening is visit the site and see how big the hot spot is. It seems to get bigger every day.

Here’s a link to la Wonkette

She is completely disgusting – but you have to admire somebody who posts links to their most fervent detractors. I wouldn’t have known about Michelle Malkin if I didn’t read Wonkette. Ana Marie is my heroine, although not my role model, as I am several years from commercializing my site, and I’ll be doing it rather differently than she did. If you’re feeling *really* gossipy and raunchy check out the sib sites Gawker and Defamer. What would we do without Molly Ivins?

My all time fave political columnist, and she writes hella books, too.

My mom’s an Ophiuchius!!! That explains it.

Please, don’t knowbody tell me that astrology is bogus, I already know. However, there is a growing mountain of data to suggest that your birth month actually does have a statistical correlation to the likelihood of getting certain ailments, so it’s not like the astrologers are totally wrong, it’s just they are attributing what they see to the wrong cause. They are looking up at the stars, but the answer is in our jeans.

Mad Cow News

I notice the major US media are staying away from this one. I know somebody who’s married to a meat inspector, and she says that the reason we found Mad Cow in Canada is because we were looking for it. Don’t eat cow. I take some comfort in knowing that there is actually a sizable chunk of the gene pool that is resistant to prions. After all, prions have been around for a while, as have been cows and their ancestors – we had to have bred our way around that one at least among the cattle eating people.

Fark

Once again, a sign that I have neither taste nor shame.

From the WildernessThe premier conspiracy site of the internet, in my opinion. Mike Ruppert is my kind of nutbar, and Gary Webb’s suicide has turned the heat up at the site a notch. Gary Webb was a Pulitzer prize winning journalist who lost everything as a consequence of trying to pin drug activities on the CIA. Now, the CIA ADMITTED what they had done, but the mainstream media in the US refused to report it (I recollect it was reported in Canada, but we live in a different reality groove up here.) Anyway, lost house lost kids lost job and shot himself. His funeral was December 18th. If you can read the transcript of his Oregon speech (turns up on a number of links) I highly recommend it, and as a memorial it’s wonderful. Further to that:

Narco News.

Who needs conspiracies?

Really nice peace and prayer flags

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