Category: Writing

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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Mailed off another letter

One of the ways to fight anxiety is to think about other people, so I’m trying to write entertaining letters to relatives and friends.

Anyway, if you want a letter, private message me with your mailing address.

Katie dropped by for a visit. Alex was with Suzanne, Dax’s mum, and Katie had just dropped Paul off at the airport – he never, ever, tells me when he’s going to the US, it’s always been startling to me, no matter how many times I learn about it after he’s gone, which has literally been dozens of times, which just goes to show that I am a slow learner. He’s agreed to quarantine after he comes back, and if he misses his friends and girlfriend in the US who can blame him.

She said her car had a mind of its own and she ended up in my driveway. We had a very long and very necessary chat out on the deck. There was laughing, crying and swearing, and she is such a dear person to me. She was feeling a bit low, but she managed to cheer me up, and that was helpful.

Last night I had my first nightmare that I can remember in years. It was horrifying because my subconscious was saying that it’s better to be dead (or to kill someone else to spare them) than to go through whatever was happening (some unspecified apocalypse). I can’t actually say what it was about because the internet is forever, but let’s just say it was nauseating and disheartening and framed me as an entirely heartless and cruel person with no connection to the future of this earth.

And it was all so calm. HORRIBLE things were happening, and myself and my unnamed conspirator proceeded through our horrible response to them as if neither of us had a hair out of place or a care in the world.

Very slowly, as I realized what we had done, I decided to call the cops, and then I woke up.

 

Made chicken breasts, bok choi and onions in ginger and garlic, and green salad for supper last night. Practiced lots, still working on arrangements.

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user chewmynails posted this on reddit saying the MIL crocheted this

r/aww - My MIL crochet my cat her own couch

Speaking of kitties, Buster has been training HARD. He’s a good chonky boi.

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from @gabrielsherman on twitter

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This is quite the poem, eh? Inglorious in Excelsis by Brian Bilston

FOG

Woke up to a blanket of fog that hemmed the world into to a block. Couldn’t even see to the school.

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Continuing to work on a fleshing out and providing lyrics to a couple of songs.

Buster had 3 training sessions yesterday. He’s already trained this morning.

Oatmeal and tea for breakfast.

Paul reiterated that he had a lovely time hiking. He didn’t know how much he missed a walk with some challenge (for me it was super challenging, and it’s an ‘easy’ trail.) He wants to do it again so I’m looking for relatively short but somewhat challenging local hikes, if anyone has any ideas.

Spoke briefly to Keith. We talked about politics mostly, because man, there’s just so MUCH of it right now. The BC Election held our attention for a while.

Apart from mold allergens the air quality is pretty good today.

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Off to the grocery store

I made cinnamon sticks from the dough I made yesterday..

I did my standard ninja shop. By this I mean I make sure Jeff gets a good look at me, and then steam to the last place in the store he’d look for me. I’m pretending that I’m doing it on purpose, but it’s just the ADD. AW SHIT I NEED MILK O I FORDOTTED THE BOCCONCINI PEARLS o how I love dose tings anyway. Then there’s the moment halfway through the shop when I actually look at the list again.

I put half of the cinnamon sticks in the freezer. They are dreffle tasty. Possible not best to consume them all at once since it’s essentially half a loaf of bread with sugar and butter on top.

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Yesterday and today

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I do believe you have to be human to die of COVID so I’m assuming most of these people are safe. Yes indeed Trump has tested positive for COVID. It’s the biggest security risk possible and Pence must be just drooling over how Trump could be permanently rendered unPresidential. I really only care about Stephen Miller. If I could publicly announce what I intend to do if he dies of COVID I’m not sure any of you would enjoy it. Trump needs to stay alive because Pence is worse.

Tom needs a heart valve. Schedule willing and the surgeon don’t catch COVID he’s having surgery next week. Tom is one of my favourite people and I like Peggy even more than that so the stress and confusion and foreboding they must be feeling is something else and I guess today is the day I get off my ass and make bikkies for Peggy.

I had a really productive day yesterday, (I pulled up the dead vines in the garden, still need to finish that) and wrote a letter to a family member and did a load of laundry and rehearsed on  three instruments and worked more on You do me Wrong)) and then lost my cell phone. I mean I hiked a reasonably challenging trail with Paul, whose foot seems completely healed. It’s only 3 k, but we went to Goldie Lake, and I took some great pictures, and then somewhere between the last marker post and the parking lot I lost my phone.

Paul took pictures. I’ll keep bugging him until he answers.

somebody shot heroin in Mt Seymour Park I found the needle.

Did I mention in December we have to stop having that little rent break. It was only 25 bucks a month but there’s nothing like feeling you’re putting one over on your landlord.

Now I have to buy a pomodora clock and a proper alarm clock and go back to a paper/electric calendar. Life is twagic.

My phone was set to send me a notification of my meeting with the RN yesterday but it didn’t go off, and that’s another reason I’m glad I lost my phone.

I hated my phone because at this point 3/4 of my calls were spam or phishing texts or women exhorting me in Toisanese or Mandarin.

I’ve actually wanted to stop having that bill every month. Seventy bucks for shitty service and overages after 2 gigs, **** my **** and then there’s the issue of having a cop in my pocket.

I cancelled my service and had to deal with two humans over half an hour to make that happen. I changed the most important passwords just in case there’s something in my phone that will enable them to get my shit. So Google, the blog, my social media accounts…and I went very crunchy and hard and strong on the passwords this time.

Roses are red

Sydney’s in Australia

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courtesy of @thesarahyork

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omg @Stonekettle on twitter this morning saying “If you want sympathy look in the dictionary between shit and syphilis” with respect to Trump’s positive COVID test.

red moon rising

last night the Harvest Moon incoming was red as a glass of wine in a streaky sky

Still feeling congested but I distinctly feel more lively today.

Breadsticks. I must make breadsticks. or naan or buns or summat

l8r:ah me, I made Sixer Sticks. LIKE ALL FUCKING CANADIAN RECIPES IT USES MIXED MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS and people wonder how Sumerian and Akkadian survived for 1000 years side by side WAAL LEMME TELL YOU

make bread dough in the machine. Use less salt and sugar and a little more yeast.

Preheat oven to 375

after a second rise roll the dough out around 2 cm thick, ensuring it’s no longer than the pan you’re baking it in. Cut in 2.5 to 3 cm strips and move to a baking sheet with parchment

in a ceramic cup nuke 3 tbsps salted butter 3 tbsps white sugar and lots of cinnamon for 25 – 30 seconds. Apply to naked Sixer Sticks with a pastry brush, (and let me tell you I love my silicone pastry brush, that thing’s a champ) like a gorilla expecting to lick the pot afterward. Try to get all the doughy bits at least brushed with the mixture

Slam those tentacles of goodness in the oven for twenty minutes and yank them out and try not to eat the entire batch while they’re still warm

One of the songs came back to me (the other one vanished), it’s called You do me wrong, and it’s about a woman telling a man that it’s a very good song but please don’t sing it because it reminds me of my dead brother. Yeah, I’m in a fucking terrible mood why do you ask? No this has nothing to do with Jeff and everything to do with John. It’s on Rowena so it’s one of those annoying neotrad tunes that’s really completely modern because it rips at the Empire. I hear fiddle, bowed bass and tambour as well.

Little over a week before Supernatural fires up again. I don’t know if I’ll ever rewatch it after it finishes this November (after the election, so …); if so I’ll wait until Jeff’s desperate for something new and then WAAL THERE ARE 320 EPISODES that’s even more than Time Team, SG1 and ER!

ha ha

fic 16261 and I still haven’t (this para deleted)

 

gluey day

I am making bread dough. I think I want home made cheese sticks. We’ll see what they turn into.

Load of laundry done; practicing done. Two songs descended and I don’t even want to deal with them. I’m used to crying while I’m writing songs but not this. The fucking pandemic is making me an emotional hole collector.

Right now I’m missing John so badly, for all the things he’d say and the songs he’d sing, and I tried to give myself a “Well life goes on” speech but that’s hard when I can still smell him in the room divider and his name is on the wall. And I miss Mike, and my parents with an everpresent longing, and I miss being able to feel like an actor in the world, and I miss thinking about what I’d do if I went back to school.

charming piece of BC twitter follows (they’re all fake accounts)

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there’s a thing going round twitter about the albums that came out the year you were born. Man I’m old.

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tiresome

My enthusiasm for walking in public parks ceases when I’ve had to truck (bagged) dogshit into the bin.

I’d been enjoying the break in the rain, up in Hilda AVENUE park, hullo Burnaby, can’t even get the park sign right, took a walk, took my pickerupper, and was ridding the children’s play areas of nasty sharp bits of plastic, candy wrappers and cigarette butts and feeling might’ pleased with myself and then something that looked like it came out the hind end of a golem living on dog food was sitting there in a thin pink plastic bag. I binned that and what I’d collected and I dragged my ass home. People suck.

We did a shop, got milk and a few other things.

Another very lazy day, except I made weird pizzaâ„¢ for supper mostly so I could self-calm by eating raw bread dough and cooked myself up beef strips with onions and Peggy’s tomatoes with a tiny amount of taco seasoning for breakfast and damnation it was fine. Now I could have cold pizza (fresh chopped tomatoes, bocconcini balls, fresh chopped onions and scallions, capers, chopped olives) or oatmeal, let me think on it.

Indi Samarajiva said Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That’s all it is.

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later again

Tom’s in hospital. He’s on his cell phone though, so it’s not like he’s incommunicado or currently dying. Glad I called Peggy and learned these tidings, which I communicated to the Keith for their household.

 

word count on fic 15466

graphic shows sonic the hedgehog’s two eyes gradually growing together to form a single huge eyeball

 

current mood

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shown is a lightly smirking woman, having won a beaver handling contest I’D FUCKING SMIRK TOO not that I’d ever have her simply incandescent skill set.Image

@zhaabowekwe posted this, saying that she’s still badass and one of the most fluent Anishinaabemowin speakers

Lucy Liu fest

Watched the last Elementary, and then the first one, because I missed it, and then the first 20 minutes of Charlie’s Angels, which got kinda repetitititive and then we stopped. Watching Lucy shake her hair out repeatedly and wear a series of truly stunning gowns was wonderful.

Like a lot of people in the PNW now that the smoke has briefly let up I can’t stop coughing.

Thinking about cinnamon buns and biscotti this am. Shall thought become action? stay tuna! Currently running the dishwasher

445 words on “Firehall Bob” an UPSUN short, and 15016 on the fic which has a working title of ‘daily schedule’

Below: artist: Peter de Seve

Shown, a witch on a broom looking at a black kitten through a pet store window at night, and the kitten is looking back. All the other kittens in the window are asleep.

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@TamikaButler on twitter is responsible for this gem:

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