Category: Writing

I’m begging you

Mother Dear Mother

I cannot find the slender black binder which contains the ‘Tales of Grampa”. Please either send it to me in printed or electronic form, or acknowledge that everyone else involved but Grampa is dead now and publish it for the world to see, because Tales of Grampa is one of the best things our family ever wrote.

Alex is the right age now, I NEED THAT BOOK.

Okay technically it’s not required for my physical survival but gloryoski I shore would plumb like that.

Spent a LONG time at Lougheed Mall yesterday with Keith as he acquired a new phone. If -and this is a big if – I need a cell phone I’ll go to Walmart for the flip phone and go to the Bell kiosk for the sim card and activation. Keith also acquired a shower curtain and some other items for his dad and I fed him at Cazba. Lovely food but takes forever. I spent so much time waiting for him that I put together a 125 item generalized list. I also picked up a beautiful new pen – Oomomo has wonderful Japanese pens – and some mini whiteboards with markers – and a pack of Pocky. Managed to stay away from Cobs Bread and the Purdy’s Chocolate. The mall keeps changing stores and it can be quite disorienting.

Keith desperately needs to get some work done on his car, it’s not starting very well. Honestly thought we might be ‘stranded’ (it’s one bus ride home, la).

Had an unbelievably frustrating conversation with him about creativity. He spends all his time worrying about not writing instead of digging in to understanding his creative process and finding tools to support it. I mean, I only found Scrivener a decade ago and before that I didn’t have an app which supports my creative writing the way I need it done. He’s always so infuriatingly vague when he talks about anything personal so after five minutes of flailing, I shut up, assuming he was finding my ‘solutionizing’ patronizing and demoralizing and candidly useless. You know, like the ‘just cheer up’ advice you get from someone who doesn’t understand depression and anxiety and finds your gloominess rude, antisocial and disrespectful.

I checked someone’s name on line after they advertised their cleaning and organizing services on Next Door and they are…. let’s just say whoever the hell she really is, someone with her exact and unusual name has a set of resumes on line which…. er …. don’t line up. They can’t all be right, but they for sure can all be wrong…. so I’m just going to skip over that part where I pay for her advice.

The red canoe is gone out of the back yard, thank you Jeff for making that possible.

I’ve gotten wordle in three tries three days running, I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. There’s been a run of words with ‘B’ in them though, I don’t think that’s unrelated.

Ah, that coffee. Milk and sugar. So good.

And in spite of it, do you know what my bp was this am? 117 over 79. That is absolutely perfect blood pressure and that’s 1.5 hours before my meds so you can understand why I feel a bit weird for an hour after I take them. (But it doesn’t stop me from doing things, I just take it easy.)

I owe Dave a phone call, hopefully it will migrate from my list to reality sometime today.

Zibethicus changed the logo on twitter. Long time nesters there are saying things like ‘EVERYTIME I SEE THAT X INSTEAD OF THE BLUE BIRD IT REMINDS ME TO GO SOMEPLACE ELSE’ Yes Elon, you dun fuct up

I’ve written 773 words over the last two days on TB.

I really wish my energy level wasn’t so variable; but that I guess is the single biggest reason I can’t work full time any more. Plus I’m actually listening to my body and peeing at first recognition that my bladder is full rather than waiting until explosive decompression is imminent.

My pOp said something HILARIOUS to me on the phone yesterday, so I am saluting him this morning WITHOUT repeating what was said. Thank you kind sir, I have been chuckling occasionally ever since. He’ll read this and think, “What is she going on about?” and that too is part of the humour.

I miss Ryker, I need to see that boy.

 

RIP Creede this one’s for you

It’s two in the morning, I just wrote and orchestrated an entire song in my head, and I’m crying so hard my snerking can be heard in the next county.

 

Herewith ‘The Parting Gift’ a bluegrass song for Creede Lambard

Opens with banjo and the bass sneaks in, other instruments following, everyone’s playing and singing together on ‘and now the train is boarding’ to maximize harmonies and audio density

Your voice gone from the room
Your song is a recording
Not much to lift the gloom
And now the train is boarding

bass really booms, all the other instruments wire weave; the voices on top are angry and desperate

I’m glad, I’m glad
that the batteries are dead
the times we had
always better in always better in my head

Instrumental break, starting with the bass, then to mandolin, then to octave mandolin, then to banjo, then a polyphonic explosion as they all try to outshout each other.

Much sparser accompaniment and vocal arrangement, with the voices taking turns.

I lost my final home
Soon after you had left us
And now I’m doomed to roam
With the dark songs that you gave us
Only my voice I lift
My mandolin is gone
It is your parting gift
I remember you in song

Much longer and more subdued instrumental break, everybody calming down and being sad and politely taking turns.

I’m glad, I’m glad
that the batteries are dead
the times we had
always better in always better in my head

 

 

for banjo, mandolin, octave mandolin, upright bass and at least four voices, all tenors and altos but if there’s a true ‘black hole’ bass voice I’ll allow it.

First meal at the seniors residence with Paul

It was very pleasant. Paul learned where his mailbox is, I picked up some items for his new apartment (something to boil water in, cutlery). Saw Anne from church. She literally bolted when she saw us-  (got up from reading her newspaper and fled) – I have no idea why.

Returned him to his home and Dax and Justin were working on Dax’s car which is not drivable at the time and they needed to do a parts run. I am not getting in the middle of that, so I said Paul’s right here, ask him to borrow his car, and Dax and Paul did a parts run out to PoCo. I may need to help with that continuing repair job tomorrow so I’m holding myself in readiness to provide transpo this morning. (By staying sober, I told Paul I’d never drive high and of course I don’t drink anymore, unless you’re counting that mouthful of beer I drank yesterday just so I could remember what a Sleeman Honey Brown Ale tasted like and get a little taste flashback to when I was happy and drinking with my pals at the Golf Course.)

So I may be picking Justin up (I drove him home last night, he lives across Royal Oak from Deer Lake park the lucky young dude) this morning but he’s probably going to be able to borrow his mother’s car, and so I’m going to putter in the kitchen and do laundry and try to stop crying from writing the first part to a song.

Dementia song

I open my mouth to reply
can’t remember why
I know that the sky is blue
and then it’s grey
and then I think of you
I was talking – I remember my own voice
but it sounds different now
choked somehow
And I try to swallow and I can’t and I’m sputtering
And I try to stand but I can’t my feet are stuttering
and I freeze in place
in space
and what I’m looking at is gone
I thought that you were here and now you’re gone
and I thought I remembered your name but you’re gone
and then I remember you were mean to me that time
and I tried to get out of the car is that a crime
and I tried to get back where I was is that a crime
and I think that maybe I should nap

well wow

ParticularSummer6019 on reddit ran ‘the opposite of the star spangled banner’ through chat AI and this is what happened. It’s doggerel, BUT WHAT DOGGEREL

Oh, the shadows we cast in twilight gloom
At the land that divides us, our hearts find no room
The stripes of discord, the fields of disdain
We March to the dissonance, a fractured refrain.

With no gleaming stars, just darkness above,
No unity we find, no binding love.
Where freedom falters, and justice bends,
In this shattered land, our hope descends.

The flag of division, we unfurl high,
A symbol of discord, where truth and trust die.
No land of the free, no home of the brave,
Only chains of discord, a nation enslaved.

Happy 4th July

so happy for Buster

Today’s the day! CONE COMES OFF, STITCHES OUT. … also today I phone the doc’s office and ask why the fuck she didn’t email me my requisition which she said she would do on the phone during our last appointment.

Three months of rent cheques off to the landpeer this am.

Feeling pretty good, except my nose is running. The grass pollen is insanely high.

Still plugging away at TB (65K words and NO SIGN OF WRAPPING UP) and Handyman Special (12902 words DITTO)

no way

There was absolutely no way I would permit another sleepless night, expecially since Jeff and I are supposed to breakfast with Keith and Alex this morning. I whacked myself with ten milligrams and slept like a cat until 5 am. YAY, MULTIPLE EVENTS OF YAY!  Jeff, however, is not in the most tip top shape so it’s still an open guess whether he’ll be able to join us. (I’ll let him not provide the details.) Keith’s going to call us when he’s levered Alex into the car.

Yesterday, 3500 words on Handyman Special, day before 2500 words, 250 so far today. Absolutely none of the last ten or so destiel stories I posted had explicit sex in them and this one is basically a sea bed of hand-wavy plot hosting a tsunami of schmoopy porn, and honestly I have ZERO clue where the hell any of this comes from. But at least I am not repeating, in describing the hella hot consensual sex, any of the most commonly used expressions OR anything I’ve previously written, and by god that’s an accomplishment even if none of you horrified old coots will give me my due as an ahem mistress of the genre.

from Fanlore:

Schmoop is used to describe fanfic with a very sweet romance between two characters. Some fans see schmoop as a further escalation of fluff.

Fluff is often used in fandom to characterize any pleasant, feel-good work. It is sometimes described as the opposite of angst.

None of this is preventing me from chipping away at Totally Boned.

why me why vancouver (from 2014)

Why me? Why Vancouver?

For almost ten years, my husband’s request to be transferred to Vancouver by his employer sat in some HR equivalent of development hell. Nothing happened, and given the desirability of the posting and Paul’s place in the line, nothing was expected to. Then, three weeks after our family followed his employment from Montréal to Toronto, he got word to report for work in Vancouver in 72 hours’ time.

And he smiled. He’d applied for three weeks of vacation at exactly the same time, and couldn’t be forced to start work until it was finished. Thus began our family’s transition.
We put everything we owned in a truck trailer – including the vintage motorcycle and sidecar that Paul later sold so we could buy a house – and sent it on its way. We grabbed the kids and the cat and flew to Victoria and dropped the kids off with the grandparents, and then we spent two weeks lining up a car, a place to live and schooling and drivers licences.

We laboured in that little golden slot of weather that we get sometimes in late October, when the days are deliciously crisp and cool, the air smells wonderful, and the sun on the mountains makes you think you’re living in a fantasy novel.

We wondered why there was a bird we could only hear at intersections. We said Gag-lard-ee and Anna-kiss and locals choked on polite laughter. We found a house (after consulting an earthquake map for the safest locales) and got the kids settled, and began a love affair with Vancouver that continues to this day.
I can’t speak for the rest of my family, since time has kept us in the same city but no longer under one roof, but the shape and texture and beauty of the city has come to mean home as no other place ever has. Memories bubble up.

The turbaned Sikhs teasing the waitress to bring them chopsticks in the Chinese restaurant, “What are we, uncivilized?” The silent explosion of flowering shrubs each spring, the lilacs, the rhodos and the cherries. The way people leave their Diwali lights up until Christmas. The Babel of accents and voices on the transit; the kindnesses I have experienced on the two occasions I’ve had car trouble and strangers appeared out of nowhere with cell phones. The ‘four o’clock stripe’ at sunset in the winter, just about the only time you can reliably see the sun. The hundreds of kilometres of lovely places to walk and ride; the hills that nearly gut you in the summer and cause articulated buses to splay out like drunks in the winter.

Watching my son do Winter Karate Training on Jericho Beach, marching in his gi into the water; paddling among the herons on the Pitt River, and then nearly dying of the effort required to get back to the dock when the tide was making. Sunsets and sunrises of transfixing beauty. Dealing with raccoons, skunks, coyotes, deer and bears, and once, the authorities had to tranquilize a cougar, mere blocks from the house. Running into herons in every part of the city. Once I startled one as I came around a corner on my bicycle and nearly fell off as a six food wingspan abruptly flung wide in front of me. The stairs at Wreck Beach and the 60’s vibe that greets you at the bottom. Sadness at the ancient trees wrecked by a storm in Stanley Park; joy to see the statue of Lord Stanley the first time and read the beautiful words inscribed on it. Asking Headwater to come play on the back deck for my brother’s birthday, and what an amazing concert that was.

There are things I’ve learned to dislike about Vancouver, but complaints are cheap. I’ve learned to love my splendid city, to want to know more about her and the people who were here before the settlers came. It was a happy accident that brought me here, and I’ll be staying here as long as I can. Vancouver has given me a church community I cherish, co-workers whom I now consider my closest friends, and music and love and really phenomenal craft beer in abundance.

It seems strange to have been born on one coast only to find my heart’s home on the other, but Vancouver is a place that has taught me to respect the playful grip coincidence has on any human life.

This is a list of NO GO PHRASES

So now I have to go through TB and remove all of these:

And by X, I mean Y
Are you having a stroke
Aw helllll naw!
Awesomesauce
Awkward
Bacon anything
Bag of dicks
Best ____ ever
Check please
Cray-cray
Debbie Downer
Did I just say that out loud
Douche nozzle
Dumpster fire
Epic fail
Epic fail
Food baby
Garbage people
Go Sports!
Gonna leave a mark
Good talk!
Hard pass
He’s standing right behind me
Here’s the line, here’s you
I absorbed my twin in the womb
I can’t unsee that
I just peed a little
I think that came out wrong
I think we’re done here
I’d tell you but I’d have to kill you
I’ll show myself out
I’ll take ____ for $500, Alex
I’m a hot mess
I’m right here
It’s giving me all the feels
Laughy McLaugherson
Life Hack
Little help?
Nailed it!
Note to self
Random
Really?
Rut-roh!
See what I did there?
Shots fired
Sorry (not sorry)
Spoiler alert
Squad goals
Stay classy
Swipe right
Thanks Obama
Thanks, I guess
That happened one time!
That just happened
That went – well
This is why we can’t have nice things
Too soon
Uh, define _____
Um, in English please
Va-jay-jay
Wait, what?
We have fun
Well played
White people problems
Who hurt you?
Why are we whispering?
Worst ____ ever
You assclown

This is from a writer’s room for TV. Interesting eh wot

a few items

Mo-no-ny-mous
I mean Shakira
Mo-no-ny-mous
And also Cher
Mo-no-ny-mous
Adele and Bono
and Plato, & Cato,
Colette – and don’t forget Voltaire

(This above for mOm, I sang it to her the other day and she laughed so I thought I’d write it down for her.)

Made fruit salad for the meal yesterday. Last I saw, leaving their house, Paul was going to eat the rest before anyone got seconds. It was that good. And candidly, given that he daily complains about how hard his poops are, who minds that he inhales some food value with his roughage.

It consisted of pieces of melon, blueberries, strawberries, mangoes, the best fucking Bartlett pears I ever et, and oranges. The dressing which is from a recipe I got online, I’m not smart enough to invent it, and it’s for those who can eat dairy: a cup and a half of 10%BF Greek yogurt, three tablespoons of maple syrup and half a capful of vanilla. WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS how nommy it is, and like I said I would have taken home leftovers if there had been any. The mouth feel, good god yall.

Oreo sat on my shoulders a good long while and purred hard in my ear.

I PLAYED A BOARD GAME WITH THREE QUARTERS OF MY DESCENDANTS YESTERDAY. It was Alex’s idea and I had so much fun. Hasbro’s latest version of Clue, if you need to know.

Dax changed the oil in my car. I asked him anxiously from the back deck if the oil was very dirty and he swilled it around in the container and considered the matter and said, ‘Yes’ so dryly that I burst out laughing. I owe him forty bucks for the filter and the oil so I’ll be heading out to drop it off sometime today. Perhaps I’ll combine it with a trip to Peggy’s to ditch that weird fretless bass ukulele.

Made soup yesterday. Started with a litre of unsalted Campbell’s chicken stock, added organic ramen (so damn good), chopped carrots, mushrooms, baby bok choi, a little tiny dab of veggie soup base, a splish of soy sauce. Today or tomorrow I am going to attempt Instant Pot (did you know the parent company is going out of business thanks to asset stripping? Capitalism HOW YOU SUCK) red beans and rice. I may bake up some chicken breasts and taters since the weather seems to be veering off into ‘June-uary’ temperatures.

Thunder and lightning two days ago. Not usual for these parts. We talked about the weather a lot yesterday.

Ryker was just down for his nap and Alex kissed his head AND WOKE HIM UP. He was down for most of the meal and the board game but since he’d gotten no other nap that day and was up at 6:30 Katie was SPARE while Ryker ran around the house terrorizing everything he could and parroting everything his mother said. WITH HER INTONATION. He’s got dozens and dozens of words, some clear enough that people who don’t live with him can understand him. Keith was like that, pristine pronunciation from the git. But Ryker is DIFFERENT. He is stronger, braver (yeah, like no sense of self preservation) smarter, faster, funnier, more able to understand what the adults around him are saying, more able to self-soothe, more durable – he took hits yesterday that would have had me bawling and just walked it off – picking up language so fast. Mike the father brought him back with a pinch bruise on his leg from a recliner, apologetic af, and Katie wasn’t bothered. What can you do? He’s not Alex, or Keith, who conducted themselves from a very early age knowing that the world can bite ya. I told her they should promise each other ten bucks and hand it to whichever of them DOESN’T have to take him to hospital with a broken bone first. You should have seen Katie rubbing her face as she contemplated how many TIMES she’ll likely have to take him to hospital. Like the tshirt said, today we keep the tiny human alive. Except he’s NOT tiny, he can open and shut doors with the handle.

everything about the visit is overshadowed by the fact that Alex is crying every day about how he can no longer go to second street school because his mother can’t afford to live in the catchment area. And the landlord fucked her over by not giving her a duly completed eviction notice so she can’t move up the BC housing list. This world is a horrible place for my children right now and I am helpless.

Over 500 words on TB yesterday. Richie and Blossom have finally met.

New Poem It Is a Source of Constant Surprise

When I think of the way I used to think about you, it’s a rebuke 

to the mundane way I think of you now. 

In those days you were an apparition

fantastical goat god and that brief relief from diapers 

and the portable midden of culture that is this holy shit quotidian. 

Our ancestors, ringed ‘round us like eyes in firelight

are amazed at our carts and our flying machines

the little man in the phone

and the big man on the ceiling

who can put carriages in the firmament that carry messages here and there.

They in their silence convey stupefaction nor can they believe our dailyness

feeding our carts with an elixir of monsters from the centre of the earth

so they can go fast in careful rows 

They don’t suss the wonder of combustion while understanding very well

the long footrest makes it go. 

My contemporaries on this earth have worn through novelty 

come out on the side where all the natural dirt is;

all the glacial rocks flensed from the hide of our mother

ground down into grit are beautiful

mostly because they don’t have any fucking plastic in them. 

And yes, I am still thinking of you; you are an overhead projection in my life

I’ll look up and there’s a different quote, since you are that quotable

projected on the ceiling. The next time I look it will be different, as you will be.

Back then you were always the same, and that just isn’t true any more.

feeling pregnant

I don’t know if it will be a story, a song, a rant, a poem or a drawing but it’s not gas even if it must vent sooooon.

I have something creative in me that has to come out … is what I mean to say. This is a something creative that is not making a batch of cinnamon buns, which I did yestreen.

Today I bleached most of the coffee cups. I think a while back I ran the dishwasher with no soap and while everything was sterile when we were done there was tea baked on. Gave ’em all a thorough rinse and put ’em in the dish rack.

All the errands I’d run if I was made out of energy:

take that fretless bass ukulele back to Peggy. It was borrowed from her and a gent I don’t know loaned it to her and I CAN’T STAND THE SMELL it’s like it lived in a moldy basement for a hunnert years. BUT IT SOUNDS SO COOL (LARRY DAVID UNCERTAINTY GIF)

walk for 45 minutes at least

do a shop

bathe; maybe get really radical and brush my teeth

write a thousand words

rehearse/noodle/compose

pay bills

try to obtain my credit score

call at least a couple of my friends

play around on Bluesky, the replacement for twitter, some more (I like it so far)

What I’ll probably do:

Whine continuously and pause for my video call with my doc to get my scrips renewed. I do not want a holter monitor. I do not want a colonoscopy. We shall see. If she complains I’ll say, can you go back to the part of my file that says I have ADD? get corrected, sheesh.

Already got my first Notice of Assessment back, holeeee that was fast. Thank you Jeff as always my home guard!!! My taxes are again up to date, phew.

Suzanne comes today but this will likely be her last Thursday with us because her jobs are changing up and we need to find another four hour block – weekend most likely.

Watched a Russian soldier surrender to a drone on video this morning. The alternative was eating a grenade launched from a nearby chopper, so I’m glad he’ll eventually go home to his family.

Buster was a good boy at the vet and gets his teeth cleaned next week.

Glenda Jackson, 87, passed at home in Blackheath today. Rest well my left wing goddess.

 

 

morning haiku set

grating on your skin
you tense; relaxing you think
it was just sugar

pour out your coffee
onto the firestorm of news
and remark, ‘no change’

the moon, thank goodness
is no longer a pale green
I guess that’s something

Yesterday the moon was green when I got up. I went to look at ‘the Strawberry Moon’ and got a sickly looking moon, scary as hell. If it’s truly an omen for the strawberry moon – the month upcoming – I’m holding myself in braced posture for a lousy time.

The summer will be hot and dry, and that means full of fire and smoke. I just had a vision of Vancouver on fire. Under exceptionally bad conditions we could have urban fires in Vancouver (remember 25 percent of Burnaby is parkland and open space…) and I just had a vision of standing on the back deck and hearing the cops on bullhorns trying to get people out of their houses…. I need to do something else. Sigh.

Russia has repelled a Ukrainian counterattack.

Absolutely none of my Ukrainian and western correspondents are saying this. How easy it is to successfully repel a counterattack that never happened!

However I’m DEFINITELY hearing desperate and very concerning rumblings about a planned ‘event’ by the Russians at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant TO COINCIDE with a Ukrainian counterattack, to get everyone in the west so upset they –I don’t know —  start dancing with the lizard people in their tightie whities while saying nasty things about Zelenskyy, mebbe??  who the hell knows with the Russian strategists right now, they have a century long playbook of assorted misinformation, genocide plus deeply personally vicious tyrannical AND casually banal state actions to pull plays from.

Russia’s ‘many arms in many sleeves’ tactic for its mis/dis campaigns is now extending to SOLICITING SCHOOL CHILDREN to go on podcasts, video streaming and TV platforms to ‘report’ on the ‘military operation’ ie be the next generation of propagandists. These poor kids and their parents are going to be dog meat when the war’s over. I’d like to warn them but no one can.

Jeff and I continue to rewatch Elementary and Stargate Atlantis, are into S2 of LawnOrder, S4 of Medium, and are dipping into Archer, Disenchantment (Eric André voicing Luci and Nat Faxon voicing Elfo are always standouts), Time Team and a couple of other shows.