The weather has finally gone Full Metal Summer; in spite of this I intend to get out of the house for a walk today if it kills me, hopefully before 8 am and that big yellow thing starts bossing the sky.
HOTM 48960 words
The weather has finally gone Full Metal Summer; in spite of this I intend to get out of the house for a walk today if it kills me, hopefully before 8 am and that big yellow thing starts bossing the sky.
HOTM 48960 words
Heard from Keith this morning – I’m taking him to a celebratory meal on Tuesday next.
Happy father’s day to those who celebrate. Hi pOp!
Some mornings I wake up at 2 am and get up; this morning I forced myself back to sleep and woke up at 5:30. Like a little kid I lay in bed and thought to myself, “Oh, I hope Katie calls and wants to spend some time with me today!”
Then at a quarter to eight she called and we had breakfast.
It is so easy to make me happy, it’s quite funny.
I’M SEEING MY MOM ON SUNDAY NEXT AND THEN I HAVE A JOB INTERVIEW.
And I’m going to see a doc about my suspected septic thyroglossal cyst Friday next, which is now bobbing around on the bottom of my tongue and which accounts for, get this FOUR OF MY SYMPTOMS.
Pain – generally they only hurt if they’re infected. It’s a completely ignorable amount of pain, which is why I’ve been ignoring it. Turns out you’re born with these suckers and they can literally never do anything to announce their presence.
Dysphagia and an occasional sense that my throat is closing over (WHICH LIKELY IMPACTED MY APNEA MACHINE USE) – which comes and goes depending on how swollen it is, which makes sense considering it’s attached to the bottom of your tongue and moves when it does. Unfortunately this symptom has been MAJOR in telling me that I’m going demented, so finding out there’s another reason has given me life.
Metallic spit – an occasional sensation, see above, which is accompanied by a nasty feeling at the base of my tongue and a completely indescribable sensation in my mouth when it happens. It was MUCH WORSE during my taking antibiotics in November last and kept up for weeks after. Still happens a couple of times a week.
A previous symptom, not present since menopause – I used to get a large pimple on my neck just where they often push fluids and pus to the surface. Who knew.
Bonus symptom: having to hyperextend my neck so I can feel like I can breathe prior to going to sleep.
There is a less than 1 in 100 chance that there is carcinoma present. These things hardly ever go bad that way, although they can randomly collect fluid so they look like a half-goiter or get infected.
I wouldn’t even care about this birth defect – for such it is – but it’s affecting my ability to enjoy food, sleep and sing, the three major reasons I’m alive, so I’m going to try to get a diagnosis and then see if I can’t have it either drained or excised. I’d prefer drained but it would be entertaining to have a throat scar that makes me look right piratical.
and god won’t I look silly if I’m wrong about this, but fOlks, I rilly don’t think I am.
I love my family.
Getting lots of lovely comments on my fanfic. When people like the stuff you wrote for what you think are the right reasons……
I am seeing so much of him and speaking so little of it I guess
I don’t know
I feel like the imaginary-play and song and cuddle time (.24 seconds of cuddling) last night was like going off to a mythical grandma land where this hilarious, thoughtful, easily perturbed and easily distracted little boy is ALL YOURS. But all he can think about, (hands to his eyes, dramatically holding back tears) is his mama being late to get home. We averted a meltdown.
He’s still talking about a very sad event he witnessed a couple of weeks ago.
He likes what I’ve got of the insect song so far but he only asked me to sing it twice so it obvs needs work.
I have so much more to say but trying to see the world through his eyes is magic. He went up to five Desi kids (four teen girls and one early teens boy) and whinged his way onto the teeter totter, the little sod, before I could catch up to him. We played bumps for a while and then I hauled him off backward and made him yell thank you.
In the swings he said, with staring eyes and trembling lip, “My pants are going wrong.”
They were all twisted up. So was I, seconds later, from laughing so hard.
Finally finished my current longest posted fic, got a couple of comments. There are 22 people in the world who have user-subscribed me, which means they want to read every word I post as soon as it comes out.
I have no idea who these people are. I imagine I could find out but part of the charm of fanfic is the anonymity.
Progress will continue today on my ‘real’ work, in the form of editing SOTW.
Yesterday I learned that Keith is employed. Yes HE GOT A FULL TIME JOB cycling distance from home. It is amazing, it is wonderful. HE BUSTED ASS FOR THIS. He deserves it. I’m taking him to Atlas Steak House next week to celebrate. He started this morning. Gave two weeks’ notice at the fucking horrible job that made him buy a car for the commute and then dialled him back to two days a week…. or less. FUCK THOSE ASSHOLES. They want to take a professional and turn him into a part time wage slave and if he quits replace him with another young desperate person.
Alex really likes the shirt I sewed his Mater and Lightning McQueen buttons to.
We had a family walk last night, all five of us. Katie was bathing Alex when we left and HE PERSLODED and insisted getting out and getting dressed and chasing us down. Katie, who is not stupid, put our potential path in a mental map AND FOUND US around 2nd and 13th, which was amazing. We finished our walk together and hung out together and talked and then Paul drove me home around nine since it had started raining again.
Jeff’s efforts to get the downspout cleaned by the landlord a while back so I don’t have to listen to buckets of water cascade and splat on the concrete immediately adjacent to my room are declared a success. I slept 8 hours last night.
I see Dina tomorrow yay!
Alex doesn’t like how he looks. I’m wondering if it’s his father that’s doing this to him.
If you go out in the grass today
you’d better go in disguise
If you go out in the grass today
wear armour up to your thighs
For every tick that ever there was
is breeding there precisely because
your scrumptious ass is bringing them all
a pic-nic
Spent the night at Planet Bachelor. Paul’s still in WA so I crashed on his bed. Paul’s pillows are a … like… love letter to allergens, that’s my hot take, and his bed makes the pillow in the original Bedazzled feel like a dandelion puff. Woke up with sinuses like concrete, although that first cup of coffee blew through that nicely.
Anyway yesterday I had a burrito at Chronic Tacos and got some Cars (PIxar movie, 2005, highly recommended if you care about the internal state of Alex) buttons at the Fabricland down in New West, and sewed them on his Lightning McQueen t-shirt, which he loved, and wore to daycare today. Full props to Keith as being the only person at Planet Bachelor who knew where a needle and thread were. WE SHALL KILL THE GENDER BINARY SLOWLY AND WITH PRAXIS.
We spoil Alex with ludicrous heaps of spoilage, but he’s likely to be an only grandchild, so whatevs.
Confirmed Victoria dates with Katie. Alex is looking forward to it as well.
Oh god another project – I need to do a science song about true bugs and make a video for Alex.
True Bugs are animals
They’ve been around a while
They’ve got a lot of different looks
They’ve got a lot of style
Their bodies are divided
into three major parts
and thanks to evolution
they do not have hearts
What?
They do not have hearts?
What?
They’ve got circulation systems
but they do not have hearts
They have three major body parts
which isn’t very many
the head has eyes to see and a mouth to suck
and two wiggling antennae
Imagine how very different
breakfast would be today
If when you were finished eating
you tucked your mouth away!
What?
Tuck my mouth away?
What?
No I do not tuck my mouth away
Today or any other day
But that is how true bugs live
they tuck their mouths away.
Saturday I spent three hours over at Planet Bachelor alone with Katie. I know I parented while mentally ill (depression, anxiety and ‘other’) and still managed to do a decent job because I never went squirrelly enough long enough to make trouble, and I had to pull myself together for the two years Paul was gone (hey, anybody remember how that nearly killed our family and I fell on my sword by moving to Montreal with the kids even though we had no friends and no prospects in Montreal but daddy knows best?) I should sound bitter, I made the choice of my own free will. Which reminds me of the Cairn, a song I wrote 30 years ago or more.
Well once he was her lover but now / he’s just a pile of rocks/ and she has to move them one at a time / to get to whatever she wants / and the nights she’s cried / and called him cruel / his answer is always the same / if your life is not all that you would have wished/you’ve none but yourself to blame
But Katie has her own mental health challenges, recently aggravated by witnessing something terrifying (I’ve shared with those who need to know) and she’s dealing with in-common-laws who instead of (long ass description of how amazing Paul’s siblings were to me and for me during the entire time we were merrit and the time since, like John preventing me from falling down the single time I did the Grouse Grind and Lois and Bobby’s amazing hospitality when we went on the Dinosaur Park trek) are (can’t actually describe how fucking stupid and horrible it was because of pending court cases, how effin’ jolly hey?)
and yet
She’s the best parent. Alex is anxious and driven (thanks epigenesis, write if you find work!) but he has lots of coping skills because his mama helps him. He does a lot of things to self-regulate. But he’s also not able to talk and process everything, so when his daddy yells at him for not getting in the car seat fast enough (for which I hold him no grudge, nor does Katie – frustration is part of being a parent, you should have heard me beak off at Alex for not getting into his shoes fast enough last week, he quailed poor lad) he may be completely spinny for hours until his mother “asks him the right question” and he can finally connect how upset and repetitive he is with the emotions he feels from being upset about his daddy. But it could have been something else he was churned about and Katie will spend the time to unsnarl things for him. She takes the time. He’s worth it.
Spending time with Katie was very therapeutic. I told her to write it all out (she needed to) and THEN pick out what would be helpful.
She called me back Sunday and said read two sets of verbiage. The first was a core dump – started respectful and turned into a slapfest purty damned fast. I advised to go back and take out everything that wasn’t actually going to help her current problem. Think like an elder I said – think of your whole family, in laws included, how this rant would play out.
Then an hour later she calls with AN AMAZING letter. Here’s the problem. Here’s how your behaviour has exacerbated an adjacent problem. Here’s the hole of daylight I’ve left for you to jump through ie the desired solution. It was fucking brill and completely in her own voice.
The recipient will hate it, but Katie provided no additional ammo for family fights, just two tines to the forking argument and here’s the daylight in between. Honestly pOp you would have been amazed, it was a lovely summing up argument against a crime already committed (and technically, yes, it was two crimes under the CCC and everything’s safe now but HOLY SHIT it was terrifying and gross as it went by, trust me when I say the problem has been dealt with.)
I have nothing but respect and love and admiration for my grown daughter right now, and it’s a privilege to be this close to her after all the horror at the shop.
—-
So angry at the current state of the left that I want to give back all the politics books I took after John died.
Six of my twelve fanfic stories got kudos last night. Sounds like I now have enough works posted to have people want to read them all. Interesting. Also, I get more kudos if I beg for them. Eye roll. Nothing is the fuck about merit any more, and even if it was, I still have to stand back and let other people decide.
Let me just put my hand against my forehead for two seconds about all of this. I am a writer, but until I get paid I won’t have any respect, and after I get paid, strangers will still be happy to tell me how shitty my work is.
that said;
48970 is current word count on HOTM.
In three days I get to see D. the midwife! yay! I plan on taking a musical instrument and serenading her if the weather’s good.
After Father’s Day, Katie and Alex and I hope to go to Victoria, yay!
I want to go get croissants, I wonder if Jeff is amenable.
I’ve figured out what I’m going to do with the Blaise Cendrars book I FINALLY RECOVERED FROM PLANET BACHELOR.
I’m going to decolonize it. YUP YOU HEARD ME I’m going to go through the entire book and then write a 50K word decolonialization of it. The book is 100 years old it’s not like the author can take offence although ten bucks says the poor bunny who translated it will stalk me and slap me if he ever learns of it.
After the first seven Upsun books are done.
I’m going to have coffee with someone who took 936 days to answer my email and I am so happy you couldn’t believe it. That’s how long a midwife with five kids takes (light bop on the head with amusing sound track). Whereas I am like the lucky old sun rolling round heaven all day.
1800 words yesterday.
Ford got elected in Ontario and Anthony Bourdain, author of Kitchen Confidential and intimate TV friend of dozens of people I know, has perished of suicide.
It’s all that’s in my feed right now.
I don’t care about any of it.
Combination of being pissed off about something and writing so much completely drained my brain yesterday – I slept all day when I wasn’t writing or catching up on the Expanse. Literally slept for hours and hours and hours. I feel quite refreshed this morning – woke at 4 and bounced out of bed.
Working on fanfic today. Everything sucks and I’m okay with that.
Most recently posted fanfic got to 500 hits and over 10% kudos faster than anything else I’ve ever put up.
In another couple of years, there will be a celebrity suicide twice a week and people will be freaking out, but let’s face it, the smartest and the most sensitive are not going to make it through the next Darwinian sieve, and the world’s a rapidly deliquescing shithole. Just my two cents, which I can’t put on social media because I don’t want to have to apologize to all the people on my feed that are being super sensitive about suicide now, which is, like, ALL OF THEM.
And yes, I’ve sent messages to the people I know who’ve expressed suicidal ideas. I hate this aspect of our modern world. Stay down, everyone, the firing line is live.
This one’s going off in a weird direction but I like it because so much in this life is predictable and this one isn’t.
Last night I helped Paul sit Alex by himself. The first part Alex and I had to be super quiet because his Poppa (Paul) was napping on the couch. I spend most of my time with Alex letting him be himself. Paul’s approach is somewhat different – it’s mostly reminding Alex how much bigger and stronger he is than Alex, which is in my view easy – showing a kid you’re kinder and more knowledgeable seems better.
He looked at my slide show of Iceland with intense interest and when I suggested I’d bring it with me again when I came back next Wednesday he thought this was a great idea. He especially liked the video of the fumaroles from the Valley of Stinky Pew Wow Sulfur Compounds Dude. Any video, actually. It was fun and interesting to make all my descriptions simple enough for him.
We then practiced memory with him reciting all the names of the Characters in Cars.
Then I found a very nice little piece of promo for Cars 2 which I played for him (shows off most of the named characters). He’d hold up the matching character and say the character’s name. (Some of the character names are quite funny, like the German Car being Max Schnell being a pun on Make Speed in German.)
Then we went to George Leaf Park and he was dragging his butt when we got back, as was I. I didn’t try to put him to bed, I left that for his mama.
I’ve written 3000 words in the last two days but it’s all been fanfic. I’ll get back on the horse sooner rather than later.
The Tale, starring Laura Dern, is an amazing movie about how a young girl was groomed by a pedophile and his enablers and it’s really intense but also completely amazing, and I hope it does well.
Running through the airport. Parking lot.
About two hundred words yesterday – midnight clicked over before I wrote down the number.