Category: Writing

wonderful

Got to snuggle with Alex again last night. Poppa and I took him to Eastburn Park and he wouldn’t climb something and I said you can climb that and I showed him a secret way how and that probably burned two hundred calories offa him right there.

Going shopping with Keith this morning. He’s working but his employment torments are his to relate.

I gave myself a proper manicure and it’s pointless so I’m chopping off my fingernails this morning to be super short again.

Saw Mike with excessive briefness yesterday – he left me a copy of Lost Connections by Johann Hari and he seemed quite excited about it.

off to see Alex tonight

I shall do childcare tonight. I don’t imagine it will be as easy as the last time but who knows.

Realized that I wrote some magic and then used it the wrong way. The music I’ve been writing calls my ancestors, and I’m not keen on that, (cause it worked out so well the last time it happened – I was messed for days!) so I’ve stopped singing and playing it and as soon as I made the decision to do that I immediately felt much better. My sleep is better too.

The dishwasher’s running, I’ve had breakfast, and my new fic is up to 4000 words.

Tammy is encouraging me to edit. I’m deleting the next sentence and the sentence after that because I’m fucking pissed off at another friend of mine for the ‘writing advice’ I got but it would be ill-advised to make that opinion public. Or I could take the advice in the worst possible way.

A MIRACLE HAPPENED TO ME YESTERDAY. My parents know about it. ANYWAY I’M IN A GOOD MOOD NOW THANKS.

 

alex was here

Phidippus borealis

Biggest jumping spider I’ve ever seen
The Dogwood in the sun.

Clouds in the sky

One of my favourite types of cloud – cirrus uncinus
Katie checking to see if her pregnant friend is up for a visit

But where is Alex?

that smirk

 

tooth pain

I cracked a tooth on a pancake (not eating that brand anymore) two weeks ago and Jeff just had root canal plus, so we’re kind of ouchy. I’m wondering if I should see the dentist before I go but it doesn’t seem to be getting worse.

To take your mind off my troubles, have some figures from the top of Renaissance German heraldry.

Finally saw Black Panther. Yup, fave character Shuri.

fantastic

Alex was amazing. He broke down twice; once I said, too bad, I’m turning the light off. The other time he wanted chocolate cereal for supper and his Poppa and I just looked at each other and laughed quite heartily. Other than that, he was his usual flailing butterfly self, and fell asleep when he was supposed to.

Tonight, I was at Tom and Peggy’s with all of my fam and Tom and Peggy had their son and daughterinlaw and *their* three kids under four and you’d think it would have been a zoo but I found it entertaining in the extreme to have six month old twin boys around, especially when they thought I was the frickin’ pied piper every time I sang and played (took Otto and Rowena). ANYWAY I told Peggy on Thursday I’m showing up with food and the rest of it all kinda happened and Jeff against his best nature et some of the macncheese and now nature done put a plug in him.

I hope the blueberry minitarts buy back some enteric happiness.

We sang and played and Peggy was at the standup bass and her son even played for a while (he backed me up on Clem’s Walk, if you can credit it….)

Anyway it was fun, and everyone cleared out and left me and Peggy to talk and Tom and Paul to talk, and you know how it is when you haven’t spoken to a friend you know well and it all just comes pouring out but really you should be getting going…..

Three kids under four, Christ wept. I know it’s nothing by Victorian standards but even so.

meals and feels

Ate both lunch and dinner with Keith and Paul yesterday. (Lentil soup for lunch, Desi Turka for dins – during which a person came in, shot up in the women’s washroom, puked (in the toilet)  and scraped herself together when the manager told her the police were inbound and then she staggered out in much the same state of distress as when she staggered in. To say that watching the washroom door for the entire meal put a pall on things is not overdoing it, and somehow I ended up subsidizing everyone else’s drinking, but o well.

Keith spent the intervening period interviewing a business owner for the possibility of acquiring it, and I’ll let him tell that story, but we certainly had a lively discussion about it afterward.

Paul and I are hanging with Alex at his place tonight while Katie is off at some appointment.

Due to an event that I’m not supposed to publicly discuss but which is known to the Burnaby fam, Katie’s childcare options are reduced somewhat.

Those two statements are connected. Paul and I are hoping to keep him entertained and then we’re going to haul him off to bed and stick him between us until Paul’s furnace-like corpus roasts him to sleep.

schnitzel

mmmmm the schnitzel house was back on its game last night SO GOOD normally I don’t eat the whole thing but I just devoured mine.

Watching The Alienist. I read the book a couple of years after it came out, and really enjoyed it. Caleb Carr is a historian who lives in New York, and he tried to make as close to being ‘real’ as he could. I particularly remember how incredible the descriptions of 1896 New York were. Also, he wrote a sequel, which if this show is successful will probably form the basis for the next season.

100 things I like

  1. Fireworks
  2. middle aged men restoring useful objects as a hobby and posting progress pics on the internet
  3. middle aged women taking up old school handicrafts and then bending them out of shape with modern math, new techniques and wild wild subject matter and posting progress pics on the internet
  4. deer, moose, skunks and coyotes — when they aren’t in the fucking road
  5. hummingbirds
  6. Detroit iron, almost all of it
  7. the colours teal, purple, racing green and burgundy. I like black but it ain’t a colour and it’s usually really dark gray
  8. Pot. A lot.
  9. Human hair, on human people, the way they like it.
  10. Cats. A lot.
  11. Cuddling
  12. Coming to consciousness while somebody else is loading and unloading the dishwasher
  13. Drum circles
  14. The way my kids call me when they’re upset or happy or miss me.
  15. books that popularize hinky areas of science
  16. David Attenborough’s voice
  17. the fact that even if the Indigenous peoples of what is now Canada reclaimed all their land and kicked me off it I COULD STILL GO LIVE IN ENGLAND LEGALLY now THAT’S what I call settler privilege
  18. FASHION NUGGET by CAKE
  19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_sku22QWeE  LOUDER PLEASE
  20. horrific puns
  21. circus geeks as a cultural construct
  22. knowing that no matter how bad things get I have friends and family who love me
  23. catastrophizing everything
  24. The Expanse. A LOT books AND SHOW
  25. THE DOGWOOD IN THE YARD Right now it is at the height of its spring glory
  26. wondering when we’re going to have another century flood (see 23)
  27. having Paul and Keith tour me around in a canoe
  28. the view from Widgeon Creek
  29. @hayBEARS on twitter
  30. Throat Coat tea before a singing session – that shit works. There’s a recall out right now so don’t buy any with an expiry in feb 2019
  31. Me and Paul doing high tight harmonies while he’s thrashing on the 12 string
  32. D saying ‘intriguing’
  33. Sue cackling with laughter
  34. I’M GOING TO ICELAND IN 17 DAYS
  35. Mike Beach – and the view from his place, I love it so.
  36. Used book and clothing stores. You never know…. what lurks
  37. Solid wood furniture that you don’t need an allen key to take apart (thanks Leo)
  38. How fast I can make my grandson laugh
  39. Rowena A LOT
  40. OTTO A LOT MAYBE EVEN MORE
  41. Decolonization
  42. Lumpy trucks
  43. Russian dashcam videos
  44. anybody shredding on anything human powered with wheels
  45. or dog powered, I’m not fussy
  46. Moscow Cat Circus
  47. a song I cannot find on the internet by Benni Hemm Hemm but I’m hoping I’ll discover the name of the song when I go to Iceland since he’s Icelandic
  48. Hot tubs
  49. Never having to help move a hot tub again
  50. My new boots even if they are giving me blisters – they are quite light and will likely be durable
  51. Making domestic lists and then losing them…. I must like it – I do it so much. I’m better at work
  52. my fOlks’ voices on the phone
  53. Reporting assholes on twitter – currently 15/16 for getting them banned
  54. changing my mind about something and then spending months and years getting my emotions and behaviours to catch up
  55. trying to talk Jeff into doing a movie podcast
  56. Gifs that really represent how I feel just this moment
  57. Knowing the name of the BLACK actor whose name isn’t mentioned when the three white actors in the publicity shot are named. YES I SEE YOU BOKEEM WOODBINE
  58. The way Jeff twitches in irritation when I call Tom Hardy Tom Brady, or mistake him for Pablo Schreiber
  59. Dominique Tipper’s hairdo in the Expanse
  60. Hey I turn 60 this year!  Really hopin’ for a steak dinner agin
  61. Tarot done mystyle
  62. Anything by Dunnett but the Johnson Johnson books
  63. finding interesting stuff on the internet for other people
  64. cotton socks
  65. wearing clothing people gave me as a gag gift
  66. steampunk anything
  67. 11.04 Supernatural episode “Baby” the one shot from the car I just rewatched it and it’s really good
  68. season 1 episode 4 of the Expanse – still the best 45 minutes of space sf EVAR
  69. highly trained animals with rude senses of humour – including Woytek the bear
  70. peaceful traditions that connect you to your ancestors
  71. rescuing wasps, spiders and bees from bad situations and potential interactions with allergic people
  72. walking in my neighbourhood in the early morning, or in fog
  73. wondering how it is that I’m still twenty-eight on the inside and thirty years older on the outside
  74. making new choons and dicking with old ones
  75. finding a new swear word
  76. editing – when I’m in the mood for it
  77. In season home made peach pie with vanilla ice cream. Jo made a peach pie once and goddamn it was good.
  78. teaching people how to cut up a pineapple
  79. making biscotti (when my heart has love otherwise NO NO N ON OONONOOOO!)
  80. THE WRONG BOX
  81. sleep
  82. hilarious signs Cuz Alex makes for work
  83. homemade cheese
  84. Problematically – queen elizabeth II
  85. Really problematically – Ezra Pound
  86. What the hell is wrong with me problematically – Mel Gibson
  87. Oh this is just fucking stupid problematically – Trudeau beating Brazeau in a boxing match
  88. my wacky ancestor HTW
  89. Plum duff
  90. Correcting people on twitter. Then being forced to correct my correction.
  91. Burnaby
  92. the MR2 is almost running again! well, adjacent to almost
  93. the word nullibiety
  94. the graffitti “Klingons fart in airlocks” from Torcon II
  95. the graffitti “Solipsism is such a great idea I don’t understand why more people aren’t into it” from the steam tunnels at Carleton U
  96. The graffitti “One in five crack up” from Spadina in TO
  97. scintillating scotoma that look like fractal dragons chasing each other across my visual field
  98. Organic fair trade chocolate
  99. phó
  100. pork chomps

alive

Took Jeff out for brekky this am. Now we’re trying to grind through enough work to feel okay about watching whatever’s on the pvr – which will not include NCIS since it’s a rebroadcast.

I charged up the camera M loaned me without difficulty and now I’m trying to extract pics. We’ll see how that goes. May post some here if I am successful, which I’d better be, since I AM UNDER STRICT ORDERS TO FILL A 16 GIG CARD WITH ICELAND ICELAND ICELAND

 

grandson visit

I love how hard he concentrates on his play. He was ferrying rocks back and forth between the bowl of water and the cement blocks he was placing them on, and everything made sense to him and he got wet from the hose and peed in the back yard and it was all pretty relaxed. I’m always glad when the rellies come voluntarily….

Recently he’s started telling stories. The one he told yesterday was of the multicoloured bugs that tried to get into his daddy’s place and make it a mess. We continued along with the story and laughed rather immoderately.

I got my bucket filled up again, yay. The sun yesterday was so gorgeous.

Left a gallon jug of milk on the counter last night SCREW THAT NOISE I’M MAKING PANEER.

aerie thoughts

There was an immense salmon made of clouds across the sky in Burnaby this morning. As a day sign for Earth Day I hardly think it could be improved upon.

somebody on twitter had to rehome a puppy (sadface) and I cheered her up with a pic of Miss Margot.

Barbara Ehrenreich gives up on doctors.

mOm that one was for you, since it’s slyly funny.

I JUST HAD SOMETHING MAHVELLOUS HAPPEN Alex told his mama that he wanted to go to a friend’s house and I AM THAT FRIEND.

I feel like I hit the grandson lottery. He’s already complimented me on a dress I wore (I wore red because he likes it) and now I’M HIS FRIEND. I feel like running around yelling, but I think M would object (we are very mismatched re sleeping cycles – I’ll be amazed if he stirs before 10 and given his insomnia I’d rather hack off my feet and eat them than waken him).

Anyway I get to see my grandson this afternoon and I’m a happy camper.

I saw this on twitter today and told Jeff if it wasn’t on the basement bathroom door by the time I got home I would be ‘disappointed’.

mOm next time you’re talking to Katie ask her about her ‘sexual harassment incident’ at work. Not as bad as it sounds. Tremendously happy ending, although possibly not what her coworker was expecting in that regard.