Wording

Katie emailed me looking for help on wording on an email about access to Alex as babydaddy is being a pisher about it.

Jeff started watching Mountain Men and I’m kinda enjoying it.

I made chocolate rice pudding, so that should tell you everything you need to know about my state of mind at the moment.

Brain melt

as requested short version: If I didn’t have any friends, I wouldn’t feel obliged to fight with any of them. PROBLEM SOLVED.

Allegra version: I don’t want to administer an ideological means test to my friends. Generally I don’t have to. Is it intellectual laziness or me being butt hurt that caused this problem? Why not both?? At times when you pick up the threads of a friendship that’s been dormant for years, you’ve changed too much to be a comfort to your friend any more. I’m old and I don’t bend. The responsibility for the rupture is mine. Perhaps it can be healed, but the implication was that with friends like me, he needs no enemies.  PROBLEM SOLVED.

Air quality is going to be good for the next 36 hours and passable after that. TIME FOR OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES. Paul is going to be field managing at the soaring club today and he hates it with a passion since he hates paperwork, but strapping the aircraft together is a nice non-controversial activity and he can get behind that. Then he’s going to be partying and picnicking, so lucky him and it will be a great weekend to do it.

I got a text message from Alex’s father yesterday that was an absolute masterpiece of finely honed masculinist special pleading. It was meticulously written, as if I had not experienced the last 15 years of him being a complete fucking brute to Katie, his mother, his siblings and common sense.  I blocked without responding, which is kinda how things are going in my life right now. I’ve already forwarded it to Katie.

All of his choices appear to be based on making Katie feel bad and not parenting his son; now comes the time to say tell it to the judge and nothing else.

 

second of two

I’m really pissed off about John dying. Most days I’m sad. Around the time he died, and during Worldcon, and FilkOntario and Conflikt, I get an extra specially crispy toasted feeling of pain, grief, loss and anger.

Words cannot describe and will never be able to describe how angry I am about the restaurant. The money lost was inconvenient. The damage to my relationship with Katie is, FOUR YEARS ON only beginning to be repaired, whatever you may think of our surface interactions.  The damage I took to my idea that I’m a competent individual pretty much destroyed my life until I was desperate enough to start writing in earnest. I suppose I should be thankful for that, but the pain and the misery and the feeling that I want to be ill every time I drive by the old place is horrible.

I’m pissed at Paul for suggesting that we all move to the Island. (I got all excited, we could move as a family unit with kids and grand to Courtenay, blah blah. ) When I asked him if Janice or the soaring club knew about that, he said no, which meant that moving to the Island as an idea has reset to zero, since he’s not going to reduce the amount of time he spends with Janice (nor at this point would I want him to), he no longer flies alone (that was an interesting and candidly heartening piece of news), and there’s no soaring club on the Island. We all got briefly excited for nothing. piss me off.

I’m pissed at the landpeers for thinking that attaching the awning to the deck with poly cord is something worse than our nightmarishly slippery demonic hellslide of a front stoop. And not doing anywot about the roof, which can’t possible go more than another year in its current state of rot and that mofo better not come down over the server.

I’m pissed at Justin Trudeau, but I guess I don’t need to fill that in.

I’m being pretty much beyond, over and far past the line of being pissed off about Trump and his cronies, and now it’s just boredom mixed with terror, cause this is war.

I’m pissed off about…. damn. I’m done.

first of two

This is the first post today. I am up. I have had coffee. I am contemplating the sea of options and being irritated.

I read an article about how when you’re depressed counting your blessings is dopey. Count the things you’re pissed off about instead. RECLAIM YER RAGE.

Except I’m s’posed to keep my blood pressure down, you know, just on general principles.

Walked again in Oakalla. Saw cheerful people walking who were willing to talk to Paul, which never happens. Then back to his place for singing and playing and a lovely convo with Katie. Obliviously I ain’t talking about the next stage in the liberation, but the email I send (will send) the fOlks will likely be happy making.

 

longer walk

Paul and I went for a lovely (mostly in the shade, so we didn’t go up the hill) walk at Oakalla (which Katie spells Ocala, which makes me laugh). While we were there we saw a badly proportioned slap fight between a kind of wasp I haven’t seen before and could not subsequently identify and a kind of ant I didn’t identify.

The wasp was more or less minding its own business and scraping up moistened dirt, presumably for nest building activities, while an ant located it and started attacking the wasp. This it accomplished by running up to the wasp’s thorax at full fucking chat and booting it in the non-equivalent of the ribs. I saw it happen about eight times, Paul about three.  It was thrilling, and frankly hilarious, because the wasp outweighs the ant by about 20 to 1, and yet the ant gave much better than he got.

Dishwasher’s running. It wasn’t quite full but if you wait too long you have no coffee cups, so there.

I am feeling a little less messed up today, we shall see. I do manage to practice on the twangy box every day.

brief walk

Walked over to the 7/11 to get cream for my coffee and a small treat for Jeff. Walked at Lougheed Mall yesterday with Paul since the heat and air quality were not great. Air quality is going to suck for the next little while.

My gumption machine is broken.

apocalypse sky

All the blue of the sky is gone. My eyes are gunked up. You couldn’t see the far shore of the Fraser when I got up, it’s just barely visible now.

The trip to Victoria was wonderful; the best moment of all was being able to point to the single most glorious late strawberry the world has ever seen for Alex and feed it to him. It was red all the way through and Alex ate it and then he looked for more and found more and his mother helped with that.

looking south from Kingsway and Edmonds

Mike received family gifts with thanks and immediately donned the shirt.  It had just the effect I was going for pOp so big thumbs up all round. Kitchen knitted wipes also will be put to good use thanks mOm.

Two delightful teenaged boys played with their fidget spinners with Alex on the ferry. His mother broke down and got him the toy ferry that makes the honk noise. Alex is currently enchanted with ferry boats. And why not!?

Alex makes friends wherever he goes.  It’s rather delightful. And Katie is an awesome mUm!

 

brush with celebrity

I saw Mel Gibson this morning. I literally stood next to him and exchanged a couple of words with him without knowing who he was. His kid Lars (7 months old) is unreal cute. Katie and Alex and I decided on the spur of the moment to go to Miniature World in Victoria, and that’s where he was with current s/o and batch of offspring and retainers.
 
As far as I can tell it’s because the movie he started shooting in Vancouver mid July is having production issues due to haze.
 
Katie said “That’s not Mel Gibson” until 90 seconds later when she heard him speak.
 
If you’ve known me a long time, you know that when we’re talking about stuff that’s unlikely, I mention ‘and me getting smooches from Mel Gibson’. Considering that I was close enough to plant one on him I’m going to have find another way of describing an unlikely event.

Alex of course didn’t care, but he freaking loved Miniature World. In Andrew Brechin’s honour I made damned sure I showed him every toilet in Miniature World.

plotting and planning

Off to Victoria tomorrow. My dwaughter has talked me into going over the long holiday weekend, which is just stoooopid, but there you go. Back Friday late, which will also be insane, but whaaaddeva

Upsun is coming along.

Very hazy skies from the fires in the Interior. Air quality alert’s been extended through Friday.

Thinking about going to see Valerian today. Part of me wants to be ENTERTAINED gorramit.

this space for rent (or rant)

Erk.

Anyway, Katie and I plan to haul the squirming evidence of my parents’ reproductive fitness to Victoria at some point in the next two weeks. But wehn??? weeeehn? is the issue at hand. There will be much discussion I’m sure.

I am writing between 2500 an’ 5000 words a day of fanfic. There, I said it. I should be ashamed of myself. Instead, I am viewing it as how the difficult gets out. I have a lot of difficult. It’s rather abundant. This is draining it, somewhat. It’s also a very high order of pantsing, and I’m liking that too. People are telling me they enjoy it, and I’m tired of writing very hard and not getting cookies. There, I said that too. There are good and bad physical consequences to writing fanfic. There, I said that too.

I’ve seen the dentist. My front tooth is fine. If I have leaky fillings, that’s not where they are. MOar dentrification in August.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately (along with Marxism, the second and hopefully final resignation of Christy Clark, twitter statistics, coffee and do I have enough cream, laundry — hey I WASHED AND REPLACED THE LINENS on the downstairs bed may I have a cookie please — my will, my finances, how when I called Paul’s second Echo, which is Katie’s car now, her ‘sanity machine’ she agreed with me – my daughter’s negotiations with the whining necrotic skintag who quite against all expectation — ed that’s quite enough of that — how pleased I am with the last tweezers I bought for the one piece of performative heteronormativity I do, which is pluck my eyebrows, how I only seem to be able to manage one hard thing a day these days — which is not sufficient to help save the world — and how on fucking earth I’m going to keep a fresh smell in the washing machine — because it sits with a bunch of water in it all the time and it gets funky like, all the goddamned time, and now I have to add to my list of things to do hosing it down with vinegar at least once a fucking month, o joy — and how I’m supposed to cope with the large piece of furniture that magickally appeared in my living room, and Joe of all people suggested what, and why I’m such a lazy disorganized sod, and how mango lassi is almost but not entirely proof there’s a God, and where we should buy land in northern BC to try and deal with a place to live during climate change, and how the landpeer is really nice but, wow, not exactly bumping fists with the laws of physics, and how Tom Hiddleston is just heart-jumpingly sexy) is the shape of family.

The shape changes. And when the shape changes we get a change to chance ourselves.

various

Lovely not long enough but I was falling asleep conversation with D last night. Three lines are a good days’ work for him so you can imagine that I have to use a different granularity for comparing output, not that writers ever do that.

Left messages for various other people; Tam-tam is gonna call later. Got in touch with Katie, who showed up bearing two pairs OF EXCEEDINGLY COMFORTABLE PANTS (I don’t know if they’re a dead woman’s pants so DON’T ASK ME) and Alex. Alex is so so so so  so    so        so

very cute.

Today is a day that I shall cherish in memory, for today is the day that Alex learned how to use both flippers on the Bally Star Trek TOS pinball.

I have started asking for comments on Ao3, and I have gotten them. I write sparkly dialogue, who the hell knew?  Jeff is thinking “I can’t even understand her half the time and the other half of the time she grunts and waves her arms to communicate so this sparkly dialogue bit is …. nope.”

 

Happiness

We (Jeff Mike and I) had a lovely meal last night at Taverna Greka, and then went to Rogers Area for the Dylan show. Here’s the setlist.

Let’s just say Mike did not expect to hear Bob Dylan sing Tangled up in Blue and Blowin’ in the Wind on his 50th birthday. Spent the night and got back around two, Mike cooked brekky. We watched the world go by from the balcony at the Aerie and all was good.

I was entirely blown away. Great concert great sound great venue.

Katie is back home safe. Haven’t seen her yet. Paul and Keith here for a couple of Expanse episodes.

I’m really happy right now. It won’t last, which is why I’m enjoying it so much.

Hanging out and memories of Mike aetat 50

Hung out most of the weekend with Mike, and now he’s on vacay this week. (Basically he woke up from his partay solidly the worse for wear and even though I drank pretty much continuously from one o’clock on that day I was not hungover, at least not painfully so, so the first order of business was to get Phở and nap in the sunshine like capybaras.)

He cooked me a couple of meals; brekky yesterday was the best goddamned farmer’s sausage I ever et plus eggs and toast and a latte; dinner the night before was cold soba with chicken and steak cubes with bok choi and enough garlic to make shit levitate. It was all really, really good.

Like the asshole friend I am I recorded Jim, Mike and I attempting to sing Acadian Driftwood during the party while we were drunk and I played it for Mike the next day sober; it had the desired emotional effect, which was horrified horror and childish gales of laughter. Believe me, I didn’t come off well. AT ALL. Couldn’t remember lyrics, held notes too long, it was like a speshul kinda agony.

In a less asshole-like fashion I tried to put together a list of top ten Mike moments since I first started hanging with him in 1997 – yes it has been that long – and while I can’t share all of them –

  • The time he slipped on an icy walkway on the way to his hot tub, which at the time was set up in Jarmo’s yard, and not only did he spring up again in a fashion so untoward that the laws of physics got a black eye, he didn’t spill a drop of his wine. Honestly… if I hadn’t seen it, I woulda called bs.
  • The time he broke about a hundred light sticks and smeared them all over a Tyvek suit and went walking around the Lantern Festival. Like a multicoloured glowing stain.  Right. It didn’t last but it was amazing.
  • The time the fam had been hot-tubbing at Mike’s old place across from Trout Lake and I couldn’t find my undies when it came time to change and he deposited them on my desk the next morning in front of scandalized coworkers. so.funny  god I smirk every time I think of that….
  • The time we and the fam were walking back from the hot springs at Ahousat and Mike slipped and came off the walkway and came (I’m not exaggerating) perhaps ten centimetres from impaling himself through the heart on some cleared brush. For years he would show the double hole in his fleece jacket with a laugh until it finally got too tatty and he threw it out.
  • The big one, the one that sits parked at the top of the ‘everything Mike means’ pile, how he took me in for a day three days after John died and reminded me that even if John was dead I wasn’t; he tended me (literally, with a spa treatment and 90 minutes of extremely required massage) and was continuously and quietly sweet to me at a time when I needed love and support like I rarely have.
  • Mike doing the Surrey Macarena at a party and me laughing too hard for civility. If you know me, it’s a constant fricking trial how hard and loud I laugh.

Mike and I and Jeff are going to see Dylan tonight.

Daysign card is Death. I guess it rally *is* time to clean my room and do the prep so Jeff can post Upsun.