Category: Writing

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.

 

attendees Trent, Jim, Hal (and his spectacular gluten free southern style peach cobbler which was outeffinstanding, Cassidy, Joe (and his SPITBALL GUN), Jean, Keith and Paul. Not everybody was there all the time. The sun came out after a grey day, when things got underway.

It was lovely. Eat Drink Talk Laugh. Finally everybody left except me Mike and Jim, and we sang and played, and then Jim got a mischievous look and we sang my partay song “An Evening of Serious Drinking” and then I crashed. Mike’s sleeping in the basement.

The outside is tidied already; the inside shouldn’t take too long. Keith volunteered to help clean up today, isn’t that sweet of him? Anyway, today looks wonderful.

It’s four-something in the morning, a little note.

 

The day sign is the Ten of Pentacles. Little happy dance. In a minute the shoving of the furniture for the party will commence. I have to make a list.

Looking forward to seeing the folks tonight!

Katie and Alex and Paul are off to Edmonton. I hope she has a healing trip and much laughter and fun with her friend Julie.

Keith said that he’s never been happier, since Alex moved in.

Katie and Keith are getting along really well. Paul’s in his glory.

This is my new favourite picture.

I’ve put on ten pounds since I stopped working. Time to run around a bit more.

I feel much better. Seeing Alex (his little head on my lap as he watches tv; his busy little feet as he crashes his ‘car’ into various objects in his Poppa’s back yard) makes me unreasonably happy. Seeing Katie getting ready to go visit a friend in Edmonton for a week. Hearing Keith say that he’s never been this happy in his adult life (after having a toddler move in with him, what does that say to you). Hearing Katie say “Notice how clean the place is” and me giggling.

Things that hurt quit hurting. Seeing Katie happy.  Something’s been missing for ten years.

Seeing Keith and Katie so mutually supportive. I’m crying on the inside, because you never know, right?

Sunrise at the Aerie yesterday – I should have been writing or editing and played computer games instead, lazy sod. Lovely lunch at Mr. Ho. Very lazy day, apart from the walk to see the kids (Paul’s in Seattle).  I think now my tank is filled back up I can work.

 

Lamb dinner at the 6th Street Grill last night.

Maybe 100 words. I need to understand that it’s EDITING TIME NOT WRITING TIME.

wrote about 150 words yesterday, did a couple of loads of laundry and ran the dishwasher and went for a walk and did a small shop but other than that it was kind of a nothingburger day

Deer Lake Park is beautiful as always, but I cannot seem to shake the brown study.

I need to go for another walk… the walls are not my friends right now.

go give your dirty mind a bath as one of Leon Uris’ characters once remarked. I am going to have to have a painful and hopefully brief convo with a non-family member about a matter which will impact, uh, stuff that’s impactful. It’ll probably go better than I imagine will be case at the moment but I hate conflict of any kind and that’s why my bed seems like such a particularly lovely spot to park. A lot. Mind you I can write and make phone calls in bed so maybe it’s not so bad? I don’t know. I’m feeling it and hating it and wish I could be over doing it and dealing with the outcome, even if it’s —

what?

What would happen if this person stopped speaking to me? I voluntarily stopped speaking to somebody this past week and I felt terrible about it (briefly — let me be clear — briefly.) But if THIS PERSON stopped speaking to me I’d turn my face to the wall for a couple of days.

And then I’d get up and be nicer to the people I had left. I guess that’s all I could do. I just can’t. I can’t do that conversation right now.  I’m happy right now and I want to stay that way for a while. Editing with Jeff was FUN I LOVED IT.

There were three people of colour in that room yesterday. All the presenters were white, and all of them were women. Festivities opened with an acknowledgment of Musqueam land.

They mentioned the UBC MFA program about a hundred times, as if it was some kind of talisman for getting a book advance.  On the basis of what I see regarding Canadian publishing, they may fucking well be right.

There was some good advice and parts were interesting, but it was almost completely and nearly totally an expensive waste of time with 1.5 hours of transit on either end.

It seems obvious the traditional pipelines for books and publishing are collapsing slash drying up.

I’m still going to try to find an agent, but honestly I have even less faith in that now than I did before.  Upsun is too niche.  I know it and I’m going to suck it up. Nothing happened in that room to make me want to stop writing.

Crashed at Mike’s Friday; dinner was leftovers given the Mike spin and it was really really tasty; breakfast, which was closer to lunch, was mixed veggies at Mr. Ho (we walked, and that was wonderful.) It was a really glorious day.

Henleys are great but they tend to be warm. I’m thinking of customizing the two I bought to make them more form fitting and buying mediums in future.

When we got to Desi Turka for Keith’s birthday celebration, we were shy Keith’s boss, Jeff and Mike, all of whom had other plans, so it was just the five of us.  I love interacting with Alex.  He says the most hilarious things and he’s an affectionate little dickens.  I asked him (when I took him for a run so his mama could eat) if he wanted to watch the car wash and he said yes. The woman washing her car in the stall I had him perched in front of burst out laughing when she saw his little face over the concrete wall.

Today I’m here.

So probably not much writing.

Keith’s birthday today.  Honestly, the last year went by like nuthin’.

I could assemble a nice family oriented rant about it, but all I’m gonna say is that Paul and I, with help from Keith’s basic temperament and other relatives, managed to raise a decent human being.  That’s an okay feeling.

Word count for yesterday topped 900. Things progress. This scene is a phone call from space.

Paul just called, we’re going to head out to walk and possibly eat.  Hope it’s pho.

 

 

The person referred to as LTGW on this blog and I are no longer on speaking terms. It all happened by text. People who love me are aware of the circumstances and I’m doing okay, but this has sort of been brewing for the last three weeks. I dislike tossing a decade-long friend aside, but there was a really stark mismatch between our needs and interests, plus he stopped wanting to see me IRL, which is what allows you to stay entrained as friends. I’d been keeping track of our interactions for the last six months and becoming increasingly sad and disaffected.

At least we didn’t ghost each other, I fucking hate that.

When I say ‘I’m doing okay’ I mean to say that I’m really pissy and disappointed and butthurt. But… this too shall pass, and along with it (I piously hope) any idea that I could ever change a goddamned thing about my friends. A friend is kind of a whole person package deal. She is what she is, he are what he are, they be what they be.

…is not going here. I just learned that I did not get paid for the last days of my work at (the Company I Ain’t Naming until it’s in my interest). I could go for a fucking hour about how they were ignorant douchebags with delusions of competence, but meh. I emailed the chief wackdoodle and imagine I’ll get a reply in a couple of days. Nothing’s stopping me from going back to the office with a skunk under my arm, but no, not yet.

It’s only a thousand dollars, after all.

Fortunately, the writing is going. I may not include this interview in the final novel, but I’m going to have fun doing it, mostly because Jesse is a very fun playground character.

250 words so far this morning on HOTM. I am fuelled by tea and chocolate ice cream, evil creature that I am.