Category: Writing

I am so, so grateful for the friends I have. Communication had gotten kinda wonky between us and we had a full free fair frank and productive conversation last night that’s gotten me buoyant again. On two different subjects he and I were viewing the issue from such wildly unadjacent angles that I burst into tears thinking about how horrible it must have been for him. And I got to say how much he means not just to me but to everyone in my close family. You can’t show the people you love that you love them enough, in my view. Telling them is not always the right thing. There are a lot of love languages.

He is The Magician. It is all right.

Anyway, it’s not fixed because it wasn’t broken, but it sure is a lot shinier.

Stuck on editing at the exact halfway point. Last two nights at work were very busy and for nights, yesterday morning was completely and thoroughly insane; twice as many calls as normal and people freaking out and being rude, not my fave. Anyway, I literally couldn’t edit because the second I opened the clamshell the phone would ring again, as it does when you’re getting paid to answer it.

I go back and forth between thinking it’s a piece of crap and finding it mildly amusing. It isn’t as funny as MMCo, that’s for sure. But I think it’s got a little more heft to it.

Phoned a friend to stay in touch after his wife died. He’s doing astoundingly well, for two weeks later, but I just bleed for him. The first year is full of firsts; the first concert you bought tickets for that you were both going to see, and, well, she’s not there anymore.

Whenever I heard a BMW motorcycle for the first year I’d weep. Even now there are days I miss John so much I feel bitey. Then I’ll remember him without tears; with laughter, with gratitude.

Tammy and I keep missing each other on the phone. I hope to catch up to her soon.

I’m starting to build up a head of steam of needing to see Alex. Maybe I can see him today or tomorrow.

Watching facebook friends discover The Expanse makes me happy. Jeff and I call it EGGPANTS! like little kids who can’t pronounce it properly, it’s so exciting.

So the dude whose rudeness almost made me quit this job – which is far from perfect, but is an actual job – called me at 1 am this morning and asked me to swap shifts. Because he doesn’t like working Saturday nights sometimes, yo.

Haven’t heard from him for two months since he’s been on vacation and the first thing out of his face was ‘do me a favour’ followed by whining about how me not agreeing is inconvenient to him. He wants me to break up my weekend to be nice to him, and there is really not a fucking thing in the universe which would make me want to be nice to him, since he’s already made it plenty clear that he’s a mansplaining assbutt whose response to me attempting to make conversation is to talk louder and interrupt me.

Also, if you’re a nurse and you say you’ve phoned four times for a room clean and your male colleague has actually called once, and only 20 minutes ago, I’m gonna think poorly of you.

Various things are happening in the background of my personal life right now that are causing me grief, but I’m doing my absolute best not to borrow trouble that isn’t mine.

Thrill ride, thrill ride
come on a thrill ride with me
Thrill ride, thrill ride
come on a thrill ride with me

It won’t be an ordinary thrill ride
I’m gonna make you

skin your knees

(About the time Paul cracked up, listening to me sing it for the first time)

chorus

It won’t be like any other thrill ride

Where else you gonna get

Intimacy

Chorus and extremely wicked cheesy farfisa organ and surfer guitar duel bridge. Okay, that’s how I hear it…

Won’t be much like any other thrill ride
Cause I’m all about

Consent you see

CHORUS AND FADE

In my experience, inebriated moose are introspective and slow to react.

A pullquote for the ages

Why can’t four lanes of traffic kill a rat scampering across the street??? I have no idea.

I’ve edited one half of Upsun. More tonight.

Transit to work has improved greatly over the last week or so; now if I catch the 10:30 bus I’m at work ten minutes early, so that’s one slick commute.

We got a little snow early Sunday morning but it’s mostly gone now.

In about half an hour I’m going to nuke up my leftovers from this morning’s brekkie at IHOP, thank you Jeff! I’ve also started taking in my own cocoa powder to work; I make it up with skim milk powder so it reminds me of the dishwater cocoa we used to get served at lunch when we were kids in Ottawa.

Some fun at the Oscars! I never watch, but announcing the wrong movie winning is pretty effed up. And Bill Pullman is dead, cue the Game Over Man jokes <<<<< bad joke it's really Bill Paxton. He was only a couple of years older than me, so that's just crappy all around. All my laundry is done! Now to put it away, which seems to be the part I never can do. Otto is looking at me reproachfully. But I am working seriously on edits, and I've finished part 1 of Upsun, and will continue to hack away at it tonight.

I have ceased writing dreffle fanfic (although I know that I need another 35K to finish the story arc and it’s plotted out and there will be a rousing finale during which the estrangement between the bros will be all fixed), and have written the first 575 words of Honey on the Moon, the log and journal of the Ungainly Potato, an Upsun story. I have also edited a substantial chunk (first 100 pages) of Upsun. So I should just barely meet my end of February deadline for Upsun, we’ll see.

Then I huck it over to Jeff, who’ll post it for me, and then we’ll do another round of emails and try to sell that one too. I’ve already had two people tell me they’re waiting for it with anticipation.

Well, since I’m never going to make a dime on any of that smutty Supernatural fanfic, I am officially going to shut that sh*t down and edit. When ten different people ask me to start writing more fic I will; until then I’ll just jot down story ideas and concentrate on my own crap.

No memorial. Paul says there are no flights and its 1200 bucks minimum to fly out in the window I have at very short notice, so it’s not happening.

I am really sorry that I can’t go, but Dave and Paul and I all agree that a longer visit after the memorial service would be better.

Jeff and I are going to add some stuff to k-side. Anybody got any suggestions?

I may be going to a funeral this weekend. The joys of getting older include having friends and relatives die far away and unexpectedly. More later.

In the grip of graphomania, again, but at least I’m working on paying projects again. Tangled Angels is up to 32K words so I need to grind through another 25K to be at book length.
Posted 18K of Destiel fic. I’m so ashamed, but I still have to own it. That last episode, though, really kicked queerbaiting up several notches. I’m ashamed to be a fan, I truly am.

Here’s an interesting take on US politics.

Training again, my sub coming back from a nasty bout of flu. She’s gonna be flying solo tomorrow night, so I am trying to make sure she gets the real skinny so she can do just that.

Two whole days off. Whatever shall I do????

I will admit that of late my thoughts have not been entirely kindly toward Katie, as I am still quite miserable about what happened with the store, and have not yet learned to let go of it. However, there are times I love her fiercely, and today she provided an easily parsed example of why.

She posted pictures of playing in the snow with her little family. Alex and Dax and her. And the next post was Bill Nye offering another defence of women’s rights, in the form of reproductive rights.

Yeah. Fierce girl, fierce.

So Nick Kouvalis got himself kicked off Kelly Leitch’s campaign, only to have John Tory, Mayor of Toronto, spring to his defense?  Bleaugh. I mocked him on twitter and then he got fired, but I don’t think the two events are connected.  If they are, go me. Just so’s you know, I support Maxime Bernier, who has a sense of humour without being a complete er gendered slur.

I referred to Kellyanne Conway as a bonebag.  Go me.

Breaking up is hard to do, once you’re yoked to the Feds, or maybe not.

I’m sleeping TOO MUCH.  Having to shovel snow every fucking time I’m awake prob’ly has something to do with this. Now it’s time to eat my dinner at the office.

As soon as this flurry of work settles down I’ll be editing book#2 for the last pass prior to epublication.

 

FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF OCTOBER 2021 THIS COMMENT ABOUT BERNIER SURE WAS WRONG WRONG WRONG

A very partial list of what you can do after five six Muslims were shot dead at the CCIQ in Québec:

Tell Kellie Leitch to **** off and die for her disingenuously offering thoughts and prayers ‘regarding the situation in Quebec’ — carefully not mentioning it was Muslims getting shot. She’s one of the most persistently wretched and nasty Islamophobes currently seeking to lead the Conservative Party, and although I defended her when she got doxxed, I’d cheerfully pie her at this point.

Support charities doing the hard work on the ground getting Muslim refugees resettled.

Send individual letters of support to local mosques. Phone calls are great too but a letter is more substantial.

Go to the facebook page of a local mosque and offer a message of support.

Tell your Muslim neighbours and coworkers that you will not be quiet when Islamophobic comments are made in your vicinity. Ask them what they want to hear allies say, to strengthen your resolve and calm your nerves about saying the right thing. If speaking out was easy more people would do it. Don’t let that stop you.

When their site is secure -it’s behaving quite oddly at the moment – donate to the CCIQ dot org as they will need funds to restore their sanctuary. Keep an eye out for news on the mosque well after the news cycle expires; there may be charities which spring up for those affected, and the horror of this shooting will continue to be part of the community for years to come.

And you know what? It doesn’t matter what the religion is of the felons.  What matters is that the violence enables those who hate Muslims and darkies and immigrants.

I feel horrible. Physically I’m okay, but the political sitch in the States is appalling, and I’m staying across the street from SeaTac, and people I know and love put their lives and sacred honour on the line this weekend to protest. It’s hard not to be worried.

I was so stressed I got up and ran away from the luncheon.  I’ve been hiding in my room for most of the con; came out to open filk for about an hour, saw Char McKay’s concert, saw Vixy and Tony’s concert, but otherwise I’ve been feeling so sickened by the state of the world I want to hide and stay hidden.

Paul’s coming to get me later on this morning and I can go home – to work at 11 o’clock tonight.  I flipped back to being diurnal this weekend so it’s gonna be ****ing carnage.

Fortunately, I have a Denis O’Leary and a Kellie Leitch to prevent from leading the Conservative party in Canada, Islamophobia to fight, and books to edit, and songs to write, and people to love on and feed and snuggle with, and a grandson who needs me to fight for the world he deserves. And a job. I can’t forget that. It’s not a good job, but it’s still worthwhile. I’ll be training the weekend midnights person tonight, apparently.

I drove Paul and I down here; I’m at the Seatac Doubletree.  Started fading around 6, stopped for food, got going again.

Had a lovely, lovely world building conversation with Jen,  spoke to Tom briefly, tried to stay in the GOH concert and ****ing near FROZE leading me to believe that I was actually too tired to regulate my body temperature so I went to bed and now it’s 3:34 and I haven’t slept till this time in the morning in I don’t know how long.  There will still be people filking downstairs but grabbing Otto and walking half a kilometre to get there – this hotel is ****ING HUGE – has little appeal right.now.

Me ‘n hotel beds, man, it’s like all I want to do is sleep.

Arranged steak dinner with Lemming, as per the prophecy; “And the Lemming shall meet in the foreordained place with the crabby old lady, and she will feed him the flesh of beasts and the words of sages.”