there are MANY versions of this joke

A housewife takes a lover during the day, while her husband is at work. Not aware that 9 year old son was hiding in the closet. Her husband came home unexpectedly, so she hid her lover in the closet. The boy now has company.

Boy: “Dark in here.”
Man: “Yes it is.”
Boy: “I have a baseball.”
Man: “That’s nice.”
Boy: “Want to buy it?”
Man: “No, thanks.”
Boy: “That’s my dad outside.”
Man: “How much did you say the baseball was again?”
Boy: “$250.”

In the next few weeks, it happens again that the boy and the mom’s lover are in the closet together.

Boy: “Dark in here.”
Man: “Yes, it is..”
Boy: “I have a baseball glove.”
Man: “That’s nice.”
Boy: “Want to buy it?”
Man: “No, thanks.”
Boy: “I think I just remembered something I needed to tell my dad.”
Man: “How much did you say the glove was again?”
Boy: “$750.”
Man: “Fine.”

A few days later, the father says to the boy, “Grab your glove. Let’s go outside and toss the baseball!”
The boy says, “I can’t. I sold them.”
The father asks, “How much did you sell them for?”
The son says, “$1,000.”
The father says, “It’s terrible to over-charge your friends like that. That is way more than those two things cost. I’m going to take you to church and make you confess.”

They go to church and the father alerts the priest and makes the little boy sit in the confession booth and closes the door.

The boy says, “Dark in here.”
The priest says, “Do not start that shit again.”

CONFIDENTIAL TO MOM I THINK THIS KID IS RICHIE

I’m begging you

Mother Dear Mother

I cannot find the slender black binder which contains the ‘Tales of Grampa”. Please either send it to me in printed or electronic form, or acknowledge that everyone else involved but Grampa is dead now and publish it for the world to see, because Tales of Grampa is one of the best things our family ever wrote.

Alex is the right age now, I NEED THAT BOOK.

Okay technically it’s not required for my physical survival but gloryoski I shore would plumb like that.

Spent a LONG time at Lougheed Mall yesterday with Keith as he acquired a new phone. If -and this is a big if – I need a cell phone I’ll go to Walmart for the flip phone and go to the Bell kiosk for the sim card and activation. Keith also acquired a shower curtain and some other items for his dad and I fed him at Cazba. Lovely food but takes forever. I spent so much time waiting for him that I put together a 125 item generalized list. I also picked up a beautiful new pen – Oomomo has wonderful Japanese pens – and some mini whiteboards with markers – and a pack of Pocky. Managed to stay away from Cobs Bread and the Purdy’s Chocolate. The mall keeps changing stores and it can be quite disorienting.

Keith desperately needs to get some work done on his car, it’s not starting very well. Honestly thought we might be ‘stranded’ (it’s one bus ride home, la).

Had an unbelievably frustrating conversation with him about creativity. He spends all his time worrying about not writing instead of digging in to understanding his creative process and finding tools to support it. I mean, I only found Scrivener a decade ago and before that I didn’t have an app which supports my creative writing the way I need it done. He’s always so infuriatingly vague when he talks about anything personal so after five minutes of flailing, I shut up, assuming he was finding my ‘solutionizing’ patronizing and demoralizing and candidly useless. You know, like the ‘just cheer up’ advice you get from someone who doesn’t understand depression and anxiety and finds your gloominess rude, antisocial and disrespectful.

I checked someone’s name on line after they advertised their cleaning and organizing services on Next Door and they are…. let’s just say whoever the hell she really is, someone with her exact and unusual name has a set of resumes on line which…. er …. don’t line up. They can’t all be right, but they for sure can all be wrong…. so I’m just going to skip over that part where I pay for her advice.

The red canoe is gone out of the back yard, thank you Jeff for making that possible.

I’ve gotten wordle in three tries three days running, I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. There’s been a run of words with ‘B’ in them though, I don’t think that’s unrelated.

Ah, that coffee. Milk and sugar. So good.

And in spite of it, do you know what my bp was this am? 117 over 79. That is absolutely perfect blood pressure and that’s 1.5 hours before my meds so you can understand why I feel a bit weird for an hour after I take them. (But it doesn’t stop me from doing things, I just take it easy.)

I owe Dave a phone call, hopefully it will migrate from my list to reality sometime today.

Zibethicus changed the logo on twitter. Long time nesters there are saying things like ‘EVERYTIME I SEE THAT X INSTEAD OF THE BLUE BIRD IT REMINDS ME TO GO SOMEPLACE ELSE’ Yes Elon, you dun fuct up

I’ve written 773 words over the last two days on TB.

I really wish my energy level wasn’t so variable; but that I guess is the single biggest reason I can’t work full time any more. Plus I’m actually listening to my body and peeing at first recognition that my bladder is full rather than waiting until explosive decompression is imminent.

My pOp said something HILARIOUS to me on the phone yesterday, so I am saluting him this morning WITHOUT repeating what was said. Thank you kind sir, I have been chuckling occasionally ever since. He’ll read this and think, “What is she going on about?” and that too is part of the humour.

I miss Ryker, I need to see that boy.

 

New Song – Looting Corpses with You

Looting Corpses with you

(with a Latin beat, (alas I could not determine which one, but I will eventually) sung by a single voice with guitar, trumpet and percussion accompaniment, and descriptively it’s the ‘Dah dit dit dit Dah dit dit dit’ rhythm, whatever the hell that is)

This song is, quite obviously, dedicated to the memory of John Caspell.

 

The moon is high and bright
It sheds a ghostly blight
Upon a battlefield
With chilling points of light
The little things we like to do
Will make us ever close and true
Oh how I bless the moon
For I will soon
go looting corpses with you.

Their boys put up a fight
You know it don’t seem right
But we survived the fray
And now sneak out at night
The CO will find fools to scold
until he sees that shiny gold
Oh how I bless the moon
For I will soon
go looting corpses with you.

RIP Creede this one’s for you

It’s two in the morning, I just wrote and orchestrated an entire song in my head, and I’m crying so hard my snerking can be heard in the next county.

 

Herewith ‘The Parting Gift’ a bluegrass song for Creede Lambard

Opens with banjo and the bass sneaks in, other instruments following, everyone’s playing and singing together on ‘and now the train is boarding’ to maximize harmonies and audio density

Your voice gone from the room
Your song is a recording
Not much to lift the gloom
And now the train is boarding

bass really booms, all the other instruments wire weave; the voices on top are angry and desperate

I’m glad, I’m glad
that the batteries are dead
the times we had
always better in always better in my head

Instrumental break, starting with the bass, then to mandolin, then to octave mandolin, then to banjo, then a polyphonic explosion as they all try to outshout each other.

Much sparser accompaniment and vocal arrangement, with the voices taking turns.

I lost my final home
Soon after you had left us
And now I’m doomed to roam
With the dark songs that you gave us
Only my voice I lift
My mandolin is gone
It is your parting gift
I remember you in song

Much longer and more subdued instrumental break, everybody calming down and being sad and politely taking turns.

I’m glad, I’m glad
that the batteries are dead
the times we had
always better in always better in my head

 

 

for banjo, mandolin, octave mandolin, upright bass and at least four voices, all tenors and altos but if there’s a true ‘black hole’ bass voice I’ll allow it.

sadface

Spent the afternoon to evening at the Junction covering off childcare and hanging with the folks.  Tuned John’s old twelve string. I want that freaking guitar but someone’s going to have to mess with the action because it is ahem a manly guitar.

Katie is not having much luck finding a place but she’s working hard on it. She keeps apologizing to Alex about it and it’s breaking my heart. She won’t move in here.

Keith cooked a fantastic meal, souvlaki style chicken with the fixings.

I am trying to work on my writing projects but I can’t get settled. Errands today. Coffee God, boot me arse.

some progress

3300 words so far on TB in July. Schlep this morning.

I hope to leave the house today. I am at quite a low ebb and exhausted with worry but somehow I manage to do a few domestic things a day like run the dishwasher and make iced tea.

Another woman relative has been diagnosed with add. Yes it runs in families.

UPS Pilots are going to go out on strike with UPS drivers in the US. You wanna crash the economy, because that’s how you crash the economy.

Paul’s sleeping in his own home now

Keith and Rob are dribs and drabsing their way through the rest of his boxes, may the lord bless and keep them both.

I have an ad for a garage sale to write.

Multi-family garage sale

 

8133 15th Ave, Burnaby 

 

SATURDAY JULY 22

7 AM to 1 PM

(closest intersection 16th Ave and 2nd St – 101 bus stop steps away)

 

TOOLS

BOOKS

CLOTHES

BABY AND CHILD TOYS

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

CAMPING EQUIPMENT including canoes

BIKES including a folding bike with carry bag

Asteroid City

I very much enjoyed Asteroid City but not everyone will, that’s for sure. It is EXTREMELY GAY and worships intelligence and wordplay. It’s also got some stuff in it that makes so little sense but is so funny or beautiful that I think the director (Wes Anderson) stuck it in because he couldn’t leave it out, and that’s a comment too.

It’s about life, death, love, the lies our families tell us, the omissions our families make us live with, and exactly how continuously weird acting is, all set in a heat shimmered pastel palette. All the stuff about an alien is a McGuffin disconnected from the plot.

The speech the General gives is one of the funniest and most subversive things I’ve ever seen. If I ever make a goodies reel, it will be there.

I HAVE SATISFIED MY PARENTS’ INTERESTS IN ONE PHOTO

THERE ARE TENTACLES

THERE IS A USEFUL POT

Also it is in pleasing colours not outside the range of their admittedly eclectic ‘décor’.

Rose Schmits says this is ‘tentacle pot 081’. She is a ‘trans kiln witch’ according to her bio and apparently she’s on TV somewhere too (the great pottery throwdown I have learned) in her capacity as a ceramicist. She has a site under her own name where there is more.