4.1 hours on the cpap last night. That is a new personal best. I’m hoping to hear back from a couple of different jobs I’ve applied to. I saw the doc this morning and I need physio but I’m otherwise okay.
Boop is a verb
and I used it as a verb in the 650 words I wrote this morning. Of course I should redo my resume. It proceeds.
Playing catch up
Saturday I was at Mike Beach, Sunday was church, which was excellent. Sue fetched me to and fro, and the minister gave a really excellent sermon. Last night 3.2 hours on the cpap, which makes me really happy because I skipped a night and I was wondering what was going on. I didn’t have a problem with the mask fitting but I woke up with my right eye pretty much glued shut because I forgot the Liposic. I was hoping Katie and Alex would come to church but they didn’t make it.
Salmon, rice and cauliflower for dinner last night, which was unfortunate, because I set off the burnt offering alarm.
I had some wonderful news over the weekend but for the news to be presentable I have to do some work this morning; I’m going to go through the take-off checklist and get going on that, starting with going downstairs and getting some coffee, since it’s obvious I’m not going back to sleep.
I’ve been watching a debate between an white Jewish woman ally commentator and a black man who’s a media activist. The woman is suffering from GCAS (Golden Child Ally Syndrome) and the man is not anything but long suffering. As much as I love being the centre of attention and being told I’m necessary for the proper running of the world, when a person of colour is telling me about his experience I’m supposed to a) listen, b) believe him, c) leave my defensiveness at home d) consider what I’ve learned on my own time in my own space and e) not flip out on social media and encourage a bunch of sock puppet accounts to attack him to try to get him banned from various places (like what the ever loving fuck is up with that??) and jack in the box squawks about hypocrisy, intersectional privilege and ‘what are you making this all about race’ which was so fucking tone deaf I wanted to pole vault through the phone with a punch in the snoot as my opening gambit. I didn’t pile on her, but I did snark hard on a few of the more clueless sock puppets.. Now maybe it all started for me because I was married to a black man during a period when the Toronto cops were randomly shooting black guys with mental health problems (not that this disproportional bs has stopped, but that one summer was not a fun time) and maybe it’s super easy for me to be convinced I’m an SJW because I’m essentially an evil person who’s a race traitor but my narcissism makes me think I’m an ally – but I wish that people who are white and left wing could parse their own outrage with more intelligence and humility. Listening won’t kill you and it’s not safe for POCs to be around you as you’re processing your feelings, since you’ll probably say something racist and not even realize it because duh intersectionality.
Read
Listen
Go away and think about it
Integrate
Reiterate
Engage when your heart is soft
Leonard Nimoy RIP
blue eyes
So 2.1 hours day before and 1 hour cpap last night. I changed the temperature but although I got to sleep faster I tore it off faster. I think the mask is now too tight and it’s hurting my nose.
Alex and Katie were here yesterday for Laundry adventures. Katie’s working him up to being left with me for a couple of hours. Unless he’s asleep he cries for mama within ten minutes, so child care is going to be an interesting proposition.
He was sitting on the deck in his stroller car seat when I opened the door, and as soon as I opened the door he recognized me and smiled. Not a big mama smile, but an “I see you and I like you” smile. MELT. That’s Margot in the background, and although you can’t see it, every once in a while she’ll lift that little black paw and bat laboriously at the cat toy hanging right in front of her face. That’s her fave spot; Buster of course sits at the very top.
I find Alex very baby like. He drools so much these days he could sub for a horror movie monster.
You can’t see the logo very well, but that’s a pinball machine on his shirt.
Now that’s what I call a tiger mom!
Pity she sends her daughter to a Catholic school.
2.6 hours on the cpap last night. Guess it’s ‘trending’ in the right direction.
Walked 2 k yesterday in the rain. I was quite sore when I got home and walked up the last hill like an arthritic corncrake, but at least I got out of the house.
Also applied for a job.
Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden
in that moment when your comrade falls
all the world is out of sequence
each space is subdivided into noise
fear and cruelty
crumpled parchment
stuffed into a crack
is every line of scripture
how could there be recovery from this
then another falls
we left behind will stiffen, shoulder loads
agree that we are soldiers
or at least survivors
there is a task that lies ahead
perhaps to drown in blood
with hands blown off
which is what it feels like
when another one falls
i am neither these lines
nor this war
this entire earth a cry of sorrow
for the things you will not see
my fallen comrade
Feeling somewhat better
I used the cpap for 2.3 hours last night, according to my highly evolved machine.
Doxie sent me an ac charger, yay, now I can use the scanner continuously.
99 words yesterday. It’s not much but it’s progress.
Had long long talks with Tammy and Sandra yesterday. Tammy’s continuing to work on her counselling business and we brainstormed some marketing ideas, and Sandra was all bubbly and full of news about family, including comments about the family Bible (what a story, but it’s not mine to tell) and lovely updates about her elderly female relatives (and what a grand ear flapping that was).
Watched Grand Budapest Hotel, and it was lovely.
Applied for a job this morning.
I have not one but two very difficult decisions to make. One involves my finances and the other my mental health. Wish me luck, I’ll need it.
Now for some eggs and tea and toast.
Ow plus science
Welp, it’s official. The xray came back and there’s something amiss amidships. I see the doc March 3rd, but I don’t think I’ll march forth. It’s physio for me… likely. Physio I can’t afford. Man, I love being unemployed.
I find it absolutely hilarious that I got my first offer of sex in like I don’t know, a year? …. immediately after I informed my interlocutor that even if I was interested, I am not physically capable at the moment. I’m not saying men are clueless, but they sure can concentrate on themselves and their needs to the extent that they become stone… fucking… deaf. The little dears. Reg will be Reg.
Since I’m never going to date again, I thought I’d take this list and whack it like a rhetorical piñata for a while.
1. It all went fine until we got to the cat. After that I don’t remember much, although I do remember waking up in the ambo and thinking “Holy fuck, I hope that’s not all MY blood.”
2. This is a genuinely hilarious idea, and if I was a few years younger and dating a man with a sense of humour, I would totally go for it.
3. I think I have sufficient costumery to cover this in style.
4. Only if we’re doing it on Bowen Island; you end up at the labyrinth if you do this.
5. This should only be done on a double date. It will increase all of the fun. For variance, include kids from previous liaisons.
6. Nah. Fuckers would just assume the book was used and hate on the retail staff. Do not do things which will make fuckers hate on the retail staff.
7. I cannot think of anything which would bring irritation to the boil faster than this, but on the other hand it might be totally fun, except that every time I ever did this with a guy he ended up steering the story over to emergency blow jobs.
8. Only if I have something that does the bending for me, otherwise it’s going to look like I got to the edge of my neighbour’s yard and gave up.
9. A charming notion.
10. Nope. Trees are too small to hide this ass behind. Van Dusen Gardens, mebbe.
11. This could be genuine hilarious and memorable. I’d start at the cruise ship dock and work my way through Gastown, Chinatown, and East Hastings.
12. This is TOTES a fannish activity. People have been doing this in sf fandom since the 30’s, possibly earlier.
13. See, I’d REALLY HAVE TO TRUST HIM. This is how you end up in the newspapers, sisters.
14. Only if I’m leaving hangar rash on every sport ute and noise kit vehicle in the parking lot.
15. Not with this pubic symphisis, but in your 20’s it’s a hoot.
16. I have actually done this; with the right person it’s so funny you’ll be needing oxygen by the time it’s done.
17. I gave away my superhero costume to Mary Crowell, but I have NO REGRETS.
18. Had me and my imaginary sexytimefriend but the funds.
19. Only with my mask…
20. Only at Wreck Beach…..
ow
Katie and Alex came by to do laundry, eat pork stir fry which I had providentially cooked up that morning, and drink coffee, and Paul showed up to take me for a walk but was only too happy to take us all in his car, which involved much shovage and shrinkage on Katie’s part.
Somewhere in there the kitchen clock fell on my head and shattered, and I have a hummingbird egg on my head. Getting hit by a clock when you’re 56 just seems a little too on the nose, doncha think?
So we 4 went to the Quay, and walking like my pelvic girdle done come apart, and grateful for the prop of the stroller, I got 2 k in, and then, joy of joys, Paul treated Katie and I to the sopa de tortilla at the Quay (best soup that isn’t phở for many miles). Then I came home and I would have liked to have collapsed, but Alex was here so I sang to him and watched him career about in his Jolly Jumper (which was the reason the kitchen clock got dislodged, but oh well it’s still running although Jeff had to pull more glass out of it this morning.)
Church was okay. The speaker had wonderful things to say about feeling like an odd person out, but a man in the congregation kept talking and it was hard to hear what was going on sometimes. Also, the amount of tunage has dropped away to practically nothing, which is in my view somewhat farcical. I didn’t hang about for the soup lunch.
The xray result should be back soon. I have a note in to call the doc.
I have a rather troubling new symptom; the numb patch on the bottom of my foot more than doubled in size in the last twenty-four hours. This is the first time the paresthesia has gotten significantly worse since my initial recovery from the L5-s1 injury, and what really cheeses me off is that I have been making a tremendous effort to get more flexibility happening and my symptoms get worse. (I have been doing various exercises for my hips and back). FML, as the kids say.
If I keep being this fragile I have no idea what will happen come May when I’m expected to do childcare several days a week. I imagine I’ll adjust, but it’s a terrifying prospect that I might put my back out again. Also, it’s by no means settled where this childcare will happen….
Breathing easy
Many, many hours on the cpap. I had to go at it on three separate tries, but I gooped my eyes before I slept and woke up both refreshed and not so dry that I couldn’t get my eyes open, so I’d call that a win. Later on this morning, we’re going to do an early shopping run, and later after that I’ll be off to church – to drop off tea towels and pick up cocoa….
Sore
Walked 4+ km yesterday and my back feels okay but my pelvis is trashed. Only managed the CPAP for an hour and a half .
Alex is so cute! Yes I was walking around New Westminster yesterday, and although I have like $60 in my account until more funds arrive I simply had to have a Chronic Taco (Katie and I split one, it was SUPER DELICIOUS). They cost a bomb but they are simply loaded with nutrition.
As a member of the League of Practical Women I purchased Katie some WD40 which immediately got used to desqueak the horrifically squeaky wheels of the stroller.
Pic back at the apartment.
Note: Baby drool smells GHASTLY once it dries. I came home and thought, gosh, that’s …. what’s that….. and then ran to change my shirt. He is Tom Drooly, f’sure.
Theo, you bastard
This is Theo, George’s cousin, being forced to say something for Raven’s little book. He’s only doing it because he’s scared of Michel and George. Otherwise, he wouldn’t even be acknowledging that he can speak English.
I have no idea why Raven keeps pestering me to talk about my childhood and my hobbies. I like eating chickens, alive or dead, and moths are always welcome food. I am closer than is normal to my Grandmother, but she is in Europe and I am here. We text or talk almost every day. It annoys her to use human language, but I think it is a sign of how wily and adaptable she is that she’s taken to it. She has chosen a strange voice to talk in. It is at the low frequency end of the normal woman’s voice range, and the accent stretches from Germany to the Greece, and while she is learning English, she still speaks Greek to us. I have no interest in talking further on these subjects, and prefer to return to the subject of why humans are inferior.
Humans don’t realize why we have the advantage in the matter of diet. I have given years of thought to this – although Georgios would mock me for claiming to think at all, such is his disrespect for me – and I’ve determined what’s destroyed humanity. You could have been like us, unhindered, wild and alone, but evolution forced you into taking the social route and you got into groups.
That was bad, but what really messed you up was agriculture. Once somebody moves you away from access to the food you require to survive and breed, you are a slave, and only your elaborate social networks, with their elaborate food related rituals, and the buying and selling and growing and storing and transporting and preserving and mixing of food in inane and endless processions of ways, prevent you from seeing this.
If the food supply stops, which happens from time to time, I move where my nutrition buds take me. For I, in my superiority to humans, have no taste buds. That would prevent me from eating what I need instead of those materials this body needs to sustain itself. Nutrition buds advise me that my body will feel better if I eat this. However unlikely, if it’s safe and it’s within the current dietary rules, I eat it. I have no moral qualms about eating a dead human, and have been freely offered more corpses than I care to document. I have been advised not to while being recorded. I can always tell if there’s recording happening so there’s no chance I’ll get Georgios in trouble doing that. Michel sat on me and told me he’d kill my babies, which is stupid because Georgios would never let that happen, but just in case I don’t eat dead humans.
If humans were much less fussy about their food they’d have more resources for other things, and maybe they wouldn’t need to work at all, since work is slavery with the beatings missing, as I can clearly see. Work! I’ve been watching humans work for more than a hundred years, and it’s always the same. Almost everybody works and the ones who don’t work are either free like me or are parasites like Georgios. I learned from watching that the people who were most like me, free, although most of them live in cities, which is stupid, since it’s safer outside of them, were considered homeless and therefore less than other humans. Why? Because they have no place to keep food. This must be the most stupid reason to think someone is less than you. Think them less if they can’t think for themselves, or entertain themselves, or successfully breed. Not having a place to keep food is not a sufficient reason to think poorly of someone, since that is the default position of every member of my species and to an individual we are better than humans by any objective measure.
The first time I watched what’s called rush hour in Vancouver, I stood on the bridge over the highway and wondered how much of the substance of the earth could be set on fire at one time and yet everything still seem normal. All this you humans can accomplish, while sitting in a car. I always prefer to sit on the roof, if I can have it, as I enjoy the feel of the wind, and the g-loading as I hang on is exciting.
I do like moving around better with airplanes and cars rather than walking and horsecarts and trains.
I do not care about any human hobbies, and yet I am asked about mine constantly. Nothing that happens to me is of the slightest interest to any intelligent human being. I can neither hurt nor help anyone, so why would anyone care what I do? Psyche was as persistent as you, Raven, and I don’t say that lightly. I tell them moths, and then they say, well what about moths? I look at them. I create habitats in my body for them. I study them through their life cycles, watch them come into life and leave it and make babies in the middle, I feed them and watch them fly and examine all their body parts in detail and create maps and itemize what they eat, and then I eat them. There is nothing in the slightest bit unusual about any of this and I have no idea why any human cares about it.
Buster Boy
He’s curled up next to me right now. I’ve started letting him in to my room. For a while he was resting his head on the corner of my laptop which was socuteIcoulddie.
I’ve started doing the exercises I found on line and it is already making a difference, not just to my pelvis but also my back. I woke up this morning with no pain. I dodged the CPAP, but at least I cleaned it. I finally went into the programming for the CPAP and checked my actual hours used and it’s pretty bad. Best night was 3.5 hours; average is just over 2. I also snugged up and rearranged the mask fitting while I was cleaning it. Back to running the machine tonight.
Mike was gently encouraging me to get over my hate for YYOGA I will try again. But honest to glob, if that receptionist is still there and pulls the fat shaming stuff again, I’m going to give her a piece of my mind, complain to her manager, and complain in writing to head office. And then I’ll say screw it and take Mike on as a private instructor, he is after all trained. Also, yoga is expensive….
Yay, finished the first part of the thing for church. Now to the edits, after we get updates.

