For a friend (from 80s)

REDUCTIO AD ABSURDAM

Until it happens to you
ventures close to your life
the flash of the scalpel
is entertainment
you do not see the cost of survival.

shall I make jokes
call her an Amazon now
a soldier sworn to a particular battle?

shall I mourn because my friend
has been reduced
by her breast
by her hair?

the next time she sees me
none of this will show
I am a civilized person
given to mourning in private.

 

Various parcels of news

I will probably have to stay late tonight as Bertha quit.  (All the fridges have names.)  The fridge ifrit will be coming by to take a look at her.

Katie is getting all kinds of blood work done as she has suddenly and very nastily acquired Persistent Daily Headache.  If it really is that there’s nothing to be done, which has teh suck.  Now we find out that whatever the optometrist found in her eye last week is such a BHD that she now has to go to an appointment at 2:20 this afternoon as they called with a cancellation.  This is enough to freak both of us out, yech.

One more week of church!  I have to get the financial deets over to Bareld tonight.  I don’t know how easy that is going to be if I am in the shop minding the fridge ifrit.

 

Another lovely day

Sales are slowly creeping up, and we’re finding ways to keep things yummy and wholesome while reducing costs, which is great.

Peggy will be by soon to pick up some biscotti.  Mike McG came by and bought muffins.  Happy sigh.

Yesterday Janet Wilson popped by and it was lovely to see her after all these years living in the same town…

The building inspector was awesome and he made me howl with laughter.

Katie is going swimming with her buddy tonight, but I’m just gonna go home and hack away at church accounting as I have a deadline…

The list is getting shorter!

Today – getting menus printed and laminated at Staples now that Jeff has proofread them (thank goodness for his picky eyeballs!), sending credit applications to the meat and garbage companies, Paul coming to store to put in some hooks for the prep table, training on POS and cash register, getting the float for Monday morning.  Katie is still feeling a little under the weather and we can’t tell if it’s nerves or maybe a weird migraine.  I am migraining at the moment but the visual crap has lifted so I’m back at it.  Tom L kindly offered to put up the additional exit sign,

There’s also church stuff in there, but I’ll deal with later today as soon as I have finalized the accounting stuff.

 

 

deaths and entrances

My old self dies a little and my new self is born today.  With luck we will have signoff for a Monday opening for the cafe; with a little spinal firmness on my own part I’ll never be on the Beacon Board again.  Everybody loves having me and the worst aspects of corporate governance are not easily addressed. AT LEAST we are treating our staff members better, or more or less we are, and I did have something to do with that.  And the church is okay-off financially, I am sure next year will continue to bring change.  But I’m done, and I will only be going back to church when I am interested in the sermon topic.  Having weekends completely off except the inevitable worrying about the business will be pleasant.

 

Lovely long chat with Tammy this morning.

Back to the living room clean up in preparation for the board meeting tonight.  It will be easier for me to concentrate on the meeting today when I’m done with the living room.

sundry and various part the 95th

I am now communicating with a Swedish man regarding the subtitle file for Real Humans.  We are going to collaborate via the internet, yeah.

Spoke to pOp.  What an entirely loathsome experience he had in hospital.  I need to get him a black turtleneck and get GOS in big white letters on it.

My stress level is rapidly rising as opening day approaches.  However, the last piece of cooking equipment is on board and working so that is good news.

The potholes in the back parking lot are so big I’m posting pics of them on facebook.

Katie is working her ass off.  We are going in for five am this morning, heavy heavy sigh, but such will be our lot for the next little while.

 

at the shop

listening to Gotye’s Your Heart’s a Mess, having delivered biscotti to the gents at Gord-Ron.  I was condoled with at having to clean up the sex trade worker mess left on our doorstep / bleaugh.

 

Peggy’s mum has passed away.  She’s the eldest, so now she gets to sit with the full glare of her own mortality.  I had been saving a very beautiful but somehow sad card… autumn leaves silvered with frost.  Somehow apropos.

Something horrible regarding my church work has been righteously ducked, and I am so relieved I am practically weeping with relief.  I feel really stupid though.  None of us are walking alone even if we think we are.

Back to the shop

I am heading back to the cafe with Katie this morning.

Real Humans, the SVT show from 2012, is the best sf show I’ve seen since BSG came out.  It is filled with beautiful and nuanced performances, amazing photography, whip smart writing EVEN IN TRANSLATION, deft and surprising plotting, great background music, hat tips to all our favourite science fiction movies, a portrayal of family life which through its economy and plotting is realistic and emotionally sound – without making the father look like a moron or a wimp or a drunk or an emotionally abusive jackass or the mother like superwoman or hysterical, or the kids like little cookie cutters, brilliant set pieces which totally rock the ensemble acting, and it asks, all the time and at many levels – what does it mean to be human?  Where do we get our ‘programming’ from?  Is the most important thing about us that we can be kind?

Oh, and naked girl robots, but you knew that without asking.  It is filled with little Swedish touches regarding being open minded about sexuality which play out in a variety of interesting and sometimes cringe inducing and sometimes laugh out loud hilarious ways.

It’s a very UNITARIAN show, in terms of its concerns and writing.  Very, very satisfying.

Katie and I had the same dream

ROFL.

It was opening day.  The layout and the location of the restaurant was completely different; we had kids running around, a lot of extra space, and we had no cash register.  It was a complete zoo.  Katie and I were laughing our asses off as we traded notes.  No, it wasn’t an identical dream, but close enough.

Just over a week now.  I’m hip deep in church stuff and going straight back to it once I hit send.

Churchy stuff

Can’t do anything re the shop today or tomorrow. I have shitpiles of unavoidable work re the AGM.

 

There’s a biscotti batch in the cooler at the shop, and I brought home the lentil soup.  Jeff is tearing a hole through the split pea with ham soup; it really is awfully good.

We found really cheap split green peas at the warehouse place on Kingsway but strangely a 20 kilo bag of lentils is the same cost as what we pay at Galloway’s, so that was weird to find out.  We also found lots of consumables for cheap, including coffee cups, glassine bags, etc.  Snow Cap trading has everything we need in terms of baking supplies in bulk, and then some, and we found a place for plastic containers for muffins for people who want to buy a half dozen at a time.

The website is pretty much done, we’ll be adding menu items slowly and carefully.  We still haven’t settled on a bread supplier but Costco will do for the time being.  I roasted up another hunk of beef.

Katie got up at 4:30 to go pick up Jessica from her midnight shift at SaveOn and they are going to hang out today.  That is true friendship. Spoke briefly to Keith yesterday and told him he must come over and watch Real Humans, the phenomenal Swedish sci fi show.  Cannot recommend it highly enough.