Heard from Tammy

I’m about to leave to go get her.

And I’m back. We had a lovely Vietnamese meal on Main Street. I drove like the granny I am. Even so, the check engine light came on on the way home. Paul is using this as a reason to get his car back. I have no further public comment.

I am shrugging. I have no control over this situation and I know it. I got home safely before dark, that’s all I care about. I saw more bad driving (lane changes, violent u tURNS ACRosS free lanes I mean three lanes AFTER SIGNALLING THE OPPOSITE WAY. Fuckt, absolument.

Just ordered chicken and ribs. I have control over that. I also get one forkful of Jeff’s dessert, I can’t eat the whole thing, it’s enormous. Also got warm potato salad and a nice big caesar salad. It is coming.

Christmas

I’ve heard from Tammy and have a rough idea of her itinerary. Hopefully she’s able to fly from Seattle to Vancouver with no difficulty.

It is unbelievably slippery out there and the rain keeps falling in bucketloads. It’s well above freezing on the ground.

We’ll be staying home again today, except I still have to get my prescription. The inderal is out of stock until April… or February, so I guess some discomfort is to be expected.

Holiday greetings

In no order:

Merry Xmas to the dude on reddit who asked an uncaring universe if he was a nutbar for not taking the Coquihalla this weekend to make it for a family Christmas. I assured him he was not crazy; nothing’s impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it. When an atmospheric river meets an arctic outflow, wild shit falls from the skies.

To my brother Jeff I wish the very best the ‘holiday’ allows him – which is hilarious given that he’s a phone call away from having to work at any moment – and a wish that at some point over the next couple of days we settle in for some ‘real’ Christmas telly: Die Hard, a Call the Midwife Christmas special, maybe a Lord of the Rings or Hobbit binge. Maybe even watch the King’s Broadcast, if only to mock him roundly. I disdain that boorish manchild.

Love and social distancing to the fOlks; we’re not seeing you this Christmas. Remember when the kids were little? and we were somehow obliged to drive hither thither and yon in The.Worst.Fucking.Weather that Southern Ontario could shove in our faces at the end of its tobacco-stained arm? Those days have passed. We can all thank The Grand Joculator for that blessing. Of course I’d rather be there. But the great thing about being a member of this family is that we don’t chivvy each other into social occasions by nagging and guilting the shit out of each other or trivializing each other’s safety; I find this of more comfort than whatever I can derive in a ferry lineup after four cancellations.

To my Ontie Mary and all of her kin of the Niebuhr line, even the ones that are still convinced Jesus in a UFO is comin’ for the righteous, I extend greetings and best wishes for a quiet, joyous and safe Christmas. Cousinly greets to Shauna, John and Katherine.

To the spirit of Jim P, and his surviving family; I hope you have the best Christmas you can. I love you guys and wish I had something other than my own grief to offer as a gift.

To my friend Peggy, whom I haven’t even called in a month because I’m such a bum, Warmest and Brightest wishes of the season. I don’t think I’ll get those biscotti to you before Christmas. I haven’t been busy; I just keep forgetting to buy almonds, and when I looked at the prices at Rave-on yesterday I damned near died of fright.

To the crows and wee birdies; yes I got peanuts and sunflowers; I will put out feed during the worst of the weather event.

To my friend Dave, shifting on his laurels as a soundly published poet, I offer hopes for a spark of cognition which becomes a flame of output. Yeah, right.  You and I have always been at opposite ends of the word spigot….

To my pharmacist YOU ARE THE FUCKING BOMB. Happy holidays! To any pharmacists reading this, thou as well.

To my doctor; thank you for the latest scrip; after many months my blood pressure is now pretty much normal whenever I record it.

To Sue: may the year ahead be filled with family, love, and the work you have chosen with such distinction and success.

To all my former coworkers at the House of X – even if I didn’t like you very much when I was working with you, how I miss you now! It’s a reminder of how familiarity, and time, shifts all things in our feelings. Thinking of you all at midwinter, with particular effect for Mike (of course, special mention), Jerome (seeing him on the 28th weather willing), Stephanie, Sarah, Glenda, Mohammad, Arzina, Jim, Brian, Tom, Ryan, Carlos, Darryl, Ngoc, Patricia and many others whose faces are clear and whose names I cannot now recall.

To my landlady Kim F, who is currently training her replacement and I cannot tell you how sad this makes me since she is literally one of the people I’ve known longest in this town, I’ll probably never see her again after she quits— You were a really good landlady. Sure glad I didn’t have to call you about a plumber. I hope you have a lovely holiday and your daughter brings you nice presents.

To Tammy, whom I’m supposed to visit with on the 26th. O darlin’, I hope your trip to Vancouver (she’s flying in from Hawaii on Saturday) goes smoothly, but I really don’t think it will. Even so, I wish you the best of this season and my earnest hopes for a lovely day of tooling around the lower mainland seeing sights for Boxing Day. That’s what I wish for us. (We were thinking of getting together with the fam but holy cats with the amount of respiratory crud going through that house I can’t see that being a good idea a-tall.)

For Paul, hopes for a better sounding chest; for Keith, well he already got several denominations of my best wishes for a great Christmas (and promptly spent it on groceries, foreign editions please copy); for Katie, grace and peace for 20 minutes in the middle of her bustling household. In the spirit of Christmas I publicly acknowledge that Daxus is back with Katie and we’re all trying to hold grace for someone making an effort. Katie’s happier. I don’t know what else to say. We’re allowed to change our minds.

To Alex and Ryker; a grandmother’s blessing on you. You’re not getting anything else from me, by order of mammabear.

Ah Suzanne! I have enveloped you as a family member and it’s a wonderful thing. I hope you have the peaceful, joyous and family filled Christmas of your fondest wishes. (Note. Suzanne is Dax’s mother. Suzanne knows how to do blended families and I am doing my best to learn from her.) I hope you have all the gluten free treets yer belleh can hold!  Hope three days a week of Rykercare doesn’t prove too much for you.

Fond greetings to Bonnie.

To Leo and Linda and their lively agglomeration of kids and grandkids: merry and joyous best wishes of the season to you all!

To Catherine C, Bob W, Colin H, Jan & Soon and their kinfolk, my Seattle filkfen, Cindy, Jaz, Elias and Kaitlyn (sp), Lois and Bob, kids and grandkids, Ruth and John & their kids, Juliana & household, Al P., Lorna @ IHOP, all the Doordashers who’ve brought food over the last couple of years (and the nameless kind souls who cooked it), to the people processing images from the JWST, Michael Balter & the rest of the gang on twitter, I wish health, strength, and fortune at Christmas and for the year to come.

 

 

 

 

 

while I still have power – no water

The pipes in our rental have frozen. I’ll waken Jeff in an hour to tell him if he’s not up by then. We are supposed to go shopping this morning before the icestorm starts.

Oh did I mention that?

this is what I posted on facebook:

 

Everyone in the lower mainland please read this. The atmospheric river last year was a simply terrifying event; now imagine an atmospheric river of half that volume BUT IT’S ALL FREEZING RAIN!!! This forecaster says we may get 36 hours of freezing rain totalling as much as 80 cm. Mark Madryga at Global is NOT arguing with him.
This will be one of the most messed up Christmases in the history of solh temexw. I beg of you all to stay home once the event commences, if you can.
Consequences: complete shutdown of all transit – air, ferry, ground. No ambulances. Fire/rescue hampered into immobility which means house fires may not be put out fast or well. Unless you have crampons and walking poles the outdoors will be extremely unsafe.
Be prepared to literally chop ice while freezing rain sticks to you, if you’re responsible for clearing sidewalks. I plan on using the edger to bust it up.
If you are required to drive over the period in question do not go anywhere without chains. If you don’t have chains now’s the time to buy them. TODAY.
***Cover your car*** if you park outdoors. ***charge your devices***, & charge anything that can charge devices.
Ice melter may not work all that well. You may need to apply sand or grit for traction instead.
LARGE ZONES OF THE LOWER MAINLAND WILL HAVE POWER OUTAGES (remember the Quebec ice storm in ’98? I was selling portable power equipment at the time so I sure do!) AND THE POWER OUTAGES WILL GO ON LONG ENOUGH TO KILL FRAIL ELDERLY AND DISABLED PEOPLE. So check on your neighbours if you feel safe to do so.
Outages (as in Quebec) may go on long enough that there will be no power at hospitals. They may go on long enough that the pumps for the dykes run out of fuel and fail in Richmond; flooding along the river in some places is likely, especially if drains get frozen over or clogged.
AFTER the storm there may be pockets of the lower mainland that don’t get power back for literally weeks. Hotels and motels will be jammed.
If you have a gas generator BUY FUEL NOW AND START IT UP TO MAKE SURE IT IS WORKING. Get a chain and a lock. One of the most memorable takeaways from the Quebec ice storm was that if you had a functioning generator, poltroons would steal it from your porch. If you have a woodstove or a safe fireplace that draws properly get some wood in. Get food you don’t have to cook into the house – even a flat of replacement meal shakes will be better than nothing.
I am so glad I’ll be able to stay home for this. Not everyone is as fortunate. If you have money to spare for the unhoused who will suffer tortures from this weather event, please do so.

China

There are very few painkillers left on store shelves; children’s painkillers are virtually unavailable.

and it’s all going to get dramatically worse. Although the Chinese government is not reporting the death toll from COVID after releasing the lockdown, hearses queued in front of funeral homes tell no lies.

President Xi had a terrible choice; let millions of people die, or sit still for the largest wave of civil unrest in decades. So he let the pressure off the population, and now they’re too busy getting ready for CNY and, you know, dying, possibly of variants whose existence will be as a direct result of the end of the lockdown, to give him any grief domestically.

Overseas Chinese are mailing tylenol home. China makes 40% of the world’s medicine supply. I’m sure you can see where this is going; a complete collapse of the global medical supply chain. There will be one style of hospital care for the rich and another for everyone else. COVID outbreaks in China will also slow shipping globally for everything else.

Pray you don’t get sick. This will be a hard, harsh winter, and a dubious and inauspicious spring.

Apparently Ryker ended up in hospital last week with a breathing problem; he was nebulized and went home. This was when he was with his da. Apart from being maybe 5 percent crankier than normal Katie didn’t notice that he was doing poorly, afterward, which is why I didn’t report it earlier. Scared me though!

weather chaos

Jeff and I are most assiduously staying the hell home in our coldass little rental, because the following is going on out there:

  1. folks sitting on the snowy tarmac of YVR. The de-icing crews apparently had all been working doubles and a lot of them went home; many crews are sick. The current record is 8 hours for smaller airlines that don’t have the deep pockets to advance their slot-time agendas
  2. we were EXPECTING this, all of this, and yet the snow response municipality by municipality, much like the police ‘services’ ahem, are patchy and also impacted by callouts from sick staff. New West cleared all of its roads by the time they said they would. Burnaby kinda kept up; Vancouver proper was a fucking disaster.
  3. in the old days, it was 8 to 10 inches of snow. These days it’s 25 cm. You would think a major Canadian metropolis would get out an’ plow er something, but it’s not good.
  4. TransLinkBC on twitter minutes ago (5:30) “Good morning, folks! Due to inclement weather, the transit system may be experiencing delays.” Like if that isn’t the single stupidest thing, stay home f’chrissakes, I’ve seen video of snowploughs pushing busses down Joffre. I mean unless you want to be standing in this freaking wind for an hour or two, stay home.
  5. Man skiing down Como Lake Road last night, just like how people got around during the Century storm in ’96 in Saanich/lower mainland and the Great Blizzard of ’71 in London and most of the northeast.
  6. More snow today and then bonechilling cold right into Christmas, so this natural phenomenon will remain here for most of a week.

Pity Katie; she has to both remove snow from her car and drive in this shit. At least once she’s out of the alley she’s on cleared roads.

My health and brain are much improved but FUCK it is cold in the house. I may bake today just for the heat.

Have yourself a medicated Christmas

Have yourself a medicated Christmas
It’s the only way
wifi connectivity is days away

Please take all your edibles with caution
No fair greening out
Please share or the rest of us will call you ‘lout’.

Now we’re home for the holidays
they’ll be squalid days I know
Cheek by jowl with relations dear
& we’re up to here

with snow

Have yourself a medicated Christmas
As your purse allows
Numb your brain cells, then sit in a chair and drowse
& have yourself a medicated Christmas now

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So much snow

Yes, we got some. Ten centimetres, more in some spots. We’ll get wind today to blow it around. The house is like a meat locker; when it goes down to Minus Nine that poor little furnace can scarcely keep up. I got out of the house around 10 yesterday and shovelled a path through the back deck and I shovelled the front walk way but I was completely winded at the end of that. Jeff took over and did all the rest of it including the salting, which so far has prevented further accumulation.

Found my crampons!!! so happy, they are now hanging up in the front hall. Never know when you’re going to need the soddin’ things when it’s slippery underfoot.

And after me saying I haven’t heard from Katie, she phoned me that day, just the lightest checkin.

Alex (in front of Suzanne and his mother) was asked what he wanted for Christmas and after seriously considering the question gave a little frown and said, “I think I have everything I need,” and Katie and Suzanne were narrowly restrained from bawling their eyes out, I sure did when I heard about it.

I sang to Ryker through the phone and he smiled…. according to his mammabear, I doubt she’s fibbing.

I tried to watch the World Cup and left after the second goal. A small amount of ‘you missed an amazing game’ ensued. LOL I always leave things too early.

I am trying to move from Twitter to Mastodon and I probably should wait until my brain is no longer swimming in glue.

Lumosity scores continue very poor.