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.

My scores have crashed

I’m either suffering from the after-effects of a small stroke or I’m still too sick to concentrate on anything. I’m pretty much back to where I started. (This is for Lumosity. YES I am aware that Lumosity has had their legal troubles and have overrepresented the benefits and handwaved some of the science and I am not convinced they don’t still jimmy the scores from time to time.)

I’m going to take the uptempo view and decide to believe my brain will get better.

I don’t have any NEW news because I’m staying the hell away from other human beings since the plague situation has been crashing down around our ears. Without Jeff around I’d go completely feral, I reckon. It’s a good thing we all have phones and can at least talk to each other instead of scowling across the vast distance between here and where the kids live. Haven’t spoken to Katie in ages, but the great thing about that woman is I can leave her alone for a couple of weeks and she is still there, and still loves her mOm, she’s just busy.

It’s very hard to believe I was once that busy, flying around with kids under my arm and no vehicle. Yup, I took kids to daycare on transit in Toronto. Hours and hours getting to work and getting home, every day. Paul had to have the car because he worked shifts, you see.

The world cup final is in a few minutes and while we haven’t watched the rest of it, we likely will this am because it is global sport on a very high level and likely from all accounts to be a memorable corker of a game. I should stop what I’m doing and make brown buns to nosh while we’re watching. (LATER damn I didn’t get started fast enough. I was feeling very queasy and I’ve learned that I should eat into my morning queasiness, and then it’s gone.)

Tea, leftover Japanese food for breakfast. Those gyoza were evidence for God, sorry I ate them, jury’s still out now.

Metrotown parkade (THE WORST –– THE FUCKING WORST –– THE ABSOWORST) was BLOCKED for an hour last night, people were literally prevented from leaving by crummy driving and the parking attendants did bupkes. I learned of this from r/vancouver.

2023 is about learning to live with other people’s shitty epidemiological decisions and still finding joy.

I wept when I read Nita’s post on facebook about how she misses her dad. Me too kid; like me you have an awesome dad who filled my life with fun, food, music and art (also discipline, expectations and feelings of security.) Your loss is harsher to bear than mine, and the world lost an amazing man the day Jim decided to walk on.

There are ten people who read my blog every day. I want you to know that I love and appreciate you, even the lurkers, and hope you have an especially glorious day. Try not to get snowed in, wherever you are.

Trying trying trying

Suzanne has been and gone and the floors are cleaner.

She set off the smoke alarm downstairs and I used my ukulele to wave air over it so it stopped. I wish I had video of this; I must have looked DERANGED.  This was four seconds after I answered a phone call from Keith.

There’s me dropping the handset on the sofa, me and Suzanne yelling, and Keith afterwards saying, “That was like an old time radio show.”

I did pick up my FIT test. POOP IS COMING in the immortal words of Marvin Boggs (from the “Reds” movies.) My innards are calmer but I’m still getting messages from the front regarding standing up too fast. My blood pressure is fantastic but lord, that diuretic makes me dry. Normally it’s just my right eye that doesn’t tear enough but this morning I was forced to start crying just to get my eyes open. These days that is easy enough. I’ve cried every day since Jim died. I have no right to, I just do. I was crying about something else though.

White Spot burgers for dinner last night. Thinking of the barley bowl for brekkie this morning.

Christmas Void – Jan and Soon’s new cat Count Tricksy

Christmas Void, Christmas Void / hiding by the tree. / Will you ever try to drop the Christmas tree on me OH / Christmas Void, Christmas Void / hiding by the tree. / Will you ever try to drop the Christmas tree on me. / Make the tree to shed / by using it to shred / It is not alive / but not exactly dead (a ZOMTREE) / Festive all our hearts / Seasonal our joy / Now that Tannenbaum is up the cat has got a toy! OH!

 

& repeat until people throw crackers.

Feeling much improved

The pain is gone, normal toilet functions have resumed, I can stand long enough to chop vegetables.

The actual line of poetry I woke up with in my head this morning was “All human history is a glory hole of mimesis” but where in Christ’s name do you go with that? So I wrote about consciousness instead, it was easier.

Absolutely must get to the lab today. Also need to go to the bank. And rehearse on various instruments. And deal with the element I dropped plastic on yesterday.

I am looking longingly at my writing projects but I’m going to continue to play computer games, doomscroll reddit and try to imagine a world without capitalism.

New poem – how to be conscious

Life powers consciousness and unmakes it.

Here I am, sleeping again, but I don’t know that. An entire world crawls into my skull and spectates, and somehow that world is me. Unconscious for whatever registers dreams, I sleep with a heaviness that obliterates care and hangs a sheet over an ugly view. The drowned city dreamscapes of my childhood have given way to a glacial blue crevasse into which I fall each night; Del Toro and such? – these terrors cannot find me.

My griefs and wounds depart. I waken in a world where my eyes are so dry I’m momentarily disoriented, then I enact Warren Zevon’s plan and start to cry. My griefs and wounds settle back in my flesh. Break time is over.

How does it happen? To travel galaxies in flight and perspective, and never move; to be snoring for most of it.

The cat is sleeping on the couch. Ears flick, paws twitch. Someone’s in there, dreaming.

Here I am, on the phone with my mother. She is sad with the normal sets of woes plus the indignity of current ‘lurgy. My job is to cheer her up without making her laugh. She’s coughing as a new career. Laughter turns into a long stretch of wheezing irritated pain and a claim that this has gone on for too long. To maintain this conversation I am picturing my mother in her den, surrounded by books and papers; I am leaning my mind against hers through our voices. I was a dream she once had. She built a programmatic nest for me, with twigs from Pa, and now I am talking to the woman who taught me how to be conscious.

Resipiscence

I got a haircut yesterday. Kimiko is in fine fine form.

If you don’t want to hear me whining about my health, ignore the rest of this.

I was going to walk from Bbombshell to New West Station and the taxi stand affixed thereunto, and I literally couldn’t. I collapsed in a chair and asked the kindly receptionist to call me a cab. I couldn’t walk that distance. This is very depressing because it’s literally two city blocks. A cane wouldn’t have helped; my legs were literally Not Working. My guts kept grinding away, to no avail.

Got home, took my temperature. Normal. Had a hot bath to relax my abdomen because I was SO messed up and experiencing diffuse abdominal pain. When I got home, I was crying because not being able to walk a quarter of a mile is one of those “You’re more likely to die in the next six months” kinda things and I’m freaked out. Stairs were a trial. After a delay I check my blood pressure, which is low, like not even low normal, just low (am I bleeding internally? What in the everlovin’ farce is this?)

Over the course of the afternoon I perked up. I felt well enough to finally run my bed linens through the laundry. Not well enough to make my bed, hope to do that this morning.

The abdominal pain differential diagnosis goes on for miles and miles. I’m still avoiding caffeine and hard food, and I’ve reduced how much I eat to nothing.

I am quite dehydrated. I just don’t experience thirst …. at all. I was forcing myself to drink lime Bubly all day but that’s part of my esophagus problem so I stopped. If you take a litre out of how much you drink every day — and I can’t drink caffeine and keep forgetting to make myself peppermint tea.

Anyway, I’m wondering if I’m recovered enough to go shopping today. We shall see. All of this grot I’m experiencing could just be the diuretic and me getting used to each other, once again, we shall see. I will go to the ER if I have symptoms that warrant it.

Dry

I feel quite sere.

Eating very slowly, soft foods in moderation, chewing a lot. Much improved from two days ago.

I laundered towels yesterday, I even put them away. (THe prevIoUS three loads, not so much.)