Later, yesterday.

Long about 4 Katie magickally appeared with Kelsey in tow.  Kelsey is her bestest girlfriend from school (you know how fast friendships blossom in school).  Katie wanted what was left of her Kaylee costume (you will have to scroll down to see it) and she literally bounced in, hugged me, grabbed her costume and left (and I got two insubstantial Kelsey hugs in there as well.)

Katie had been all sad and freaked (I am going to school… I know no one… I will have no friends).  I said, “Sit next to the girl with the nicest face.  Not the best looking one – the one who looks nicest, most pleasant and friendly.”  So she did and now she’s hanging with a hard working hard playing crowd, just up her alley.  And having fun, too. That 70 bucks I spent on that costume seems to have paid dividends.

PS.  She’s done something with her hair.  It’s darker brown and sort of ripply all over.

Soon I will go off to Famous Foods and get the last of the food I need for the awesome festival of roast fowl and tubers!  Swossage meat for stuffin’.  Hm, mmmm.  Great! It’s after 8 am and they are open…. time to get going.

My third oldest joke:  “Why does thanksgiving come a month earlier in Canada?”  “Because we have less to be thankful for!”

I still haven’t been to see Tom, but I’m still stuffed up and I dread making him sick.  Sicker.

Warm Human Experience

My mOm and I have a little ‘thing’ that we say when a standardized interaction – a bus ride, a visit to a government office, some brushing up against of another human being who is somehow a functionary – turns into a genuine experience plein de twists and turns and full honour given to the humanity of all parties.  Such was my toothicus dirtius cleaning today.  Because I am EVIL, and I mean EVIL, I occasionally take much pleasure in messing with people’s heads. So the gal who polished my teeth, who unless I miss my guess has antecedents who hail from Vietnam way, was horrified (I mean TEARS IN HER EYES) to hear that I “only brush my teeth three times a week, and floss when I remember to.”  (This isn’t true, as will shortly be revealed…. like now, because if I really DIDN’T brush my teeth I’d be a seething mass of cavities.  I mean, when was the last time on this blog that you can recollect I went to the dentist?  I’ve been tested for AIDS and got Hep shots more recently than I’ve been to the dentist, and viz all that, I don’t know whether I’m bragging, complaining or merely reporting the facts.  Anyway… no cavities – except the ones I was originally issued with, suitably edited, augmented and enlarged by nature, thanks.)

So Toothy Dude – my very first male hygienist, wOOt – shakes my hand and within 30 seconds I’ve told him about the whole “slam the beggar woman against the wall” thing from Assassin’s Creed, and he’s told me about the Weezer concert, and the Cure concert he went to earlier, and he’s mentioned psilocybin.  How do they find me?  Am I like a magnet for teh weird, wacky, wonderful?  Go me.  Anyway, it was the best cleaning evah.  Also, this dental palace has THE MOST EXTENSIVE AND EXPENSIVE HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS I HAVE EVER SEEN IN A PROFESSIONAL OFFICE.  They have elaborate skeletons occupying chairs in the waiting room and my dental station was decorated like a Warner Bros version of a crypt.

Then I went to London Thugs, where they were out of the USB turntable, no duh, and bought curative objects, crackers, and chocolate, and then to Kin’s Farm Market, where I bought a roster of root vegetables, and then I bought an apple peach pie for dessert and a couple of loaves of bread, which I have already toasted for stuffing, and some other snacky type things, and then I bought beer and came home to find a nice plump fresh turkey in our fridge courtesy of Keith and Jeff.

Then, a Buffy blowout. Life, she is so hard.

astonishment!

Keith spent the night.  Today, the dentist and the running around which accrues with Thanksgiving meals.  I’m just waiting for Keith to get back from 7-11 and then…. waffles with strawberries, and cream for our coffee.  Keith arrived, realized he’d forgotten the eggs, and then departed again.  That’s what 4 hours of Assassin’s Creed into the small hours can do to your brain, folks!

Eddie is trying to sleep on my bed again; I left my door propped open last night so he could.  Oh, that’s odd – Eddie just whacked Gizmo over the nose for no reason I can see.  Lightly, with no malice, but Gizmo jumped down from his usual perch on the back deck.

For four years or more I’ve been talking, on and off, about the collapse of civilization.  I guess the thing I keep forgetting is that a collapse generates heat and no light.  People will HATE.  They will hate the wrong things, for the wrong reasons; they will hate and kill.  Watching what people are saying during McCain Palin rallies makes me ill, but Canada’s no different in any meaningful way, we just don’t have a focal point for it yet.

I hope that we can ride out the global economic storm without all migrating back to the ranches of our prairie ancestors; I’m a city girl, and I don’t want to leave.  But human migrations have a merciless logic, and the time has come to start making back up plans, and I am just too citified and lazy to face it.

steamed lamb

….actually I ate kleftico and then the Luddite and I popped over to Hastings Steam and Sauna. This time, it being ever so much colder outside than the last time, I steamed for a GOOD long time, and now my back feels much better, thanks.  It’s kinda odd doing something like that with somebody you’re no longer romantically involved with, but as usual the Luddite cracked me up any number of times, and it was all very light hearted and fun, and he’d never been so it was pleasant to introduce him, and this time I remembered to get an extra towel because once my hair is wet there’s simply too much of me for one towel, and it’s only a buck extra.  None of the evening was planned; we didn’t even know where we were going to eat until I got in his pig of a 1980 Toyota diesel truck (I tease, I’m actually quite fond of that vehicle, although I don’t know how much longer the Luddite will be able to stretch not replacing the windscreen).  And it’s only 10:18, so I’m going to sleep and something tells me I will sleep well and long. Oh, and he had Ecuadorean chocolate with him.  Looxshury!

Forgot to mention…

I had an AMAZING session with Anne the mandolin teacher last night, and I think it is possible I may learn to read music before the end of my sorryass life.  She says she will take it as slow as it needs to be; after forcing me to do sight reading we relax with me playing rhythm mandolin while I learn new tunes – in different time signatures, even!

She also wants to move lessons to Friday nights, and I’m good to go with that; I always seem to end up doing my heavy drinking on Saturdays and weeknights.  Specially Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Dunno why that always happens.

The Barque of Concord hits a rock

I guess I tried to explain to Jeff prior to moving in that I make a lot of noise when I am singing and writing songs and that it can get quite annoying.  His response was that he could wear headphones. Well, last night I was working on a tune and he told me to be quiet because what I was doing was annoying him. It was plenty annoying, but I had warned him.  I dunno.  I hadn’t worked on a tune or come up with anything new in yonks, and only being exposed to the brutal indifference of previous roommates and other relatives prevented me from curling into a fetal ball at his disapproval.  When I was living with Paul and the kids I’d get that annoying at least a couple of times a week – I guess Jeff is unaware of the extent he’s been spared my usual behaviour.  I have been unusually quiet.

tick

tick

tick

I will be looking for rehearsal space, I guess, and once I calm down, other possibilities. It’s too bad that it’s now officially too effing cold to play outdoors.

Keith came by and picked up his phone.  What a turkey I am!  I didn’t even know it had a camera in it.  Mine’s kinda like a little rubber brick and all it has is Mah Jong and Tetris and Bejeweled and Sudoku to while away the time.

Anguish

Daxus just proposed to Katie on Facebook, and she accepted.

a very long paragraph deleted.

This is all my fault for not being a better parent.

Well, I guess love’s gonna conquer everything.

Excuse me, I have to go throw up now.

ScaryClown dines here

ScaryClown was here for dinner; he was fed buffalo sloppy joes, and he had seconds, lord love him. Also, I received from the mysterious and everedgy Mike (everybody’s favourite chinky chinaman) a call which said, “Guess where I am?” to which the answer could only be “Wreck Beach, you wretch”.

I send glories and posies, firelight and starlight and the light of the borealis, the light of the sea in the night as your oar goes through it, to Chipper, and she knows why.

I light a candle for Juliana and her efforts, and her album.

I light a candle for Carrie and her peregrinations.

For Tanya, and she knows why.

For Patricia, and she knows why.

For Peggy, in her trials with Tom and her usual daily challenges; I quail at the notion of carrying such a load myself, and can only love.

For my mother, and her traversing the dual canyons of the annual checkup and the dead and dying relatives; for my father in his travails without question or comment.

For my grandmother, may she pass into machine intelligence and live forever in the annals of my family, for gold, for good, forever.

For Mr Music and the sleeping giant he imagines into life.

For my cousins; Alex, Alyssa, Darcy, Shauna, Katherine, & John, and Gerald, of course, and his kin.

For my coworkers, Salmon Man, Cristian, Prashant, Jeff, Jenn, Hardeep, Joe, Gianna, Dale, Andy, Heather, Mike B, Mike M, Sandy, Robof9, Peter T, Al Karim, Francis, LTGW, Lindsay, Mel, Graham, Inne, Jeff, Bill.  Chris and Ky and Zari of course.

For the downstairs tenants, may they increase in health and strength.

For my Unca Dave, may he live forever in song, story, fable and myth.

For Lucile.

For Lois, Ruth and their close kin.

For Lady Miss B and her loved ones. For Dr. Filk, Swampy and Maggie.

For Suzanne.

For the ladies (and for the occasional lad) who lunch. All hail Dunnett.

For Spider Robinson and Academie Duello.

For Tammy.

For Rev Katie, and Pope Mary.

For David J. D. and the hard road he set me on,

For Alan.

For the hidden, the unreal, the unseen, for the lies which spin themselves into truth, the stories which harden into tradition, the festivals which anchor human life from one season to the next, a candle, and a warning.

For Keith, for Kate and their dad, Paul, candles, and blessings.

For the people I love and don’t speak of; for the people I hate and don’t speak of.

For my brother Jeff.

Give my head a shake, if I can’t do it for me….

I can really tell I’m upset about no more NCIS – I found myself going to fanfic sites this morning.  And… backing away slowly.  Do I really – I mean really – want to read Gibbs-on-DiNozzo slashfic?  It is to heave.  Gibbs/Abby?  Tempting, but no.  On the other hand, Salmon Guy returned my S1 Deadwood box, so I could go back to Deadwood if I wanted to.

My nose has stopped running and now I’m coughing.  A dry, hacking cough.  The next week will be joyous; I remember thinking about a month ago that it had been bloody ages since I was really sick with something.  Note to back:  Please keep improving somewhat.  I’m experiencing less pain, although I nearly went ass over teakettle down the stairs at Production Way Station yesterday morning when my leg partly buckled, so I guess I need to work on some muscle strength.  Patricia recommends running in water. Anyway, I thought “all those kids will break my fall’ – the station is jammed at that time of day – but you KNOW it never works out like that in real life – the stuff you don’t break bruises to the bone, and my back already hurts, and I don’t do pain well.  I’ve learned my lesson; I have to go down the stairs with my hand floating a couple of inches above the handrail, just in case.  The one day I thought I could go down the stairs in the middle I learned that my earlier caution was entirely justified.  Then I think about my grandmother, and I figure it’s time for me to shaddap.

Tonight, Sloppy Joes, if I can remember to ask my bro to get nice, structurally sound buns for dinner, and spaghetti if not.  Can you believe it? Katie came through and the macaroni is all gone AND she ate dinner.  Honestly cooking to make leftovers around here is hazardous. We either get bored of it or it vanishes into Katie’s piehole before we even have a chance to get bored of it.

I light a candle for Tom, who’s back in hospital.

I light a candle for Jeff, for being understanding.

Today, in anticipation of funds, I got all high on consumerism

And bought a phone, because it was PISSING ME OFF, yes, I think in a week I will still feel that vehement, that I couldn’t get hold of my son when it was mutually convenient.  The next time Keith arrives I will present him with it – I already called him to tell him.  I also bought beer.  I thought of taking a cab home, and then my conscience stabbed me and I took the bus.

Then I got home and there was a check for $6K and a night out waiting for me.  And Katie, dreamingly expecting to get fed.  So out with the leftover pork and sauerkraut (life, she is so hard) and yet more tater tots and homemade cheese sauce with steamed cauliflower. and the leftover mushrooms.  Note how little in the way of dessert I’ve been mentioning.

Katie left (of course!) and Jeff and I watched the Ken Burns documentary on the Brooklyn Bridge.

It’s raining like mad out there, in fitful, cranky bursts, with long lulls, like a teething child that you’re just putting to sleep.

I hope that you are someplace snug and warm right now.