A death in the family / a dream

Carrie reports that her doggie Mabel has crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  In response, all I could do was forward a copy of a Hallmark card poem that was on a card Lois (Paul’s youngest sister, a woman of uncommon charm, wit and sensitivity) sent me when Bounce died.  If I had any clue who to credit this to, I would, but it’s copyright Hallmark Cards, card S81-4, and I post it because out of all the things you can say to a person whose animal just died, this poem does it the best I know of so far:

They will not go quietly,
the pets who’ve shared our lives.
In subtle ways they let us know
their spirit still survives.
Old habits still can make us
think we hear them at the door
Or step back when we drop
a tasty morsel on the floor
Our feet still go around the place
the food dish used to be,
and, sometimes, coming home at night,
we miss them terribly.
And although time may bring new friends
and a new food dish to fill,
That one place in our hearts
belongs to them….
and always will.

Last night I dreamed I was supposed to meet up with some people, and I trusted somebody else to get my bag.  We got off the train (not the Skytrain, the subway in Toronto) and poof, no bag and everybody looking hangdog.  I said, **** this noise, got back on the next train, figured out where to cross sides so I got on the train I’d just gotten off, and at the end of the car there was a big pile of unattended gym bags, and the first one I opened had my bag in it.  There are a lot of messages in this dream, and on the whole I’m pleased with it.

Up at 4 – it’s now almost six and I’m about to pull cheese scones out of the oven.  The aroma is now well-nigh overpowering.  I put the last of the fresh basil in them.  Sigh.  It’s winter in Vancouver.  The overcast has started, and it won’t lighten up until April.  Time to hunker down and do some healthy baking.  I found a recipe for home made power bars the other week and I should dig it out and start making them.  And as for unhealthy baking, maybe this is the year I commercialize my biscotti?  I’ve had lots of people tell me they’d pay for them.

Scamp

Mr. Music’s dog deserves his own post.  A border terrier, he possesses a very pronounced personality, he’s smarter than most people, and PRETTY.  His coat is such a subtle combination of every colour from cream to dark cloud gray that I could stare at it for hours. When I walked into the apartment (a masterpiece of restrained visual energy, complete with an OMG afghan his mother knitted and some half finished half mannequins which are decorated with everything from decoupage to glued on jewels – one of them has a compartment carved out of her tummy which has a toy violin in it) all I could see were the balls.  There are like a hundred tennis balls in the apartment; Scamp can’t seem to make up his mind which one he likes best.

He still has his puppy dog bed and refuses to sleep in anything else (except when he sleeps on his master’s bed of COURSE) and when he crashed out briefly (border terriers are ENERGETIC creatures) with his head hanging out he was so cute I got all squirmy.

A head full of buzzing noises, a tummy full of yummy

Mr. Music fed me last night, and what a meal… Tuna couscous, home made corn meal muffins (he made me take a couple home to Jeff). home made instant mint chocolate cake, and Corona, and some white wine, and hummus and bread and red pepper for appies.  I went staggering out of there thinking it was a little late to be finding a wheelbarrow and somebody to roll me home.

I sang (for his thumbs up or thumbs down) the first pass of the music that I want to put in the musical.  He approved of most of it, but that was not the upshot….

More FREEEEEAKING HOMEwork.  My task, in between practicing my mandolin so I don’t get all embarrassed next Wednesday when Anne comes back, is to view / listen to one ‘representative’ musical from each decade from the 20’s through the 70’s, and the stage version NOT the filmed version, because even I know that these are separate disciplines and I’m writing for the stage.  I feebly commented that I want to do a musical pastiche with only the most paper thin excuse for a plot, but Mr. Music seems to think I am capable of more than throwing together the millennial version of the King of Jazz; he pointed me at Oklahoma! as being a very close to perfect attempt to meld story with song.    Anyway, I have the list written down somewhere and after I have finished digesting both that wonderful meal and the bolus of simple but time consuming suggestions I will start hacking away at it.

I did tell him I’m expecting this to take at least a year.  I still have to work full time and do laundry.  And now I have to go see every piece of musical theatre in Vancouver over the next year, so I can see what’s happening in contemporary musicals….. sigh.  Who needs spare time?

It’s talk like a pirate day.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

MANY thanks to Mike, who hauled out the massage table last night and put me into that stunned state of mind that accompanies a really long and effective massage.

Katie and Mike were both around for dins last night and I fed them garlic bread, tater tots, lettuce and tomato and onion and sunflower seed salad, and broiled pork chomps and leftover mushrooms and I kinda went nuts at the bakery so we had dessert too.  I bought so much sweet stuff I gave it to Katie to take to Dax.  Katie has a routine now where she does all the homework she gets assigned to do as soon as she gets home on Thursday night, so she can have the weekend to herself without feeling anxious about getting home by six on Sunday to do the work.  She also entertained me and Mike and Jeff with her description of working and learning at hair design school at VCC.  Katie says easily a quarter of the class is ‘spoiled rich bitches who don’t do any work’ and most of the rest don’t have any gumption or ability to work independently.  She took my advice and sized up her colleagues on the first day and sat next to the one with the sweetest face, and now she and Kelly are becoming fast friends and she hangs with a clique of women who really want to be there and are working hard.  If you think hairdressing is easy, try standing for six hours with your arms outstretched…..

There was a skunk in the front yard last night, right at the bottom of the stairs.  Yikes.

From Paul – for Keith

Next time you talk to Keith, you might like to pass him some kudos.
Here’s the skinny: we’re doing Mr. Canoehead coming home from Deer Lake.
Keith’s driving for the first time in a year or two & he doesn’t like the
idea of Canada Way at 18:30 so I say pull into the Esso on the corner &
watch the traffic for a while & if you don’t like it, I’ll take over.
Second time the light goes red for Canada Way he says “Let’s go for it and
I’ll drive along in my own little space,” and starts to pull out onto the road
when this idiot turns left into the station and winds up stopped in the
roadway head on to us.
I say, don’t worry about it Keith & he blithely maneuvers around and heads
south. Of course a few more idiots have to blow by us like we’re going
backwards even though we’re doing the limit, but Keith doesn’t get rattled,
just stays in his lane & asks for advice when he needs it.
Best part of all was when he had to parallel park in front of the house.
We’ve got a space that’s about 7 ft. longer than we are & we’ve got a canoe
on top. To make a long story even longer, Keith, with a little coaching put
rear wheel 2 in from the curb, front wheel on and three feet space in back,
four out front IN ONE PASS no guff folks.
He was pretty proud of himself.

And SO AM I.

Cat / lessons / good news

My mandolin teacher is what I’d look like if I had nicer hair and more of it, put on forty pounds and was 15 years older.  She’s pretty stern.  Fortunately she’s also pretty flexible, and I already know one additional chord, and have a LOT OF FREEEEKING HOMEWORK.  Eddie, who normally ignores female visitors, came out and inspected the living hell out of her, including trying to get under her skirt.  It was quite a performance.

Spartan kitty.

Work continues to have the worst kind of oil, being turm-oil,  but I have laid to rest most of my anxieties and concerns.  There’s still a lot of thrashing around, and I have to move desks for the first time in years, but other than that things are slowly returning to normal, or whatever the new normal is.  When you’ve been through a great deal, you get punchy.

Pig for mOm.

Squirrel mom vs curious dog. Hint, squirrel FTW.

Tuna salad bowl for dinner last night.  Jeff does NOT like the little red cheeses; they are responsible for him wanting to bail on dairy entirely.  Ha, what, no ice cream?  I made enough tuna salad for two meals, and that’s exactly what Katie did, made two meals out of it.  She apparently didn’t want to get out of bed yesterday morning (she was at Daxus’) and he forced her out, coffee in hand, saying, “Yer mom’ll kill me if you don’t go to school.”  That he would even pretend to care about my opinion cheered me no end.  Please note, I am not for killing anybody, although there are about six people I’d like to personally spank, and about a hundred I would like to be paid to verbally humiliate. I’m so good at it I really oughta get paid.  But of course, there’s no room at the standup inn.  Oooh, speaking of Standup, anybody see Marg Cho’s Christian rant?  Most amusing!

Katie K has sold her condo.  This is awesome awesome news, and it made me very happy when I heard it.

I have to pack up my desk today, which means basically that I have to throw a lot of crap out.

I really like Jeff’s kitties, but I wish they were more affectionate. I just want a kitty to curl up on me once in a while.  Like dis.

Releasing my inner zombie /coffee

Wow, I guess I always subconsciously knew this.

Do you know what I’d do if I was at home, and there was an earthquake, and my house didn’t collapse or catch fire?

After I ensured that the cats and my brother were safe, I’d send Jeff on a mission to get another propane canister or two, and I’d make coffee.  I’d light the barbecue burner on the back deck and boil water to make coffee with.  Coffee is hot.  Coffee wakes you up. And coffee is what you are going to want when you’ve been pulling people out of buildings all morning.

The global system of commerce may collapse (I personally have my doubts that it will do anything but restructure itself after years of privation, just like the last time) but as long as people want sugar and coffee and there’s a boat that can carry them, I’m not too worried about the future of my relationship with coffee.

I mentioned coffee is hot.  A study on social isolation – it’s in the last couple of days on eurekalert.org – says that social isolation makes people literally feel cold.  That’s why hot food is an integral part of social connectedness and discourse in this and any other culture, whether it’s a tropical country or not.

After I made coffee I’d deliver it to people who needed it.  Then I’d go back to the barbecue and make an immense pot of oatmeal.  Then I’d start taking stuff out of the freezer and cooking it so it didn’t go bad.  That’s what I’d do – I’d stay close to my technologically sophisticated hearth.

False alarm – I havna lost my gaming platform

Jeff, having proved not to have already gone to bed, suffered me to borrowed his car keys.  My little blue brick was right where I left it on the floor mat.

The sheets I bought at Costco tonight are already clean and dry.  I feel so happy to have another set of sheets for my bed, more or less the same pale sage colour, but about twice the thread count.  There was so little lint in the dryer I could have, without troubling my conscience, left it for the next person.  They feel like silk but they are pure cotton.  And I have a drive, I gotta message Robof9 and tell him not to buy me one like we discussed.  Got chicken for the freezer, and also little red cheeses, which should make Katie happy as she appears to be feeding half of her class with her lunches.  If Keith ever turns up again he’ll probably devour a few, provided they ain’t all et.