Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
I have taken a number of on line tests in the past but today’s was the most detailed… from the bbc website.
As I’ve noted from previous tests, my brain is exactly half boy and half girl. This will come as no surprise to my lunch time companions, who are as startled by my interest in things no other woman they know gives a toss about as they are by me berating them whenever they make with the sexist cheese.
Off to New West to help Katie with financial stuff.
I met a man with the largest collection of musicals in BC, possibly Canada. To give you some idea of the scale of his collection, he moved sometime in the last few years and put the stuff that he could bear to part with on ebay and cleared enough money to buy a house in rural Saskatchewan. I am going to email him today and ask him if he has a copy of Zou Zou, one of Josephine Baker’s movies.
Tammy had a wonderful time on Gabriola and has promised pix. I’m going over to her mom’s today to see her before she leaves tomorrow morning.
I am very happy about signing up for the CAN car, and the illiterate SUV drivers who keep parking in that spot are going to think I’m a evil evil hag, because I’m going to start calling for towtrucks on people. Seriously, why are the people who take that spot almost always SUV drivers? Was that a rhetorical question? Is this?
The young man downstairs from me gets one more gimme before I rat him out to the landlord. I have now addressed him personally twice; I will give him three times. I don’t enjoy being woken up like that and his apologies are wearing thin.
After a decade of living in this town I finally poked my head into Sikora Music down on Hastings. I picked up a couple of CD’s which will go in the Christmas present pile. I tried to go into Long and McQuade but they weren’t welcoming enough. I also emailed L&M a few days back and started my email with “Your website sucks a Greyhound bus station men’s room mop.” And the webguy emailed me back to acknowledge that I was funny, but didn’t actually address my question. I know it’s not an e-commerce site, but a list of what snares you carry when I search on “snare” would be useful!! And why am I suddenly interested in snares? Well, I’m thinking of some portable and classy percussion, and a snare head with brushes, which I had recently seen used to great effect, got me thinking. My percussive friends are smiling and nodding.
Katie K is back from Maine and visiting rellies. She said “The theme for this trip is cognitive dissonance.” My father is nodding and saying to himself, “That’s just a fancy way of saying, “Can I go home now?””
Dinner with Keith, Kate and Tammy went wonderfully, and I completely kept out of the conversation Tammy had with Katie, since it was everything I’ve been telling her for aeons, except Tammy is both more forceful and more tactful, tact being something I should really work on, except nobody would recognize me. Keith bitched me out for not inviting Paul, and I phoned Paul to try and get his side of the story (and also to alert him about a possible change of address for Katie), but he appeared unconcerned and hadn’t really expected to be invited. A whole paragraph detailing why he should be happy he wasn’t invited has been deleted, thank god.
Re the change of address for Katie…. stay tuned. She’s having her troubles, and now she’s working on graceful exit strategies.
Keith’s first two days of Dispensing Optician school appear to have gone well. He loves the new campus, says “The air here is better than it was in high school” (not hard) and seems to be thriving on being so busy, although he’s kinda sharper and more brittle than I remember him. He went on at length, as he tends to do, about writing projects he never actually does anything about (I keep saying, find a comic book artist, there’s less writing) and various media things, like TV Tropes which I forwarded him a link to yonks ago and which is still causing him fits of hysterical laughter. Keith also recited a William Blake poem, which he recently memorized. I will now pause while my mother recovers from her swoon of happiness.
I also bought a Moleskine. I am a little fashionable sheep, but it sure is a pleasure to write on.
Now, since my apartment is tidy and all my clothes are clean, I guess I’ll have to actually do some work before I phone Tammy at nine…. The major projects are:
But hark, what scent from yonder café breaks?? I think I’ll go downstairs to the Renaissance and fuel up.
I’ll probably never find out what happened, but 30 hours of downtime was a bit much, and I’ll be looking for a local host. I’ve been posting to my secret free blog instead. I’ve been having a jam-packed vacation; this is the best time off I’ve had since my flying visit to Toronto in February, and DEFinitely more productive. Now if I could just get going on my projects… ;).
I am surfing less internet and watching more movies. I think this is an improvement. I have now seen Zou Zou and Red Shoes in the last 24 hours; next up is King of Jazz.
Tammy and I walked to Horizons from my apartment this morning. She’s in better shape than I am, as far as I can tell. I became more acquainted with the trails around here as well as getting some exercise. I didn’t exactly stick a gun in her ribs when we got there (ambling around rose gardens and taking pictures of roses was more my speed) but we hung about until the doors opened on the restaurant and I warmly encouraged her to feed me, which she did. Consider the meal rhapsodized about. Then we walked home. This time I chose, much to our satisfaction, a more level route.
She’s gone off to a family dinner and now I’m going to go back to an exciting evening of staring off into space, giggling vacantly, and folding laundry. (Doesn’t that sound bizarre? none of it’s true except the laundry.)
Tonight I did something I very rarely do. I watched a movie, by myself, all the way through.
I watched Just Like Heaven, with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, and I have to say I enjoyed it. I told a friend on the phone, “If you’re a straight guy, you should only watch this movie if you think it will give you better odds of getting laid. Otherwise, you should dodge this movie like a bad karate chop.”
My god, I watched a date movie all the way through and liked it. I’ll be wearing a tinfoil hat before this phase of my life is through, she opined gloomily.
Tammy and I poked around the campus yesterday, in between light showers of rain. Nothing was open, and there were very few people around.
I had no idea the public art up on the campus was so hideous. I’d post pics, but nobody would thank me. Tammy cooked a wonderful dinner.
Mike was over briefly – I gave him his prezzie – and then he left again without taking it with him. Oh well, he’ll have to come back for it.
I am having a lovely vacation.
Bonnie called yesterday and we had a very nice earflapping; she’s seen HORDES of relatives. She wryly commented that this was a good vacation not to take her spouse on; I bet he was happy to be left behind.
Tammy and I had a leisurely meal at the Himalayan Restaurant and then earflapped for about six hours and then crashed. Now we’re up, caffeinated and ready to go to a service at the new location of Beacon, which is the Gathering Place in Port Coquitlam. I am very much looking forward to it….
Now I have to give Bonnie a call because she is in town and we probably won’t get to meet because of the last minute nature of the visit, but I definitely want to see her if chance affords.
Now, my mother will kick my heinie if I talk about any of this in a sloppy, sentimental or overly dramatic way, but I think the sensitive viewer will admit that finding out that your mom has cancer is one of those things that makes you very preoccupied and introspective.
Having said that I must hasten to add a number of facts:
She’ll still probably live a long time. By the numbers – and we’re kind of funny that way, as a family, thinking about probabilities in as realistic a fashion as we can – it’s true.
She’s going to get excellent care.
She’s not scared, freaked out or lying on the bathroom floor washing tranks down with red wine, while my dad frantically beats on the door calling her name. Actually, I find it rather amusing to even suggest that she’d do such a thing, it’s so far away from what she’s like. In fact, I’d pay good money to watch her pretend to do that.
Everything that’s about to happen is going to be an inconvenience. That’s the way she’s treating it, and I’m going to line up behind her on that one, although you can bet your sweet ass I’ll be visiting her somewhat more frequently in future, now that my 8 months of navel gazing are done. I’ll be more comfortable knowing what the course of treatment is going to be, but I’m not going to waste two seconds feeling sorry for her or me. If you have her contact info you can fire off an email to her directly or you can post comments to this if you feel so inclined.
The waiting is hard. We’ll be better when there’s something to be done.
Some more differences between men and women…. in the brains department.
This is a rather disturbing image, and I’m not entirely sure why.
