Allegra Sloman's blog

Just made myself a hot rum toddy. I am feeling much better now.

Take a gander at it while you can – archives will disappear on December 31st.

(2019 says not)

Off to Mike’s for dins tonight. Haven’t figured out the exact lineup of attendees – Paul has already declared that he’s going to stay home and do revision on the 340, seeing as how he’s actually going to be called upon to fix them in the New Year.

Gave Katie one of her Christmas presents early (she was whining about wanting to open something NOW) so I handed her the Chicken soup for the teenager diary and she promptly locked herself in her room for the day, only coming out to say such things as “What do you think is my best feature?” and OF COURSE I say physical or character, and she says, physical, and I say, because it’s a no brainer, her eyes. (This sentence deleted, because even though Katie doesn’t read my blog she’d flail the mucus out of me if I even hinted at it.) Then she goes back in her room and I can hear her cursing every once in a while because ‘this is really hard’. Then she comes out and asks for a definition of compassion, which really has me squirming until I come up with something half assed, and then she goes back into her room. Some powerful alchemy going on in there, can’t say what the results will be.

Keith, who each day drifts a little closer to being a Buddhist, is constantly yelling at me, usually while he’s playing war games on the computer, to practice a little compassion every day. This is in response to my ill mannered attempts to pound sense into my spouse. (I’m still verbally abusive, I’m just much more crabby about it than I used to be). He’s right of course, and if I can make my way through the thickets of pomo irony, I’m sure a more compassionate heart will be mine.

Keith just crawled outta bed and is taking in Cowboy Bebop, a gift from Who Else, Mike.

Okay, I’ve been putting this off for many weeks now, but I finally have to confess, and it’s crazy making.

My cat has asthma. I really wish this weren’t true, but we went to the vet and the vet gave her steroids in pill form, which she ingested without question in her food, and she promptly stopped making that god awful coughing like she was going to die sound. So then we spent an ungodly amount of money on her puffer. Yes, Kira has a freaking puffer, with a little kitty mask. Keith picks her up every night and administers her meds and then promptly feeds her (associating something nice with something unpleasant). Now I come from a universe where cats are a free good and they don’t cost anything to maintain except food. So the notion that I’m going to be coughing up, you’ll excuse the expression, money for the rest of her natural goes against all of my feelings about how cats are supposed to be. People who like cats – or love cats – or are obsessed about cats – will think I’m an inhuman beast. But really the only thing that concerns me is that Keith is gonna be gone for a week and I’m the one on puffer duty while he’s at my brother’s. Apparently a week of the new LOTR game and sitting in his underwear has more appeal than hanging around here, and who could blame him? Pic is a childhood memory.

Ah, feeling much better. The inaugural soak was really quite wonderfully self-indulgent and there were a lot of folks there. It was good to see the Dalai Jarmo and his lady wife and stepson; also in attendance, Trent, Tori, Mike of course and two of my krewe, being Paul and Keith. Got home about one and didn’t get out of bed until AFTER ten o’clock, which is like, miraculous, or something.

Had a warm human experience with a government employee this morning. For reasons that I REALLY don’t want to get into right now, I need my divorce decree. Jumping Jimmy Christmas, don’t get me started. This is a rant I will simply have to save for the stage; my blood pressure leaps up like a homesick angel when I think about it. Now that means I had to go to the government of Ontario webslight and try to find information. Got it wrong once, then went back to the webslight to find out that there was some not particularly small print and that led to the SEXIEST MAN’S VOICE IN HISTORY SAYING, “Hi. (short sexy pause, I’m not making this up). You ‘ave reach da Central Registry for Divorce. Please leave a message wit’ your name only and your telephone number, area code firs’, and we will return your call as soon as possible. Bonjour, vous avez rejoint…” etc. Honest to Murgatroyd, he sounded like he was recording a message as to which item of clothing I should remove first during our next tryst. I damned near dropped the phone. I wanted to play it for the kids but it was a toll call, and besides, they refused. Anyway, I carefully spelled by name and left my number – this was yesterday, mind – and some bushy tailed female of a certain age returned my call this morning, we had a pleasant and productive conversation and I now have my decree file number, which means I can get a copy. And don’t get me started about what I need it for, you’re gonna have to pay to get in for that story. Except my mom, you can have the story for free.

I know it’s going to strike a lot of you as weird, but I write this blog for two people – me and my mother. I know I have fans – they send me pix, some of which I post – but mostly I write this stuff for me and my Mom. Now I’m late, and my mother is suffering low blog pressure, so I’ll hit send and get going on “Allegra Avoids Christmas, opus 46”.

Sidney Redlitch… that name ring a bell? How about Collignon? He’s da guy who gets his apartment turned upside down by Amelie? The cat in Monty Python (‘he’s on the mend’)? Madmartigan from Willow when the fairy dust hits him? That feeling you get when somebody clearly enunciated one thing, but your nervous system forced you to hear something else? When the universe completely shuts down, restarts, and comes back as a man in blackface singing “Mammy?”

My charisma machine is in the shop, so I’ll have to do some thinking for a change. Sigh. I’m so unused to it. That is what scares the wee-hoo outta me about going back to school. Think? Or “that kind of think” again? I have been constructing a nest for my brain for what feels like a thousand years (some days) and the idea of forcing myself out of it causes me no end of grief.

And when I am not thinking about that, I’m thinking about my shoes. I am really emotionally attached to my shoes and I want to wear them everywhere, whether or not they are appropriate to the occasion, and really I should be wearing other shoes. But I am telling you, at my age, a comfortable pair of shoes is worth diamonds and rubies and all that carborundaceous gaudery that you’re supposed to want more than a decent pair of shoes because it’s inherently more “valuable”. I could be dead tomorrow – I want a comfortable pair of shoes today. Dadgum it. There’s a lot of other things I want today too, and with any luck I’ll get them.

Distributed hugs, TTR and biscotti at the office, with Samantha and Katie in tow, and then stepped into Loughell Mall long enough to realize I could feed two teenaged girls or get the Starcrud card tanked up again, and realized that people come before things so put food into the children, not that it was really food, and went home where I listened to Keith blether on most entertainingly about the game engine in the new Lord of the Rings game.

Now the dreaded Buffy has returned to my screen so we’re in Out of Mind Out of Sight right now. Knee high black boots and a pink on pink floral skirt and a white v neck tee? Okay, I’m confused. Now she’s entirely clad in black leather. That’s more the heck like it. And Angel just showed up, and he is smouldering as always. This sentence deleted but I will mime it on demand, in person.

What amazing bloody bone structure. Too bad he is too old to play my all time favourite hero, Francis Crawford of Lymond. Mwa ha ha. What a lad!

Okay, enough with the spooky coincidences. Saw a great blue heron coming down Cariboo before I went in to work. Yeah, means nothing to YOU. Then I get home and watch Born Yesterday with Paul and Keith (Keith got it from the library for us) and realize that on the DVD are theatrical trailers, and one of the trailers is for Bell Book and Candle, which means that the same day I get this weird kink to see something by Ernie Kovacs it turns up in my living room. Lawsamercy, I’m scared to think what I could imagine if I really put my back into it.

Actually, I know what I’m imagining right now, and it’s simply wonderful. Hope you’re all having as great a time as I.

Off to some ADD Self Help thingee downtown, to be arm candy for Paul I imagine (insert derisive snorts in THIS slot, and derisive laughs HERE please).

If I could say anything I liked to you / it would be about how you have brought / possibility into my life. Vistas / and unimaginable stretches of massed ideas. / A guided tour of the numinous / flashed from your eyes / not reflected / like burning cities seen across water. /

A tool forged and quenched, forged / and quenched. Some heat required / some exchange of blood and muscle / for the offering. /

As I bring my best to the temple / so I implore you, bring your best.

So we may be hallowed / So we may be blessed / Be fed and be the meal / may your bones feed your grandchildren.

I supPOSE if I don’t have anything to say, I shouldn’t attempt to say it. I mean, I can write a thousand words on damned near any subject without actually working too hard, so maybe I should just pick a topic, any topic, and stick with it.

How about a year end wrap up?

Let’s see. Almost a year has gone by during which I haven’t got enough sleep. You will note that my most common Topic is enough sleep, or not enough sleep. And that’s because thanks to my spouse’s mental state and the multitude of joys that is perimenopause, I have not been gettin’ enough shut eye. I’ve tried going to bed earlier, staying up all night, etc., and the dreaded ‘getting enough exercise’ but no dice. I also have RLS, Restless Leg Syndrome, don’t you know, so I kick and jump during the night; and I snore like the creaks of a moving ship, and I thrash, sweat, and grind my teeth like a cute little rock crusher.

You would think that this would be enough to make Paul leap up and say “I am sleeping with a fiend in human form – begone, vile spirit, and trouble me no more!!!” but instead when I ask him what my snores sound like, he says, “I find it oddly comforting.” He sounds sincere and one thing I’ve learned about Paul after 25 very odd years is that he’ll be reticent about his own opinion but he won’t shame himself by lying about it.

It all becomes worthwhile when we (with any luck) wordlessly snuggle the next morning. In the cold grey before dawn, all that skin is like magick armour. Mind you if Paul starts talking the majick disappears pretty fast, as it’s usually a variant on the usual where did we go wrong lament. But in the meantime, I’m not getting enough sleep and my cognitive functioning, always a mixed and variable entity, is completely shot to the place where, in the wonderful words of Rudyard Kipling “the dead crabs go”.

Besides, I really don’t think I’m doing all that bad these days. I’m not nearly as crabby about life but THAT MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE HOT TUB.

Yes, indeed, received the gladsome news that Mike’s hot tub is up, running and able to receive guests; tonight marks the night of the First Annual Post Winter Solstice Soak. Calloo callay, etc. etc. with a yip yip yip arrrooooooo thrown in on the side. Happiness is a friend with a hot tub.

What else happened this year. Well, there was a fair amount of death this year. I guess I’m doing a good job of ignoring anything that doesn’t smite me in the phyz; but I did the eulogy at my grandmother’s funeral and it’s a good thing somebody with some public speaking skills got up there and did something, because the minister blasted through the service as if he was half an hour late for a (deleted… it was funny, but only to me). And I did the Order of Service for Rev Katie’s installation (whip out the Makita! we’re gonna install us a minister!). And I gave a couple of sermons, and work got a whole lot better, and Keith got his green belt, and Paul seems to be finally pulling out of his depression, and we didn’t have to sell the house, and he’s still working for Air Canada, and Katie didn’t go to jail for assaulting that kid, and the next line deleted, and she didn’t get killed or permanently damaged by the car accident, and she’s not drinking and even I’ve reduced my alcohol consumption (why sometimes I go days without drinking a beer, and a lot of the time I’m only having one beer. Tonight is NOT going to be one of those nights. I’ll need beer to fortify myself against seeing certain people naked, and I don’t mean that in a bad way).

I signed up for a comedy course and I have investigated where all the open mikes are in town (my word, but there are a lot of them).

This next paragraph was a self directed diatribe about my weight. I reread it, it bored me, I deleted it.

Now I must do the Laundry that Oozed Across the Bedroom Floor, dejunk enough of this house to get Paul to stand down from the Mental Health Red Alert, buy beer for this evening, sweet talk Paul into buying a phone for Katie, buy a book for my brother, pack off some cookies for Tam Tam, boot Katie’s ass outta bed, cure cancer, formulate and enforce world peace and go dancing with the Dalai Lama. A modest enough plan, and I’ve got hours and hours to do it in.

Pic is something random.

Went for a brisk walk down to Dinosaur Rock with Keith and Paul.

After we got back Katie called and I went to fetch her from the station, and she told me about all the things that she and her non bf (with whom she’s been hanging for a day) have been up to. They had their first fight.

ah, young love.

pic is something random. (I believe taken from the pier at Iona Beach at dusk in the autumn)

Where the scientists post their news.

One of my rave fave sites, filled with wonder and bizarreness, and occasionally, even, good news.

Mt. St Helens Cam

Not much there at the moment, but one of my favourite things to do of an evening is visit the site and see how big the hot spot is. It seems to get bigger every day.

Here’s a link to la Wonkette

She is completely disgusting – but you have to admire somebody who posts links to their most fervent detractors. I wouldn’t have known about Michelle Malkin if I didn’t read Wonkette. Ana Marie is my heroine, although not my role model, as I am several years from commercializing my site, and I’ll be doing it rather differently than she did. If you’re feeling *really* gossipy and raunchy check out the sib sites Gawker and Defamer. What would we do without Molly Ivins?

My all time fave political columnist, and she writes hella books, too.

My mom’s an Ophiuchius!!! That explains it.

Please, don’t knowbody tell me that astrology is bogus, I already know. However, there is a growing mountain of data to suggest that your birth month actually does have a statistical correlation to the likelihood of getting certain ailments, so it’s not like the astrologers are totally wrong, it’s just they are attributing what they see to the wrong cause. They are looking up at the stars, but the answer is in our jeans.

Mad Cow News

I notice the major US media are staying away from this one. I know somebody who’s married to a meat inspector, and she says that the reason we found Mad Cow in Canada is because we were looking for it. Don’t eat cow. I take some comfort in knowing that there is actually a sizable chunk of the gene pool that is resistant to prions. After all, prions have been around for a while, as have been cows and their ancestors – we had to have bred our way around that one at least among the cattle eating people.

Fark

Once again, a sign that I have neither taste nor shame.

From the WildernessThe premier conspiracy site of the internet, in my opinion. Mike Ruppert is my kind of nutbar, and Gary Webb’s suicide has turned the heat up at the site a notch. Gary Webb was a Pulitzer prize winning journalist who lost everything as a consequence of trying to pin drug activities on the CIA. Now, the CIA ADMITTED what they had done, but the mainstream media in the US refused to report it (I recollect it was reported in Canada, but we live in a different reality groove up here.) Anyway, lost house lost kids lost job and shot himself. His funeral was December 18th. If you can read the transcript of his Oregon speech (turns up on a number of links) I highly recommend it, and as a memorial it’s wonderful. Further to that:

Narco News.

Who needs conspiracies?

Really nice peace and prayer flags

Check here every Thursday, if you have a sound card

but they are there.

Katie phoned last night after we crashed to say that she was staying at the non bf’s. Wonder how long this charade will last?

Body still ringing like a gong from the labyrinth and the singing yesterday. Don’t normally feel like this, it’s very weird.

Writing exercise this morning was “Write what you didn’t say.” I wrote something flippant about how I could write a universe about what I didn’t say, and then THIS popped out (with some edits for tightness).

To have your gaze fall on me is to breathe light.

To share words with you is to risk annihilation.

At any time your words may crumple up my world

like a bad first draft.

You have a knife at your belt

which is sharper than the edge of the unseen.

Proof, intent, will and intellect, all irrelevant,

for among them like a hunter is desire.

Paul said, go post it and I’ll make you some tea.

He’s all happy because the great Eye of Sauron fell upon him at work, and he served his master well. In other news, he had an hour to get an IFE system running (Montreal gave him a one hour delay) and he DID it. Maybe it’s not such a big deal compared to airworthiness items but if you’re going to Heathrow or Peking from Vancouver you want the frikkin’ cabin entertainment system working! Paul rocks, I publicly declare it.

Mike says hot tub will be working for New Years; keep your little appendages crossed.

Chung man sent me a Christmas party pic. Paul and I look great (okay, Paul looks great, and I am neither eating nor drinking so I can’t complain), but I can’t post it because of the two other people in the pic. Deb is actually a stunningly gorgeous creature and in this pic she looks like a Buffy outtake, and Rob of Nine has had his head cloven in twain. Since it’s MEAN to post bad pix without permission, I’ll have to deal with it. Once I edit it, and maybe ‘shop the platoon of beer bottles in front of me into another plane of existence, I’ll post it. The pix I took at the party suck, so I am not tempted to post them.

 

Before we went to the concert at the chapel, we walked the labyrinth. Scoff if you like, but it’s a very peaceful and spiritual place. I walked the inbound circuits palms up, and stayed in the centre for a moment, and then walked out remembering just at the first turn that I was supposed to be walking palms down for the outbound circuits. So I turned my palms over and a river of sparks and water flowed down my arms and bounced off the ground like raindrops (obviously that’s NOT what happened, but I’m trying to hint at the sensation). My chest filled with pain – a nice pain, the kind you get when you see somebody you love after a long absence, and I started to weep. I took a deep breath and kept walking, palms down, and tears flowed until I found broken glass on the path, so I picked it up, and after that I felt quite a bit calmer. Keith found some more glass after that, and I was very glad we found it before he stepped in it, as he chose to walk the path barefoot.

For a portion of the time we walked the labyrinth, a dog was howling in time and in harmony with a chainsaw. Unbelievably eerie sound, but after a while you just ignore it and keep walking.

Then brunch at the Tuscan whatever with Keith. Then taking a wrong turn and driving around like a fool until I found my way to the chapel 5 minutes before festivities commenced. Keith pounced on two seats together and we sat back and enjoyed a stupendous concert with three singalong carols.

Now I have to go get Paul from work…. more later.

Chor Leone is the premier men’s chorus here in Vancouver, and I’m going this afternoon with my eldest and the son of one of the men in the choir, who’s a buddy of Paul’s. Hope that’s all straight. We have to go early, and I am going to use the opportunity to go to the Labyrinth at Xenia on Bowen Island. Must remember to pack camera.

I am writing porn again! That more than anything else should tell you about my mood. Read it to Paul. He only laughed once when he was supposed to and he snorted when he wasn’t supposed to… yes I know, it’s a bizarre thing to write soft core porn that’s supposed to be funny, but there you go. If there’s anything with more potential for complete and lung squeezing embarrassment than sex, it’s a kind of sex you didn’t know about before. However I’m not into the humour of embarrassment (much) so most of the humour has to do with the heroic efforts of a band of devotees to get the lead female character, ten guesses who that might be, to just shut up for a minute, or several.

I remember telling a friend that I love laughing in bed and she said she’s learned not to. I had to have that explained to me. That’s how stupid I am!

Or, and you can take this any way you like, any person foolish enough to want to get close to me BETTER have a sense of humour, and not be afraid ta unlimber it as the occasion may require.

In the best circumstances, I get to share the stories I write with the person who’s the object of the stories… sigh, the good old days … but that leaves me with freaking MOUNTAINS of stories that I will never be able to publish, at least not until…. No, drop it like it’s hot. Lean back. At last count I have twenty of these sick little puppies squirming around. I am extremely happy though, because one of the best stories I ever wrote MAGICALLY REAPPEARED recently (actually it was stuck on the end of another story so I didn’t realize I’d never lost it). I re-read it with great happiness, because in the last two paragraphs is a line that made me whoop with laughter when I saw it. I just wrote an entire paragraph in the hopes that I could somehow Disnefy it, but it didn’t work, so you’ll hafta trust me.

Speaking of soft core, check out liegirls.com. It is one of the narstiest pieces of political humour I have seen in quite a while, heard about it thanks to the News Dissector. The English accent of one of the girls is really jarring until you realize that it is part of the shtick…. you know, the coalition of the willing and don’t forget Poland.

I love Canada. Six hundred women came to the land of the beaver last year because of our horrific shortage of exotic dancers.

Aren’t you glad I didn’t post a picture? In my current mood I might be posting those ‘art’ pix I had done of myself when I was 21. (Brother James in Ottawa is screaming and clapping his hands over his eyes right about now – that thin reedy wail… can’t you hear it?).

I give this advice all the time, and I’ll give it again. If you think you can secure them, get naked pictures of yourself when you are in your early twenties. I have never ever regretted doing it. At the time I thought I was uggggly. Jumping Jimmy Christmas, I look at em now and go that girl was hotter than a compressor stall. But I figured my then husband would want them.

As a pro porn feminist, I have a horrific confession to make, one that will make most of my male readers want to KILL ME. I hardly ever think about this dark blot on my past, but I am truly contrite and if I could fire myself back into a time machine, I would never ever have done it. I would have found some more humane way of dealing with it or I would have shut up.

In my defense, I must say that I was the victim of a pre pro porn feminist mentality. Because, to quote Gord Downie “She says, Why are you partial to that Playboy con? When you can see me naked anytime you want?”

I figured that one live me was worth more than, ow, I don’t even want to type this, I am compelled, o master stop the pain,

Every Playboy published up until 1979. All of them, stapled navels and all.

I made my first husband get rid of his Playboys. Can you believe it? Can you understand why I can never run for public office? Most Canadian men would read this and go, sorry, you’ll never pass MY background check, ya silly twink. Okay, enough true confessions. I’ll say one last thing in my defense. They took up a LOT of room and it was a bachelor apartment. But that’s a women’s excuse, so I expect no mercy from the men who used to be my friends.

But I do stand up in support of Romanian lap dancers (I just typed tap dancers!) so maybe I will survive this confession. Isn’t a goil allowed to smarten up?