This is a poem called the nap

The resonant horn blowing up from Sto:lo tells the city to rejoice in the sun
There’s fog downslope, lain across the last few metres of ground, and tugs avoiding
Each other.

The river is still high. You can sense the irritation of the animals set to breed.
All stark the colours and straight the lines, urgent business.
You want to get out of the woods.

Crows are nesting already. They trim the dogwood, their accustomed favourite
For all its benefits. How it, springing new under their depredations seems to
Visibly laugh as it blooms, and blooms, and most years blooms again,
To mock the crows, even as it roosts them,
an excellent host this morning against a muted sky.

For once the neighbours across the alley aren’t building things. Their silence
Unnerving and unexpected. I myself have been wailing. I fancy myself
Quite expert on the kazoo. If I flatter myself, I’m not asking anyone else to.
All of that’s a relief. I keep trying to attend to things but I see myself
Eating and sleeping a lot, and maybe that’s okay. If I stay awake I’ll be
Angry at the world or angry at myself, and those choices seem so bleak
Asleep is what I’ll be. It will be another beautiful day,
And I’ll sleep through it.

——-

er… this poem is a mood, it’s not real, I have plans for today and I’ve already run the dishes… I have strange ideas in my head again, I want to go back to a previously energized project. I have to fight this sloth – it’s a very big, very claw-y Ground Sloth, and the fact it’s extinct does not appear to be impairing its efforts to impede me! Have at you sir! Ow! I can’t continue to pretend I’m blogging, if that indeed is the best description of this onanistic activity, when I’m being assailed by a Ground Sloth the size of a mini bus and fucksticks did I mention his claws already because that really should be close to the top of the in box if you know what I mean, okay, bailing now, hope this fucker doesn’t show up in your reality because he went through a custom door frame like it was fucking balsa wood and fucker left two wheelbarrows of shit wish I was kidding in the house already. Being in confined spaces makes him shit, okay great I feel like Chuck Darwin now.

er… I’m not actually floridly psychotic now I was just riffing on how easy it is for a person with ADD to be seduced by another project. Why, what did you think I was doing?

feetsball

pOp and brO are going to watch the pinnacle of sportsball this weekend, yup Jeff is going to Victoria this am and will be back Mondayish. Just a reminder that most sports fans are still reeling that the Beagles, Bugles, Bungles and Bangles (as the Cincinnati Bengals are variously and humourously called) were never expected to get this far…

One little kudo this morning. I’ve been plugging away on stories a couple hundred words at a time. Very close to being finished Mary’s letter, hope to mail it today.

a middle aged white woman with medium length hair wears a long, long-sleeved black dress and bare feet

 

this dress, which I bought about ten years ago is now so full of holes and so washed out that I can only wear it as a housedress, is still one of my favourites. I do like cotton knit as a something to make garments from.

I would like to read a newspaper headline through your breast

Said the mammogram technician. Anyway, I have booked one for May, and it’s relatively local, so all is good.

Why isn't there a more comfortable mammogram procedure? - Harvard Health

Yesterday I did two loads of laundry, and thanks to Suzanne the bathrooms are shiny again. She’s settling into her new apartment at Kingsway and Gilley (SOOOO CLOSE) and is probably going to get Alex for an overnight soon, when her apartment’s all shoved back into corners. Katie helped her assemble all her computer-y stuff like a boss.

Slept FANTASTIC. Went to sleep just after 8, woke up around 4. I may not nap tidday, boys!!!

Jeff bought me a burger and shake from Wet Spot, and it was fantastic.

I am very close to being finished writing Mary’s letter but I think it should be at least another couple of pages longer.

No kudos this morning… what a sap I am. One must be motivated from the inside.

Recent uproars on the internet:

person 1 – I ain’t taking my shoes off in your skanky ass house cause your floors are heinous and I don’t give a shit about your cultural constructs appears magically on line. THERE ARE OPINIONS

(this is all part of the editors in NA on line venues looking for ways to shit on Asian people during the Olympics, how rude)

person 2 – I ain’t putting up with your skanky ass shoes in my house because you fucking people walk through broken glass and dogshit and then march all over my new laminate floors and you laugh when I point out the scratches

person 3 – (allegra) I brought orthotic slippers to help me keep my feet warm and keep my balance, if you prevent me from wearing my indoor slippers you’re an ableist fuck and I ain’t enterin’ your skanky ass house (I didn’t actually say this, I never found a venue, so here it is on my own site) and if your floors actually are dirty I won’t fucking care but if there is a shrine in the house of course I’ll take my fucking slippers off do you think I’m a clod, deaf to the songs of the gods?

Vocabulary review: skanky – cheap, dirty, slutty, low-rent, low-class; – ass – added for emphasis.

Got a comment hijacked by a comment bot on Reddit this morning. Didn’t even notice until someone picked it out of the crap pile for me. It’s one of the funniest lines I ever wrote so of course some witless algorithm steals it.

Jeff and I are continuing to enjoy Peacemaker (it is rude, it is funny, it is freaky, it is scary) and Leverage (well written, clips along, very very formulaic and light hearted, which compared to the grimdark we watch most of the rest of the time is GOOD).

Have some Ice from Iceland to go along with today’s fog. It was 5 degrees and rain blowing horizontal, if you wonder why it’s so dull, almost four years ago, May 2018.

Spoke to Peggy

She is doing about as well as expected. The sons can’t help her clean out the house as much as they like because they are householders with children themselves and it’s a lot.

However she’s lined up someone to do the clearout if they can’t, and she’s moved out one tenant (with sadness) and is moving in her son and daughter–in-common-law and their kids (with happiness but it won’t be for a few months) and a different other tenant instead (her house is beeg) so she’s moving downstairs (less stairs, better for her knee (and of course there’s a full bathroom downstairs so no problems there). I approve of all these shifts and changes. I can’t imagine rattling around a house that size without other people.

an elderly cis white woman stares vacantly, jaw hanging open, at the camera
an elderly cis white woman stares vacantly, jaw hanging open, at the camera

I sent this to my mother when she said she’ll just be staring at me the next time I visit.

I changed my bedding!

I restuffed my bolster after washing the cover and tied off the ends and now I am very comfy in bed; the weighted blanket is folded at the end of the bed so I can use it to raise my feet.

Suzanne came late due to my communication error but is here now beating bathrooms into shape.

My next assault on adulting consists of booking a mammogram. Ai Yi. Next doctor appointment February 23.

Suzanne is here today

I missed her. I’m continuing the clearout / reorg of my room. I have a nice long list of things to do today and after my absolutely wonderful night of sleep I think I’ll start with washing my bedding… Nope I’m going to make myself some brekky, eggs I think. Also reheated the fries from the fish and chips the other day. SO GOOD.

3 kudos in my mailbox this morning, all for the most recent story. It really landed well, the kudo to hit ratio is like 1 in 6, which is amazing (it usually ends up being 1 in 10 or 1 in 15). I’m tucked up in bed working through chapter subjects for the next story. I can already tell this new story is going to be book length, I have too many ideas. I want to finish the ‘tree man’ story, the story about the single dad with PTSD from being a respiratory technician during a pandemic, the story about the flooding in November, the alternate universe decameron style story, the massage therapist story, and I think there are three other incomplete ones but I can’t remember the hook.

Poetry is slowly stirring inside me. I’m either going to keep working on the Dark Book or write about allergies.

The siege of Ottawa continues. The siege of Coutts continues. The Ambassador Bridge Siege continues. Fuck ’em all, all those flag flying fools.

 

 

I put all my laundry away

Yes, you read that correctly – except the socks. The socks are going to need their own hour of effort and I will throw away the extras this time…. I have not actually put all my laundry away in several years so I want bunting dammit. I mean HUNG UP and IN DRAWERS.

Found a new restaurant, the Fraser Park Restaurant down on Byrne, which serves breakfast all day. Chris Campbell of the Burnaby Now mentioned it. The meals are MASSIVE; I’m impressed. It also opens super early and isn’t jam packed, and one can always take a walk afterward in the park. Just ate my second breakfast from that meal.

I have to pick up yet another medication today but hey hopefully I’ll stop blowing holes in my eyes, kidneys and brain thereby.  I’m off the diuretic, it didn’t help. God, I hope this works.

 

 

 

how does he plan to pull the pin

this is the picture of a man who threatened to blow up a casino with a grenade he had previously secreted up his ass…. The face of a man who conned a policeman into giving him a free prostate exam…

Brian Gower, 46, faces one count of making threats of conveying false information concerning an act of terrorism after the incident Friday morning.

According to police, Gower was arrested at The Strat Hotel and Casino after threatening to “blow the building up,” officers wrote in an arrest report.
by: David Charns

Posted: Feb 7, 2022 / 05:54 PM PST / Updated: Feb 7, 2022 / 11:21 PM PST

 

Got the absolute longest, sweetest and most detailed message about one of my fics this am… great way to start the day. Still no letter for Mary.

Got to feel chickadees landing on my hand yesterday. I am not supposed to feed wild birds in parks but I was feeding them ORGANIC Styrian raw unsalted sunflower seeds at 20 bucks a bag so NO COMPLAINTS AND THEN Paul and I got to watch seven mountain jays appear screeching out of the trees … in their breeding plumage AND THEN we got to see one of the local red-winged blackbirds from two meters away and the sun was on it as it grabbed millet from a stump and it too was it its breeding plumage, and the world is better than it was yesterday.

Came up with another fic idea, this one about a part time driving instructor and his socially awkward adult student. I think this one may be 25 -40 k… I have lots of ideas.

Speaking of lots of ideas Jarmo has tons of them now for businesses and products, now that he’s retired. Some of them sound massively wacky, but one in particular? THAT ONE I want to bankroll, because it’s an accessibility idea for computers…

two loads of laundry yesterday and fed Paul lunch of lentil soup and cole slaw. Got fish and chips delivered for supper.

Jeff and I are thinking of actually going out for breakfast, which is insane, but we got told about a new breakfast place by Chris Campbell at the Burnaby Now. I want him to stop being an editor and merely do restaurant reviews. If you go to r/Burnaby people hate on him so fucking much, but I love him because he has an honest and distinctive human voice and BELIEVE ME not all local journos do.

look at my STRUGGLE

IMAGINE having three out of five letters correct three times in a row, I thought I was gonna run amok.

Doctor appointment on zoom equivalent today. They send me four reminder notices, I guess somebody finally noticed I have ADD.

The shit on twitter about Ottawa is melting my mind. There are so many cops on the ground right now, from all over Ontario. The antivaxxers LOCKED THE DOORS ON A BUILDING AND SET FIRE TO IT.

Not much writing. Not much of anything. I was so exhausted and braindead yesterday I slept for most of it. Today I’ll do a couple of loads of laundry and finish that letter to auntie Mary, it’s been months.

In our desperate attempt to find a lighthearted show to watch (everything is SO FARKING GRIMDARK DESE DAYS) I prompted Jeff to find Leverage; it’s the same folks who did the Librarians (John Rogers, whom I followed on twitter for a while as He Is Funny but also a little too centrist for my taste LOL like I can expect a showrunner to be an anarchist). Anyway, it is a light hearted show and it’s like Mission Impossible crashed Burn Notice’s party while scraping content from White Collar. The characters are all likeable and the writing is sharp without being brittle, and Timothy Hutton is way better in it than I was expecting (subtle, reactive, sweet, it’s ver’ nice). Christian Kane continues to be every fangirl’s second favourite bi icon….

 

Convoy observation

Keith and I didn’t protest, because there wasn’t a fixed point for the convoy to protest at.

So here, not orderly, is what happened.

The convoy #IvermectinInsurrection gathered in Langley and then drove along Terminal to Main, where it met a crowd of very conspicuous bicyclists around 10:30, 11 am. For an hour the convoy was stalled as everyone milled around and there wasn’t anywhere for the convoy to peel off to. Then the fucking cops busted it up and let the convoy spread out all over downtown – this happened around noon, and at that point all of downtown Vancouver was crisscrossed with maskless white people in trucks with massive Canadian flags honking and driving up and down.

Around 2 pm about 400 of them were gathered at Burrard close to the VAG, where rhetorically challenged people tried to whip the crowd up. THAT WAS WHEN I GOT SCARED. I knew they meant me harm, and it was a foul feeling. I am so glad I went with Keith.

Keith and I went first to Terminal and Main and then to Granville Station to observe and report.

It was fucking sad, and I’m not in a good place today. We had lunch at Earl’s. Apparently I got 4000 steps in (so Keith tells me.)

He had an interview yesterday, hope he gets the job if he still wants it.

Quiet day

Ran the dishwasher and wrote 800 words and called a friend.

I’m thinking of a new fic with a bit of a twist. My English fanfic reader was BACK she even read the SF short story which is not finished. I should finish it, it has its moments. Normally I post finished stories only because my rage when I start a story on line and it isn’t finished is , the robot tale is the sole exception.

The #IvermectinInsurrection

They’re coming to town tomorrow, and I’m thinking of calling Keith and asking him what he thinks I should do about it.

A few more kudos this morning, always pleasant to wake up to. Still plugging away at a couple of stories.

Katie sent me a link to one of my favourite music videos and that cheered me up.

I sure hope I’m not getting polychondritis … every goddamned morning I wake up and my ears hurt. I mean it seems fairly obvious that I have some kind of weird stammering autoimmunity issues, with my hot joints and constant weird pains and blurpiness and ghastly overwrought pain and exhaustion response to any exercise but walking. Walking doesn’t present a problem 98 percent of the time.  I could also be the world’s most embarrassable hypochondriac. Oh well, off to the doc virtually on the 7th to get my HORDE OF SCRIPS renewed. Hopefully an adjustment, my blood pressure continues to be unacceptable despite the diuretics. Anyway I’m getting it in both ears, worse on the left.

Symptoms of relapsing polychondritis usually begin with the sudden onset of pain, tenderness and swelling of the cartilage of one or both ears. This inflammation may spread to the fleshy portion of the outer ear causing it to narrow. Attacks may last several days to weeks before subsiding.

 

from another website

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE SYMPTOMS?

Every RP patient is different – they may have some, but not all, of the following symptoms:

 

  • Ear pain, which may include swelling and redness check

  • Nose pain, which  may include swelling and redness check but nowhere near as bad

  • Throat pain, which may include change in voice, shortness of breath, dry cough nope or not much

  • Red, painful, swollen eyes not really; more likely familial dry eye and issues around blood sugar

  • Rib pain and tenderness fuck yeah all the gd time I’ve been complaining of it since my teens (literally whined about it until I got a free xray at the radiology dept I worked at and of course NADA)

  • Joint pain or swelling and this would be different from daily life how… KNEES, HANDS, ANKLES, TOES, HIPS, BACK, NECK, ELBOWS, BACK TO THE KNEES

  • General malaise, low grade fever yes to the former no to the latter