complaints, kudos, complaints, lists

Nothing to complain of regarding Alex. Some mornings he wants to cuddle, other mornings he wants to go downstairs. Dropped him off in time for school, thought about going to Lordco because one of the Echo’s wiper blades flung itself off and lodged itself so firmly under the other wiper blade that I could still use it but it stuck to the car. This is the kind of luck I always get issued; sloppy but welcome.

Weather seasonal, rainy, not too cold.

Later this morning I have to go to Thornebridge, roust the wasband and tell him his girlfriend’s been admitted to hospital in Seattle after taking the wrong medication for a cold. She has a history of absolutely horrific, interpersonally damaging and completely avoidable meltdowns, usually thanks to hospitals ignoring her when she provides them with a list of what she reacts to. Everyone is calling COVID a cold now I see. I am not saying I hope Janice ups and dies, after all, I wrote “Invective” for her and I always have a soft spot for anyone who provides me with the impulse to compose, I just fail to see why I have to be all tenderhearted about the woman who brazenly busted up a marriage that I didn’t – as it turns out – want to stay in. Alan’s role in all of that got called out very close to the beginning of the end by Glenn, so HI GLENN THE SHIT CONTINUES BUD, same planet different day. So I acknowledge that I’m …. conflicted …. possibly hypocritical …. definitely snarky. Fuck it, have to go to Thornebridge. Nobody OF COURSE can raise Paul on the phone and I’m closest. I told him to go to Strong because memory care is a seamless transition, but the sisters put him in Thornebridge and those of us close to the problem get to watch him decompensate expensively. I loved that man far more than I can say and I wrote songs and poems and stories for him and now I’m wild with what a sting love has at the far end of that long tail.

almost 100 reads on the last story and ten kudos. Only one comment, sigh, but it was a beaut and I shared it with mOm.

This morning I on the downlow shared my distaste for an extremely popular sf/sff novel by agreeing with a poster “so polarizing I don’t have a public opinion about it’ so that’s as subtle as you get. After all, Canadian authors are supposed to close ranks – LOL: define Canadian, I’ll wait.

Jeff TOUCHED the dryer and it started working. Kiss pOp for me mother, he obviously passed the gift down. I’ll probably break it again when I go to load it up in a minute.

Must empty dishwasher.

 

 

Peaceful morning

Buster came out, butted Alex’s shin with his head, and in general greeted him. It was a scattershot day yesterday but in general it worked out okay.

I’d love to do a complete teardown on how I get Alex to and from school BUT OF COURSE this is the internet and I do not want to give total strangers access to how I move an 8 year old around.  He will be 9 in less than two weeks. Isn’t it amazing how fast they grow.

HIS MOTHER SUPPLIED WEEKS WORTH OF SCHNACKEROOS

So many snacks.

Cheese, fruit, yogurt drinks, cookies. A panoply of snackertude.

Now to run the dishwasher so there are plates to serve them on lol.

Writing is on the back burner. I have a con to rehearse for!! I only have 45 more days!! That’s right, November 10-12th I will be at the fully masked con Orycon 43 in Portland! It’s a gencon not a filkcon but there are LOTS of filkers in Portland. So looking forward to it!

In the market for singing masks now.

Other worlds

Off in my own little one this morning, writing mush, just heartfelt mush for Brad and Omar. There are more ways to say I love you than there are stars in the universe. If it were not so we would not keep proving it, we lovers.

There’s no cream, so I’m eventually going to have tea. I’ve already played with Buster and brushed him, gotten some 90 Micron into me, written four hundred new words, had an entirely pain-free morning widdle – which only happens about 30 percent of the time so hey, we must grab these little happinesses as they go by is this not merely a truism but a mechanism by which daily life may in practical terms be a-accomplished?  she stammered… the keyboard barfed up an a so I stuck a hyphen in there and called it done.

I can go from piss to philosophy in seconds, so, do not try me, world! I have the words to roll you back again.

I find myself very blank and unthinking in most ways though. I am pressed on all sides by anxiety, and it is not all my own. So I think this feeling of blankness is an accommodation; if I am not reactive I won’t be making as much trouble. Of course, past a certain point, absence from human affairs starts taking you backward. I’ve spent my whole life, literally my whole life, trying not ‘to have it all’ but ‘to have all that I could reasonably attain without destroying myself as a creative being’, which involves a lot of decisions.

Having children never seemed like a decision. It was ordained. I felt it then, I felt it again as I typed it. The horror of childrearing and bearing that many modern women feel now is alien to me, but not anathema. I was among the last women who didn’t have reproductively impactful amounts of forever chemicals in my body during my pregnancies, so I remove myself from the pool of people who get judgy on modern women not wanting to have babies.  I have always been vocal in my support of the childless by choice. I understand the demographic arguments against the falling birth rate, and I reject them as propertarian and against self-interest (in planetary capacity terms). If I as a science fiction writer can posit three or four different social responses to a globally crashed birth rate (which is inescapable for reasons of deteriorated human health), each with their costs and benefits, how many responses can a whole nest of human civilizations come up with, depending on how resources are deployed? I still have hope, despite the countability of life.

Poems and songs turn over in my belly. something in there is wrathful, and something sad

it’s just gas

my brother said

Emotionally charged

Yeah, it was a day of emotionally charged phone calls. May it all be well. It was a relief candidly to talk to Dave D on the phone and just be shooting the shit about commonplaces.

Alex was here and we recorded (I managed to record me farting and Alex’s subsequent howl of outrage was so funny I put it all on loop and then the two of us nearly died laughing.) We never did manage to get down the road to Paul’s.

Lovely night of sleep, I have my mug of tea  and a light repast and my marching orders for the day (call landlord about the dryer again) and Alex’s calendar for next week (early dismissal on Wednesday!)

Later:

533 words on Yaks are Not Admitted Past This Point

Jeff will be home sometime this afternoon.

 

 

sorry I missed a post yesterday

Good thing I won’t have to do this – being this blog-  more in a couple of months. Yup, After November 16th it will be THE PRIVATE DIGEST OF ALLEGRA SLOMAN, sent specifically to you for your deletion, consumption, or hoarding for later, being a week’s worth of my ramblings, including whatever I’ve been writing in terms of fiction as a subsection ALWAYS WITH TRIGGER WARNINGS. I mean, if you don’t want to read smut, you would want a warning. If I’m never leaving the house I might as well be able to prove I’ve been busy, even if it’s for such a low life enterprise. You’ll even get my game scores so you can track my cognitive decline, what could be more exciting.

Alex continues to be wonderful. He got to interact with his other Grammy yesterday because SUZANNE was here and the enshinening happened, and she got emailed the entire ms for Totally Boned.

I get him for the whole day today. Childcare for an ADD family involves having the child tell you about the PRO-D day because his mom forgot. Katie is BUSY past ENDURANCE these days. She was apologetic and Suzanne and she and I stood on the front stoop laughing and hollering like trailer trash while two men of colour glared at us from across the street. White women, I tell ya. Anyway I’m going to take him

In other ‘that side of the family’ news, Unca Steve got two tags this year, one for a moose and one for an elk. (Dax is up there hunting with him right now which will also partly account for Katie’s state, since he pulls weight at home.) Anyway another hunter had a moose tag and gave up in disgust and gave the tag to Unca Steve and Steve bagged one and will get a cut of the carcass. (Unca Steve is a “this harvested animal will be consumed as food” kind of hunter.) So he got three tags for the price of two and his reputation as the family Nimrod is secure. (in the old as opposed to the cartoon sense of the word.)

Completed my rewatch of S1 GOmens but have not watched anything else since Jeff departed.

One of my music fans messaged me yesterday about a song, to tell me it meant a lot to him, and that was …. honestly so sweet and welcome.

Intelligent readers will skip the next paragraph / wall of blithering text. re fanfic.

The new Good Omens fanfic is posted on A03. I am going to retire the rest of the destiel fic I was working on (we’re talking a number of words not unadjacent to 300K of work, if I’m including the 200K unfinished doorstop ‘The Sword That Cries ‘Ruin!” which has the single best Own Character from all my fanfic, in my view, an ancient creature representing herself as a woman (she’s actually a sentient tree, of a species with a heritage older than earth because she’s ‘not from around here’ and she falls in love with Sam and he has to bury her in the ground so she doesn’t die because of her species’ life cycle, and it’s just so tragic and amazing and sad and glorious and beautiful and the smut I wrote about their goodbye tryst (have sex with me now and bury in the morning LOL) is so pure and awesome and then she wakes up twenty years later after her transformation and, because Dean’s been peeing on her grave (he HATES HER thinks she RUINED SAM’S LIFE) every time he’s at the bunker to visit Sam, when she wakes up she’s a foot taller. the explanation for this is also molto hilarious. I further wrote a crapstack of stuff about the hunter kids Cas and Dean adopt, one of whom takes on Crowley IN HELL and bests him (different Crowley – there’s a Crowley in Supernatural AND Good Omens.) Although it has been pointed out in tumblr that a) both Crowleys USE THE SAME THRONE – the side by side pics are HILARIOUS) AND B) AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, THE SIGIL IN THE CENTRE OF THE CIRCLE THAT AZIRAPHALE WARDS IN S1 IS A COMPLETELY MADE UP SIGIL FROM SUPERNATURAL – NOT EVEN ENOCHIAN – which according to rumour ‘was not deliberate’ which is the single funniest thing I have ever heard in my life about crossover media, whether or NOT IT’S TRUE.  AND in ‘Ruin’ THERE IS A TALKING CAT NAMED FELIS CATUS WHO IS ACTUALLY AN ALIEN WITCH’S FAMILIAR AND GETS HIMSELF PREGNANT AND GIVES BIRTH TO SENTIENT CATS i mean this story has damned close to every wacky witch trope I could jam down its gullet and parts of it are so terrifying and hilarious it’s among the best I ever wrote, AND THERE’S A LOT OF HIGHLY TECHNICAL B&D SEX BETWEEN CAS AND DEAN AND DISCUSSIONS ABOUT HOW IT’S HARD TO HAVE A GOOD DOM SUB RELATIONSHIP WHEN YOU’VE GOT TEENAGERS CRAWLING IN AND OUT OF YOUR HOUSE DAY AND NIGHT). Yeah. You can understand why I need 200K words for that.                                           BUT I was thinking of just plain deleting it all – good and bad – off Scrivener as a sacrifice to Erato, but who knows, maybe the sparkle will come back. I’m only four or five thousand words from the end of ‘Ruin’ but I can’t bring myself to unfray the knot.

I believe I’ll enjoy writing Brad and Omar stories more, anyway. I love my lively lads. They’re on a farm in Eastern Ontario right now, thinking about putting up a yurt. And yaks. Brad’s going to have a ‘newborn yak adventure’.

 

 

 

 

Just put in a private post

I had some whining, and didn’t make it public, isn’t that kind of me?

Dryer has quit. It has got to be a quarter century old so I’m not having a problem with that. I am going to have a problem calling the landlady, as she is hard of hearing.

Alex is here, watching his tablet and enjoying a glass of milk and a small snack.

I’m going to try to get by with less coffee. So the leftover cup this morning will be all. sigh unhappy sigh.

RAIN YAY fire hazard drops at least in the city, although we need a month of steady soaking before we’re safe again. Good air today too, which is good for Alex and his asthma.

I have an absolutely lovely idea for my Brad and Omar story. It’s not lovely in detail in fact it involves pain, but it’s another opportunity for Brad to learn how to be a good partner and for Omar to ACCEPT HELP rather than tough everything out on his own so it should have the right combination of angst, schmaltz and praxis that seems to be my jam.

WHICH LED TO A HALF HOUR OF ME FUCKING AROUND WITH THIS:

 

regular day

Did a little shop with Alex after school to get some SCHNAX into the house.

Brief aside. For the CHEESE TAX.

I am awake far too early. Miss Jeff. Forgot to lock the cat door yesterday and haven’t seen Buster since supper, I’ll update once he’s up / home. Started rewatching Good Omens S1 because I’m a dolt.

Apparently there were immense streamers of northern lights across the north shore mountains last night.

mOm’s given me her marching orders with respect to the next Brad and Omar story, which will have YAKS. I will take some time to ruminate and then start writing again.

Next order of biz coffee.

 

finnegan beginegan

Because I am a complete compulsive graphomanic fool, I have commenced working on additional Brad and Omar stories. They will be assembled into my next book, which will be 10 or 12, 3000-12000 word stories continuing on in the Brad and Omar universe. (Dave already teased me that I might do this so yes you guessed right congrats sir!) This project is called “Matching Shorts: A Brad & Omar Collection”. It will cover the first couple of years after the events in Guyana.

I get Alex again this week. It’s such a privilege. It’s possible Jeff will be off to Victoria at some point soon to provide some assistance to mOm and pOp.

 

 

Dishwasher emptied, sink zero

Kitchen’s tidier than it’s been ages, lol, it won’t stay that way alas.

Couldn’t get the wordle this morning, and given that the word was MUSIC I’m feeling right pissed off.

I’ve always thought I could tell the good ones from the bad ones but good god Russell Brand is a turd. I had something nice to say about him in 2013 but I edited that to update my blog.

no heroes only comrades

Survey Sunday asks: How be ye on this fair day!?

It’s done

My screwball thriller romcom “Totally Boned” is complete. Many will find the ending abrupt. I’m very pleased with it. I wrote it so that I could introduce a number of contemporary romance tropes and updates to my mother, since she introduced me to the romance genre in the first place, plus Omar and Brad just would not stop telling me what to do, and the final line of the story is the starting line for ANOTHER romance, so …

104K words give or take. Also sent to Dave.

I feel absolutely wonderful. Not everything in my life is great right now, and I forgot to wish Paul a happy 74th birthday. But honestly this is the best I’ve felt in weeks. I’m going to try to have the best day possible. Starting with emptying the dishwasher and getting to sink zero, I reckon.

concern

I spoke to Keith earlier, he’s doing okay.

Alex is here, I just made him cake in a cup. I told him he only gets it on Friday now, and a different after school snack the rest of the week.

Paul’s comms problems continue. He can be reliably gotten on his home phone thank goodness.

BUSTER CAME OUT AND APPROACHED ALEX. Alex got a chance to give him some treats to cement the acquaintance.

Ren is at a sleepover at Alex’s new place. Alex was thrilled; earlier in the day he thought he wasn’t coming and he was in the car when Katie pulled up!

pOp is doing better, possibly needs to eat some more.

 

Good morning!

Alex was let in by Grunkle Jeff this am, I was so TIRED from getting up at midnight and then NOT being able to fall back asleep so that was embarrassing, kid standing on the stoop wondering where the hell I am.

We played on the Kaossilator and on various musical instruments this morning so I’m not just playing on my computer and sitting next to him all the time I’ll have you know!

Spoke to Keith, he saw Paul yesterday and things are not cool on the phone front but we knew that.

Leo was 80 this week. Congratulations, revered family elder!

1422 words yesterday. Only 150 so far.

Laundry from yesterday is folded and put away.

Saw Suzanne briefly yesterday for tax and computer stuff with Jeff, it was lovely to see her and she recounted cleaning Keith and Ben’s apartment for the first time and that was definitely funny and not repeatable.

I end this with a heartfelt wish for the early amelioration of the conditions of my pOp and Ontie Mary.