One Thousand and One Nights

the bathroom reno post

2012-01-23T21:22:00.006-06:00

So we found this guy who does home renos, and contracted him to fix our bathroom, install the new bathtub, move the toilet & sink. Finding someone who does this kind of work, knows what he's doing, and then does it -- well they're very rare, as I'm sure you all know. This guy is competent, knows what's what -- that's the good part of this post.

Then we bought that bathtub, which costs a ton, and weighs a ton, too. That was the first bit of pain. To get it in the house, and up the stairs took four guys. I was at work that day, thank heavens.

But we figured that the floor in the bathroom should be reinforced before the new tub was installed -- makes sense, right? And Charlie (the reno guy) agreed. So he began ripping up floor boards.

Meh. The rest of the week went something like: Charlie rips out more of the walls, finds more stuff that wasn't done properly in the first place and needs fixing. In the pictures, you can see the new joists he's added, plus a support that he has holding things up right now. He has to put a new beam across the doorways which lead from the living room to the kitchen & basement. This beam will be right under the head of the stairs; a place where you would particularly think that good solid support was crucial.

"How it's stayed up there all this time I don't know," he said.

Not that I'm complaining about the work getting done, you understand. Just depressed about the necessity for it.

Do what they say, say what you mean
One thing leads to another
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long
But then one thing leads to another.

--The Fixx, One Thing Leads to Another

organize

2012-01-17T09:25:00.005-06:00

I need a bigger house -- much bigger -- then I wouldn't have so much trouble fitting all my stuff in it, and it would be easier to get organized.

Time to buy lottery tickets.

I remember one of my periodic attempts to get a handle on the junk in my life. We were living in that apartment on Spadina, and I was trying to find places for everything in the kitchen, and develop the habit of putting things in their predestined places. The Empress would have been 6 or 7ish, I think.

"We're really trying to keep everything in the right place, right, Mum?" she asked in that way kids do when they've spotted a pattern in life, and are trying to understand why it's there.

"Right," I agreed, and I may or may not have muttered under my breath, "We'll see how long I can keep it up this time."

This past Sunday, I was visiting over at the Empress' s and remarked that I had too much to do (probably said in a whiny voice.) The Empress, something of an organizational ninja these days said I should try the Household Scrum method. (I have a feeling there should be a TM after that.) I said something about being more the sort of person who makes a To Do list, then rewards myself with a nap. What I meant was that for me, there is such a thing as too much organizing -- all too often, the organizing becomes a means for putting off the doing.

There are two areas where I fall down in the getting things done category: 1) stick-to-itiveness and 2) just taking that first step. If you have those two steps mistressed, then a method like Household Scrum will make you more productive. If one cannot reliably perform those two steps, then anything more complex is a waste of time.

***

In the next few days I hope to have a post about the continuing Reno Saga -- Bathroom Edition. (As an aside, we finally got all the drywall up in the master bedroom -- still has to be mudded and sanded and painted, but still. Good on us.) I've always had a bit of a phobia about bathtubs falling through floors when I'm in them. Turns out that when I was living in that house, that fear wasn't so far fetched. And by that I mean, we need a new floor in our bathroom.

Novel gave me a Kobo Vox for Christmas. Yesterday I discovered that Indigo has most of Georgette Heyer's novels as ebooks. Last night at work I ignored the biography of Catherine the Great that I had bought, and instead read The Quiet Gentleman.

Tuesday afternoon is never ending
Wednesday morning papers didn't come
Thursday night your stocking needed mending
See how they run

Lady Madonna, children at your feet
Wonder how you manage to make ends meet.

--The Beatles, Lady Madonna

the proof of the pudding

2012-01-12T14:56:00.004-06:00

She drove a white hummer.

She was in her late 30s to early 40s; she wore expensive looking clothes, although her taste was uninspired, had applied her make up with a heavy hand that morning. She leaned in confidentially and said, "I want to ask a question. Do you have parking security?"

Um hm, I admitted, noncommittally.

"Well, you might want to let them know -- there's a guy over there -- a native guy, and he's looking in the windows of cars."

I thanked her for her concern, assured her I would take care of it, and sent her on her way.

What I wanted to say was: "I don't mean to sound racist, Ma'am, but I can't help but notice that you're white and well off. Why would I take your word about anything, much less about what a person of aboriginal descent was doing? You people are such liars."

'Race' is such a strange concept when you think about it.

Later, waiting for a bus home, I made change for a young man who wanted to take the bus, but only had a fiver and didn't want to walk to the nearest store (two blocks away on a blustery day) for change. It will get you good karma, he murmured as I dug in my purse. Well, I needed some of that, so I found him two toonies and a loonie. It got me pondering exactly what good karma would look like in this day and age? What kind of good karma would $5 of change buy me? I think we can assume that anyone born in North America in the 20th or 21st centuries starts off with a shit load of good karma.

Saskatoon isn't a convenient place to be racist these days. The boom has made us an extremely multi-racial city, people from all over the world. I personally love it, but I imagine that it doesn't sit so well with some people.

What really annoyed me about the Lady in the Hummer was that she was such a fockin' stereotype. Middle class and well meaning and probably if you asked her she would deny that she was racist. No, no, I'm not racist, it's just that--

I try not to be a bigot, but I will admit to a strong antipathy toward people driving Hummers.

I made chocolate cookies last night. When I was little, my mother used to make something called chocolate drop cookies which were my ideal cookie. When I was leaving home I asked her for the recipe, but she said it was in her head and she didn't think she could reproduce it. Or some such nonsense.

Years later, I happened upon a recipe by that name in one of her old cook books, so I made it. I don't think it's the exact recipe that she made; my cookies are dryer than I remember hers being, and not as rich. Maybe she added some oil, or something. Even so, I quite like them (although at least one of my granddaughters turned up her nose at them. Pretty sure the middle grandkid thinks I'm a terrible cook). This time I made them with stevia, which is a sugar substitute. It's supposed to have no effect on the blood sugar, it's grown naturally, (one can even grow it oneself, apparently). I don't dislike it, although it sure isn't sugar. It starts with a bitter taste, and has a long aftertaste which is sort of flat and unexciting, like one of the fake sugars.

As it turns out, a good dose of chocolate (fair trade, these cookies are good for body and soul) more or less disguises the bitter preliminary taste, so the cookies are ok, if a little undynamic. I cheated a bit on the icing, it's a chocolate cream cheese icing sweetened with honey. I'll have to try making it with the stevia, see how that goes.

Feel the naked dust beneath my toes
while the future sun calls winds to blow
and the past and present black-eyed crow
flies hunting high and circling low
between dream mountains of our Eden.

--Jethro Tull, Mountain Men

technology

2012-01-06T07:15:00.006-06:00

I have a scanner.

More accurately, by 'scanner', I mean a printer which also scans and copies. And by 'I', I mean, Novel has a printer which I gave him for Christmas.

I call the above picture, "What the hell is happening with my hair extensions?" Those grey smudges are really glitter. Sadly, the scanner doesn't pick up the sparkle.

O, Fortune is never a lady,

But the cursedest quean alive

Tricksie, mincing and jadey --

Kittle to lead or drive

Meet her, she's hailing a stranger!

Greet her, she's busking to leave!

Leave her alone, for a shrew to the bone

And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve!

Largesse, largesse, O, Fortune!

Give or withhold at thy will

For if I've no care for Fortune,

Then Fortune must follow me still.

--Rudyard Kipling, Kim, Ch IV header, 'the Wishing Caps'

bollocks

2012-01-01T10:50:00.000-06:00

I seem to be starting 2012 in a bit of funk.

no YOU shut up

2011-12-16T17:20:00.002-06:00

I'm in a bummed out, hating on the world kind of mood these days.

I imagine that swearing off the internet for a while would help with these symptoms. That won't happen, of course.

The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

--Pink Floyd, Time

(Also, where the eff are all my blogger buttons/options??)

the black hole that swallowed time

2011-12-05T08:37:00.005-06:00

(title lifted from my sister.)

So renos are... plodding along. I was hoping we could be moved by Christmas, but now it looks more like spring.

However, I think I've come up with a solution to one of the problems to living in that house that has been exercising my mind. The house has only one bathroom and that isn't a full one. It is set under the slope of the roof, so in only half the room can one stand up. The bathtub is (was, actually, we've already taken it out) tucked at the back of the room under the roof, and there was no room for a shower.

Our first plan was to build an addition onto the back of the house so there could be a full bathroom on the main floor, but that seemed likely to be too pricey for our slender means. Then we thought of putting a bathroom in the basement, but walking down two flights of stairs every morning to shower seemed like it would get old quite fast.

Then we thought we might build an alcove out from the bathroom, cutting into the master bedroom and install a shower in that. That had several problems for me, one being that the master bedroom is the only room in the house with the original hardwood flooring, and I didn't fancy installing a shower on top of that. Plus the plumbing would have to be moved around quite a bit, plus the master bedroom is nice and roomy, and I don't really want to reduce it by much.

But I was looking through a brochure for showers, and found one of those bathtubs with doors that they make for people who have a hard time getting into normal bathtubs. It's taller than a normal tub, with a seat so you can sit down and it has a smaller footprint than a normal tub. And I'm all like, hey, that would fit in the bathroom, all we would have to do is turn the toilet a 45 degree angle, and change to a smaller sink. The tub is, of course, mega-expensive, but much cheaper than building an addition would be. We probably still will put another bathroom in the basement eventually, but that can wait till after we move.

The other big job, which we have been working on for several weeks now, is drywalling the master bedroom, which still had the original lathe and plaster walls and ceiling (and original insulation, which has turned black with age and is beyond gross). Neither Novel nor I knew how to drywall, but one of his soccer playing buddies worked in construction for a while, and volunteered to help us, so we've been ripping out the walls and putting in new insulation, and then drywalling. It's hard bloody work, especially after one has put in a full shift at one's regular job. Also there are a lot of odd angles and awkward shapes in the room, which are a challenge to cut the drywall to fit.

We have two walls done, plus the sloping part of the ceiling. The main part of the ceiling has yet to be done, which will be a pain, because rather than gross black ancient insulation, it appears to be insulated with wood chips and shavings which fall out all over when you rip out the lathe-and-plaster. And there has been something living up there, so in places you get showers of animal droppings falling out on your head. I thought it was mice, since that's what the droppings look like, but both Novel and our helpful drywalling friend contend that the droppings are too big. Maybe squirrels. Or rats, said our helpful friend, helpfully.

There are no rats in Saskatchewan, sez I.

Why are people so convinced that there aren't any rats in Saskatchewan? he demanded, scornfully. Of course there are rats in Saskatchewan.

Because that's what I learned in school, I said plaintively (although come to think of it, it was an Alberta school and they were talking about Alberta). And that's what the media tells me. It made big headlines when rats were found in Swift Current a couple of years ago.

If you google "are there rats in Saskatchewan" you get a couple of self-congratulatory pages on how there are no rats in Alberta because they fight them off at the Sask-Alta border.

Oh, well, who knows. I remember when we had a rat infestation in the haystacks -- I was probably five or six at the time, we were living south of Lloydminster, and the old man was still trying to be a farmer. He set fire to the haystacks, then he and my two brothers chased down the rat refugees with pitchforks. It was a strange and creepy night.

Oh, what a night.
Late December back in '63.
What a very special time for me,
'Cause I remember what a night.

--Frankie Valli, What a Night

overwhelmed

2011-11-25T09:31:00.003-06:00

I want to be the sort of person who just throws money at problems for a while.

And if they stare
Just let them burn their eyes on you moving
And if they shout
Don't let them change a thing what you're doing

--Argent, Hold Your Head Up

parmi veder li lagrime

2011-11-24T08:06:00.002-06:00

Dear iTunes:

It might be too early in the morning for Eminem. But Eminem followed by Tito Schipa is sheer genius.

Sincerely, etc.

The clock strikes midnight, one, two, then half past three

This half ass rhyme with this half ass piece of paper

I'm desperate at my task, if I could just get the rest of this shit off my chest again.

--Eminem, Run Rabbit Run

Parmi veder li lagrime

Scorrenti da quel ciglio

quando fa il duolo e l'ansia

del subito priglio

dell'amor nostra memore

--Verdi, Rigoletto

stuffmas

2011-11-20T07:46:00.005-06:00

I haven't done a lot of Christmas shopping yet, but I have bought one present that, every time I look at it, my mind says, Really? You're going to give that away? Reeaally?

Too bad there weren't five of it, because I'm pretty sure that everyone on my (adult, thrift) gift list would love it.

I guess I'm an unnatural grandmother, but I find it easier to shop for the adults on my list than for the grandkids.

We walked the loneliest mile

We smiled without any style

We kiss altogether wrong

No intention

--The Motels, Only the Lonely

steadily depressing low down mind messing renovation blues

2011-11-16T15:44:00.004-06:00

It occurs to me that I need to blog in pithy one liners if I still want to blog, since that's about all I have time for these days. It should be fine, since the internet is notoriously short of attention span.

It occurs to me that I use the phrase 'it occurs to me' too much. Remind me never to use it again.

Since I last talked to y'all on here, I have learned to install drywall. In retrospect, I would have preferred not to learn this. Renos are hard on the carpal tunnels, not to mention fingertips plagued by psoriasis. Also, why do I have this rash on my wrist?

Watching them come and go
The templars and the saracens
They're traveling the holy land
Opening telegrams

--David Bowie, Loving The Alien

cat blogging

2011-10-12T07:33:00.019-06:00

The other day in a moment of weakness I might have blurted out to my family that I felt the need for another orange polydactyl kitten. So last night the Empress phoned me about these guys:

Mr. Mitts

"They're not orange," says she, "but look at the size of their paws."

So cute. Although I'm not sure if you can tell anything about the size of a kitten's paws from a photo. Their paws look always too big for their bodies.

But that got me looking through the list of adoptable kittens at the local SPCA (you know, the one Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed donate to) and I think maybe orange is a more important trait to me in cats than polydactyl. Orange domestic short hairs seem to have the best personalities; as evidenced by Doorstop, Tybalt (the Duchess' cat), the orange tom whose name I am blanking on that lives with tKOS & tQOS, and of course, Cissy.

Just look at this baby:

Or Lilac:

What a pouty baby she is.

Roscoe's pretty adorable:

Look at him. He's a baby Doorstop, just waiting to get fat.

The adult male orange domestic short hair is pretty lovable too. For example, Pumpkin:

Look at that world weary face.

Or Leonard:

"Human. Why have you not yet fetched me my sardines on ice?"

This one reminds me of Cissy. Look at her, just lurking, ready to shred ankles.

Precious:

Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullabye

--The Beatles, Golden Slumber

a mixture of gravity and waggery

2011-09-27T09:46:00.008-06:00

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air. --Doris Lessing

One of the troubles with being chronically poor -- the kind of poor where you are continually playing catch up with financial challenges -- is that when stuff wears out, as stuff is prone to do, it can be tricky to replace or repair said stuff in a timely fashion so as to avoid worse breakdowns. We would seem to be at a point these days when everything is wearing out/breaking down/blowing up all at once. Toilets which are chugging along on a chain and a prayer, carpets which need replacing because they didn't get cleaned when they should have, because of the scarcity of money and the plethora of sinkholes into which the money disappears. My fridge seems to be having issues; for about the past 3-4 weeks, the milk has gone off before its time. Then the cheese molded well before it should have. We've had two computers die in the past year, and only managed to replace one. (You try being a two person one computer household. I think the proper ratio for computers:humans in a household is the same as the ratio for litterboxes:cats in a household is reputed to be; i.e., if humans = n, then computers = n+1.)

A lot of my procrastination problems, it would seem to me, arise from the poor in which I live; then again, I suppose a lot of my poor arises from procrastination.

This principle also applies to pets. At least, if you have money, you can take preventative measures to keep your pets in health, and treat them if they get ill.

As you may or may not know, I had to have my many toed freak put down this weekend.

A few weeks ago, sometime during the summer, I noticed that Cissy had developed some lumps on her belly. My first thought was something like, oh shit, breast cancer (actually mammary cancer, cats don't have breasts). And my second thought was, I don't have the time or money to deal with this right now. And as she didn't seem ill, I didn't do anything about it. Cause maybe, you know, it was just something innocuous and if I ignored it it would go away.

Then last week -- Monday, I think -- she suddenly stopped doing anything except sleeping and drinking water. She acted dull, the way cats do when they're sick, and peed on the couch once which wasn't like her. In fact, I think she didn't even wake up or notice that she'd peed. I took her into the vet, who examined her, did blood tests, and said that the lumps were probably absesses, and that the infection had probably gotten into her system, and gave me antibiotics to give her. But keep a good watch on her, added the vet, and if she acts worse, take her to emergency at the university.

So I dosed her dutifully every morning -- she hated that -- and while she did seem a little better, she still wasn't eating. So on Sunday we took her into the emergency vet clinic, where the vet talked volubly and incomprehensibly (he had a thick scottish brogue) about expensive tests and how hard it was to get definitive results without doing a biopsy which would be $1000 by itself, and if it was cancer, (which it was kind of clear to me that he thought it was) that it might well cost around $3000 for chemo. We left her there and they did an xray and called me a couple of hours later to say that she had masses in her lungs and intestines and although this still wasn't proof positive of cancer that it was as close to proof as we were going to get without that biopsy. And furthermore, he was of the opinion that she had deteriorated so much that it wasn't even worth it to take her home. So Novel, the Empress and I all went in and said goodbye to her and I signed the papers, and that was that.

Cissy's passing has affected me a lot more than when I had Doorstop put down, but then Doorstop had had a good 17-18 years, plus I had a lot more time to get used to the idea that he was going to die soon.

The whole thing has me in a morass of guilt and regrets, of course. Maybe if I had taken her into the vet when I first noticed the lumps, she could have been saved? Or maybe not, of course. We still wouldn't have had the money for any expensive treatments. I guess if I'd taken her in when I first noticed the lumps, I'd at least have had more time to get used to the notion that she was going to die. One thing I might do differently if I had it to do again, is that maybe I would have brought her back home on Sunday for a day or so. She didn't seem to be in any pain, and she was alert. When we were petting and cuddling her, she had this look on her face that said 'I don't know what's happening, or why, but the attention is sure nice.' It would have been nice to have a bit more time to say goodbye.

I would also have found a way to let her go outside if I'd known how short her life was going to be. She always seemed to miss the great outdoors, however much she liked living with us.

She was indeed a beautiful cat. I like to think that she's stalking the Elysian Fields now, hunting the Elysian field mice and striking fear into their little Elysian hearts with the force of her great terrible cat eyes.

I want to be a hunter again
Want to see the world alone again
To take a chance on life again
So let me go.

--Dido, Hunter

sex scandal poetry kit

2011-09-16T08:04:00.006-06:00

The first story linked herein simultaneously amuses and horrifies me.

Gordon Ramsay's Dwarf Porn Double Percy Foster Dies in Badger Den

This one is just sort of weird.

Naked Man Eating a Fudgesicle Breaks Into Nicolas Cage's Residence

Headline which seems most likely ripped from a sex scandal poetry kit:

Michaele Salahi Secretly Promised to Spend Life With Rock Star

I had to google both Gordon Ramsay and Michaele Salahi.

*****

Being poor is taking up too much of my time and energy these days.

We are currently balanced between two houses, one empty and in need of cleaning and renovation and one stuffed to the rafters with junk, also in need of cleaning and renovation. The bathroom here may fail any day now in one of many ways: the toilet will break, the sink will fall off the wall. I'm avoiding cleaning it because when we reach the point where we can renovate it, the entire room has to be gutted, and the contents discarded. No point cleaning a toilet when you're just going to throw it away, right?

I have two cats in need of vet visits. One wheezes and pees on the floor, the other has little lumps on her belly.

I signed up to enumerate for the provincial election which is coming in November (side note: four years since I got involved with Novel). Enumerating is largely more trouble than it's worth, but I guess ultimately it will give us a little extra money. On the downside, those hours spent walking the streets looking for voters could, in my opinion, more profitably be spent working on one or the other of the houses.

I also told them I'd officiate for the election, but I think I've rethought that. The pay for being a DRO is decent, but not as wonderful as they make it out to be, and it's something like a 14 hour day, 12 hours of actual voting, plus another couple counting ballots. Once again, time which could be better spent on renovating/moving. Every month that the other house stands vacant is costing us money.

On the upside of life's leger: went on a road trip to Edmonton last weekend. Painter, the Empress, Novel and I drove to Edmonton Thursday, met up with Vagabond Queen, went antique and sari shopping, then drove to LLoyd for the wedding of my brother's youngest daughter, then home on Sunday. It was all money that we really couldn't afford to spend, especially as I spent about $100 on antiques, but it was a lot of fun. I have to say, spending that much time with my family was a little intense in spots.

Take a look at this photograph
Clearly his teeth were bared
He coulda been yawning or snarling
He coulda been anywhere

--The Tragically Hip, Yawning or Snarling

tranquility

2011-09-04T20:45:00.001-06:00

If someone would get me a good video camera, I would promise to travel around the province, make videos of peaceful scenery.

book ends

2011-08-24T20:52:00.003-06:00

When I was randomly listing the news stories which had attracted my attention this summer, I forgot to list the federal election we had last June (I think it was June. So long ago, already). It was an influential event, a bit of a game changer, for two reasons. One was that after 4 years or so of whining about how they couldn't govern when they only had a minority government, the Conservatives finally managed to pull off a majority. Part of me would like to believe that they managed to somehow rig the election and that they didn't win honestly, because, you know, if they actually won the election without dishonesty, then that would mean that I live in the sort of country where a majority of people think a right wing government is a good idea. Of course, they didn't really get a majority of the votes, it's just that years of careful crafting of electoral boundaries has resulted in tory wins because the votes from people in any given region who don't want the country to slide any further to the right are split amongst other parties. Also, I have to admit that the "natural governing party" aka the liberals shot themselves in the foot repeatedly and with great gusto, which resulted in them losing a lot of ridings.

The other reason that the fed election was interesting this time around (usually Canadian elections, yawn) was that after the Liberals shot themselves in the foot, our national socialist party managed to win enough seats to make themselves the official opposition. We're all pretty cynical up here about politics these days, but the NDP do manage to occasionally look like they have the best interests of the country at heart. I don't know if I was actually hopeful, after all there was still that Harper majority to get past, but at least Jack Layton & the NDP winning seats made me feel that we weren't without hope entirely.

But then Jack, who had had treatment for prostate cancer prior to the election had to step down as leader of the NDP because the cancer had recurred, and then he died this past weekend. There are a lot of things that I might say about this, but most of it has been said elsewhere more eloquently than I could say it. I just think it's a great pity that having managed this historical achievement, he didn't get to enjoy for at least for a few years the opportunity to get up in the House of Commons and politely tell Stephen Harper that he was full of shit.

All for freedom and for pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world.

--Tears for Fears, Everybody Wants to Rule the World

baby, have you got enough gas?

2011-08-18T09:13:00.004-06:00

Brilliant money making schemes I've had recently:

A contracting company that specializes in making companies less stressful places to work. Using baseball bats. Doesn't necessarily result in the workplace being less stressful for management.

And (this one is almost practical):

Freezer gel packs which you slip into your bra on hot days. You could actually make them heat/cold packs, for use in the winter as well as the summer.

Little red corvette
Baby you're much too fast
Little red corvette
You need a love that is gonna last.

--Prince, Little Red Corvette

cheap sunscreen

2011-08-10T21:30:00.008-06:00

Things that have been on my mind lately:

work. Hours have been cut back, three new people have been trained in the past month (two of them by me). The first Old Cranky Guy, who has been there longest and who is therefore the seniorest person went off on holidays for 3 weeks. The other Old Cranky Guy who yelled at me the first time we met before he'd even bothered to introduce himself to me has come down with a nasty case of cancer and is off work till December. Everything has been at sixes and sevens.

vacation. We went up to Waskesiu for a week. The Empress & family were up there also camping for a couple of days, then my sister camped for a couple of days. Novel and I went up there by bus as always, and took Ozy with us which was ... interesting. Ozy is calmer these days, but there were still a couple of moments when it looked like things might come apart. Everyone survived and stayed sane, however, and I'd even do it again. Next year, tho, I'd like to rent a cabin and then family could just stay with us instead of camping, complete with pouring rain and soaked bedding.

cats. When we got back, it was apparent that some one of our cats had become too lazy to go down stairs to the litter box. After some research, it was determined that it Roadkill who was the culprit. So now we have to figure out if he's actually sick, or retrainable. He's certainly asthmatic, and I suspect he has diabetes. I'm not sure if we're disciplined enough pet owners to nurse a chronically sick cat.

the houses. We've made little to no progress on this moving business, although we gave the tenant a move out notice. Don't know if he is out or not, he is supposed to be out by the 20th, but he's being a bit of a dick about things.

Current events which have caught my attention and shaped the summer:

The Norway shooting: http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn&q=norway%20shooting

London riots: http://www.google.ca/search?aq=f&hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&btnmeta_news_search=1&q=london+riots+2011

Amy Winehouse: http://www.google.ca/search?aq=f&hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&btnmeta_news_search=1&q=amy+winehouse+death

the US debt crisis: http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn&q=us%20debt

Seems I've got to have a change of scene'
Cause every night I have the strangest dreams
Imprisoned by the way it could have been
Left here on my own or so it seems
I've got to leave before I start to scream
But someone's locked the door and took the key.

--Joe Cocker, Feeling Alright

deflation

2011-08-05T09:28:00.003-06:00

So the other day I was sitting on my front door step, drinking tea and swatting mosquitoes, and I thought, well, what if there is a god, and we are all just mosquitoes in Her world? When we get good things in life that's when we manage a drink of blood and when we get bad things in life, that's when we get swatted.

How's that for a creation myth? Pretty much takes care of any delusion that humanity is somehow centre of the universe, dunnit?

(22nd street looking west to the new holiday inn going up.)

It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pity
To be looking at the board, not looking at the city

--Murray Head, One Night In Bangkok

Thank god for solitude

2011-08-01T17:48:00.001-06:00

say I.

office of incisive analysis

2011-07-13T21:31:00.002-06:00

...yah, I got nothing. It's been an challenging couple of weeks, and it looks like the summer will just get moreso.

This is easily one of the prettiest songs ever:

My darling once told me that loving was better than living
But I told her survival for me was the easier gain.
I couldn't live with her and now it's I can't live without her
I thought I'd feel different, but somehow I still feel the same.

--Irish Descendants, Lovers

send it off in a letter to yourself

2011-06-08T10:56:00.003-06:00

I have far too much to do these days, so I thought I should blog rather than do any of it.

The song referenced in the title used to bother Thorsdatter. Steely Dan's Rikki (don't lose that number) -- sung by a guy, lyrics full of sexual innuendo, and to someone with a gender ambivalent name. Rikki can be a girl's name, I tried to reassure her. I totes read a book about a girl named Ricky once. Well, okay, I didn't say totes because the word hadn't been invented then, but had it been invented, I would totes have used it. She remained unconvinced.

Actually, listening to it now it's the consent ambivalent lyrics that trouble me. You tell yourself I'm not your kind, but you don't even know your own mind.

I came across this picture from Vancouver, which I intended to post last fall, but forgot about. We were out walking and saw this Asian wedding party who had stopped to buy food from a street vendor. Bad form, I know, to take pictures of them and post them on the internet unasked, but you can't really see any faces in this one. (So that makes it all right, right?)

So much to do: we're planning to move into my house this summer and sell this one. This is worse than planning a wedding. Then there's, you know, working for a living, keeping this house liveable whilst we are here, all my projects, social life, etc.

Last night
In the sky
Such a bright light
My radar send me danger
But my instincts tell me to keep...

-- Breathing, Kate Bush

under a jewelled sky

2011-05-11T11:35:00.003-06:00

I would imagine that you are all wondering how my herb garden project is coming along.

The answer is, with great good taste, thankyouverymuch.

Not sure if the tea tins are going to be large enough for the plants' root systems, (in fact, I'm pretty sure they are not).

But they're so cute.

Last time I attempted a herb garden (a couple of years ago) I stuck them in a planter out under the trees and promptly forgot all about them, except for the occasional water. I don't think I ever took a single leaf off any of the plants. They grew with great enthusiasm, though.

He'd a French cocked hat on his forehead, and a bunch of lace at his chin;
He'd a coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of fine doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle; his boots were up to his thigh!
And he rode with a jeweled twinkle--
His rapier hilt a-twinkle--
His pistol butts a-twinkle, under the jeweled sky.

--Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman

always another project.

2011-05-05T17:23:00.004-06:00

Would I get more done, do you suppose, if I concentrated on one project at a time, working on it until it was done, rather than continually coming up with new ones, which require me to stretch my time and energy further than it really is possible that it can go?

That's a rhetorical question.

Also a pointless question, since I can no more stop coming up with new and clever things to make/do than I can stop breathing.

Above is a project I've been working on for a while, the transformation of a wooden tool box that I got for Christmas long ago from that computer consulting place where I once worked. I'm wishful of turning it into a planter to hold a herb garden. But I can't just, you know, stick some herbs in it. I have to paint and decorate it and then cover it with some varnish so that it won't get too damaged by accidental water spills which all plant containers are subject to. I'll post more pictures when it's done. The herbs will be planted in the tea tins that I've been accumulating since I became a hardcore tea drinker -- Twinings makes cute little tea tins, but a person can only use so many of them.

The trouble is, many of my projects are complex and take considerably more than one sitting to accomplish.

I've been working on one of my projects this evening -- the learning to cook with gluten free flour project. After the two successes that I blogged about awhile ago, the bread and the oatmeal muffins, I had two resounding failures. (The trouble with failures when you're experimenting with cookery is that the results are generally inedible.) I tried making baking powder biscuits -- one of my perennial favorite recipes -- they turned out nice and fluffy, but tasting of chickpea flour. And chickpea flour has a disgusting taste. Then I tried making crackers, with the same result.

My theory as to why these two things didn't work when the first two items I made with the gluten free flour were perfectly edible is that the biscuits and the crackers didn't have any added sugar, whereas the bread & the muffins did. So as a test of that theory, I'm making banana bread with the GF flour. Banana bread has lots of sweetness from the bananas, and sugar in the recipe in addition.

I waste a lot of money on magazines. It's one of my vices, so when Novel was asking what to get me for my birthday I told him a couple of magazine subscriptions would be good. I didn't ask for a subscription to any home decorating mags, which is I suppose odd because they are one of my worst vices -- crack magazines, Novel calls them -- but then I rarely buy the same one twice running. Instead I opted for Threads and Mother Jones. (I also really wanted Yoga Journal, but then ended up not getting it, for reasons of economy, which was doubtless a mistake, as I shall probably buy issues piecemeal over the year.) Yesterday my Mother Jones mag finally came so I spent the day reading about right wing politics (and the politics of lying) and simultaneously being angered and saddened by the stuff I was reading, and seeing the parallels between the tactics used by the right wingers in the States and in Canada. We're a couple of steps behind them in certain things, but I'm sure that now that Harper has a majority he'll fix that.

Update: Turns out that banana bread made with gluten free flour and plenty of sugar is extremely edible.

Oh all the days

That I have run

I sought to lose that cloud that's blacking out the sun

My train will come

Some one day soon

And when it comes I'll ride it bound from night to noon

--Mike Doughty, Looking At The World From The Bottom of a Well

by popular request

2011-05-01T20:09:00.003-06:00

I can't imagine why you haven't posted pictures of those shelves, quoth Vagabond Queen when she was here for Easter. They're so lovely

So here is a picture:

For my birthday, VQ gave me a set of 3 plant pots from Ten Thousand Villages. I had a couple of cuttings, one from a geranium and one from an ... um. I used to know the name of this plant, but it completely eludes me at the minute, and google isn't being as helpful as it could. It might be a caladium, I think. I don't know that the cutting on the left will survive, since it didn't actually have any roots, but the other two are doing fine.

And here is a picture of that copper door that I saw when we were in Moose Jaw:

Also, you should go to a google search page (for May 1) and see their image for the 160th Anniversary of the first world fair. Then click on the image itself, so as to see it in big, with a virtual magnifying glass.

She's so swishy in her satin and tat
In her frock coat
and bipperty-bopperty hat
Oh God, I could do better than that

--David Bowie, Queen Bitch

down in the river

2011-04-26T11:36:00.004-06:00

I was going to blog this morning, but I've been too busy with other things, and I still have to finish the repotting of plants that I began earlier, so that I can clear the kitchen table, because the assortment of odds and ends of plants and dishes and my most recent acquisitions from thrifting, which the table usually holds up, have been displaced to the counters (which are usually covered with dirty or sometimes clean dishes) and no one can use the kitchen until I finish.

But somehow this video seems oddly appropriate to the current space that my head is in, and that of my family, partly because Vagabond Queen was playing it in the car when she was here, and partly because picnicing beside rivers is a very old family tradition. Swimming in the Battle River south of Lloydminster forms part of my earliest memories.

O sisters let's go down
Let's go down, Come on down
O sisters let's go down
Down in the river to pray

--Alison Krauss, Down In The River To Pray

i'm the specialist

2011-04-12T11:55:00.005-06:00

Went to see my regular doctor today, for a callback related to the dermatologist visit. She told me, "He thinks you have psoriasis".

Is this a rather strange way of phrasing it? Dr. Dermatologist sounded pretty firm when he diagnosed me -- he wasn't all like, oh Ah think y'all may have psoriasis. He was all like, Yup, it's psoriasis.

The health system is so irritating sometimes.

He recommended that she send me to a rheumatologist to check out my joint pain that I reluctantly admitted to after he asked me several times if I had any trouble with my joints. I have some joints that ache sometimes. Nothing that really seems worth seeing a specialist for, or that seems any different from any other aging body.

While I was there, I asked about the testing for celiac disease, and she said that no results had been received, so the test must not have been done, so she added a request for the test on the requisition that I required of her. So I guess the jury is still out on whether or not I should be gluten free.

Also irritating? Blogger and it's sodding problems with inserting hard returns.

Well I'll keep on movin' ... movin' on
Things are bound to be improvin' these days
One of these days
These days I'll sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten ... my friend
Don't confront me with my failures I had not forgotten them.

--Jackson Browne, These Days

'i like a girl with spirit', he said, incorrectly as it turned out

2011-04-03T16:47:00.003-06:00

I've been reading Terry Pratchett. Terry Pratchett isn't someone I've ever read much. I read Good Omens years ago (Neil Gaiman is another writer on my to read list; I haven't read much of him, either), and that is the extent of my Pratchett reading. I had formed the notion that he was sort of like Douglas Adams, and so he is insofar as he has that geeky dry English humour down and the wordplay. There are certain ways they differ; one gets the idea that Adams probably never spoke much to women in his youth, whereas Pratchett manages to write fairly credible female characters. Also, Pratchett looks like Gandalf's slightly dotty older brother, while Douglas Adams looked like Bilbo Baggins' slight disreputable older brother.

It's late Sunday afternoon in early April. Was it two weeks ago, or three, that we were still enduring -30c temperatures? We've actually had above zero temperatures for the past few days, with the result that the snow is half gone already. The sun is shining; if there was anywhere in the backyard that was any good for sitting I'd be out there rather than in here but there are still significant drifts back there and what isn't snowdrift is swamp. So instead I'm on the computer, eating chips, drinking tea and blogging.

I've been a busy girl the past couple of weeks. We went to Moose Jaw last weekend; some of Novel's high school buddies gave us a gift certificate to the spa there as a wedding gift, so we used it last weekend. That was nice; we alternated between shopping, sitting in the waters (piped in from a hot spring) and did the tour of the tunnels (Al Capone and the dirty thirties one day; Chinese launderers the next). Hah, I totally forgot to tell the family about the most impressive thing I saw there. We went to a cafe in the Yvette Moore art gallery, which was in the old land titles building (one of the charming things about MJ is the number of restored old public buildings they have) and it had copper clad doors. And copper window frames. It was such a beautiful old building, and the restoring job had been beautifully done.

That was Novel's birthday weekend, so the week prior to that I was working on sewing him a pair of sweat pants as a present. Then this weekend I made some gluten free flour mix from a recipe I found on line, and from that I have made Spicy Raisin Oatmeal Muffins (rating: 4 stars out of 5), the family heirloom chocolate cream cake recipe (rating: 5 stars out of 5) and potato bread (rating: 4/5). They were all quite delicious, the bread still a little denser than wheat bread, but completely breadlike, which anyone who has tried to make gluten free bread knows is not easy; the cake was also a little denser but indistinguishable so far as taste went from its wheat flour conterpart, and the muffins were good compared to the similar muffin mix I bought at the health food store (which confounded me by having 35% of my daily sodium intake in a mere 3/4 cup serving).

Why all the gluten free cooking you ask? I'm not gluten intolerant so far as I know, my doctor sent me for celiac disease testing which since she hasn't got back to me about I assume didn't come back positive. OTOH, there is that nebulous gluten-psoriasis connection, plus gluten is supposed to be bad for causing inflammation. Partly I was just experimenting to see how difficult it was to adapt basic, relatively easy recipes to non-gluten form. Conclusion: it's fairly easy

Not cheap, though. The flour mix I made yielded 13 cups and cost approximately $30.

Also, eating about 95% gluten free this weekend hasn't done anything about my bloating, which aside from the psoriasis sores on my fingers is the health problem bothering me the most at the minute.

Apart from these projects and excursions, I've worked full time, cooked and cleaned and read and wrote and frittered away time on the internets. Because we were in MJ last weekend, we got together with the fam this weekend to celebrate Novel's birthday with cake and cute children. The HannahDon has taken to giving effusive hugs when to people when they arrive at her house, although she mostly categorically refuses to give farewell hugs. (Maybe she is a reincarnation of my sister Mary, who once told me quite snottily that she didn't 'do' goodbyes.)

So I told Painter I was going to come home and do something that didn't require the use of my hands, which have been bothering me quite a bit lately, but that is easier said than done. In fact, pretty much everything I like to do, writing, sewing, blogging, drawing, making things, cooking, etc., etc., require use of the hands. I guess I could read, that isn't hard on the hands, at least. But I really want to doing some writing or drawing, so I may just say to hell with my hands, they can suck it up and stop whining.

Is it wicked not to care when they say that you're mistaken

Thinking hopes and lots of dreams that aren't there?

Is it wicked not to care when you've wasted many hours

Talking endlessly to anyone that's there?

I know the truth awaits me

But still I hesitate because of fear.

--Belle and Sebastian, Is It Wicked Not to Care?

soon me and the boys were singing again

2011-03-15T07:24:00.007-06:00

Some mornings the internet just charms my socks off, you know?

This song has been on my mind recently, dog knows why. Just one of those random memories which floats to the surface of a crowded mind. So this morning I finally got around to googling it, slightly hampered by the fact that I could remember the singer's first name but not her last, and could not remember (if I ever knew) how to spell sukiyaki. However, I also knew that she was a French Canadian singer, and google put these random facts together for me and turned up this video.

So that got me googling (YouTube-ing?) Garden of Ursh, a song from the same era that my sister frequently asked me to look for back in the heady days of free Napster. Apparently if a song has ever been recorded, someone, somewhere will upload it to YouTube. I haven't heard it since the sixties, but it's just as beautiful (and hippie-ish) as I remember.

And finally, since we're listening to Canadian singers with lovely voices, here is Cano's Rebound from 1979. I remember years ago Farmboy bitching that he and a friend had gone to see Cano in concert and were annoyed to find that they sang some of their songs in French. Really? A French Canadian band that sings in French? The nerve.

So glad I'm in the Garden of Ursh
Singing so glad, I'm so glad
So glad I'm in the Garden of Ursh
And I want to stay here, oh I want to stay here forever.

--Karen Young, Garden of Ursh

skin deep

2011-03-05T19:33:00.005-06:00

It's a strange world.

I belong to a couple of those online activist petition sites -- you know the ones that send you emails about atrocities happening in the world and solicit your signature to stop whatever the problem is -- violence against women or megacorporations screwing over the poor or whatever the cause of the day may be. One of the recent ones said that I should sign because the petition would put pressure on Silvio Berlusconi to influence Muammar Gaddafi to stop killing the Libyan people because, apparently, Gaddifi & Berlesconi are totally bff.

This is just wrong on so many levels.

I signed the petition, of course.

In other news, I finally saw a dermatologist about my hands. My family doctor had dismissed the idea that I had psoriasis (my symptoms aren't quite text book) and actually my hands haven't been too bad since January, (which is when I stopped using the soap at the hospital), so I thought it was maybe a sensitivity to the soap. However, this dude pretty much just glanced at me and said, yup, that's psoriasis. I do have patches of problem skin on my elbows and feet, (where hospital soap would never be used) and a patch on one thigh which is red and flakey. So, okay, he may be right.

Psoriasis is a disease of the autoimmune system, not treatable except topically. Dude gave me a prescription for some skin cream. Asked me several times if I had any joint pain or if anyone else in my family had skin problems, because there is some kind of hereditary connection, and also because about 20% of psoriasis cases develop psoriatic arthritis. I couldn't remember any joint problems; it wasn't until later I recalled that when the sores on my fingertips are really bad, my finger joints generally get red and inflamed too. But it's just as well I didn't remember that symptom at the time, I think, because he would just have prescribed me some kind of medication that I probably don't want to take like nsaids. So never mind.

Also, the internet tells me that there is a celiac/psoriasis connection.

And in case any of you were worried that there was a shortage of arrogant male doctors who think they are god, I'm happy to report that I've seen two in the past two months. They seem to be in fine supply.

Sweetheart
I'm changing my role in life,
I'm not re-arranging the main things in my life.
I ain't sacrificing what I hold as true,
I ain't sacrificing, sweetheart even for you.

--Marianne Faithfull, Sweetheart

who is constantin brâncuşi?

2011-02-19T14:08:00.004-06:00

I was going to post some pictures of the shelves that the Empress and Judah gave us for Christmas (handmade, cream coloured, tasteful), but my camera connection crapped out for some reason, so instead you get a picture of the flowers that my sister arranged for the wedding, also tasteful.

Tasteful is hard to get away from when you're around my family.

Was reading the local paper on Friday, which had the following pleasing juxtaposition of headlines:

What does family day mean to you?

followed by:

Killing daughter 'right thing to do" -Latimer.

You know, when I first heard the Latimer story, it seemed very sad. Now I just want him to go away: shut up, f**ker. You claim it was a mercy killing, you were putting her out of her misery, ok, I don't care, you know? You had a fair trial and were found guilty of murder, society sent you a clear message, it's not okay for a private citizen to take the law into his own hands like that. You did your time, now stop whining and go away.

Of course, the media could stop doing stories about him too.

So Novel & I have these two houses, right? We live in his, rent out mine, this gives us options: we could continue to live here, we could move into my house, or we could sell both and move somewhere completely different. Both houses need a bunch of work to make them liveable -- well, they're technically liveable right now. But a bunch of work to make them nice and pleasant, for example, Novel's bathroom needs to be totally redone, the toilet is breaking, the sink is a million years old and I'm pretty sure we have mold in the wall beside the shower. OTOH, my house's bathroom is okay, but there isn't a full shower in it & you can't stand up in the bathtub. So they both need maintenance, plus some structural work.

Lately we've been giving the third option option, selling both houses and buying a third, a lot of consideration, but I had pretty much ruled out doing so for a couple of years because we're still in debt from the wedding and we would have so much to do before we were in a position to sell either house. But last night I was reading the local real estate listings and came across the perfect house -- old but well preserved, original hardwood floors, & mouldings, fireplace, little and cute, nice yard, lovely big windows -- and the price wasn't too bad, it was doable. The one thing I liked above all was the location which was actually on the river, not far from that apartment building where we lived when the Empress was young, and with the park and the river across the road. Really, it was the location that made it for me, I would so like to live by the river again. But dammit, someone has already made an offer on it, which is just as well I guess.

In other non-news, I have an appointment to see a dermatologist next week followed by allergy testing, regarding my hands and the sores I get on the fingertips. Actually, since Christmas, my fingers have not been too bad. I quit using a bunch of stuff, notably I avoid so far as possible washing them with the soap used in the hospital bathrooms (not that easy to do when you work at a hospital, where careful handwashing is a bit of a fetish). I've taken to carrying a cleanser with me which I use, although I'm pretty sure that it doesn't have any anti bacterial properties, which of course the hospital soap does. To test my hypothesis, I went back to using the hospital soap this week, and now I do in fact have an outbreak of the sores.

It's a lovely sunny Saturday. Novel's gone out with friends. I was going to go downtown, but it's too cold out there. Think I'll go sit on the couch and read or write, or maybe nap.

I heard his fiancee got a letter
That told how Billy died that day
The letter said that he was a hero
She should be proud he died that way
I heard she threw that letter away

--Paper Lace, Billy, Don't be a Hero

give me steam

2011-01-28T16:54:00.003-06:00

It's one thing to say I'll blog once a week, quite another to actually do so, apparently.

Maybe my life is just too boring to blog about right now?

I've decided that I've fallen for the steampunk aesthetic, even though I'm not sure I understand it. I'm a little familiar with steampunk in popular culture, but I didn't know much about it until I looked this entry at apartmenttherapy.com, since then I've been mulling it over in my mind. I think my decorating style (inasmuch as I have such a thing) is a kind of shabby steampunk victorian.

This is one of my recent projects, a metal board to which I stuck various small tins with magnets:

That wooden thing hanging next to the board is a shoe sizer that I picked up at the local thrift store. I had no idea what it was until I got it home and Novel pointed out what it was.

Was chatting with VQ online last night and she sent me to this site: http://www.oldbookart.com/ , a site where the proprietor scans and uploads illustrations from old books. She says that this particular set of pictures reminded her of me. And I'm like, cool, they're certainly lovely pictures.

All you zombies hide your faces

All you people in the street

All you sittin' in high places

The rain's gonna fall on you.

--The Hooters, All You Zombies

mindful

2011-01-20T10:59:00.003-06:00

One of my (sort of vague, not very well articulated) new year's resolutions this year was to take more mindful leisure breaks -- not spend more time doing nothing, per se, but actually be more mindful of the breaks I take, be aware of them. (Resolution taken, I admit, from one of those articles I linked to upstream.) In the spirit of this, I just had a cup of tea, sat on my living room couch and stared out the front window. The cat loved it.

We have quite a lovely front window, not with any magnificent view, but it looks east and this time of year we get to see some lovely sunrises through the trees and houses. I watched the birds for a bit; Novel feeds them, plus I think the neighbour across the way does too, so we have gangs of fat sparrows and chickadees fluttering around. And there were some kind of sleek little birds with dark caps and rosy breasts in the giant spruce outside the window. If I weren't so lazy I'd find the bird book and track down what type of bird they were.

Just jokes. I'm not really lazy. Sometimes I'm tired a lot, and sometimes I'm avoiding something, but neither of those things are quite the same as being lazy.

One of my (non-new year's, ongoing) resolutions is to be more aware of my internal voices and all the crap they say to me (you're lazy, you're stupid, no one likes you). Actually, my resolution is to argue more with my internal voices and tell them to shut up a lot.

When I moved in, Novel had some pots of amaryllises. I was pretty meh about them, because when not blooming amaryllises are fairly boring plants, but since I moved in, these ones have taken to blooming for several weeks each winter.

Don't stay in a sad place

Where they don't care how you are

Everyone says hi.

--David Bowie, Everyone Says 'Hi'

my kitchen smells of hyacinth

2011-01-11T17:33:00.006-06:00

Random links:

5 things you should make time for this year: http://lifehacker.com/5727486/five-things-you-should-make-time-for-this-year

vs.

11 things you should avoid:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/11-things-to-avoid-in-2011.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LifeHack+%28lifehack.org%29&utm_content=Twitter

Things you really should have learned by now (if you weren't a bit slow): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/things-you-really-need-to_b_788989.html

I took these pics last fall; Novel & I were walking over to the Empress' place for supper in celebration of some family gathering.

river rocks

I had a gigantic sad on that day; don't remember why.

Things which have been claiming my attention the past few days:

Where global warming is taking us: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/01/australian_flooding.html

The fact that we're f**kt whether we do something about global warming or not:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20110110/climate-change-greenhouse-gases-study-110110/

And the contrast in coverage and public reaction between the assassination attempt on Gabbrielle Giffords (USA) and the actual assassination of Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer by his bodyguard (Pakistan).

she said you remind me of rod stewart when he was young. you've got passion, you think that you're sexy. and all the punks think that you're dumb.

--The Hold Steady, Stevie Nix

always too much or too little to say

2011-01-04T10:58:00.005-06:00

your mama look like carol channing
she watch the sunset on an 8 inch black and white tv
she's got a sister in Toronto
you got an old man out in "call me when you're drunk b.c."
he was the king of corona
dark glasses and a reason not to go back home
she fell in love with the night time
she fell in love with his fists and his cheap cologne

So. Easing back into blogging, as it is a well known fact that if you jump into it too quickly after a prolonged absence, you'll get the bends.

So many reasons why I haven't been blogging (although to be fair, Vagabond Queen is the only person who has asked why, so probably it's not important to most readers). The biggest reason is that I've been busy, working full time, Christmas with my family to plan for and execute my part in, life, and stuff. I've sat down a couple of times to blog, but the entries have either stuck in the mud of my mind and gone nowhere (as this one well may) or turned into volumous commentaries on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which I discarded as being too pompous. And I've been dealing with a couple of issues IRL that have been taking lots of time and attention, but which I have no intention of blogging about.

My New Year's aim is to blog once a week, whether I have something to say or not. You note that I said aim, not resolution; it's more of a hope than a purpose.

A tale of two wedding gifts: a bit of a running theme with our wedding was gifts to do with embibing liquids. Our friends, bless 'em, are apparently concerned that we get enough liquid in our diets. One family that Novel has known for years pooled their resources and got us a wine cooler. (Huzzah! says the non-drinker.) We got one of those individual cup coffee makers (not going to link to the maker as I'm about to diss them) from a friend, and a cast iron teapot with dragonflies from my sister. The coffee maker annoys me no end. To brew a cup of coffee each time you must use one packet, that is, one plastic cup filled with an individual serving of coffee. True, I've always been a bit of a slacker when it comes to environmentalism, but the waste involved in this system is a bit much even for me.

On the other hand, Painter gave me the cast iron tea pot, which comes with a little stainless steel inset cup to hold loose tea leaves, which is as environmental as all hell (or would be if only I composted the leaves). So instead of drinking coffee, I've switched to tea. (I still drink about one cup of coffee a day.) Because it's cast iron, the tea pot has to be properly warmed before brewing tea in it. I've been experimenting with different brands and types of loose tea; I'm no expert so my taste is probably not as refined as your professional tea drinker. I quite like the twinings earl grey & english breakfast loose teas which can be bought in Safeway. I got a tea in chinatown in Vancouver (came in the most tasteful blue & white cannister) which I really enjoyed but it's gone now. I have to go check the asian stores in town for something like it. Me mum used to drink Blue Ribbon loose tea which came in a red and silver-foil packet; I saw some just like what she used to buy in a Co-op store within the last few years but I'm pretty sure it fell onto the shelf from a time warp, because google barely admits that there ever was a blue ribbon company that sold tea. (I have a Blue Ribbon cookbook inherited from my mother, so I know that it really existed.)

Had a perfectly lovely Christmas, and I may blog about it later, if I have the gumption. Now I have to go see if I can get something constructive done before I have to go to work.

she says, "I wanna run away and wanna see the world but I probably never will...but I don't wanna know.
some nights I can sink like a stone, look around me and completely
understand...and some nights I don't."

--Greg MacPherson, Slow Stroke

words on words

2010-10-16T21:42:00.004-06:00

Q: What is the definition of a slut?
A: Anyone who gets laid more than you do.

My sister told me that joke when I was a teen. I think it was my first introduction to the concept of how words are used as social controls.

When I was 20 or so I lived in a house with a bunch of people, Thorsdatter, Bianca, Katrina, etc. Thorsdatter, Bianca and Katrina were all in first year university, I had just dropped out. At the time Bianca was dating Thorsdatter's oldest brother, whom she subsequently married. Bianca's Beau didn't like me much.

Thorsdatter and her siblings, 5 brothers and 1 sister, were from a small village in central Saskatchewan; they routinely went home for the weekend, taking with them any friends who were interested in spending the weekend partying in small town Saskatchewan.

On this particular weekend, everyone was headed out to Thorsdatter's family home for party time all the time. I had been before, but opted not to go this weekend, for whatever reason. Probably lack of funds. Before they headed out, Bianca's Beau and his roomies, all also from the same town, came over for pizza before heading out. I didn't share this supper, also for lack of funds. I remember sitting in the living room reading whilst they ate. When they left they abandoned the remains of the pizza on the floor; when they returned on Sunday night, I was again sitting in the living room reading, the remains of the pizza still on the floor.

"Boy, are you ever lazy," announced Bianca's Beau, who didn't like me much, when he saw his three day old pizza still on the floor. I confess that it hadn't even occurred to me to pick it up. "I can't believe how lazy you are."

I can't remember when or how the adjective 'lazy' became attached to my character, though I do recall that by the time I moved to Saskatoon in '74 it was fairly well established that I was lazy. Probably the parents had decided that I was because I didn't do the things they thought I should and I, compliant girl that I was, had dutifully internalized the idea. Although, by the time Bianca's Beau pronounced me lazy, I had pretty much caught on to the fact that lazy was a descriptor applied when people wanted to shame me into doing things that they thought I should do. Or just when they wanted to shame me.

There are a lot of words like that. Whiny is one. Whiny generally doesn't mean "That person is complaining inappropriately." Whiny means, "That person is inconveniencing me by complaining about things that I don't want to hear about. Whiny means, "That person is very inconsiderately expressing pain in my vicinty and why the hell should I have to hear about his/her problems?"

Let us not forget the 'good' words which also perform functions of social control. I remember an occasion when my brother David was home on a visit and was driving us somewhere in a rented car. That was long before seat belt wearing became mandatory and I was resisting wearing one. "Debbie, do you have your belt on?" he asked as he drove. "Good girl," he added in jocularly condescending tones when I answered the affirmative. David wasn't particularly subtle.

Actually I saw a mother at the hospital the other day who perfectly exemplified this concept. She had a little girl of maybe four, dressed in pink and flowery girl clothes. The kid actually looked a little shell shocked, but she was staring at me, so I was trying to get a smile from her. I made some inane remark to the mother about how quiet she was. "Yes, you've been a good girl, haven't you?" agreed Mom. "She's making all our lives easier."

Umm, good.

We're made up of words. Sticks and stones may or may not break our bones, but words will certainly twist and warp us.

It sounds a little Orwellian, but I think all negative and positive words could be eliminated from the language, and instead we could just switch to using acceptable and unacceptable. Suzy, your behaviour is unacceptable. Try to be a bit more like Johnny. He is behaving acceptably.

Not sure where I'm going with all this. Just observations, I guess. A long time ago, I read a story in Chatelaine Magazine about a woman who was maybe? suffering from severe depression. I don't recall the details of the story. As she came out of the depression, she spent some time talking to her reflection in the mirror. What did you think of the story? my sister Mary asked me. That's how you come out of a depression, Mary said. You have to say positive things to yourself, talk yourself out of it.

She may have been right.

Although I've always found that depression goes away by itself, eventually.

Then it comes back.

Your lipstick don't fit
Your strap's coming loose
You're out in the hall
Waltzing the blues
Now you hurt somewhere
They won't find a bruise
You've been learning to walk
In those dancin' shoes

--Bono and the MDH Band, Dancin' Shoes

more pictures

2010-09-29T11:18:00.002-06:00

I really did intend to finish blogging about the trip, but life intervened, in that way it does. Anyway, here are some more pictures from Vancouver.

Lovely fretted stairs in some mall near the waterfront:

The view from our hotel window:

The first night we were there we went to a sushi restaurant with an old friend of Novel's and his daughter. This poster was on the washroom door; it fascinated me. "Predators ruin it for everyone". Word.

And these little red dudes which were some kind of tribute to some international event Vancouver had hosted. The girl was in the circle mimicking them; her mother was all like, come out of there, people are trying to take pictures. But I thought she made the picture way more interesting.

early morning

2010-09-19T06:09:00.003-06:00

Back when I was a teenager, it was a bit of a ritual in our house to have a nightly cuppa before bedtime. Nowadays, I apparently can't drink anything caffeinated after supper; it leads to Early Morning Blogging Syndrome.

Or perhaps it was the excess of fresh air and exercise that I got yesterday that has me up so early. We tore down our back deck yesterday. This is a project that has been hanging fire ever since I moved in with Novel. The boards on it were rotting so badly that Novel had fallen through a couple of them. So the intending to tear it down has been ongoing, but it was a bit of an intimidating job.

So this weekend, Novel drafted a couple of his high school friends; two brothers, B and D and a 3rd friend, K (most people I know do not have friends left over from their high school days; Novel not only is still friends with people from high school, but they are good friends and good people) and they came over with their pry bars and muscles and the four of us took it down.

The guy who built the deck in the first place used four inch screws to hold it together. These proved near impossible to take out, partly because he put them in very thoroughly and partly because the heads had corroded so using a screwdriver immediately stripped them. In the end, the guys sawed the boards into short lengths and then pried them apart, while I hauled stuff out to the truck to be taken to the dump.

The whole thing was done by lunch time, then we took them out for burgers and beers. Now we have a big patch of bare dirt behind the house and no steps into the back door. Possibly a spot for a garden? We don't have the funds for a new deck right now, I know that.

When I look at the pictures from our trip, I want to go again right away. But I guess if we did, we'd end up sleeping on the street like this guy:

I was telling Novel that some rich entrepreneur should build a railroad running down the coast from Anchorage to Mexico and run passenger trains on it. Wouldn't that be an awesome trip?

Pass the tea and sympathy, for the good old days are dead

Let's drink a toast to those who best survived the life they've led

It's a long, long time 'til morning, so build your fires high

Now I lay me down to sleep, forever by your side

--Janis Ian, Tea and Sympathy

she's not branded when the prophets speak words of fire

2010-09-16T12:49:00.003-06:00

Questions I ponder as I go about my day:

What did I do with that handy-dandy origami tool that I had?

Will my legs and feet stand up to the new demands of my job for the next 4 or 5 days?

What would a truly sane world look like?

With a little perseverance you can get things done
Without the blind adherence that has conquered some
And nobody wants to know you now
And nobody wants to show you how
So if you're lost and on your own
You can never surrender
And if your path won't lead you home
You can never surrender

--Corey Hart, Never Surrender

link

2010-09-12T20:26:00.001-06:00

Hipster Hitler: http://hipsterhitler.com/

train trip day 1 part 2

2010-09-05T20:49:00.005-06:00

This family got on in Edmonton and sat down in front of us; parents and 4 children under 10. The father promptly unendeared himself to me by making a jocular remark about how they had 4 kids and he hoped we weren't rowdies. Also, somehow he looked like a bible thumper. However, as it turned out, they were quite nice, and their children were remarkably well behaved, particularly for kids who had traveled from Toronto, picking up ear infections at the West Edmonton Mall along the way. The father spent quite a lot of time reading aloud to them from some book; as we disembarked in Vancouver I asked him what he had been reading. It turned out to be Swallows and Amazons.

The weather was grey and overcast for most of Tuesday, so I got a lot of uninspiring pictures of mountains in the clouds. These two turned out rather nicely, though.

The food on the train was wonderful, better than some of the restaurants we visited in Vancouver. Of course, when you're in the dining car, you sit where they put you, and if your party is less than a full table, you get to sit with other travellers. Tuesday night we sat with two old ladies traveling from Edmonton to Vancouver, one of whom was actually from Wales ( and born in Glasgow). The lady from the UK seemed quite nice; her friend from Edmonton set my teeth on edge. There were frequent announcements from a train official pointing out sights, telling us where we were, etc. Edmonton Lady complained that he had a terrible accent. (VIA is headquartered in Montreal and all the staff on the train seemed to be fluently bilingual. And rightfully so.) She also thought that boatload of refugees from Sri Lanka that recently arrived at Vancouver was full of terrorists who should be sent back to where they came from and made a couple of other racist remarks.

In eighteen hundred and sixty-one

The American Railway'd just begun

The great American Railway.

Patsy-ore-ore-ay Patsy-ore-ore-ay Patsy-ore-ore-ay

The great American Railway.

--Traditional

train trip day 1, part 1

2010-09-05T20:37:00.004-06:00

We got on the train Monday night at 10:50, and pretty much promptly went to sleep. I didn't think I'd be able to sleep at all, was resigned to getting into Vancouver exhausted, but as it turned out, it wasn't too bad. The train wasn't very full, so we had double seats to ourselves when we wanted to sleep. The seats went pretty far back, and had good leg rests, so I got a decent night's sleep both nights we were on there.

I woke up at 6 the next morning, just as the train was getting into Edmonton.

This woman was travelling with her dogs, getting off whenever she had the chance to give them a run.

Most of the pictures I took from the train were in the nature of there it is, wasn't it -- the closer an object was to the train, the more likely it was to be a blur. This is some pretty lake in northern Alberta between Edmonton and Jasper, with a row of houses between the lake and the train.

pictures

2010-09-05T20:00:00.002-06:00

The trouble with taking approximately 1000 pictures at once is that it becomes a challenge to sort and post the ones you want to share.

These are the only four that I took at Ancient Spirals before the wedding. I wish I'd taken more; such gorgeous prairie scenery.

This was the resident familiar spirit. As you can see, she knows her worth.

Ah, pray make no mistake, we are not shy

We're very wide awake, the moon and I!

--Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado, The Sun Whose Rays

#honeymoon

2010-09-04T07:22:00.002-06:00

Last full day of honeymoon. You know how I didn't have any pictures of my wedding because I didn't have time to take any? Well, I have about a kazillion pictures of our trip, but I forgot to pack the camera connector, so I still can't post any.

It's been a lovely trip so far, hot sunny weather, nice people, awesome food. We have averaged about 3 hours of walking every day we've been here. Back home, I feel virtuous if I manage to walk half an hour a day but here there's always something more to see, another shop to browse in and I end up going much further than I ever thought I could.

Today we hope to get to Granville Island and English Bay, maybe Stanley Park, preferably by bus or sea bus. When we get home, I'll post some of those kazillion pictures.

Well the man out to end us
Had a hurricane business
He'd raise them from babies all by himself.

But his teenage accountant
Had become surrounded
He drank up the party and everyone left.

--Tom Petty, A Mind With A Heart of Its Own

oh yeah, it was electric, so frightfully hectic

2010-08-30T10:23:00.004-06:00

Years ago, when I was in my 20s, I went to a lot of weddings, because my friends were also in their 20s, (obv) and got married lots. There was a particular group of us that generally ended up dancing in a large circle and taking over the dance floor, to the annoyance of many of the other guests, who got crowded out. Saturday night my three friends left over from that era came to my wedding dance, and we ended up taking over the dance floor with a bunch of family and friends, doing circle dances (White Wedding, Ballroom Blitz, Last Saskatchewan Pirate, Fishing in the Dark). That was a little bit of awesome, I tells ya.

So, I got married this weekend. I didn't take pictures, because I was kinda busy, but when I have some time, I'll steal some from the fam, and post them on here. It won't be soon, because we're leaving on the honeymoon tonight (train through the Rockies, a couple of days in Vancouver, fly home). But everything went wonderfully, and I had a great time, which I didn't especially expect to, so that's good.

Here is a pic of Novel & I from the Empress' wedding.

I'm reaching out for something

Touching nothing's all I ever do

Oh, I softly call you over

When you appear there's nothing left of you, aha

--Sweet, Ballroom Blitz

lake swimming

2010-08-25T23:02:00.003-06:00

I went lake swimming today. It was very cold. But wonderful.

random video

2010-08-14T22:27:00.001-06:00

some imperfections are inevitable

2010-08-12T21:56:00.006-06:00

I've never really given a lot of thought to what sort of dress I would wear if I ever got married. I'm not girlie like that, I'm not into merangue or froth and I dislike that whole white wedding dress symbolism thing. But if you had said to me sometime over the past 20 years or so that I should sew my own wedding dress, I'd a been like uh-duh. I like to sew, so of course I'd sew my wedding dress. And had you further said to me that I would like a hand dyed silk dress, I would have been like, what a great idea!

Huh. So, I'm sewing a hand dyed silk dress for my wedding. If I manage to finish it and not fuck it up, it should look quite nice. But silk is not a fun fabric to sew with if you're a bit of an amateur.

The company where I got the silk and the dye to dye it with warns one not to go into dying with preconceived notions of what the finished product will look like, and so I didn't. And a good thing, too. For one thing, I dyed the silk in two batches, because I couldn't dye that much silk in one pot. The two pieces came out two distinctly different shades. They're both a beautiful, pale copper, but I cooked the second piece longer than the first piece, and it's slightly darker. So I used the darker pieces for the side panels, which works -- I mean, it looks like that was my intention all along.

Also, silk has a very lackadaisical attitude. It slides around and stretches without telling you, and gets out of alignment. One of my side panels is about an inch shorter than its twin even though I cut them together. God knows how I will get is to be of an even length when I get to hemming it.

Oh shut your mouth,
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does.

--The Smiths, How Soon Is Now

surrounded by fire and magic we long to be free

2010-08-05T10:55:00.005-06:00

When we first started planning this wedding thing, I was all like, I'm a provide the music myself. I have fairly idiosyncratic musical tastes, and over the years I have collected quite a lot of music on my hard drive. All I need is a computer and a couple of good speakers. But as time went on, (and Novel knows a guy who does dj-ing for a living) I concluded it was just too much added hassle on top of all the other stuff. (You know how I said I wanted just a small wedding? Well, there'll be at least 49 people at the actual ceremony and close on 200 at the reception. There were people left off the ceremony invite list who should have been on there, and we've had calls from people who were just wondering if there was some mistake and shouldn't they really be invited to the wedding?)

So we hired Novel's friend to do the music. We met with him last week to discuss what was going to be played. Novel wants a lot of 50s & 60s music (plus, god help us, Elvis. Well, there are a couple of Elvis songs I quite like, but they aren't really wedding material, like Kentucky Rain, and Suspicious Minds. And In the Ghetto.).

I have this theory that peoples' musical tastes frequently get stuck at the point of their formative years. So you'll meet guys who are all like, oh yeah I loves me some music, but all they listen to is Van Halen, or ACDC. Some people just quit actively listening to musics after a certain point in their development. It's sad really. Novel's taste in music is fine fine, he listens to almost as broad a spectrum of music as I do, jazz and blues and rock. We both aren't into country, although we both are Johnny Cash fans, and he likes some stuff I just won't have played at my wedding, like Nickelback and Bryan Adams.

Anyway, the long and short of this long and pointless post is that I've decided that what I primarily want played is corny 80s rock. Billy Idol (White Wedding, Dancing With Myself). John Parr (Naughty, Naughty, St. Elmo's Fire). Meatloaf's Hot Summer Night, but not Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Eddie Money. Madonna's Material Girl. Now I have to micromanage this dude into playing what I want.

I'm really just making this post to remind myself that I have blog.

I'm on a bus on a psychedelic trip

Reading murder books tryin' to stay hip.

--Billy Idol, Eyes Without a Face

astral walks I try to take/I sit and throw i ching

2010-07-17T16:46:00.003-06:00

Yes, I'm aware that I have not posted lately. It's because I hate you all.

Don't take it personally.

I don't think I ever posted any pictures from Edmonton. The above pic is some sort of watermelon drink that the Empress, Painter and Vagabond Queen had the night of our arrival, which I did not partake of because I was being virtuous about my not drinking. I still mostly am, except that I had a marguerita a couple of weeks back. It's probably a sad commentary on my [lack of] character that I enjoyed it as much as I did.

Here's a link, but I strongly recommend against clicking it. I don't hate you THAT much. It won't make you feel better about life, or your fellow man (and I use the term advisedly).

Here's me, Painter and her Imperial Majesty squinting in the evening sunshine.

I have far too much to do to be sitting here blogging.

I did a master to do list for the wedding, on several sheets of paper, then hung it on the wall. It looks pretty imposing, but I was looking it over, and concluded that it could be worse. (Not a conclusion which makes me feel especially better.) The worst thing on it is my dress -- well, the worst things on the list are anything to do with me personally. You might say I'm resisting in certain areas, I guess. It's not that I don't want to get married. It's that I don't want the f****ing wedding, and I never have. And people, mostly Novel's friends, keep demanding to know how things are coming along. Novel keeps saying that he's going to be a blubbering idiot on the Day, and I keep saying that I'm going to be in a rare bitchy mood, then we joke about what a charming couple we'll make...

I can't figure out if the Empress is skipping down the path here, or sneaking up on Vagabond Queen to stab her. Probably the first; I don't remember any knifing incidents or other unpleasantness.

Cry for the soul
that will not face
the body as an equal place
and i never learned
to touch for real
or feel the things
iguanas feel
down, down, down
where they play.

--Dory Preven, Mythical Kings and Iguanas

forgive us we're canadian

2010-07-04T17:59:00.008-06:00

So the first big event of the summer is all but over. By "all but" I mean that the Empress is safely married and Vagabond Queen has returned to Edmonton, but Maredeth is still in town. I believe the rulebook stipulates that the party doesn't end while she's still in town.

Having goat cheese with mashed blueberries sandwich for supper. I know that sounds healthy, and probably is (needs more blueberries) but unfortunately it was preceded by a Cadbury's milk chocolate bar and quite a few honey roasted peanuts, which probably cancels any positive effects it might have had on my health. I could have gone to Painter's for supper; apparently the Empress & family were going to be there - but as I told Maredeth, I need some me time. I spent pretty much all of the past week either at work, or in the company of various members of my family, or in the company of all the members of my family at once, plus various friends and total strangers. Novel is out playing soccer and the idea of sitting here listening to tunes and blogging all by myself was just too attractive to pass up.

The Empress' wedding was very charming. Thursday night we assembled on the Meewasin Queen at about 9:30 pm. There we watched a brief ceremony uniting the Empress and Judah then we had supper while the riverboat took us up river to watch the Canada Day fireworks, then we zipped back down the river, disembarked and headed for home. On Saturday there was a party at the Empress' for more food and gift opening, which was also lovely. In between these two events, much cooking and cleaning and sewing and socializing was done. I sewed a dress out of a cotton print with a japanese motif in greens and golds. I much liked the end result, which was not at all mother-of-teh-bride-ish.

The Empress sewed her dress too -- that was a little more elaborate than mine, of course. Very lovely, belly dance themed, champagne coloured charmeuse covered in sequins and sarovski crystals and beads in red and coppers.

I made butter tarts for the Saturday brunch which won praise for me from the Empress' unlovely new father-in-law. "Did you make these?" he demanded, unbelieving. "I'll treat you differently from now on." I said to Novel later, he probably didn't think I could cook, feminist that I am, hence the surprise. I believe the Empress has mentioned him on her blog a time or two. I think my favorite tale about him was the time when the Empress & Judah were moving from their last house. He'd stopped over to help with the move; looking around the kitchen in its considerably disarray, he said casually to his son, "This mess is why I never could stand children. And your mother was a good housekeeper." I saw him watching Pteranadon at the party Saturday as if she was some kind of freak -- which I guess makes me more sorry for him than anything. Because anyone who can't enjoy the company of the Pteranadon is a sad and pathetic man.

All the children were completely charming for the wedding. And beautiful. The weather was interesting. Cloudy and windy, with a dramatic sky and a little squall of rain which blew over in plenty of time for the fireworks to not even be delayed. Of course, the weather has been a little unsettled of late in this city. We had flash floods on both Tuesday and Friday, it was nice that they missed Thursday and Saturday.

It's back to work tomorrow. I took Thursday and Friday off work, which was as well, as there were plenty of last minute things to be done, like hemming the Empress' wedding dress, and cooking and cleaning. All weekend I've been out of sync with the days, because I was off work for Thurs & Fri, it seemed like I should have been back to work yesterday.

And now I have to get serious about getting ready for my wedding.

Wish I could feel more enthusiastic about it. I want the wedding fairy to just come and settle it all for me.

Did I tell youse what we're doing for the honeymoon? Taking the train through the Rockies to Vancouver, staying there a couple of days, then flying home. We can't afford it, but doesn't it sound lovely?

Today Novel and I were walking back from the grocery store, planning to take a short cut through a nearby schoolyard, when we saw a cop standing at the back door of a house with gun drawn. At about the same moment he spotted us and gestured us to take a different route from what the one we were walking. So, not being ones to argue with big men with guns, we obediently turned and took a different path home.

You know, you can't talk to a man
With a shotgun in his hand.

--Carole King, Smackwater Jack

100 cheesiest movie quotes of all time

2010-07-04T17:43:00.001-06:00

I have my doubts about the "of all time", but otherwise quite amusing.

continuing my pithy social commentary

2010-06-13T09:26:00.003-06:00

Me, this morning with the World Cup on the telly: So if anyone suggests to you that women have achieved equality, you can just point them to this...

He: These commentators?

Me: No, the whole World Cup thing.

He: Oh, there's a Women's World Cup.

Me: Has anyone ever heard of it?

He: Yes.

Me: Does anyone actually watch it?

He: Well...

Me: Is the CBC all Women's World Cup all the time for a month?

He: No.

Me: Why are you sighing like that? Don't you agree with my point?

He: Oh, I agree. I'm just wondering how you can be that self righteous so early in the morning.

Me: Oh, it's just second nature to me. Self righteousness is one of my talents.

angst on the planks, spttin' from a bridge just to see how far down it really is
robbing a bank, jumping on a train old antiques a man along can entertain

--The Tragically Hip, Cordelia

fifa

2010-06-12T22:36:00.005-06:00

So if I live blog the World Cup, will I lose what few readers I have?*

Earlier today, me to Novel: Dear! I have decided which team I will be cheering for to win the World Cup.

Oh, who?

Argentina. They have the prettiest coach evah.

Diego Maradona? He's a coke addict --

I don't care about his drug habits. He's a pretty, pretty man. Prettier even than Cristiano Renaldo.

He used to be prettier a few years ago when he won the world cup with the Hand of God goal.

What was that?

He used his hand to tap the ball into the goal.

Isn't that illegal? Nod from Novel. So that's kind of like he cheated to win?

Later, when we were out and about, we spotted a white convertible Jag. Omigod, says I, that's even prettier than that Argentinian soccer coach.

Well, I've decided that I don't care if you watch the World Cup just because you think Maradona is pretty, if it means you're going to watch it with me.

Huh. Not a chance. I'm so over Maradona. Cheating coke addict.

* Really, not a chance. I've seen maybe 2 minutes of it so far. Luckily the computer and the tv are not in the same room.

Way down the lane away living for another day
The aphids swarm up in the drifting haze

--Duran Duran, The Chauffeur

in the event of an erection lasting more than 4 hours, seek medical assistance

2010-06-11T08:46:00.006-06:00

He: There's a fat white guy on tv congratulating South Africa on hosting the world cup.
Me: Fat white guy? Dear, you sound almost feminist.
He: Almost.

Yep, the World Cup starts today and I live with a soccer nut. You know what that means, don't you? Means I get to watch a whole bunch of commercials I've never seen before. And a bunch I've already seen too many times. Yippee.

First one (that I haven't seen) features a young girl drinking at a party. Disembodied voice asks her what she's having. Cut to a text screen reading: "An hour later Brandy (Tiffany? Shawna? can't remember her name) had herpes. And she wasn't even going to drink."

Second one (that I've seen all too many times, because although it is obvs. shown on other channels, it is a major staple on sports channels, where you can assume that the audience is made up of old fat white guys who are worrying about the diminishment of their mystical erectile powers) is that old tired Viagra commercial: Fat white dude saying, "My wife and I tried antiquing. Antiquing was taking over our lives. So I tried Viagra, and my antiquing kind of ... disappeared."

Then just for emphasis, they ran both commercials again. Message: Old white guys should take drugs and get lots of sex. Young girls should not drink and have sex... unless it's with old white dudes on drugs, I guess. And even then, they'll likely get terrible diseases and it will totally be their fault.

I especially like the Viagra commercial with the old white dude complaining about how he and his wife took up strolling. So he took Viagra and his strolling stopped. Note that he does not say *Our* strolling stopped. I figure his wife just kept on walking and left him to his priapism.

She was low down and trifling
And she was cold and mean
Kind of evil make me want to grab my sub machine.

--Johnny Cash, Delia's Gone

persistent, resiliant, flexible, curious

2010-06-07T13:43:00.003-06:00

(...sitting here drinking something called alo allure juice and eating Miss Vickies Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar chips (Sel Marin et Vinaigre de Malt, this being Canada)...)

Got back last night from the Women's Words Writers Conference in Edmonton. We had originally planned to go down thurs and return mon, but it turned out that Painter had surgery on her carpal tunnel this morning, so we drove back sun night. Got in around oneish. We would actually have got in a bit earlier, but we stopped on the way to visit with family near Lloydminster, meeting my brother's more recent grandchildren, all three of whom are incredibly cute.

My workshop was about kickstarting one's muse through meditation. Not sure what I was expecting, I hadn't given it a lot of thought beyond reading the description and thinking that it would be a good workshop to take. Anyway, it wasn't much like anything that I might have imagined, if I had thought about it, except that I did guess that it would be filled with angsty old white women (of which I am admittedly one) who wanted to express the thoughts of their innermost hearts. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The Facilitator (as my sister tells me the position should be called) was african descent, raised in london. She had a lovely accent which was a blend of cultured english with african roots. Very serious woman, although she could be jokey. She took whatever we said and did with utmost seriousness and respect, praised lavishly, gently pointed out occasional flaws, showed us some meditation techniques (she had a wonderful voice for leading meditations), played us a little homegrown music, and talked a lot about how to find the muse.

Which is to say, we talked about where we found -- and where others find -- inspiration and encouragement for the act of writing. I never thought of inspiration in terms of muse before, so some of the questions she aimed at us fell a little flat. For instance, she asked what we needed to find the courage to write. That one just puzzled me, (partly because I find the syntax awkward) but, also, I've never lacked the courage to write since I first took up the practice. Lacked the courage to talk about it or tell people about it or just generally speak up in groups, but the actual act of writing doesn't scare me, precisely. In fact, sometimes I would even claim to enjoy writing.

One of the lovely aspects of the workshop was that she gave us a lot of free writing time. She'd lead a meditation, then she'd dismiss us to sit and write for half an hour, or more, on whatever we pleased. Also, there wasn't too much pressure to open your mouth in class and reading your work out loud was strictly on a voluntary basis.

On the 2nd day in the morning, she told us to sit and write for half an hour before we did anything else, on whatever topic we wanted. I didn't have anything in mind to write, because although I'm working on a story right now, I wanted to devote the weekend to something a little more lighthearted, or at least less serious in terms of how much effort I wanted to put into it.

So I sat down and wrote a couple of awkward sentences which were essentially trying to capture the awkwardness I felt at being at a writers' workshop with a bunch of total strangers. These sentences morphed into a story about an entire family who inadvertently ended up at a week long writers' retreat on a somewhat isolated island. There is the neurotic rich-bitch mother, who hides deep and painful secrets under her well preserved exterior, her twin daughters, Night and Day and even her writerly husband flies in for the closing weekend of the retreat. Night of course is reserved and introspective, Day is outgoing, but equally neurotic. Night wants to be a writer, but feels weighted down by Daddy's expectations, (Daddy had one novel published in his 20s, which was a bit of a cult classic, but ultimately drifted into a job as an English prof, and never published again. Now he longs for an opportunity to live vicarously through his youngest daughter's success, if only she'd get off her fat ass and produce something publishable.) Day says she wants to be a writer, because it's an easy answer when someone asks. Day is a party girl, not interested in settling down, and why should she? Daddy is rich enough to support them, paying her way into the conference because he feels vaguely guilty about how she turned out. The twins are fraternal, and not much alike but very close nonetheless. There's more -- every time the facilitator gave us time to free write, I gravitated back to them, until I ended up with a complete short story, parts of which I do not hate. Now I want to rework it, and maybe post it somewhere to be read, maybe on here.

Apart form intensively sitting in workshops meditation and writing all day (harder than you would think, akshully) I hung out with my family; we got into town on Thursday in time to celebrate Vagabond Queen's birthday, then the conference didn't start till Friday night, so we spent Friday shopping. We went to a bunch of stores that sold saris and east indian material, just beautiful, with those vibrant colours and all bejewelled and sequinned. Everytime I meditated all weekend, all I could see behind my eyes were sari colours, which was a bit of all right. Meditation really gets my right brain going.

And I spent intensive time with my families which was nice.

Make it a soulful shade of blue with a ribbon at the hem,
A ribbon white for loyalty to show that I remember when
A soulful shade of blue looked into my eyes
And tell him, I want him back again.

--Neko Case, Soulful Shade of Blue

of road trips and smart mouths

2010-06-02T21:09:00.006-06:00

I was over at the Empress' yesterday and as I was leaving, someone, probably Paprika, asked when I would be over again. Well, not this weekend, I replied. Aw, said Ozy.

I was really tired, and I stared at him for a long moment while I figured out why that didn't sound right. Are you actually acting disappointed that I'm not coming over this weekend? I asked at last. No, he said quickly, with that little grin he gives when he's being funny. Good, I said. I thought maybe I'd strayed into a alternative dimension with an alternative Ozy in it.

All the same, he was acting disappointed.

I happened to be reading an old entry in this blog from a couple of years ago, about a similar visit. As I was leaving, Ozy told me that I had bugged him the whole time I was there. I don't even know why you bother coming to visit, he said.

I'm off to Edmonton tomorrow for a weekend of crazy writers' workshopping with Painter, Vagabond Queen and the Empress. I shall probably tweet about it. Blogging will not be done.

I see your hair is burnin'
Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar
Drivin' down your freeways
Midnite alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman...
So alone, so alone
So alone, so alone

--The Doors, L.A. Woman

isn't it amazing anything's accomplished when a little sensation gets in the way

2010-05-31T20:49:00.003-06:00

I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later. - Mitch Hedberg

So I know I said I was going to blog, but I have a big raw patch on the tip of my right index finger which makes me really not want to type. And I've been working on mailing labels for wedding invitations which is typing and which makes it more sorer. And I've had extreme insomnia for the past two days, waking up at 3:30 and not getting back to sleep. So even though I came home from work and slept for a couple of hours, I'm still feeling pretty blah.

Maybe tomorrow.

Here. Watch an Eddie Izzard video instead.

creativity

2010-05-28T09:44:00.001-06:00

I am meaning to do a real blog post one day soon. But in the meantime, here is a link for my creative, conflicted, dearly loved family:

http://zenhabits.net/creative-habit/

...

2010-05-25T11:58:00.001-06:00

If only I could learn to do things when I don't feel like doing anything, what a lot more I would get done.

i just want to take out my eyeballs and rinse them

2010-05-14T13:11:00.004-06:00

A long time ago -- '93, I believe -- I bought a house. Possession date was May 1st of that year. Moving in was immediately followed by a spell of frantically over-achieving nasal passages, sore throat, general feeling of malaise. Shit, I thought, I've bought a house that I'm allergic to. After a while the symptoms went away, and I concluded that rather than being allergic to the house, I had developed allergies to whatever was in the air in springtime. I've had the same thing happen every spring... thing is, it's hard to tell if it's allergies or a cold, or if I start with allergies which then morph into something more deadly.

Which is the long way round of saying that I'm sick. Started as just a runny nose and perpetual sneezing, but last night at work I was feverish and achy in addition to the other shit. So I called up the spare who works out at my site, and booked him to work for me tonight, so that's okay. I didn't mind that it is also Friday that I happen to be taking off.

On the other hand, I really want to sleep, but the roofers chose today to come put a new roof on our house, so I don't know if sleep will be happening.

Ugh. I had other things I thought I would blog about, but now I think about it, they seem to be mostly unbearably boring trivia. So never mind.

The other day at the hospital, one of the volunteers who works there regularly stopped me and asked me how I liked working there. "You must be doing okay," she said. "People don't complain about you all the time the way they used to complain about the woman you replaced." Good to know.

I think I'll go try to sleep through the hammering.

For what is a man? What has he got?
If not himself - Then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way.

--Paul Anka, My Way

emo

2010-05-07T19:59:00.005-06:00

So is it just me, or does anyone else want to stick knives in their ears whenever they hear that Ben Folds Five song, "Brick"?

Does Ben Folds have the whiniest voice in the history of pop, or are there -- horrors -- others out there whinier still? Whenever that song comes on, I want to take him out in a boat on the ocean and show him how drowning feels for real as compared to merely having knocked up his girlfriend, done the right thing by supporting her through an abortion, and 'fessing up to the out-laws about what was going on, then written a whiney song about the whole experience.

I managed to not-tip a cab driver today. I always tip, but we've had pissed poor service out of this cab company lately and this driver today was pretty bad, and I've decided not to pay extra for poor service anymore.

He started off okay, affable, helped load my groceries. Then he took the wrong turn out of the lot and to rectify the mistake, he needed to make a right turn onto a street aiming away from my house, then cross two lanes of traffic at a busy intersection, make a left into a different lot for a different mall, and u-turn so that he could head out onto the street travelling in the correct direction this time. That was some impressively bad driving. He didn't bother apologizing for the goof, either, let alone offer to take money off the fare, the way some drivers would. Then his cell phone rang. I thought of saying, don't answer it. It's illegal, you know. But I kept my mouth shut and he answered it, listened intently to whoever was on the other end, then said, succinctly and distinctly, "Fuck off", and hung up. Then he meandered up to our street, and came to a stop at the next door neighbour's gate.

"Could you back up?" I asked. He gave me a look suggesting I was being unreasonable, but complied. Then he hopped out of the cab without asking for payment first in the usual way. He quickly piled my groceries on the sidewalk then held out his hand for payment. The fare was $9; I handed him a ten.

"Thanks," he says, walking away as he pocketed it.

"Wasn't the fare $9?" I ask.

Oh, yes, he was just going to get me my change, he doesn't carry money on him, he assured me. Then he went and got his change, and handed me my loonie, which I pocketed and proceeded to haul my groceries (several bags, a bag of potatoes and a box of kitty litter) up the steps into my house, all the while congratuling myself on handling the situation with calm firmness. I don't know if he got the message, but I found it satisfying anyway. I'm pretty sure I've/we've had him some other time, with equally bad service, and furthermore I think when he realized that he'd driven me before, that was when the service went from bad to worse.

Well, it's not like the other cab companies are any better. I had to phone a cab for some poor woman today; she came up to my booth crying (I hate that) and asked me to call her a cab and specified which company (a different company from the one Novel and I usually use). I ended up having to call them three times before they got the correct place to pick her up; that poor woman waited over an hour for her cab. And the 3rd time I called, when I demanded why no cab had yet shown up, the dispatcher blamed me for not telling her the correct door. I might have snapped back at her at that point.

And the third cab company in town has been charged with breaking windshields of other cabs out at the airport, which makes me think they may not have such great customer service either.

It's Cab Wars, I tellz ya.

So have y'all seen this story: Neanderthal Genome Complete; Provides Evidence of Evolution, Interbreeding, right? Turns out we're all part neandertal.

Anyway, I best get off here. I wasn't going to write so much tonight; my hands are undergoing a big outbreak of redness/swelling/skin splits and my fingertips are really sore and typing doesn't help. Also, Novel just got home and brought me a copy of The Tao of Willie, which was left in one of the cars in his impound lot. This looks like a gem. I must go read it.

Let me leave you with this gem of wisdom: "Once the shit is out of the bull," we say in Texas, "it's hard to put it back in again."

Then I walk down to buy her flowers
And sell some gifts that I got
Can't you see
It's not me you're dying for

--Ben Folds Five, Brick

exit strategy

2010-05-06T20:32:00.004-06:00

So here's how it goes: just past my parking kiosk is a device called an exit column (looks a bit like a high tech yellow and grey mushroom); beside the exit column are sensors embedded in the pavement so that the machinery senses when there is a car there. If you have a prepaid ticket, you drive up onto the sensors, put your ticket in the slot in the exit column which lifts the exit barrier, allowing you to sail on out of the parkade. I frequently have to explain to departing customers how the thing works.

So, this morning a car containing two LOLs drives gingerly up to my window. The driver has a prepaid ticket. I wave them on to the exit column. "You have to drive up right beside it," I explain. "The ticket won't go in the slot unless there is a car nearby." "Oh," says the demure little old lady without missing a beat. "I used to have a boyfriend like that." Then she, her companion and I all crack up.

Jonny's in America
Jonny looks up at the stars
Jonny combs his hair
And Jonny wants pussy and cars

--David Bowie, I'm Afraid of Americans

Her style is new but the face is the same as it was so long ago

2010-05-03T19:14:00.002-06:00

I'm way too tired to blog and also, I have no time. However, I guess I should attempt a little updatery.

Last Monday I had a doctor's appointment. I had the ultrasound about that pain in my side, and the technician (don't know the exact name for an ultrasound technician is, ultrasound tech, maybe?) doing the procedure said no, no, everything looked fine to her. I even asked her a second time on my way out of the room, and she asseverated that my internal organs appeared fine to her gaze. So when my dr.'s (have I ever given her a pseudonym on this blog? I'm sure I've blogged her before, but I don't remember pseudonymizing her) my dr's office called the first time to make me make an appointment, I just kind of ignored it. What, I'm going to go clear across town for her to tell me everything is fine, fine? So they had to call another couple of times, before I finally went in to see her, only to be told that everything isn't totally cool with my innards after all. She tells me that I have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

This is not necessarily serious. Apparently (according to wikipedia and the mayo clinic) lots of people have it, and don't even know they have it, it's often discovered during a routine test, or tests for something else, doesn't have serious consequences, etc., etc. She's -- the dr.'s -- all like, no worries, just it's recommended that you lose weight and quit drinking. Losing weight of course is the standard prescription for all conditions we in the first world develop. In other words, I'm a fat fatty and my liver is a fatty and I have to do something about it. On the other hand, quitting drinking is a new order. Don't think I've ever been told that before for any of my myriad conditions.

Not that I drink. I can go weeks without even thinking about drinking and at most these days I will have two drinks in a given night. Maybe wine over supper, or maybe a beer when I'm doing housework (one of the rewards of doing housework in my opinion) or on rare occasions, a cocktail. So I don't see that giving up alcohol is going to have that much impact on my liver, I don't drink enough these days to affect it, although I'll admit to abusing it occasionally in the past. But even though I don't drink much, I resent having to give it up altogether. I happen to think that lime and tequila are one of god's perfect pairings of foods. I like a beer on a hot day. So, you know, that's annoying.

Oh, yes, she also said I had a cyst on my liver. She seemed to think it was of no import, although I see that the mayo clinic says liver cysts can be a symptom of cancer of the liver. Yeah, totally not going there or doing that.

Also, apparently NAFLD is related to the whole metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes thing. Plus I found a paper on the net that implies an acetaminophen/NAFLD/liver damage connection.

Lessee, what else is new in my life since I last blogged?

Been trying to get things done for the wedding, but it takes an immense effort to get anything accomplished around here. There's just too much to be done and I have limited energy on a good day.

I took my computer in to be fixed for that persistent shutting-off problem it was experiencing. They told me at least 10 days until they would even get to looking at it. That was on the 3rd or 4th, so it'll be end of this week that they look at it if I'm lucky. Then there's no saying of course just what the problem is and how much it is likely to set me back to get it fixed. Sigh. I miss having my own computer. Plus my computer was the one in the house which connects to the printer, so we can't print anything around here at the minute.

Work has been work, no major problems. I'm on days this week, which makes means getting up at 5. Last night I woke up for some reason around 1:30 and didn't really get back to sleep until around four, then I had to work. So I'm feeling a little washed out today, even despite a nap when I got home from work.

Anyone in the mood for cute grandchildren tales? I knew you would be.

Was over at the Empress' yesterday, and I was mock wrestling with Ozy. "Help me!" he cried out to his littlest sister (it's a safe bet that if he'd called for help from his next sister, she would have told him to rot in hell or the 8 year old equivalent. They'd been fighting all afternoon.). "I'm helping you, I'm helping you, I'm helping you!" cries Pteranodon running over to us. She grabbs Ozy's arm and tugs it, I of course let go, and she gives him a big joyful hug for having saved him.

She's so good with the talking that a person doesn't even really register how unusual she is. So when she says (as she said to me yesterday when we were playing outside), "I need a coat. I'm freezing to death," you have to remind yourself that many two-and-a-half year old don't use those sort of expressions.

People talkin' all around 'bout the way you left me flat,
I don't care what the people say, I know where their jive is at.
One thing I do have on my mind, if you can clarify please do,
It's the way you call me by another guy's name when I try to make love to you.
I try to make love but it ain't no use.

--Led Zeppelin, Heartbreaker

quit making me roll my eyes at you, I've done it so often it hurts

2010-04-17T14:09:00.004-06:00

When do people even find time to blog anymore? Remember back when everyone first discovered blogs and everyone was blogging all the time and reading each other's blogs and commenting obsessively on other peoples' blogs ? Remember?

Well, blogging does make a good Saturday afternoon/enjoying the sunshine/listening to tunes sort of a pasttime. A good afternoon for spinning a tale about my dreams, hey, it's my blog and I can go on about my dreams if I want.

I had my nap yesterday morning. Napping in the morning is ridiculous, prob. because I have usually been drinking coffee. So I never really sleep, just doze off then sort of resurface to consciousness which isn't quite awake where my mind thinks helpful things like I'm not asleep. Or am I? Not a restful sleep at all, but it does make for interesting dreams.

I dreamt I was lying on the couch in my kitchen (note: mostly this dream was hyper-realistic, but we don't actually have a couch where I dreamt there was one which was under the window beside the sink. The rest of the kitchen looked just like it does in the waking realm.) I was lying on this couch with one of my blood pressure pills in my hand about to take it. My mother was bustling around the kitchen. I opened my mouth to say can you hand me a cup of water but all I got out was "Can you--" and she hands me a cup filled with what certainly looks like water. "What is this?" I ask and she gives me this irritated/reproachful look as if to say it's water, you think I didn't know that was what you were going to ask for?, so I took her word for it and drank and took my pill. Then I woke up.

I haven't dreamt about my mother in years. In fact, I don't remember ever dreaming of her much. In the dream she was youngish, maybe in her forties, sort of how I remember her from my extreme youth before she really got into the ill health. She was bustling around the kitchen and when I asked her what she was doing she said she was going to make a quilt. She showed me and it was mostly done, of squares of pretty faded material. I had this panicked moment in the dream where I couldn't remember where she was currently living, and thinking that perhaps I should offer to let her move in with us.

The cup she handed me was one of my red and white Christmas scene mugs, again very real-life and the water was very refreshing as I recall. (It never occurred to me before, but that's a little ironic, considering my mother never drank water -- she always said that as far as she was concerned, water was for washing in.)

Then I got up and did my yoga, which wasn't any more refreshing than the nap had been, because I felt like I was at least 50 pounds heavier than I had been before I lay down and my muscles were made out of wet sand.

Then I went to work.

Work also was ridiculous. I had a good batch of customers that night, all stripes. A Sikh came up to my window to ask me a question, and after I had fixed his problem and let him out of the carpark, the next guy in the line drives up to the window, youngish, short straw coloured hair, weather reddened skin, grubby t-shirt and jeans -- a redneck, in short -- and asks me in a concerned voice, "That guy wasn't threatening you, was he?" Get a grip, good sir. Studies have shown that there are few to no terrorists in central Saskatchewan.

The other night I was making the night deposit and chatting with hospital security, and this one guard asked me if customers had been giving me a hard time that night. "I figure what you need is a water pistol," says he. "Then if someone gives you grief, 'squirt!' in the face. If they get bent out of shape, say, well, it's what I use on my cats."

After a while, you do get to know people. Frequently when I ask someone how he/she is, they will say something like, I have two/one more treatment(s). Always with an I survived air. And I congratulate them and send them on their way.

On the other hand, there was the aged gentleman who made a point of asking my name, and always saying goodnight to me as he drove by, even though he had a pass and so actually didn't have to talk to me (most people with passes sail on by). One night as he left I asked him how he was. "Not good," says he, in a choked voice. "My wife has --" and sort of trailed off, so that I was left unsure of what was exactly happening with her. Then a few days ago he stopped by to say that I wouldn't be seeing him anymore, because his wife was being transferred to another hospital. And I was going to ask him if that was good or not, but then I remembered that there is a hospice at that hospital, so I kept my mouth shut.

Then there are the obnoxious ones, and the cons artists. The ones who drive up to my window and haughtily demand to be let through. The guy who had conveniently dumped his paid ticket into a cup of half finished coffee. And in between customers I read and write and do crosswords (I know, right?) and admire the sky and wonderful weather. We had a beautiful rainstorm here earlier in the week, then two days of hot weather, so that everything is turning green and the trees are budding out like crazy.

And I've been waiting in the weeds
Waiting for the summer rain to fall upon the
Wild birds scattering the seeds
Answering the calling of the tide's eternal tune
The phases of the moon
The chambers of the heart
The egg and dart of small gray
Spiders spinning in the dark
In spite of all the times the web is torn apart.

--The Eagles, Waiting in the Weeds

methought I heard a voice cry "sleep no more!"

2010-04-16T08:19:00.006-06:00

Been up since 4:30ish. Novel had to go to work early (he usually works at noon, but today it was 8), so he got up at 5 and I couldn't get back to sleep so eventually I gave up trying and got up and had breakfast. Novel said he was going to stop at Mickey D's on the way to work, and I'm like, that sounds like a good idea -- not Mickey D's, off course, but some combination of grease and cholesterol and salt. So I made shredded potato cakes with marg and sour cream and fried eggs. Umm. My digestion is so going to hate me for the rest of the day.

Now what I need is a mocha from Starbucks.

I keep thinking about all the things I could get done this morning, like yoga and going for a walk and maybe some creative stuff, but I'll probably just fart around on the internets for a bit, then go back to bed. I have to be at work by 3.

****

Things what I learned this week:
1) Never marry a psycho hosebeast.
2) Never move clear across the country because your lawfully wedded psycho hosebeast says she's going and you can come along, or don't, suit yourself.
3) Never get involved in a polyamory relationship at the behest of your lawfully wedded psycho hosebeast because she says she neeeeeeds it.

Had supper with an old friend this week. Yah, his life is plenty fucked.

I actually orginally typed relationship as relationshit. Beautifully freudian.

****

I also learned that making chocolate hazelnut spread isn't as easy as it might be. I've been making nut butters (almond, pecan sesame) ever since I learned how easy it is. So I bought some bulk hazelnuts because thought I'd try giving Nutella a run for their money. But I didn't properly blanche the nuts before I blended them, so my choc spread is gritty. Plus I don't think it's chocolatey enough or sweet enough. It tastes not half bad, though, so I'm definitely gonna try it again.

I need a really good industrial strength blender. It would be so useful for so many things.

*****

It's spring outside my window. The sun's been up for hours (though not as long as I have). The grass has a definite greenish tinge, and the trees are full of buds.

*****

Ever since we had those unfortunate cat incidents a few weeks ago, where Cissy attacked Road Kill and tried to shred Novel's feet, we've been keeping the two cats separate (for a while I had to keep Cissy and Novel separate, but we've managed to get past that). This isn't a big house, so keeping 2 cats in separate parts is a challenge, and has resulted in poor Road Kill living in the basement. Our basement isn't a place where you would want to live. Last week I tried bring Road Kill upstairs but he skulked around the edges of the house like Chuchundra and hid in the closet until I took him back downstairs. But so anyway, yesterday, I allowed Cissy downstairs and she wandered around sniffing the basement and ignoring Road Kill, and he ignored her. So I have hopes that we will once more be able to be one big happy family.

*****

And finally, let me leave you with some words of wisdom: To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody. - Quentin Crisp

I think I might have to go back to bed now.

They say you're a star
That's what the boys all say you are
I don't see much tv
So you don't mean shit to me
But you look like a fine thing, Jerry.
Yeh, you look like a fine thing, Jerry.

--Mark Knopfler, El Macho

i never saw time running out with my roll

2010-04-11T20:59:00.004-06:00

A couple of days ago I sent emails to my three oldest friends -- Thorsdatter, Kate and Bianca -- asking for their addresses so that I could send them invitations to my wedding. Here are their (entirely characteristic) responses:

Thorsdatter:
Well Congrats! No time to talk - I'm in my incometax zone - Talk to you soon...Thorsdatter

Kate:
Well, well, well! So there is hope for unwed women over 40 after all? Congratulations!

Bianca:
over 40?????? your younger sister is over 50, do the math, although technically I guess you are over 40 . :)In any case there always hope. :) . When's the date?

Bianca:
oooops correct postal code is xxx xxx, one that I gave you is yyy yyy. Thats what age does to you - I'm on the fast track to senility, I may be the baby in the group, but I think I'm going to win that race. :(

By-bye bye baby, rock yourself to sleep.

--The Eagles, How Long

let's get together and feel all right.

2010-04-03T22:56:00.005-06:00

Had a nice weekend so far, even though it wasn't a long weekend like everyone else had. I had to work for 6 hours Friday -- everyone was like, well it won't be very busy. You'd better make sure you have a book to read. But it was busy after all, in bursts. I did get quite a lot of reading done, in between being bothered by people who either couldn't deal with paying their ticket via an automation, or who preferred dealing with a real live human.

But the weather has been beautiful, sunny and warm. The snow is pretty much gone; maybe there's a little left in the odd corner of the city. I bought myself a back support cushion for the kiosk, which makes it a little less hard on the back. I leave it in the booth when I'm not working, but I think both my co-workers (Mr. Cranky Pants and Mr. Snotty Pants) disdain to use it on the grounds that it will turn them into pansies. They seem to have a problem with anything that might make the job easier; both of them have remarked on the fact that I use a calculator for cashing out instead of paper and pencil. I imagine them discussing my vagaries in hushed tones, did you see? she uses a calculator. If you can believe it. And a back support cushion.

But I have to say that after my initial meetings with each of them, characterized by a little rudeness on their parts (and a little hard feeling on my part) they've been perfectly well behaved and affable and I don't actually mind either one of them. I've had worse co-workers.

This morning Novel and I went downtown for breakfast, stopping on the way to return the dvd/blue ray player that I got him for his birthday because his friends had got him one, also, and we don't need two dvd/blue ray players. So he went and got a golf club with the refund from my present which made him happy. When we walked into the store where the player had to be returned to, we were greeted by a greeter who gave us each a box containing three of those Lindt truffle filled chocolate eggs. You need these, she said brightly and she was right.

Then this evening I went and played hide and seek with the grandkids in the dark because we'd missed doing it on the actual earth hour on account of it was Novel's birthday last Saturday. This was kind of a mixed success, as it always is when playing hide and seek with Ozy and Paprika. I mean, we managed a few round without anyone calling anyone else a cheater or anyone going off in a huff. It's a little difficult to play hide and seek with Ozy, especially for Paprika, because he is particular about the rules (for everyone else, less so for himself) and he has a tendency to pick at her when she doesn't conform to what he thinks she should do. So Paprika tends to get bored very quickly and not want to play, which ruins Ozy's whole evening, don't you know, then he goes back to playing World of Warcraft instead.

After the hide and seek was over, and Ozy was playing WOW, Paprika says to me, "Did you have any brothers or sisters when you were little?"

Of course, says I, and points out that she knows them, her Auntie Painter and Auntie Vagabond Queen, among others.

"And did you ever have fights with them?"

So I told her about the time Painter and I had a fight when I was 13 or 14, when I sassed her and she knocked me down and sat on me and when I got up I jumped on my bike and ran away for hours so that she felt guilty. Paprika thought this story was hilarious, and then wanted to hear all about my childhood.

And now I suppose I should get to bed. Novel is out at a hockey game which he does periodically with his friends -- Oddly, I'm perfectly fine with being left to my own devices while he does guy things.

This is kind of a sweet video:

wit, support and the f-bomb

2010-03-23T19:43:00.003-06:00

A while ago, Vagabond Queen left a link on the family forum to a list of writers workshops being held by the U of A this summer, in particular a workshop that she intended to attend on writing fiction for young adults. And immediately the World Empress was all like, but I want to go to that workshop too. And then Painter chimed in with how there was a workshop she wanted to go to and I found one I thought I could use, so the upshot is that World Empress and Painter and I are all going to Edmonton at the beginning of June to take a workshop on various aspects of writing which interest us, just like we were real writers or something.

Doesn't that sound like a cool road trip?

Someone should write a screen play based on this trip.

I see I haven't been updating again. Since last time I said anything on here, I've had my cat fixed, been for a mamogram, seen my doctor a couple of times, had an ultrasound... plus, you know, working full time and trying to keep things on track. Trying to plan a wedding. Arranging a 50th birthday party for Novel. Bought him a sweet present. Invited the soccer team. I've been busy, in other worlds.

The Cat attacked Novel a second time after the first time she shredded both of us. So I called the vet and arranged for her alterations, and they got her in the same week, and now she's wondering around the house with a shaved belly being a perfect pain in the ass. The vet said that having her spayed would probably help with her aggression levels, but that we had to give it a couple of weeks until the hormones were out of her body before we could be sure that the operation was a success on that level. He couldn't find anything wrong with her that would make her turn suddenly aggressive. So far, I would say her aggression levels have gone down a bit, but we're still carefully keeping Road Kill out of her range. She hisses at Novel when he goes past, but when he stops and asks her what the matter is, she insists on being petted. She follows me around like a kid who has suffered from a traumatic separation from its mother. (Nothing annoys me more, of course. People like to say cats are standoffish; I always say, not nearly standoffish enough.)

At the minute while I'm writing this, she keeps trying to creep into the room so that she can lie down at my feet and I keep chasing her away with the squirt bottle.

My ultrasound showed up precisely nothing, which is what I said, isn't it? The doctor thinks I might have kidney stones. I don't know; would they show up on the ultrasound? But I really haven't had a problem with that pain since then, anyway. My health would appear to be generally good. The doctor is sending me for an ultrasound of my thyroid which she suspects of underperformance, but apart from that, no one seems to think there's anything much wrong with me. Which is good, I guess.

I went out and bought a back support pillow today. That kiosk where I work doesn't have any sort of ergonomics to its set up. I think it might have been designed by Torquemada. But I don't know if this pillow will help. It's hard to tell, I've been testing it all evening since I got home with it, but I'm computing these days from Novel's computer, which has a worse setup, come to think of it, than the parking kiosk. Hard kitchen chair, desktop too high to comfortably type at, and really painful to mouse from, all stuffed into a space too small to allow much movement. No wonder my back has been bothering me lately. It'll take more than a new back support pillow to fix what is wrong with this computer setup.

And that marriage thing hasn't been really coming together. I guess we have got a few things settled or ordered, but when I think of what is still to do, it's enough to give me a fit of the vapours.

There's a jack-o-lantern moon in the midnight sky
Somebody gonna live, somebody gonna die
But down in the graveyard on that old tombstone
There's a big black crow and it's callin' you home

--The Eagles, Somebody

on the bus

2010-03-13T20:20:00.002-06:00

Two old ladies on the bus, looking at a copy of Women's Weekly or some such rag, with Dr. Oz on the front.

One: That Dr. Oz is a nut.

Two: Have you watched him?

One: I watched him for the first time in my life yesterday. It was the biggest waste of time ever.

Two: I like Ellen.

One: Yes. She's funny.

Two: I don't care if she is a lesbian.

Two: I agree. It's not her fault.

One: That's right. It's not like it makes any difference to our lives.

seven toed freak

2010-03-11T19:08:00.003-06:00

My cat had a little freak out last night. I didn't see the start of it, so I'm not sure what happened -- Novel said he was walking into the living room carrying a plate of food and talking on the phone and he managed to step on one or both of the cats. He thought that he stepped on Road Kill who then jumped into Cissy who then went whacko, but it may have been Cissy that he stepped on. Her reaction was a little overboard for just being bumped by Road Kill, although she has very low tolerance for Road Kill's quirks. Anyway, I was in the other room and all of a sudden I heard a commotion, Novel yelling and Cissy yowling and I went running to find Cissy clamped around Novel's foot. I managed to pry her off, and she promptly sank her teeth into the underside of my forearm and refused to let go. She's part bulldog, apparently. When I finally got her detached from me, she went after Novel again, he fended her off with a piece of furniture while I grabbed a shirt and wrapped her in it which settled her down enough that we could get away to the bedroom, close the door and examine our wounds. Novel's heel is a mess of scratches and I can only assume from the size of the bruising and swelling on my arm that she managed to nick the major vein with her teeth.

She's done stuff like this before but never on this scale; a couple of years ago when we were out of town, Jedi was coming over to feed the cats for us and she started attacking him (although I think he had his shoes on, so it didn't do much damage, just spooked him). Also, when she hears someone at the door she'll run over growling, although she then generally demands attention from whoever is there, rather than attacking them.

Also I was brushing Road Kill a while ago -- he's too fat to clean himself properly and he develops dreadlocks, so I was trying to get rid of them. But he cries when he's being brushed and after wandering around nervously while I was brushing him, Cissy finally attacked him so that he ran away. The next day I was trying to brush him again, but this time she just attacked him right off the bat, literally scaring the shit out of him. He left a pile of it on the landing. Since then I lock her in the basement when brushing him.

The last time Mr. and Mrs. Orbital Bliss were over they commented that they had noticed that their polydactyl cat had a seventh vestigial toe in the middle of one paw, so we examined Cissy and sure enough, in addition to her very obvious six toes on each paw, she has a vestigial toe with claw in the middle of each front paw, making her a seven-toed freak. Or to be more precise, a 26 toed freak. Crazy.

See these eyes so red
Red like jungle burning bright
Those who feel me near
Pull the blinds and change their minds
It's been so long

--David Bowie, Cat People

blogging while waiting for supper to cook

2010-03-10T18:28:00.005-06:00

I had a dental appointment today.

I've written about Monsieur de le Dentiste du Sade before. I started going to see him back in '77 when I was pregnant with the Empress. I was young and poor and on welfare, and being on welfare gave me dental benefits, so I took advantage of them because I'd grown up in a family that was poor, with a father who didn't believe in spending money on things like good teeth for his children. Monsieur le Dentiste used to lecture me on getting a job and getting off welfare. Nice.

But I was young and unassertive, so I kept going to him, and after a while I got a job and got off welfare and he shut up about it. Also, he fixed my front tooth for next to nothing.

When I was in high school, I was going into the gym one day, and there was a crush of kids going into the gym behind me and Agnes Hastings, for reasons known only to herself, was sitting on the floor immediately in front of the door and the crush of kids behind me pushed me into her and I tripped and fell on my face, breaking off my right front incisor. Agnes Hastings was sort of a friend of mine, at least, I didn't pick on her the way other kids did and I talked to her sometimes. She had epilepsy to the point that she was intellectually challenged (is that the correct phrasing for it these days?), she was for the most part a cheerful simple minded girl. After high school her family put her in a home which she apparently hated; she had an epileptic fit and drowned in a bathtub just before a trip home for Christmas. Isn't that sad, said all the kids who had picked on her in school.

Anyway, there were only I think two dentists in town at the time, one of whom, Dr. Holt, was known as the butcher. So of course, that was the one that my father took us to if we absolutely needed dental work, because there is nothing like going to a really bad dentist to build character, you know. He slapped a stainless steel cap on my broken right incisor, then later he cut a window in the front of the steel and filled it with some goop which turned yellow over time. Nice. My sister wrote a poem about me, called the Girl With The Stainless Steel Tooth.

So from when I was about 16 until sometime in the mid 80s I had this monstrosity of a front tooth. And one day Monsieur le Dentiste du Sade said, "I'm going to fix that tooth for you. I know that you can't afford a proper crown, but I'll put a temporary one on which should last for a few years until you can afford a better one." This was pretty much out of the blue, I can't recall ever discussing it with him prior to that. And that is just what he did, for much cheaper than a proper crown he gave me a new front tooth. "It will probably break off some day when you're biting into an apple or something," he said, but here we are some 20 years later and I still have it.

He was decent dentist when he wasn't being a moralizing bore (he reminded me quite a bit of my brother, Printer). But anyway, he retired this year, and moved away, so now I have a new, much younger than myself, dentist. She seems quite nice. And the office has been revamped, so that they have the latest technology, including the television on the ceiling so when you're having your teeth cleaned you can watch TV. Nice.

The hygienist was one of those relentlessly upbeat people who actively seek to turn around any negativity spoken in her presence -- It's kind of overcast out there, says I. Oh, but such lovely warm weather, says she. Spring will be here in no time. It will be very dry and dusty until the trees turn green says I. But I just keep thinking of the wonderful weather coming, says she. And so on.

Usually they give you the remote so that you can choose what you want to watch while they're scraping away at your teeth with a steel pick, but she didn't. Maybe she had lost it, or maybe she forgot to give it to me, but my opinion is that she wanted to listen to the show that she had the TV tuned to so she didn't give me the remote so I couldn't interfere. The show was Extreme Makeover and what it was was a bunch of white middle class people building a new home for this poor black family consisting of a woman trying to raise her four grandchildren in a tiny shabby trailer. I don't know what happened to the kids' mother (or father, for that matter). The show was just cringe-inducing. The poor black family was sent off to Disneyland for a couple of weeks while the Extreme Makeover (Rich White People Edition) team, led by Ty Pennington built this huge house for them, and had a fund raiser to get a college fund for the kids, and went into the kids' school to talk all the nice middle class white kids into donating books because "These kids deserve so much better."

"I wonder if they made the family sign some kind of agreement that they won't sell the house before they built it for them," says my hygienist. "You know, I'm sure they checked the family out beforehand, and I'm sure they have integrity, but supposing some relatives try to pressure them into selling it and giving away the money. You know?"

Dental offices. Bastions of good middle class values.

Long ago, for many years
White men came in the name of god
They took their land, they took their lives
A new age had just begun
They lost their gods, they lost their smile
they cried for help for the last time.
Liberty was turning into chains
But all the white men said
That's the cross of changes

--Enigma, Silent Warrior

funk to funky

2010-03-06T09:17:00.003-06:00

I was in the second hand store yesterday (and just to let my family know, don't bother going there today, there's nothing worth buying) (no, not true, you can buy some of the Mikasa plates from the 80s if you want, you know, the black ones with the violet-coloured sweet peas on them) and overheard three little old ladies chatting. One of them walks up to the other two holding out a book. I should mention that this second hand store is run by the Mennonites, so we can assume they are godly LOLs.

"Do you want to read this?"

There's some noncommittal umms, then one of them says, "Well, I'll tell you, he read it and he doesn't think it should be in here."

By this point I, of course, was straining my ears and eyes to figure out what book it was.

"Well, I saw the movie and I can see why he feels that way. It was quite ... explicit," says one.

"Oh, you saw the movie?" says another, in a suggestive voice.

"It had wonderful actors and the scenery was beautiful, that's the only reason I saw it," said the movie going LOL (little old lady), loftily.

I really can't convey the tone of the conversation, they were being so prissy 8th gradeish with the way they were pussy-footing around the topic and obvious interest in the book without wanting to admit to it, and willingness to stone any member of the group who was so rash as to admit to an interest in said book.

It turned out that the book was the Bridges of Madison County.

Anyway, after posting my last post, I made an appointment with my doctor after all. She thinks it might be kidney stones (too low, apparently, for gallstones) and had me x-rayed, which showed something that might be a kidney stone, and is sending me for an ultrasound. She said that if it is a kidney stone I might be able to flush it out by drinking lots of water (and I'm thinking, yeah, you try sitting in a kiosk for 8 hours a day and drinking lots of water).

But today I'm thinking that maybe what I've done is strained my back with all the stretching and pushing that I have to do in the course of a day, because my kiosk is an ergonomic nightmare. I mean, I still think there's something internal going on, but I also have a muscle back there that is giving me merry hell.

Ashes to ashes funk to funky
We know Major Tom's a junkie
Strung out in heaven's high
Hitting an all-time low

My mother said "To get things done
You'd better not mess with Major Tom".

--David Bowie, Ashes to Ashes

it's always something

2010-03-04T11:49:00.006-06:00

So, I've had a pain in my right lower abdomin for the past two days.

A right painful pain, started off just sort of annoying, then last night when I was done work I was early for the bus so I thought I'd walk downtown instead of waiting at the bus stop because I haven't been walking much lately and I need the exercise, only by the time I was halfway across the bridge I thought I was going to keel over. So I waited at the next available bus stop for the next available bus and when I reached my home bus stop where Novel comes to meet me when I work nights because we live in a rough neighbourhood and although I've tried to dissuade him he insists, I made him carry my backpack because things were hurting so much. Then it was -- well, not bad all night, except that if I tried to move it hurt, but otherwise it didn't, and the same this morning, but now it has pretty much subsided.

And I, of course, consulted the internet, which of course said things like, yah, if you're experiencing severe pains in your side you should seek medical attention like right fucking now, because it could be something serious. And I, of course, said, yeah, yeah, it's fine, it's not serious, you're not the boss of me. And, look? It's subsided. So clearly it's not something fatal.

You can't have any serious illnesses, says Novel. It's not allowed.

Fine by me.

I think I have gallstones; it has all the earmarks of such, pain in the right place, fatty foods have been bugging me lately. Et cetera.

I had a brief conversation with the Empress the other day about this sort of thing. "It's always something," said she. "That was the title of Gilda Radner's autobiography," said I. She couldn't remember who Gilda Radner was (which, as Radner died in '89, is scarcely surprising).

The Empress isn't allowed to have anything serious, either, of course. In fact, no one is allowed to have anything serious, anymore ever again.

I spent two hours this morning filling out an in depth questionaire at a website called diagnose-me. And I do mean in-depth, there was close to 1000 questions. They're suppsed to email me their findings/recommendations. I bet they say I should get medical attention, like, right fucking now. But I won't. Well, if it comes back I will. But I'm scheduled for a physical in a couple of weeks, so let's just hold off till then.

But since I'm not dying, I guess I should get ready to go to work.

Don’t you want my love
It’s a cloud it’s a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I’m like the trees in the midnight parks
Oozing danger igniting sparks
We’ve been left by the viaducts
With the last flame
Of the universe.

--Sarah Slean, Drastic Measures

the county won't give me no more methadone and they cut off your welfare check

2010-02-13T22:06:00.005-06:00

Not sure I should blog about this.

I've had people imply I was racist a couple of times recently. I'm guessing it's just my white privilege that is making me resent these implications.

The first time it happened I was waiting at the bus stop where I most frequently take the bus. A lot of interesting conversations take place at this bus stop; once I had a woman agressively tell me about her paintings which apparently hang in the psych ward at a hospital in this city. There's a methadone clinic right behind the stop, so many of the street's more colourful characters frequent that corner. Another time I had a pleasant chap ask me if I thought it likely that he would get in trouble for skipping out on his probation(?) -- whatever that program is called where they do community service to work off their time. He really was pleasant; he was talking about his baby daughter who had just been born and looking forward to spending Christmas with her.

Anyway, the time I got not-quite-called a racist, Novel and I were at that stop one frosty Sunday morning. There were a couple of people in the bus shelter and while I generally avoid going into shelters if there are people in them, this particular morning was cold, so we went in. This one guy who had a bit of an ambience about him and who was in an argumentative mood got in a debate with me about when the next bus would come. At least, he was announcing when it would come, then demanding that I agree with him, in that way drunken people do. And I declined to agree with his opinion (because it was wrong) and when I contradicted him he's like, "Is that right, you big white ... woman."

Then the other night Novel and I were walking from the bus and this guy stopped us to ask a question. He, too, was drunk and when he first accosted us, Novel assumed he was begging for change and turned him down which assumption offended our friend. "I work in a f******g diamond mine for f**ks sake. What would I need with your f******g money?"

It never became clear what exactly he wanted, because every time he asked us a question he got offended (and offensive) by our answers. Thus: he asked where the best place to get a cab was. We suggested the nearby hospital and Novel started to give him directions.

"It's so easy for you Saskatchewan people," says our friend sourly. "You just slide around so easily." Then he proceeded to call us prejudiced. "You're so prejudiced. You should go home where you came from," he told us.

So we did.

There's a far and distant river
Where the roses are in bloom
A sweetheart who is waiting there for me
And it's there I pray you take me
I've been faithful, don't forsake me
I'll be with her when the roses bloom again.

--Johnny Cash, When The Roses Bloom Again

these are the times that try mens' souls

2010-02-08T19:49:00.006-06:00

Ever have one of those days when you would like to say a big Fuck Off to the entire world?

So things have been chugging along in my life as per usual. Lots of work, a bit of socializing. I'm on days this week and was on nights last week in my little parking kiosk -- a job which would be tolerable, except that, like all jobs, it has its share of assholes.

Last week the parking office which regulates the job (my security firm is just a sub contractor to the health region) raised parking rates by 50%. This caused quite a bit of heart burning and annoyance from various visitors to our lot and a lot of people caught flat footed by the sudden rate increase. It's a visitor parking lot but staff park there because there isn't sufficient room in the staff lot, and they have to pay the going rates. So people would arrive at my kiosk prepared to pay the old rate and when I told them what they owed, they'd say, all plaintive like, "But I only have X amount of dollars. It's all I brought with me this morning when I left for work."

For those of you familiar with the Kingston Trio, I've had Charlie and the MTA running through my head all week:

Charlie handed in his dime
At the Kendall Square Station
And he changed for Jamaica Plain
When he got there the conductor told him, "One more nickel."
Charlie couldn't get off that train.

I had one woman tear a strip off me because we don't take debit cards at the kiosk. She was just yelling at me -- when she finally went away, the next car in the line up pulled up and its driver remarked, "well, that sounded unpleasant." And I laughed and said, "You could hear her, could you?" It didn't bother me; I kept my head and kept telling her that yelling at me wasn't going to get her anywhere. Thing is, I let people out for free all the time. If they're nice about it. If they sincerely sound like they don't have the funds on them, and are apologetic about being caught flat. But not if they drive up to my window, debit card in hand, and have a meltdown because they will have to park the car and go back into the hospital to get money. Plus the whole tantrum sounded rehearsed -- I had the feeling that she had planned the episode in order to get free parking.

Then I met the third man who works in that booth today. There's three of us who work there regularly, Mr Cranky Pants, and me, and this third guy who has been on holiday for the past couple of weeks. I had been told that he is a good guy, however, if true, none of his "goodness" was on display today. He arrived at 2:30 (I was expecting him at 3:00), tried to open the kiosk door, which he found latched because I keep it that way when I'm in the kiosk and yelled at me for having it latched. Then when I questioned the fact that he was there so early, informed me that shift change was at 2:30 and if I didn't like it, he wouldn't bother to do me the courtesy of getting there on time any more. "What goes around, comes around," he said sinisterly.

So I have no idea what his problem is, but he seems to have taken a dislike to me, and I have certainly taken a dislike to him. Fun times will no doubt ensue.

And did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned.

The Kingston Trio, Charlie on the MTA

L'altra notte

2010-02-05T10:33:00.004-06:00

I was discussing this aria with Vagabond Queen when she was here at Christmas -- well, I was saying that there was an opera aria from my youth that I needed to hear, but that I couldn't remember the name of the song, or the opera, or who the composer was. Which kind of limited my options. Anyway, I remembered the first line, and finally got around to googling it, and the first hits were YouTube videos of the song. This version by Renata Tebaldi comes closest to what I remember and may well be the actual recording that I used to listen to. It's from the opera Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito. I know, I've never heard of him, either.

L'altra notte in fondo al mare
Il mio bimbo hanno gittato,
Or per farmi delirare dicon ch'io
L'abbia affogato.
L'aura a fredda,
Il carcer fosco,
E la mesta anima mia
Come il passero del bosco
Vola, vola, vola via.
Ah! Pieta di me!

In letargico sopore
E' mia madre addormentata,
E per colmo dell'orrore dicon ch'io
L'abbia attoscata.
L'aura a fredda,
Il carcer fosco,
E la mesta anima mia
Come il passero del bosco
Vola, vola, vola via.
Ah! Pieta di me!

As near as I can remember, the translation is: the other night into the sea they cast my child and now to send me mad they say I drowned her. The air is cold, the prison is gloomy and my spirit like a bird in the wood flies, flies away. Ah, have pity on me. Into a lethargic slumber my mother fell sleeping and now the supreme horror they say I poisoned her. The air is cold, etc.

Poor Margherita isn't being quite truthful here. She did indeed drown her child, who she bore to Faust who had sold his soul to the devil in return for worldly bliss. And her mother died because Margherita drugged her so that she could go out for a night of passion with Faust. However, in the end she repents and is allowed into heaven, and Faust reneges on his bargain with the devil (because the worldly bliss he received wasn't up to par) and also is redeemed. So that's all right.

Crazy opera plots. Lovely aria, though.

you laugh? have you no heart?

2010-01-28T18:12:00.004-06:00

Man, I have got to get my computer going. Novel's computer is uncomfortable to work at; cramped in a corner, with a wooden kitchen chair and the keyboard too high up for typing.

Yah, my computer died again this weekend. It's been doing that ever since I first blogged about it, well before Christmas. I cleaned it twice, but it would still just up and die at odd times, the screen would go blank and the harddrive light would sit there helplessly blinking. But it always started up again after a brief rest, so I kept using it. Then one day it croaked and I couldn't revive it until the next day, but after that it resuscitated okay and kept chugging along. Then last weekend it died again, and wouldn't come back on even after a few hours, so now I'm scared to try to turn it on. I need to get an external harddrive before I try it again, so that if it does revive again, I can back up my files before I lose 'em. There's a lot of stuff on there, music and pictures and the like that I couldn't replace and would be upset to lose. Songs from the first giddy days of Napster that I would never be able to replace if I lost. Pictures of my grandchildren. At least my writing I back up semi-regularly.

So this new posting isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I still have my weekends, and my weekdays vary between a week of day shifts and a week of nights. I still miss the old post though; this one is in the middle of a parkade, surrounded by concrete and pillars and cars (does it ever seem a little ironic, says I to Novel, that you and I who don't drive, should spend our days babysitting cars?), I don't see sunrises or sunsets this time of year because they take place behind the hospital, and it's pretty much twice as busy as the other place. I don't like the supervisor here as well as I did at my last post. My pet name (not to his face) for this new supervisor is Mr. CrankyPants. Mind you, he hasn't been too bad the past few days, but I have to report the following conversation which we had on my first day there. At the time it made me want to smack him, but now I just think it's funny.

Although the two posts are very similar, there are a number of procedural differences between the two, nothing major, but I knew that Mr. CrankyPants was particular about how things are done, so my first day, I carefully asked him a number of questions about the differences between the two sites so as to make sure I was clear on the differences. Finally,

Mr. CrankyPants (in a considerably irritated voice): They told me they were going to send someone who was completely trained on the site.

Me: Well, you trained me.

Mr. CrankyPants: I thought you'd be here earlier so that we could go over these things and bring you up to speed.

Me: Head Office told me to be here by 3:30.

Mr. CrankyPants: Well, you're supposed to be here by 3:00.

Me: I was here by 3:00.

He has the charming habit of simply changing the subject when he can't answer an argument.I had been trained by him, I had been there at three, HO had told me the incorrect time to start, which I had corrected because that is done the same way at the other site; that is, evening shift is from 3:30 to 11:30 but by courtesy the night person comes in at 3 so that the day person can cash out. Also the questions I had were easily answerable by him. At most he was five minutes late with his cash out.

Apart from Mr. CrankyPants, there are three other guys who work there part time, one of whom is the Yelling Man who tried so hard to get me in trouble at the other post. One of the three part timers I haven't met yet and the third one is ... indescribable. A Character, I think one might safely term him, but not a bad type. He has his own, no less uncomplimentary nickname for Mr. CrankyPants.

Jedi also has been posted in the bowels of this hospital, so he came and hung out with me for a while before he went on shift the other night.

People expect me to recognize them when they've been through the carpark before -- they don't realize that I see a couple of hundred people a day and I'm not good at faces on my best days.

I can spot the people who have been in for radiation treatmet by their varied head coverings. They make me sad -- and a little chilled, it must be said.

There's always a few who give me a sad tale of how they have no money with them. If the tale is sad enough, I let them through for free.

I haven't been doing any hand/arm/shoulder exercising the past few days, and sure enough I'm having an outbreak of whateveritis on my hands again.

Alfredo: Ridete? e in voi v'ha un cor?

Violetta: Un cor? si' forse e a che lo richiedete?

--Verdi, La Traviata

baby, I've been here before

2010-01-26T11:05:00.005-06:00

I wouldn't mind my computer being down (again) so much, but I miss having my music. I mean, I can go find my Jackson Browne cd if I really need to hear In The Shape of a Heart, but I don't even have Leonard Cohen on cd.

don't you let my letters get you down

2010-01-19T19:29:00.002-06:00

It's been somewhat of an annoying day -- well, parts of it were fine, parts not so much.

I've been working at that car park pretty steadily, up until today. Today one of the schedulers(bosses) in HQ called me up out of the blue and basically told me I was being transferred to the car park of a different hospital whether I liked it or not. (And I don't -- for one thing it means no longer getting regular weekends off.)

That was one irritation. The other irritations are routine; my fingers are having an outbreak of the skin sores -- I don't think I ever mentioned on here that I finally found some cream -- Hemp Hand Protector from the Body Shop -- that actually helps them. The other thing that I concluded helps is regular exercise which targets specifically the hands, arms and shoulders. I think part of the problem may be to do with the circulation. But even with the cream and exercise the problem is still there, and periodically flares up. Also, handling money every day is probably not good for them.

And I have the mother of all back aches tonight. Maybe the new car park will have a more comfortable chair? (Ha ha ha.)

The good part of the day consisted of doing some writing which actually satisfies me that it holds a hint of originality. I've talked on here before I'm sure about the difficulties of ever being really original in one's writing; you have to assume that if you can think of it, someone somewhere else will have thought of the same thing, nonetheless, one should strive to be as original as possible. And but so the other day it occurred to me that all the characters in the story I am currently working on are so middle class North American as to make them nauseating. I was doing a very bad job of imagining a culture different from the dominant one that I have been immersed in for the greater part of my life. So I started figuring out little details which differentiate them from us, and I think I came up with some good stuff. I hope. At least, I am enjoying the story I am currently working on.

I got three green and glittery dragonflies for Christmas, as you can see from the top picture. And I think all the stars except the crochetted one in the bottom picture have come to me from Maredeth.

Don’t be so forlorn
It’s just the payoff
It’s the rain before the storm
On a better day
I’ll take you by the hand
And lead you thru’ the doors
Don’t you let my letter
Get you down.

--David Bowie, Battle For Britain

...

2010-01-14T13:35:00.002-06:00

I don't remember when or where I first heard of this guy, but it was years ago. If I lived in London, I'd trip over my feet lots, trying to spot his little people.

billion year old carbon

2010-01-09T16:03:00.005-06:00

It's always embarrassing when you dial home from your cell's directory and get a wrong number... at least I didn't call the dude who answered Snookums...

Opposable thumbs are a wonderful idea. Too bad mine no longer work. I have a persistent sore on the right one which will heal over, then open up again, and the left one of course has the osteo-arthritis in two joints. Bleah.

I've been doing a bunch of writing lately -- a parking kiosk is quite a good place for such a pastime, I find. I've developed a style of writing over the years -- a style that I thought was peculiarly my own, until I picked up a book yesterday that I first read when I was twenty or so, and reread several times during my twenties, and found, somewhat to my annoyance, that what I thought was my style is actually a lot like Marion Zimmer Bradley's style. I suppose this revelation is a) not surprising and b) not the worst thing in the world, even though I have had a couple of people say that MZB was not a particularly good writer. It's true that some of her stuff is weak, but at her best she can spin a good yarn.

This book -- The Heritage of Hasteur -- is the same copy I bought, in a book store in the Winnipeg bus terminal when I was passing through on my way from Thunder Bay to Saskatoon. My sister Painter and I had hitchhiked out to Thunder Bay to visit our older sister Mary, who lived there at the time. We went there to ask Mary the meaning of life (as I recall, she said, with some impatience, that reason for life is to live) and Painter ended up staying for a couple of years, so I took the bus home to Saskatoon. And I picked up Heritage of Hasteur in the bus terminal, reading it on the way home, then buying most of her books over the years. I suddenly had the urge to reread it the other day, and as I say, it seems to me that my writing style is similar to hers. Oh, well. There's worse people to be influenced by.

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devils bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.

--Joni Mitchell, Woodstock

the trick is to keep breathing

2009-12-30T19:50:00.005-06:00

"So, have you two started taking your marriage preparation course yet?" asked one of Novel's friends of me over supper the other night. "Why are you laughing?" he added. "I'm serious." Then he said the most hilarious line of all. "Aren't you planning to be married by a priest?"

"No," I replied. "Because one of us is not Catholic. In fact, one of us is not even Christian." Then he tried to explain to me the merits of a marriage preparation course aside from the religious aspect, while his partner laughed at him for not knowing that Novel and I weren't planning a church wedding.

"Don't you think living together for a couple of years is adequate preparation for marriage?" I asked.

"No!" he said, forcefully.

I should mention that this friend has more reason than most to dislike the current pontiff. But raised a Ukrainian Catholic he was, and a Ukrainian Catholic he apparently remains, even if that means that he is seen as more of a menace to the human race than the destruction of the rain forest.

Say that you love me, open your heart
Three simple words, least it's a start
Come on, say that you love me, say that it's true
Say that you love me and I said it to you.

--Louden Wainwright, Say You Love Me

i cleaned my cat today, and that's not even a euphemism

2009-12-29T20:24:00.002-06:00

I think I mentioned the little problem we've been having with the cat peeing in the living room. For a while at Christmas the living room smelled not too bad and I hoped the problem had been solved, but then Road Kill began peeing there again -- we actually caught him at it. When I got home this afternoon, the living room was quite rank.

Vagabond Queen says that she has a friend who is a cat whisperer, and the friend says that first we must first figure out what issue made RK pee there in the first place, secondly we must get rid of all organic residue of the pee from the living room carpet and thirdly we must lure him back to going in the litter box. This all seems like a great deal of trouble to go to for a cat I'm not particularly fond of. But so anyway, the answer to the first step is easy; he has FUS, and for a while we weren't feeding him the proper food, so I figure he got a bit clogged up again, which made him pee in inappropriate places aka the living room carpet. Then once having started with that, he's like, well, that makes more sense than making the trek downstairs every time I need to pee. I should mention that RK is a little lazy.

The other two steps are a lot harder to solve. I really can't think of any way of getting all the residue out of the carpet short of ripping the carpet out. Which we want to do, ultimately, but not right now. So I think I need to borrow a baby gate from the Empress, so we can lock him out of the living room. Then we clean the carpet thoroughly, and when the smell is gone or as gone as we can get it, put down one of those plastic runners you can get, instead of the rug that he's been peeing on. As for luring him back to his litter box... um, I'm hoping that if he can't get to the living room he'll go back to the proper place. Again, sigh.

And but so anyway, tonight I did something I've been meaning to do but putting off for some time, which is to cut his hair. He doesn't clean his back (I did mention he's lazy?) and he had dreadlocks. I personally hate dreadlocks, in human or cat, and they aren't good for cats, so I attacked him with my shears and cut off about 90% of the dreadlocks, and quite a bit of the fur, too. As soon as I lay out the scissors and the cat brush and sat down on the living room floor, he started to eye me suspiciously with his beady cat eyes, but when I told him to get off the couch and come and be sheared, he couldn't resist my orders. It was quite funny. I'd practically sit on him to hold him still and chop away at the fur until he managed to wiggle out of my grasp and run away. "Come back here," I would say, sternly, and he would hesitate, turn around and look at me pleadingly. "Please, don't make me do this," he would seem to say, but "Come back here," I would say, again, and eventually he would come within my reach and I'd grab him, hold him down, and chop away some more fur. Then he'd get away and we'd go through it all again, with him crying the whole time. Eventually Sissy got sick of it and attacked him -- I guess she thought that if I got to torture him, she did too. So then I had to remonstrate sternly with her, and explain that I was top animal in the house and she didn't have the same priviledges I do and wasn't allowed to beat up on Road Kill. Then I finished off by putting the fear of death into both of them by vacuuming the living room floor.

And that's what passes for fun around here.

The Dormouse lay happy, his eyes were so tight
He could see no chrysanthemums, yellow or white.
And all that he felt at the back of his head
Were delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red).

--A. A. Milne, The Doctor and the Doormouse

merry and bright

2009-12-28T20:06:00.002-06:00

I really should have wished everyone a merry Christmas on here a few days ago, but I didn't and so better late than never, here's a Christmas toddler for you all and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

down bound train

2009-12-28T19:49:00.003-06:00

Well though my family does Christmas -- and we do it well -- I inevitably find that there are still days around Christmastide when a certain depression creeps in, when I'm a little bluesy. There really ain't no cure for that; Christmas is a time for noticing the passage of time, toting up changes that have occurred, children getting older, young ones growing up, marriages and friends who have moved on, people who are no longer here to celebrate it with us.

I had three days off, which was nice, and I only worked until 3ish on Thursday, so I made it to Maredeth's birthday supper -- veggie burritos, salad, pumpkin cheesecake, all capably cooked by herself -- she'll make some lucky man a lovely wife someday.

Friday was the usual confusion of gifts and good cooking. Novel and I went over to the Empress' to open stockings, then we made breakfast, the Empress made gluten free banana? pancakes, Novel watched over the bacon and I contributed eggs and pan fries. Painter brought fruit salad and the Empress made bavarian chocolate cream to have on the pancakes and salad. We ate and ate, and then we opened presents for hours.

Friday night was at Painter's and Maredeth cooked once more, because that way she gets a good vegetarian meal. Saturday ... hmm, what did we do Saturday? We went shopping in the afternoon, I know. Then supper was at my place, although there was only Novel, I, Painter and Vagabond Queen, and Jedi showed up long enough to eat and tell us about his social life and assure us that GI Joe is a good movie.

Sunday we went for brunch at a local cafe that makes nice breakfasts, then some of us went shopping some more. Then Novel and I went out with his friends for supper, and then I was back at work today. Today is the first day in ages that I've had substantial amounts of time to myself. Work was s-l-o-w, I don't know how many people came through my lot, but I made all of $26. So I sat and read and wrote and made some Christmas cards for next year. And now I'm home, listening to new CDs and blogging while Novel is at work.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that the CD I'm listening to is Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. I bought it for Novel's stocking, but it was really because I wanted it myself. Novel gave me a 5 CD set of opera arias containing everything from Dvorak to Wagner which I've been enjoying.

A few weeks ago, the mother of one of Novel's friends died unexpectedly. She was in her late 60s, not exactly old. Novel's friend said that his family got together at his mother's place for Chrismas, put up the tree there, had supper there. That sounds like a nice way to do it.

Death was a bit of a theme this year. One of Novel's coworkers died in his sleep a couple of weeks ago, then Painter lost one of her long time friends to lung cancer just before Christmas.

Saturday night after supper Painter and Vagabond Queen and I sat around and discussed family history at length, the good, bad and the grim. We discussed Mum and Mary and David and the Old Man, our childhoods, did a fair amount of When did this happen? How did that happen? Who was where when? With the result that we were moved to create a family website to write down and preserve all this family history. Who knows if we'll actually get around to maintaining it, though.

Nights as I sleep, I hear that whistle whining
I feel her kiss in the misty rain
And I feel like I'm a rider on a downbound train

--Bruce Springsteen, Down Bound Train

There is no suffering, no extinction of suffering, and no path; no knowledge and also no attainment

2009-12-14T21:36:00.004-06:00

It's been one irritation after another around the old homestead these past few weeks. There's the tenant situation, House #1 and House #2, the shape my hands are in and the weather -- all irritations playing hell with my mood.

The weather has been cold, -36 to -40ish. Cold and dry, just a dusting of powdery snow. I don't do extremes well. Minus 30 is hard on a body.

Which is probably the reason for the shape my hands are in. This week they have fewer of the little cuts and splits, but the tips of my fingers are rough and tender and three of my knuckles on my right hand are swollen and red and burning.

I went to the doctor again about it, and she is going to refer me to a dermatologist, and she gave me another different cream to try on them, which prescription I haven't filled yet because I'm becoming a little cynical about the efficacy of her medicines. My left thumb has been swollen and sore all autumn, so she had my hands x-rayed and said that my thumb shows signs of osteo arthritis, rather than signs of psoriasis arthritis, which didn't especially comfort me.

Our current abode, l'Abode de Novel, is kind of jam packed with stuff, Novel's stuff and my stuff. The house is in sad need of a facelife, cleaning, painting, repairing. One of the cats -- I haven't caught him in the act, but I suspect Road Kill -- has peed on the carpet by the front door. This gives the front part of the house an ambience which I haven't been able to eradicate. My sister will be staying with us over Christmas, and I can't but feel it would be nice of me to get rid of the smell before then.

Christmas is another irritant on my list. I'm not even close to ready; bought perhaps 1/4 of the presents I need to get. The tree isn't up.

Then there's l'Abode de Scheherezhade. We had tenants. They seemed like good tenants, too. For the first five months they lived in my house, they paid their rent on time, in cash and didn't bother us. My kind of people. Then October, they paid half the rent. They're young, early 20s, and first she got pregnant, so they had to get married, then when they got back from their honeymoon, they found they had both lost their jobs (they worked at the same place, and I have not heard the exact circumstances surrounding the loss of jobs). So then they paid half rent for October, but they were going to get the money to us. Any day now. Come November, we got less than half of what was owed us at that point. But still, times were tough and they would get us the money as soon as they could. They promised.

"D'yer think they plan to do a flit?" I asked Novel. But, nah, we decided, the reason we rented to them in the first place was because the young man's mother is a long time acquaintance of Novel's. It would be hard to do a flit under the circumstances. And in the end, it wasn't a flit -- I mean, I have their phone number and forwarding address. Just, at the end of November, they announced that they were moving, because they had got on with low cost housing. They still owed us money for past rent, now they were leaving without giving notice. Their damage deposit would have to go towards the last month's rent. They kept saying they'd pay us, and not showing up with the money. Then I went to look at the house after they had dropped off the keys and there was this huge pile of garbage in the back yard, and nothing had really been cleaned and there were various pieces of broken furniture all over the house. Oh, yes, and they had left my lawn mower outside in the snow.

I've been over there cleaning today and Saturday. We're getting in a junk removal service, which bill we will try to recoup from our errant tenants. They had a serious mouse problem, which doesn't surprise me, given the garbage in the back yard. When I was sweeping the kitchen, I had to clean up two mouse bodies. So we're getting in the exterminators to check the place over. Another bill.

And my computer has been on the fritz, as I mentioned a few days ago. One day it shut off, then refused to come back on, which it never has before. I tried it a day later, and it worked again, but I have to get some kind of back up drive to back it up before it really does die. I have a lot of music on here that I would be loathe to lose, not to mention pictures, photographs, files, etc.

I think that about covers my life right now. Doesn't that sound like fun? Well, there's been good things happening too, for the most part I like my job. Novel and I get along fine. I wrote up that research to my prof's satisfaction, and he has submitted it to a magazine, and more importantly has submitted an invoice to the university to give me some money. I have all but finished settling my father's estate. I have been doing a lot of writing lately. I live in a lovely city. My family is pretty sweet, for the most part. Christmas is coming.

Do you know, with all the hundreds of times I've sung/listened to Mary's Boy Child, I think it's the first time it has occurred to me that the line "Mary's boy child, Jesus Christ, was born on Christmas Day," was a little awkwardly phrased. I mean, even setting aside the fact that he supposedly wasn't born on December 25th at all, the day didn't became known as Christmas Day until several centuries after that alleged event.

We bought a lot of things
to keep you warm and dry
And a funny old crib on which the paint won't dry
I bought you a pair of shoes
A trumpet you can blow
And a book of rules
On what to say to people
when they pick on you
'Cause if you stay with us you're gonna be pretty Kookie too

--David Bowie, Kooks

form does not differ from emptiness

2009-12-13T08:01:00.003-06:00

I walked through the mall contemplating the nature of enlightenment. How do we know that the Buddha actually achieved enlightenment? How do we know that all those who have claimed to be enlightened through the ages haven't been liars, frauds, delusional? And in that moment I was enlightened.

And I didn't care for it much.

a parking lot attendant doesn't see humanity at its best

2009-12-03T20:36:00.005-06:00

Okay, people, we need to get something straight here. I realize that most of you aren't visiting a hospital parking lot because you want to be there, you're there because you are sick, or getting tests, you're there for work, or because your friends and loved ones are sick. I try to be cognizant of these facts at all times. Nevertheless, that doesn't let you off the hook for minding your manners, nor does it excuse you from using the brains that god gave you. Admittedly a small amount, in many cases.

Six billion idiots in the world, and I'm pretty sure half of them were through my lot today.

A guy drives up to my window in a nice truck. His charge comes to something like $2. "What would you do if I told you I didn't have any money?" he asks me. "I'm sorry sir," I say sweetly. "I'd have to impound your truck." Then we both laugh and he admits he just wanted to see what I'd say.

I've been working days last week and this week. Many days when I get there at 7:30 there is someone all lined up ready to exit and as soon as they see me walk into the booth, they're holding out a hand with a ticket in it. Please? Can I at least put my cash into the cash drawer, sign onto the computer, get ready for the day?

Yesterday I had a woman have a melt down because I went in to the hospital to use the bathroom when she was trying to exit the lot. Omigod. She even went and complained to hospital security about the fact that I wasn't in my place. The security guy was pretty amused by it. "Apparently you're not allowed bathroom breaks."

A guy paid a $10 ticket with a roll of quarters the other day. "I can wait while you count them, if you want," he said, oh so earnestly. "That's okay," I replied while adding inwardly, "If you're ripping me off for 25 cents, I'm pretty sure that you're too pathetic to argue with." And sure enough, there was only $9.75 in the roll.

Then there's the volunteers and spiritual care folk. They get complimentary parking, but they are supposed to take a ticket when they enter the carpark, which they give to me on exiting, while showing me their volunteer badge, then I let them out for free. Most are good about this, but yesterday I had a priest drive up to my window and just sit there staring at me, through his closed window. So I asked for his ticket and he held up his badge to the window, still without rolling down the window. "I need your ticket sir," I said again, whereat he finally rolled down his window a grudging inch and handed over his ticket, and I set him free. Stupid fuck. I'm glad my spirit isn't in his care.

And the ones who have a fit when they find the carpark is full and they can't park! Jaysus. "But where am I to paaark?" (said in the Empress' and Maredeath's whiny voice). "I have an appointment that I'm already laaate for." Or the idiot the other day who was like, "I'm with the VON. They (unspecified) always tell us to just park in the handicap parking spots." I'm pretty sure that was a bald faced lie, but anyway, the point was the carpark was full. Which means no handicap parking spots, either. And another volunteer guy who was pissed off when I told him the carpark was full which meant no spots and I'm-sorry-we-don't-reserve-parking-spaces-sir. "Well, you're nice," he said in a sarcastic voice. He also couldn't grasp the concept of bring your ticket to me when you're ready to exit and I'll let you out for free. He was offended that he had to take a ticket at all, because he was a volunteer, don't you know and he was sick of all the stupid rules that the hospital had and he didn't think he ws going to be volunteering there any longer. He kind of made me resolve that the next person who asked me a stupid question, I was going to answer with a punch on the nose. With a chain saw.

******

And a cute grandkid story, just to finish off. I was over at the Empress' last weekend, and the Kitten got into a dispute with Paprika. The Kitten had taken something belonging to Paprika and Paprika wanted it back and the Kitten came over to me and handed the disputed item to me, whereupon I handed it over to its owner. Which pissed Her Little Majesty off. "I don't want to see Grandma any more," she said pointedly.

"I was thinking about that," said my sister, who was also there. "I mean, this talking in complete sentences is all very well, but she's still two. A lot of her complete sentences aren't going to be very nice."

Which is true. But she delivers them with such devastating cuteness that one can't mind.

And I can make it
I know I can
You broke the boy in me
But you won't break the man.

--John Parr, St. Elmo's Fire
Pure lyric gold, I tells yah.

Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work.

2009-11-25T16:56:00.010-06:00

My computer has been having technical issues lately, and by that I mean it's been shutting itself off for no apparent reason, just, I'll be on the internet, or playing spider solitaire, or what have you, and the screen goes blank, and the hard drive light sits there blinking helplessly until I reboot. Or the mouse will stop working in mid stroke and I have to reboot to get it to smarten up. Sunamon told me to clean it out, because it was possibly the vid card overheating. So I took it apart last night. The inside was indeed filthy, resembling a cave full of Speleothem, festooned with webs and dust and cat hairs. So I cleaned it out, and put it back together, but this doesn't seem to have cured its problems, as it has already turned itself off once today.

All of which makes me feel that I should type fast, so as to get this post done before the computer craps out again. My mother used to say that when she was sewing, if she noticed that the spool of thread was almost done, she would have the urge to sew faster, so as to get the garment done before she ran out of thread. Which might work if your thread was a function of time, rather than space, like Norn-thread. Not that Norn-thread is recommended for sewing everyday garments. It doesn't come in uniform width or colours, and it is prone to be cut off short.

The coyote house next door is vacant; it's been over a year since Mrs. Coyote and Mr. Coyote visited Novel as they headed out to the open prairie. It's been up for sale for the past couple of months. The kids are trying to sell it. Novel and I are a little concerned that it doesn't go to the wrong hands, as he is fond of saying, the wrong neighbours next door and we're out of here. However, they haven't had but one serious offer and the bank wouldn't okay the mortgage. The house isn't in such wonderful shape, it's an older house, the two old Coyotes were both smokers, and the kids didn't put much effort into getting it into shape for the market.

They're a colourful family, although I wouldn't describe any of the kids as anything so interesting as coyotes. There were four, two sons and two daughters, but the oldest son, the "good" son (according to Novel) was stabbed to death by his wife for no apparent reason. Well, as Novel tells it, there was no apparent reason for it, for all I know he was a wife beater and deserved it. The remaining son is a self-absorbed boozer and thankfully single. The two sisters are okay (again, according to Novel, I've never put any effort into getting to be friends with the family, and have to rely on him for my opinion of them. Novel's not a bad judge of character, though, it's one of the endearing things about him).

I finished reading that book at work, and ever since I've been noodling it over in my mind, trying to figure out what I thought of it -- whether it was good, bad, worth reading, something I'd recommend to others, etc. The thing of it is, it was held up as a bit of a morality tale -- Oprah liked it, after all, and if Oprah is not the conscience of middle America I don't know who is. Millions of people read it and held their breaths until the end, until Frey overcomes his addiction and leaves rehab, triumphant. Would he make it? Would he fall back into his old ways? Would he die? (A patent impossibility, obviously, unless his ghost was writing the book.) And it is a gripping little tale, keeps you reading to the bitter end.

But still there's that whole moral question. The whole story is a personal myth story. It's not just that Frey overcomes his addiction, he does it by brute force and willpower, and by breaking all the rules. He refuses to believe in AA, refuses to surrender himself to a higher power, he fights the staff of the rehab every step of the way, ignores the rules. He's tough but tender, makes friends with the toughest inmates, becomes the adopted son of a mobster (!), and close friend with a judge, falls in love with Mary Magdeline (one of the women also at the rehab, the archetypal fallen woman), hates organized religion, but reads the Tao and instantly "gets" it. It's meant to be an inspiring story, and it is, for the sort of people who want to believe that you can overcome all the troubles of your life by sheer willpower. Although he goes on at length about how much he hates himself, it's clear that Frey is telling himself a story he likes, about his heroic stand against the stupid rules imposed by society as well as against the demon drugs. It's an archetypal character; the outcast who overcomes his shortcomings, is embraced by society once more, a sin, suffer and repent story. I'm not immune to the lure of that kind of story myself.

But that whole "made shit up" thing makes the story and the lesson contained therein problematic. A wholly made up story can nevertheless be true and profound on a deep level. A memoir obviously can be too. But a book that is an amalgamation of the two doesn't work. If he's lying about what he did, even part of it, then the story becomes all about making himself look good. Then it becomes a bunch of lies, even the true stuff, and the book becomes dangerous.

But then we get to the story about the priest and it becomes apparent that it doesn't matter whether he made shit up or not.

All through the book he's hinting at this story, how he hates organized religions, the church, priests and hints at some deep reason why. At the end of his stint in rehab, and coincidentally the book, he is given two tasks by the staff so he can "graduate". The first task is writing an inventory of his life, and the second is discussing this inventory with a priest, the idea being that this will bring closure to that part of his life, and free him to face a new life. So he dutifully (or perhaps boastfully) writes out a list of everything he's done wrong since he can first remember, bashing some kid over the head at six, egging the principal's house, stealing and doing every kind of drug and drink he can get his hands on, dealing to finance his habit, a litany of stupid, venal and sometimes criminal acts. He's sorry for all these things, he says, but doesn't write down one last tale, the story of the priest. He doesn't feel sorry for what happened about this, the priest "deserved" what happened.

Then he performs his second task, meeting with the rehab priest to discuss his inventory. He warns the staff, he doesn't believe in god or priests, and this meeting might be traumatic -- for the priest. That's ok, he is assured, the priest has heard it all before, there is nothing Frey can tell him that will traumatize him.

So he tells the tale: at 22 he was living in Paris, having just been dumped by the love of his life for being an incurable addict (and prat). He decides to end his miserable existence, and heads for the Seine to throw himself into it, but on the way stops in a church to see if it will help(?). And while he sits there, pondering the fuck up of his life, a priest (not to be confused with the priest who is listening to Frey's life inventory) comes by and offers help. There's nothing you can do, says Frey, but the priest insists, and Frey goes to the priest's study to talk to him, only to have the priest make a pass at him. In return Frey beats the shit out of the priest, leaves him for dead and flees the country.

Got that? Frey says several times that he doesn't regret this action, that the priest deserved what he got. Why? He doesn't spell out the answer. The priest didn't rape him, Frey is 22 at the time so he wasn't under age, the priest didn't use force. The priest made a pass at him, Frey tried to kill him. Just good old fashioned homosexual panic, one assumes. Is the pass more heinous because he was a priest? Well, I have a poor opinion of the celibacy of the priesthood in the first place, so I'm hardly going to judge the man for wanting whatever he wanted as long as it was between consenting adults. It was certainly wrong of him not to stop when Frey said to, but I'm still not sure that beating him within an inch of his life was the correct response.

So if this story is true (The Smoking Gun is quite skeptical) that tells us one thing about Frey, namely that he is the kind of asshole that thinks trying to kill a man for making a pass is something to be proud of. And if he made up the story, that tells us that he is the kind of asshole that thinks that making up this kind of story makes him a hero. At which point I lose all respect for Frey and his book.

Shorter post, if you wish: I don't recommend reading A Million Little Pieces. Of course, I could have said that to start with and spared you all that time that I made you waste, reading this post when you could have been looking at porn.

We never eat fruit cake because it has rum
And one little taste turns a man to a bum
Oh, can you imagine a sorrier sight
Than a man eating fruit cake until he gets tight

--Away With Rum

untitled

2009-11-19T09:43:00.001-06:00

I spoke too soon. He's back on probation, because they couldn't find anyone else to work the shifts he worked.

Buncha bloody fools.

quick karma

2009-11-18T08:57:00.005-06:00

I was walking to work yesterday, thinking of the Complaining Man (aka Self Righteous Man) and of how the last time some dude seriously made it his mission to make my life difficult at work, he ended up getting fired. Complaining Man better watch his step, thought I, idly.

So I get to work, and the Young Woman is there and I make some off hand remark to her about Complaining Man. She hesitates. "Well, you don't have to deal with him any more," she says. "He isn't working at this site anymore."

"Really? Did he quit?" No, not quite. He complained hisself out of a job. First he wrote a big diatribe about me in the book that we keep on site for occurences that need to be recorded. "It was really bad," she tells me. "I wasn't sure if I should tell you about it. He complained about the key thing, and asked why the corporation is hiring stupid people." Then, apparently not satisfied with this, he went into corporate HQ and made more complaints to the powers that be, and they relieved him of his position. She wasn't sure if he was even still employed with the company.

Huh. My mojo mind powers of evil don't usually work that efficiently.

But I've always said that with all my faults, no one has ever called me stupid. Guess I can't use that line any more.

Instant karma's gonna get him
If I don't get him first.

--U2, God Part II

no secrets

2009-11-16T11:28:00.007-06:00

I open the front door and the ginger cat perks up and comes trotting over. As she nears the door, she pauses, looking puzzled and begins to walk with the exaggerated steps of a feline walking on something unpleasant; I have sprayed the carpet with odour remover and it is still damp. I walk away but glance back to see her make it all the way to the threshhold, then turn around. It isn't what she wanted, after all. The door to freedom is still closed.

I've been reading a memoir at work, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I found it in the parking kiosk where I work. I don't know whose book it is, I assume it doesn't belong to the Young Girl who works there, or to the Self Righteous Man. I think it belongs to the Man with the Two Broken Legs. Is it necessary, I wonder, to specify that he has two broken legs? If you say a man has broken legs, then of necessity, he must have more than one broken, but no more than two. I haven't met the Man with the Broken Legs, because he hasn't recovered yet from the motorcycle accident and consequently is off work. And when he does recover, I may well be out of that particular job, because I think that the position is only open because he was in the motorcycle accident which broke the legs.

But reading this memoir makes me think in terse present tense sentences, because that is how Frey writes. It's an interesting book, although certain things about the writing style are subtly irritating me, like how he repeats his sentences repetitiously, and then repeats them once more. Also he Capitalizes Nouns which do not need to be and should not be Capitalized. He also doesn't bother with quotation marks around speeches, and I wonder if I should write all my Blog Posts in this style.

The book caused a stir when it came out, making it onto Oprah's Book Club list, then off again when the Smoking Gun website revealed that parts of the story were untrue. Oprah had Frey and his publisher on the show to yell at them -- him for the deceit, the publisher for not fact checking the book before publishing it and I remembering wondering about that at the time. Oprah was surprised that someone had falsified their memoirs?

So I'm reading it. It's interesting, if you want to read about someone vomiting his guts out every morning because he has abused his body so badly with drugs that at 23 the doctors tell him that another binge will kill him -- a diagnosis that pleases him at the time, although I assume that as he survived to write a (somewhat falsified) memoir about the experience that he managed to kick his habits. But I leave the book in the parking booth when I come home at night, in case it really does belong to the Young Girl or the Self Righteous Man, or in case the Man with the Broken Legs comes back for it.

I'm sure it doesn't belong to the Self Righteous Man, who phones me Saturday morning to chastise me. Where is the key to the booth? he demands, and when I tell him where it is, chastises me further. What did you learn from this? he demands. It says in the instruction booklet what to do with the key, he rants on. I phoned the Young Girl and asked her why you weren't reading the instruction booklet so you would know these things? He rants on until I interrupt him. I'm sorry I say, although my voice holds no regret. I made a mistake. It won't happen again.

Oh, says the Self Righteous Man and begins to say something else, but I interrupt him to say goodbye.

On Monday morning the Young Girl phones me. There are just the three of us working at this kiosk, and although she is less than half of the age of either me or the Self Righteous Man, she is the senior staff member there (after the Man with the Broken Legs) and in some degree gets to say what goes. Oh shit, I think when Novel tells me who is on the phone, but she wants to apologize to me and asks if the Self Righteous Man was very rude. He left the kiosk door unlocked once when he went to the bathroom once, she tells me. He gets excited about things. So I apologize to her and we agree that he is stupid -- maybe not using that word, but that is the thought behind the words, and I hang up.

When I was training for this position, I worked with the Self Righteous Man one evening. For the most part it was uneventful, except when we got onto the topic of security. I remarked that if anyone tried to rob me I'd just hand them the money. Or you could give them something else, said the Self Righteous Man suggestively.

You're fucking kidding me, says Novel when I repeat this story. You should report him to the powers that be. But I won't. It would be a lot of trouble for what would likely be no particular results, so I'll just make a note of it for future reference.

I find that writing in this fashion is very tiring. I fall back into my past tense ways, and I have to go back and edit my sentences and the post loses that immediacy which it should have in the present tense. My sentences are too long and such fripperies as semi-colons not to be used. I may not switch to writing all my Blog Posts like this after all, I think. Perhaps I should write some more posts in blank verse.

We have no secrets
We tell each other everything
About the lovers in our past
And why they didn't last
We share a cast of characters from A to Z
We know each other's fantasies
And though we know each other better when we explore
Sometimes I wish
Often I wish
That I never knew some of those secrets of yours

--Carly Simon, No Secrets

get tested

2009-11-13T13:06:00.003-06:00

I was going to post this last week, in honour of world domination by feminists week, or whatever it was that we were celebrating, but you know... life happens and I was busy.

So anyway, I saw this ad on 20th Street...

and something about it bothered me. I mean, it's a good message, right? People get STIs. People should get tested. But still, something about it chaps my hide -- what exactly is the message of the ad? That faceless bosomy women in vaguely slutty clothes get more STIs? That hanging out with faceless bosomy women in vaguely slutty clothes will give you more STIs? It was posted on 20th Street, with its perpetual reputation as the stroll in Saskatoon, and that bothers me, too. Do they have similar ads in the rich areas of town, or are people from those places exempt from STIs (and faceless bosomy women in vaguely slutty clothes)?

If I was doing the ad, which I was not, I would have featured faceless men in vaguely slutty expensive suits, like so.

And my follow up ad would be thus:

for the life of me I cannot remember
what made us think that we were wise and
we'd never compromise
for the life of me I cannot believe
we'd ever die for these sins
we were merely freshmen.

--Verve Pipe, Freshmen

catch up

2009-11-11T15:28:00.003-06:00

It's simply a gorgeous day out there, for Novembrance Day. It's warm, maybe +5, the sun is shining (although about to set, sadly, we are still in the northern part of the northern hemisphere). I just sat outside and had a cup of tea, and enjoyed the afternoon.

Been working, so hard. Last week and the week before I was working double shifts, 10-4 at an art gallery on campus, and 5-9 at that call centre. Working at the gallery was easy, admittedly, since all I had to do was sit at the door and make sure no one walked off with any of the priceless illuminated manuscripts hanging on the walls. But still, that makes for long days since I would leave the house at 9 am and not get home until after 9:30 pm. (Or from 0900 hours until 2130 hours like they say in the military and in that security force to which I now belong).

Then on Saturday I got called in to work at the information booth at a local hospital for the evening (another easy job) and then Monday I started full time employment working at the parking kiosk at the same hospital, 1530 until 2330 every evening for two weeks, then I switch off with the other girl who works there and I'll be working 0730 until 1530.

I worked my last shift at the call centre last Friday and one of the two remaining guys who works there called me lazy and the Queen of Rude, (I have no idea what his problem was) but everyone else assured me that they would miss me, and the other remaining guy who works there (who I would describe as being as gay as Dick's hatband) told me I was full of awesome. Whatever, I'm just glad not to be the last rat treading water after the Titanic has disappeared into the icy Atlantic.

Today I had off -- the parking kiosk was closed for the stat -- so I've been making some desultory attempts at housework this afternoon. I slept all morning, right throught the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Novel got called in to work at his job, which is guarding the lot where the city keeps vehicles it has seized over unpaid parking tickets, etc.

Working the parking kiosk should be interesting in a way -- although I have to make nice to the public who want to park in my parking lot, I'll only have myself for company most of the time. Luckily I like my own company more than most people.

My hands have been giving me constant trouble the past couple of weeks. No sooner does one sore on a fingertip heal than another springs up elsewhere, and my left thumb joint has been swollen and painful and inflammed for weeks now. I've probably mentioned, either on this blog or elsewhere, how much having bad hands reminds me of my mother. She used to have to get me to wring out clothes that were being washed, or open jars for her and stuff like that. Yah, it makes me whiney.

Well, I'm standing on the corner of lafayette
State of louisiana
Wondering where a city boy could go
To get a little conversation
Drink a little red wine
Catch a little bit of those cajun girls
Dancing to zydeco.

--Paul Simon, That Was Your Mother

round prairie

2009-11-06T23:09:00.002-06:00

I had a number of things I was intending to do today, but my sister called to see if I wanted to go out to Round Praire this afternoon, so I did that instead. Round Prairie is a Metis cemetery from the turn of the 19th (I think) century, which overlooks the South Saskatchewan River. It was an very shiny, windy day.

Jesus and Mary hanging out in the graveyard.

I had to be back for work at 5 (my last shift at that call centre, I'll blog about that another time), so we didn't stay long. There were several miles where they were tearing up and reconstructing the highway which made for white knuckled driving. On the way back we each had a cup of hot tea; we'd drive past the huge machinerys, then drink some tea, then drive some more. It was really good tea.

walk in the autumn sun

2009-11-01T22:29:00.001-06:00

maybe we'll leave come springtime

2009-10-21T14:20:00.002-06:00

Novel is friends with, and was formerly employed by, one of the well known criminal lawyers in town. I've met the guy; he seems like a good enough guy for a middle class white guy, you know the type, good hearted but clueless about any worldview outside of his own. The fact that he is a criminal lawyer means he has defended a number of really unsavory characters; Novel claims that now he is well known and well off he doesn't defend people unless he feels like it. (Which isn't a point in his favour in this tale, as a matter of fact.)

My sister is employed by an organization which works with survivors of abuse. Recently the employees of this organization went on a field trip to see the sentencing of a convicted child molester. You can see where this is going, can you not? Right, Novel's friend was defender of the child molester.

When I told Novel about this, he was appalled that his friend would defend such a person... but my concern is more that we have to find a way to keep his friend separate from my family at the wedding... because, you know, if one of my radical feminist family members offs the guy, who will we get to defend her in court?

In pretty much unrelated news, I've been in a nasty funk lately, and I can't find the adapter for my all spectrum light which I bought last winter.

You see a lot more meaness in the city
it's the kind that eats you up inside
hard to come away with anything
that feels like dignity
hard to get home with any pride

--Don Henley, Sunset Grill

observations

2009-10-20T22:33:00.003-06:00

It's not that I never think of blogging. Sometimes I think out entire posts; even write them down on paper, then totally forget about them. Somewhere I have an essay on the topic of agency which I intended as a blog post. I really should dig it out, dust it off and post it. Although all it boiled down to, as I recall, was that everyone always over estimates their own agency, except when defending bad actions (it wasn't my fault, it was circumstances beyond my control, the devil made me do it) and everyone always overestimates everyone else's agency (I've never done that, therefore any person who has done it is obviously evil and if he/she says it wasn't intentional, well obviously that's because he or she is a lying liar that lies). Also, people resent being told they don't have as much free will as they think they have.

I've been working quite hard the past couple of weeks, at two or three jobs at once, still at the call centre, plus security guarding parking lots, libraries and (next week) an art gallery. Money is good, but a little more stability would be better. What I've learned in the course of this new adventure that I embarked on is that people are horrid whiners when it comes to parking and parking tickets.

It was raining from the first

And I was dying there of thirst

So I came in here

And your long-time curse hurts

But what's worse

Is this pain in here

I can't stay in here

Ain't it clear that--

I just can't fit

Yes, I believe it's time for us to quit

When we meet again

Introduced as friends

Please don't let on that you knew me when

I was hungry and it was your world.

--Bob Dylan, Just Like A Woman

gender confusion

2009-10-09T13:31:00.003-06:00

When I was walking into the mall the other day, there were two women behind me discussing the fight one of them had with her significant other the evening before:

1st woman: I try to be low stress... but you know, he's such a ... woman.
2nd woman: I hate men who are women.
1st woman: I know. I'm not a woman.

So if he's such a woman and she's not a woman, I guess it's still a heterosexual relationship, right?

I know you don't like weak women,
you get bored so quick
And you don't like strong women,
cause they're hip to your tricks

--Joni Mitchell, You Turn Me On (I'm A Radio)