July 2005

workin' hard

20:28 7/3/2005

Quiet enough day. Had to go to work but because of the rain I didn't mow and because the building has been flooding so badly I didn't have to vacuum. Instead I put my energy into mopping the rehearsal hall. Now, of course, I have a backache. When I got home I hung up a chain over the stove with hooks and put utensils and kettles and baskets on it. That frees up a bit of space around the place and fills a spot that was empty and now it's kitcheny and interesting. I think I want to build a shelf behind the stove too but I'm not sure when I'll go to the trouble. Ideally it'd be very strong and tiled so I can put hot pans up there directly off the stove. Got a bit more painting done. Because of how humid and cool it is the paint on the landing isn't drying. That's unfortunate because it'll slow down my whole process. I should have gotten a second coat on it today. I may have to turn on the heater downstairs to speed it up. I'm still grooving on my clean kitchen floor and the nice chain 'o' utensils above the store :-) Hey, beats crying over Dan. I did that too today :-( Sometimes I wonder if maybe his telling me he'd been sober for over a decade was a lie too and maybe he's never been sober. I wouldn't be surprised if his last relationship drowned too. Doesn't look like he's gonna dry out before he gets killed or jailed. I would put money on a bet that he's drinking and driving sometimes. My last chance at love and marriage and it ends like this. Not that we broke up, but he never talks to me anymore so it's the same difference. He's just plain gone. Last time he tried to talk to me he was so drunk he couldn't string 2 sentences together on a single subject. Now if you think he's pathetic, what about me in love with him and still counting him as good as I can get? He'd be worth the wait if he dried out. I dunno if he can though, he's almost 50. I guess men sometimes recover their lives late in life like that but its a lot harder and he's nowhere near, so far as I can tell, even admitting he gets drunk, let alone that he's back addicted.

A friend in a chatroom told me she was doing phone sex and she passed me some leads if I want to get into it too. If they'll hire me it could be a way to make that extra scratch I need.

feminazi hate rant

09:34 7/3/2005

So why do I hate women? Well they're bitches. Ok, that's the short form. Here's the long form. I'll be just rolling along doing my thing, interacting with other creatures of my species and having a fine old time. Forgetting to hate myself and feel ashamed for being me even! Then WHAM some woman will start bitching me out. Now at that point it can be seen as lucky because she's giving me useful feedback and we can discuss it. Sometimes I even become friends with them. However, more often the scenario is that she just suddenly turns one day, for no apparent reason, and starts being incredibly rude to me, downright sadistic. Doing mean things, saying insulting things, behaving viciously, and I have NO idea why. Months or years down the road I'll finally find out why she hates me, this woman I hardly even know with whom I'd hardly shared any conversation. See, turns out I wasn't showing enough interest in her! She'll say things like that I'm self absorbed or impolite or not interested enough in her or that I only value myself. So because I don't have the correct social behaviour for her rule system she decides she hates me and that this then merits extreme disrespect, cruelty, torture, insult and whatever other abusive activity she decides to hurl at me. These women never see the irony in being angry with me for being selfish instead of paying them attention.

THATS why I hate women. There are more of them like that than there are the type who actually sit down and open the dialog, whether in a bitch or *gasp* actual discussion, and find out what's going on. Women hold me to high socializing expectations and when I fail to meet them, I'm punished without ever being taught a thing or given the benefit of the doubt. They do this to men too but because men have dicks and right beside those, wallets, women let them get away with a lot more. As a female, however, I have the added detraction of being competition in the sexual arena.

After years of abusive treatment and ostracision from the feminine gender I have a very powerful streak of mysogyny which even comes out in a fascination for sexual sadism pornography and fantasies. If I was a man I'd be a rapist. Women are NOT the gentle sex!

broken feather crisis

22:39 7/2/2005

I'm pasting the writing I sent to a chat list about my day so some of it is repeated from this morning.

This morning started off bad also because of poor petey. I woke up nice and early and had petey's door open but didn't make an effort to get him out because I still felt a bit off and sore from yesterday. I stepped out to go next door and water Eileen's violets, they're away till Monday evening. On the way out I heard petey calling me and called back through the open (screened) window to him. When I came back he was MISSING!! he cant go far with his wings clipped and I was soon in a complete panic. Eventually I gave up trying to find him and just locked up the rabbit and shut off the radio and sat quietly with a tea and some email trying to listen for rustles that weren't from rabbits and birds in cages. The rabbit in this case is Freddy the lop that lives in the living room because she's unspayed and can't mix with the other two peaceably. I figured petey landed on the floor and when freddy came loping over to sniff or nibble feathers or something he freaked and headed for some tiny corner to hide.

Sure enough I finally heard him shift a bit and he was under a shelf on a case that's on the floor, behind the litter box, tucked in more neatly than I could have tucked a bundle of socks into a tight space. He couldn't get out either. I had to move a bunch of things around to be able to gently shift the case till he escaped. He came out gratefully and I held him close, my cheek against his wing, relieved. I brought him to sit by me and then I saw blood on his side. Panic time again. While waiting for the on-call vet (not an avian vet) at the university to call me I figured out to wrap him in a towel and get a look at the source of the blood. Looked like feathers that got yanked astray rather than more serious injury and it was clotting properly. So I declined to book an appt that would cost $100 for a non-avian vet to hem and haw...

It soon became evident that one feather is loose and hurting him and if he flaps his wings it pains him and he has to carefully rearrange it back into place. I finally returned him to his cage and fed him tidbits then went out for errands.

I headed out and picked up things at the oriental shop including stir fry ingredients and more peppers for petey. When I got home and got that all put away I started my home repair project, fixing up the stairs. For ten years I've planned to urethane the stairs pretty. Only the treads are really worth putting lovely stuff on, the rest i"ll paint. I stripped the carpet off that I"d stapled in to protect the wood then sanded out the stains that made it through anyway over the last 10 years, filled holes with wood filler and primed the stuff I'll paint. Then I put a coat on every other tread of urethane and took a bath. I also had to design barriers to keep the pets off the stairs while they're in process.

After my bath it was time to cook a meal and I invited petey to come join me while I prepared food. Mistake. He panicked when I approached him on teh side of his cage and started flapping. That made his wing hurt which made him panick more and he flapped yet more. screaming in pain and fear and flapping and climbing he finally made the top of his cage and cried there holding the sore wing out with the feather askew and sticking out and me crying in sympathy with him. Finally he came close for comfort and climbed on my hand. I was so afraid he'd flap again or bump that feather sticking out that I put him safe in his cage right away. I think he would have preferred to sit with me awhile but I was also pretty upset and worried. Iv'e been worrying about him all day. I brought his cage into the kitchen to the spot he usually sits but he wouldn't settle down so I finally put him to bed, it being late enough. That involves settling him on his perch and draping the cage with a black cloth so he's cozy and dark. Poor little guy, Ih ope he doesn't suffer shock from this.

All day I've been communicating with a parrot list for advice. Some suggested plucking the feather but it's clear that it has to be done right or you can injure the bird badly and even done right, it hurts like mad and bleeds. I'm waiting till I can get him to the vet at regular rates on Monday and one who's an avian vet. He'll spend the day in the cage! The stir fry turned out well, very tasty. I used the new wok I picked up this morning.

live8

13:55 7/2/2005

Oh my I got a sunburn yesterday! Oops. Hehehe. Missed out on cake again. Some year I'll manage. I saw the remains, it was chocolate.

Petey scared me today. He came out when I stepped next door for a couple minutes and got scared by the rabbit and hid in a tiny hole under a shelf behind the rabbit's litter box. He broke a feather or two in there and got blood on his feathers. I couldn't find him for a good half hour and when I saw the blood I panicked. Ultimately I managed to figure it out and that it wasn't life threatening but boy was I scared! My sweety petey. He's still fussing at the injury, it bothers him, but I think he'll be ok.

How about this Live8 concert series? Just how much have they actually spent on it? I would guess the musicians aren't being paid but you better believe the techs are getting union scale and the equipment rentals are charging and the cleanup guys too and the power companies. Just the equipment alone must run in the millions of dollars per venu. I wouldn't be surprised if the tally comes out in the billions. Who's paying it? Why don't they use that money for Africa instead of a day full of self-indulgent bleeding heart presentations where they show off how caring they are even though they're fucking filthy rich and mostly NOT putting that money into charity? Would there even be a change if we poured enough money into africa or would the corrupt millionaires there simply have more resources to continue corruption and enslavement of the people? How about our natives living in squalor or the homeless on the streets of our large cities? Do they have less need? How about some birth control programs in Africa? Some sex offender courses for the baby rapers? Meanwhile a whole lot of pampered westerners are haveing a fun day of concerts where they can pretend they care for a whole day. Of course, the food banks weren't allowed to have a drop bin there, nor was the red cross, salvation army or ANY OTHER poverty concerned charity allowed to have a table, flyers, or any other kind of presence. Oh no, this is Sir Robert's big thing. wouldn't want anyone latching on and getting a free ride off of HIS intellectual property. Hmmm, can you tell I'm NOT IMPRESSED? I'll change my tune if it makes a difference but I think they could have done a lot more with that money including more commercials on televison, more investment funds to use for outreach, more schools and direct help like foster parents plan, more medical aid, more food even, in Africa, instead of just having a weeping bleeding heart party. Oh, and there's catering and broadcast time too, don't think all that was free either.

canada day

09:25 7/1/2005

Today is a much better day. Getting up in the morning sure helps a lot. I stayed up 30 hours (with a 3 hour nap wednesday night) in order to switch shift around and went to bed at 9pm last night. That had me up with the birds at sunrise and here it is 9:30am and I've already hung the laundry out and polished the copper kettles, washed dishes and made breakfast. Yes, copper kettles! I was out and about yesterday picking up things and stopped by a yard sale and found a copper kettle and matching tea pot for $3. I wasn't terribly impressed with the look of either and the teapot even less so, yet I figured that the price was right and the kettle was a whistler and more appropriately sized than my massive old aluminum kettle. However after polishing the copper I'm utterly thrilled with both. I plan to pick up a couple of strong ceiling hooks and some chain and S hooks and I'll hang the mess above the stove and hang the kettles from it and maybe some cast iron pans if I think it's strong enough. That would fill an empty space decoratively and usefully while freeing up space on surfaces around here. If I can hang up all the fry pans then it would really make a difference but in fact I think that's an unreasonable expectation, they're very heavy. The largest weighs 25# itself! I guess I'll just get the copper and aluminum kettles and pots up there, they'll look nice enough hanging up. Later maybe I'll think of other things to hang from the chain. Utensils or something maybe. Or even the wicker baskets I use when picking in the garden.

Yesterday I saw a flyer advertising a digicam for only $10 and an mp3 player for only $30. So I went and did some shopping. The camera is worth about what I paid for it, the resolution is horrible and it uses a serial cord for the interface. The lens has a fisheye effect on it's borders. It may have some interesting uses and I'll drag it around today at the canada day party taking snaps to see what I can do with it. One thing it does that I do love is you can attach it to the TV using the RCA out jack, and either (like through vcr) record video (need separate sound input) or even just view the pictures on it's 2mb memory. It's an Agfa Smile camera. It only holds 16 images so that's pretty poor really. I suppose it'd be a good camera for a kid. ~shrug~ it was cheap enough.

The mp3 player turned out to be unusable because it uses a memory card you can't get so I upgraded another $40 for the next one up the line, a RAVE-MP 256mb player. I am able to put my 256MB SD card from my lyra in it for 512MB of music playback, a generous amount. I rather like it. It also has an fm tuner when I'm tired of my own music, again a lovely feature. The lyra is breaking down after a generous year and a half of use, the forward and back buttons no longer work most of the time and it shuts itself off without warning or reason every now and then. As if it's choking on a song. I've tucked it away in a drawer. If something happens to the RAVE I'll still have it. Another thing the RAVE does that I like is the card is well secured inside the housing. You slip off the back and it exposes the card slot and battery holder. When you put the rave into it's clip for the belt, it helps hold that cover in place. Plus the card, which is worth more than the unit itself, also snaps into place in the usual manner. On the Lyra, it was exposed and I had to tape it shut after losing one already because it got bumped slightly and that unclicked it and left it loose to fall out without my ever knowing. At a dollar a megabyte that mega-bites!

So today I'm feeling reasonably reasonable, I think partly because it's so nice to have entire days ahead of me instead of feeling rushed to get everything done in a few hours before the sun sets and I'm faced with a long dark lonely night, night after night after night. Of course, I am still grieved about Dan. The trick is to have other things to think about as much as possible, to distract oneself from what one doesn't like. To that end I plan on showing up at the Canada Day party in time for the big cake cutting ceremony and then I'll wander with sarah along the booths and pick up some prayer flags and maybe more brass bells and I dunno, you know? I sure miss talking with Dan every day. ~sigh~