September 2005

I dunno what the subject is.

How odd. I felt so rushed all day and here I am with 30 mins to spare before i have to get ready for work and I've read all the news and emails. Oh, probably not email. I think I have too many lists. I made a tasty berry and soy milk icey pudding dessert. I think they're sometimes called slushies, I dunno. The berries are frozen and they turn the sweetened soy milk thick and add ice crystals, as well as some berries that don't grind, when you mix them in a blender. You get a very tasty dessert that's much more fun than a bowl of berries and a glass of soy milk. Especially since I bought these frozen. They're cheaper than fresh.

So I got my lawn raked today, that's marvellous. I managed to avoid stressing the blister from yesterday and the work is sure to help work out the stiffness in my back and shoulders and neck. I realized that isn't entirely to blame on the dancing last night because I also raked for 2 hours yesterday. It's not too awful if I keep stretching.

I started the day with aspirin. I realize that in fact it's one case where aspirin is ideally suited to the problem, it reduces inflammation and pain allowing you to move and work out the muscles that otherwise can kink up for days.

The world cloud patterns today have a neat spiral in the central atlantic. Like a giant comma made of smaller storm cells. Nothing looks like it's forming though. I have this 12 hour animated gif of the world that I found on a server and lay in on my desktop. I share the url with friends but actually posting it on a website seems unkind, I don't think unisys wants to see any jumps in connection hits. The particular one I have is the northwestern hemisphere, essentially North america and most of the atlantic and pacific oceans down to about brazil. I have it set on my desktop and it refreshes every 24 hours so I get the day's weather picture upcoming, and can refresh again if I'm curious about something. If I see anything like a large storm I race down to the NOAA websites and watch avidly to see what she does.

more KMFDM

I just dived in there and even shoved into the mosh pit a bit. I've still got it baby Oh and the crowd was wonderful.

Everyone had dressed in their punkest best. Oh and some had some amazing bits. One girl had patent leather black thigh boots with 6" platform soles and buckles all up the back showing a crack of her fishnet stockinged leg. Above the boots the delicious stockings climbed up her sweet young thighs till they darted under a black leather mini skirt. Oh my. I forget what else she wore, those boots were everything.

There were enough lip peircings and eyebrow peircings and everything-else peircings and studs on leather or collars to decorate the town tree at christmas. Mohawks that defied gravity in sculptural shapes soared above brightly colored manes and mops. There was leather and plaid and an overabundance of black teeshirts and jeans, torn and worn, with color accents leaping out.

One guy called me the punk hippy (which was pretty accurate) because of my turquoise blue fringed vest (that I broke). I told him I was old enough to be a hippy and wild enough to be a punk. Heh. It was the effect I was after really, hippy gone vicious. Hehehehe. I smile too much to look vicious though.

I WAS high spirited though, that's for sure. Wow I had fun, totally.

The girls there, oh those delicious girls. There were a heavy share of tasty boys too, but the girls do put it on so nicely, showing all the right bits of flesh. They go all out with punk I think, skirts are shorter, decolletage deeper, it's all done like nasty sexy.

Oh there was a young man there with a crazy blond goatee and a pointy face and this insane tangled mop of hair that flew out at angles from his face like a cartoon character might have, points flying up and back in opposition to the points of this cheeks and nose and goatee and so on. That was fun.

Then there was the guy standing nearby on the dancefloor. For the longest time I thought he had the world's weirdest and most open nostrils till I finally spotted the contours of his septum peircing jewellery. LOL I'm sure glad I dressed up. I fitted right in.

KMFDM still rocks better than an iron mine!

Ohmigod I had so much FUN! I haven't enjoyed a scene like that for FIFTEEN years! I even saw old friends from the long lost days of the Plastic Puppet Motive which was a private dance club that played things like KMFDM and other tasty treats from the genres of industrial and techno punk. Old Mike was there being as flirty and huggy as ever, heh. He's lost a lot of hair and gained a few wrinkles and says he's not as flexible anymore, but otherwise he's just as cute as ever. I saw a few others, even one woman who was clearly older too. Nobody thought I looked over 30 which was fun. I broke my fringed vest jumping up on a table. I sat on the fringes and the vest tore. Damn. I can fix it but it will always look fixed now. KMFDM was fantastic.

Some local death metal did the warmup, they were there. they didn't suck but KMFDM isn't metal, it's punk and there's enough of a difference to love one and not the other. I danced way more than I've done in a long time, twitching and spasming and flinging my hair in rythm and sometimes charging into the little mosh pit that formed in front of the band.

I bought the cd and am ripping mp3s from it now. GREAT music. KMFDM hasn't lost a thing. I ran into a couple band members at the after party and gave them heartfelt thanks for visiting our little city. They go on to regina next. heh. Milk run music tour for sure, but they had a large appreciative crowd with people as far away as prince albert (2 hour drive) so really, they're appreciated here.

Boy I am a dummy, I shoulda asked the band to sign the cd. Oh well. It's the music that counts, not the fact that I 'saw" them or whether I could prove it. Damn good music.

I have the cd playing in the surround sound dvd player (it does cds and mp3s too) and it's making the house vibrate. I'm sure the birds do NOT like it, but they will just have to assume it's a bad night fulla storm or something!

I passed my card out a couple people so might be reinstating old acquaintances. I also plan on attending some of the upcoming underground events now that they're into a better venue. maybe I'll make friends. At the very least I'll have some partying to look forward to!

After that I stopped at work, popped into the carp shop and hollered at richard "hey, you're the only person at work who's seen me dressed punk!" He smiled at that. Richard isn't very sociable. I think he does his work at night partly to be able to work alone (like me). He's the head carpenter. He does a lot of wood working at the theatre. He was working on flats for the next play.

blisters

The lawn at work is big enough I finished in the dark and even wearing gloves tore a spot of skin off one thumb. Walking around at work I imagined someone asking me if witches always carry their broom around and me replying "only when we're working." I can't type this blog, Dan's online firing off IMs at me.

kmfdm prep

It's nearly 5pm and I gotta head for work to rake the lawn and clean up after the kids at the matinee today. The sky is grey and it's cool out but calm. It looks like rain could happen but I bet it'll have the grace to wait till I've raked rather than give me a good excuse to leave it longer.

I just made a fresh cup of tea after the first one got wrecked by spoiled milk. So I'll be here another 30 mins anyway. Yeah that's pushing it late for the cleaning. I don't care, I wanna enjoy my tea.

So I may be raking while they arrive for the show, so what?

I'm NOT looking forward to getting dressed for KMFDM. I feel like I can't just go in jeans and teeshirt but I'm afraid to really go through my closet trying to find something that looks suitably punk and industrial without looking silly on my fat middle aged frame, AND that fits my fat frame. There's not a lot in my closet that fits and doesn't look dowdy anymore. I just can't afford new and there's not a lot of people donating to 2nd hand who have a sense of taste like mine AND a body my size. What I really need is a $1,000 shopping spree at a variety of outlets to let me upgrade my warddrobe. Not that I've ever spent that much on clothes in a single decade, let alone one shopping trip.

Dan wants me to take a pic so that ups the ante. I haven't painted my face much since it got "old" and I don't know if my old makeup is really the look I want on it anymore. It was very young and fresh I think and doesn't sit right on my face anymore. So I'm looking at a few hours of screwing around with clothes and makeup just to look interesting. I don't really want to, but it feels like a civic duty to the other fans of the band, the club goers and the band itself to add to the color of the event rather than lame out and go boring and just take my entertainment.

I'll figure something out, the most important thing is to look exotic enough to be laughed at elsewhere. Heh. It ain't hallowe'en yet for you, but some of us still have costume balls. Hmmm, finished my tea in only 5 mins. That ain't right....

gas stove finally installed and running

The gas installer has to put a hole in my floor to install a bracket to prevent me from climbing on the open door and causing the stove to tip forward and crush my baby (that I don't have) and he can't not do it because a gas inspector will come around and will penalize him if he does because he had to get a permit for the install. If I don't let the inspector in they'll shut off my gas. Sso I have to tolerate a hole in my floor to fasten a bracket I don't need. Pisses me OFF badly!

Well the install racked up to $200 not the $75 he said. I think I was overcharged $30 on labour but I dunno. Is it my nickle when he spent a half hour picking up a part? They had to get a gas install permit and an inspector will be coming around bugging me to make sure it's done right. So $40 for the permit, $90 for the labour, and the rest is parts, new flexicoil, new valve, adapters. I think I got overcharged a bit but I feel so relieved it's over I just want it to stay over and done with.

So my first heated-in-the-stove consumable, my tea. ~slurp~

Tonight I have ticket for the show at the theatre. I am very curious to see this play. It's called A Doll's House and it's a norwegian play that was very controversial 100 years ago. It's about a marriage I think. Looks to be set at Christmas time.

Gotta go in a bit early and if I can I want to rake the lawn there. Well, I dunno. I don't want to and it's the only reason to go in early is the lawn. ~sigh~ I think I'll decide at the last minute. I don't want to and sunset is nearly 2 hours before the show starts. But I do have to rake the lawn sooner than later. Gotta rake my own lawn too but I don't feel that energetic yet. maybe after tea. I dunno.

I really just want to relax today. Yesterday was such a stressed day. At least I got enough sleep. Petey stayed out on his playstand the whole time the plumber/gasfitter guy was here. The guy tolerated all my pets well and said he was surprised to learn how many I have because he couldn't smell them and didn't get an allergy reaction. Gee that's nice, means I take good care of my home.

gas and tears and anarchy

So I was up at noon today and the stove arrived at 3pm. For a couple hours I tried lining up a plumber but I'm still so sleep short that I hadn't much ability to cope with verbal stuff on the phone. Oh I was able to keep up the automatic smile face and light voice with polite diction, I've been well practiced, but coping with answering services and machines or being told 2-3 wks for an appt. had me in tears again. At one point I tried napping but couldn't relax enough to sleep. the hideabed is comfy enough, although small, but it was bright and petey would whistle at me.

I often wonder if that whistle is the noise people on my parrot list mean when they say their senegal screamed. It's his loudest fearest voice and it's just a loud whistle and not a peircingly loud one either. Hardly screaming. After having been around louder birds I find it quite tolerable, but not conducive to sleeping.

So the freezer scratched the shit out of my floor, ~sigh~. That's too bad. Waxing it over will help. I'll do that another day. Here I am with a lovely monday and lots of yard work to do and I'm too spaced out from exhaustion to do anything. It takes too much concentration to plan my moves and move my body at the same time. To top it all off I can't cook anything. I'm glad I don't have to make with the excitement today, well unless my mother actually phones to hear it... I'll write them a nice enthusiastic email tomorrow.

I really like the stove but can't work up any caring in the state I'm in. Is that autistic of me? Would most folks still have emotional responses even when running on half power? I think maybe so. Maybe with an autistic the emotional expression is an overlay. I mean I can find the feeling inside me, happy and excited, but I can't feel it physically or express it because I'm so sleepy and tired that all I really want to do is weep! Not that my mother would understand that if she wanted her thankyous.

Tonight I go to sleep early enough that I'll wake naturally before 11am I guess. That's tricky after such recently going to bed around 7am. I hate fucking around with my shift like this. I wonder how factory workers on swing shift cope. I'd be psychotic in a few weeks. I heard there is a higher incidence of alcoholism and domestic violence among shift workers. The factories ought to offer fixed night shift for workers at their request then offer the dayshift swing theyre vacating to others who want to get on committed day shift using a lottery system to select the one who gets the open day shift as let go by a night worker who stays on nights. If they're lucky they'll get enough people who want to work nights that they can give everyone a fixed shift. Wouldn't that be nice?

I think offering adults more choices helps them grow up more and that the world would balance out. You have to exert some kind of control over a population or it runs roughshod over it's environment and causes itself suffering. This goes for wild animals needing predators just as much as humans needing laws and consequences.

Yes, I do consider myself an anarchist. A social anarchist. However, I also think that anarchy that is true will be a distinctly personal effort. Think about this. Anarchy is about self-governance. It's about saying we have both the right and the responsibility to govern ourselves with care and consideration of the world around us. If the world around us has laws and restrictions, be they natural laws of physics or artificial laws of men, they are parameters we have to work around. It's not my place to tell Mr. Martin he cannot attempt to govern me, for that would be attempting to govern him! No, rather I have to figure out how to get where I need to go without running afoul of the hazards presented by other people doing their thing. That includes the law as much as a criminal or wild cougar.

So I figure, if you're not smart enough and controlled enough to be an anarchist in the midst of a governed society, then you don't deserve to be an anarchist. See, if you're not going to wait every time for the walk light to change, then you better be sensible enough to know how to cross the street safely AND watch for police cars who may issue you a jaywalking ticket. if you can't do that and you're impeding traffic then you have no business governing yourself and ought well to let the engineers and planners do their thing and guide you. It's surprising how often their guidelines are sensible suggestions even for the anarchist. Anarchy requires not a change of state but a change of mind.

resolved

On my way to work on my bicycle my paths crossed with neighbor Ken on his bicycle. I told him of my plight, knowing it was likely he could help. So we turned back around and headed for my place. He stopped home and left his bike and grabbed some tools and soon he was behind my stove solving my headache. Thanks Ken.

I think I will hire a professional to do the hookup. This was harmless but a total fiasco.

I found that I'd done so much cleaning on Thursday last and lately that I could really slack off on cleaning and managed to get it done in only 3 hours. Hence it's 4:30am and I am going to be in bed by 5 making a nice 7 hours of sleep and rise at noon with an hour to gather my scattered brain before having to worry about the new stove. Thing is, it says any time from 1-5 which means exactly that. It works out that if I'd gotten into bed at 7 and slept in the living room as I'd planned they'd get here at 12:59. If I get to bed early and sleep upstairs and get up before 1 pm, then they won't show up till 5:30pm. So I figure that'll give me time to rake and mow the lawn after a peaceful breakfast of pizza and instant tea. LOL. If I'm wrong, that's ok too, it'll be done and just have to try and get a plumber in on short notice. Why oh why did I listen to people and not arrange a plumber? They don't charge a lot for this job. I'll probably have to replace the hose so that'll jack up the cost a bit but even so it should come in well under $100.

So the crisis passes and I get to get some sleep. G'nite.

worn out

Damn I'm tired. Was constipated all day too which is not a nice way to sleep nor awaken. Fortunately it has ... passed. :-)

So I got done at the theatre at 7am this morning and got to bed around 8:30. Got up at 4 and ate some pizza and off to work again. I had to get the lawn mowed as well as clean after the matinee. At 11 I go back yet again to clean after the evening show and clean up for sunday cleaning. Before that I have to get the kitchen ready for the stove guys tomorrow so they can get the old stove out for me. They arrive anytime between 1pm and 5pm tomorrow.

I'll sleep in the living room on the *new* sofabed. It'll be my first sleep there. I'll need to wear ear plugs against the bird's whistling and I won't sleep well but I plan to set the computer with an alarm to wake me at 2pm. I would be very surprised if the stove guys got here first thing. I hope they don't. LOL. I checked that the doorbell is working. I should marker a sign for the door pointing to it. People have trouble finding it. ...

There, that's done. It's not hard to find if you look for it but the lack of steps to the house door throws people off. What you're supposed to do is approach the gate door at the side and ring the doorbell. Then I come out from the back and bring you through. The door on front of the house isn't an entry, just balcony access.

The deck is a balcony, not a deck with steps down, and it hasn't got any railing since it's only 4' above the ground. I would like to put on a roof and screen it in but I don't want to obscure the view with railings.

So I'm running off my feet. ~sigh~ I feel tired. Tomorrow night I can go to bed early and sleep late so I don't have to go much longer. Hope I don't screw up the installation on the gas stove.

inlaws

Dan's visit with my parents was an unqualified success from what I hear. I'm so glad. It seemed likely to go well but one never really knows for sure. Like I did figure, Dan and my father connected right away. Dan said it also made our relationship more real for me. I said it made him more real for me. Now that my parents and aunt and uncle have met him he's going to be described all around and he's verified, you know? we had a lovely chat on the phone about it and he was quite happy and enthusiastic. In some ways I'm glad I wasn't there so that my personality and issues weren't interfering. Dan's parents couldn't keep up, they couldn't quite follow the accent and frankly I think they're not quite as smart as my parents and Dan. They're nice enough people but not that intellectual. No big deal, Dan is smart enough for me and that's what counts.

Smart likes to hang with smart but really, it's only one way to be. There's a lot of qualities a person can hold as virtue and smart isn't always one of them. For me, I'm not good at being patient with folks who don't keep up, so for a partner it becomes important. I must say I do hope none of these folks finds this blog, LOL. Even when it's true and not colored with judgement, people still get mad if you mention things they aren't proud of. Or maybe they're ashamed, I dunno. There's two ways to live without guilt, be above reproach, or be shameless. I prefer the latter. :-)

feeding rabbits in winter

I got my tickets for KMFDM, dialoged with the LBS about the bike I have in there, and even picked up the groceries, all by moped early in the day (for me). So that's pretty good. Next day I can get up early is Tuesday. I'll have to mow the lawn at work tomorrow and if I can get in before 6pm I hope to pick up something at the pet store.

Crazy critters are expensive. What's worse is you don't realize how much they cost till they're already moved in and a concientous pet owner finds a way to make it work, not send the animals away again. Anyway, I love these guys. The rabbits are the expensive ones and I know there is no life elsewhere for them. I have seen the shelter and the spca rabbits. It would be kinder to euthanize them or turn them loose in the yard. Hence, I make it work.

What I really need is a winter garden greenhouse. A large space in which I can grow dandelions and millet and things for me too. I wonder how reasonable it would be to make my own? What would it take to safely heat it? I have seen this insulated corrugated plastic wall paneling around, at the habitat store. I don't know if they have any left but it's around, it exists. It would let the radiant heat in from the sun. It would provide a degree of insulation. The northern half of east and west walls and the northern wall and roof could be styrofoam insulated walls. You could even put in some kind of heat sink against the north wall. It wouldn't need a building license I don't think, and you can just build it on posts into the ground so it won't blow up. You want the ground inside, you're going to grow right in it.

I think it's time to quit blogging and play with sketchup. See ya, maybe I'll post a jpg if I get one done.

armchair meteorology

I've been thinking lately again about how the earth redistributes toxic elements. Winds pick up sterile soil and turn it into a dust storm, spreading it far and wide. Then leaves and grasses drop in the bare spot and create new clean fresh topsoil. Hardy colonizing plants regenerate the soil with nitrogens and loosen it up with their roots. Floods and rainstorms wash mud out of stagnant pools and marshes, or sterile hillsides, wipes down the world. Winds blow off dead tree limbs to prune the forest clean. The whole mess tumbles into and down a river system and is spread out to marshes then to the great seas of the world. Marshes filter out and break down all manner of solids that float down from the river from dead things to oils and filth or wood and metal. Marshes arent the most pleasant of places for a picnic because, after all, they're the continent's septic system. However, as always, beautiful things have adapted to life there and graced it with uncommon beauty that draws folks there over and over.

Enter the hurricane. Thing of a giant paint mixer paddle like you put on a large hand drill. The hurricane stirs the ocean. Where the water is too warm the hurricane spins up and mixes it and spreads it's toxic filth out into the rest of the seas. Ideally this should overwhelm it through dilution. Many things will also fall eventually into the deep trenches below the ocean currents.

The hurricane then climbs up and scours the delta and river valley clean. See how it always lands right near large outflows of rivers? It washes the river system clean, the septics are pulled into the ocean for a thorough flush. If the land happens to have a large colony of parasites living on it, what cares the ocean in it's automated task?

When the water goes foul it gets warm. Sickly green algae soak up the sun and warm the water and the heat of our activity also warms the waters and the air above our cities too. This generates and draws the storm. The hurricane with it's tentacles of tornadoes seems like it's trying to scrub the living daylights out of the land when it arrives. It scours with wind and floods with water. A furious housewife named Rita attacking the toilet bowl with a vengeance. Hey, the Gulf is round like a toilet bowl and billions of toilets flush into it daily. Would you swim the mississippi at it's southern end?

swamps are good for you

Man, I hate the first week of show and now that I have to maintain a higher standard, it's taking me even longer. I worked till 8am this morning, didn't get to sleep till 11 and woke up at 5 to gobble some toast and go back to work.

~sigh~ I'm so wasted. On the upside the fresh garden bud really dulls the edge.

Huh, left this open for a couple hours, forgot all about it. So much to do, but not a lot of time in which to do it. Soon too I have to go back to work.

I'm watching Rita and seeing that once again the eye of the storm is coming ashore into a low marshy area. I was thinking, wet, the storm likes water, it will climb the land by whatever water it can find. If a coast like the Gulf coast had liberal applications of state parks rehabitated back to marshes at as many river or stream outlets as possible, maybe the hurricane eyes will veer to those channels instead of sweeping over a city. We know what these things do when they hit cities, we're seeing what marshes do. A city is a hard dry rock on a coastline like the Gulf with it's many bayous and natural salt water marshes and beaches. It's a wet and tropical place and the swamps hold and filter the water both coming off the land and going back onto the land in a storm surge. The marsh has extra capacity, like a sponge, to take on water and reduce land flooding, as well as being a buffer. If as I've observed, the storms follow water into land you can actually guide the eye and it's maniacal winds away from population centers and the marsh would likely be rejuvenated the way a natural wildfire rejuvenates a mountain forest. A marsh generates coolness where a city generates heat, the storm calms when cool air is applied.

For a long time humans reviled swampy wet places because they're not ideal human habitat. We are learning so much about our world now to realize that the world can't work on that basis, of being all human habitat. We don't get to fill every square foot of the earth. As far as storms go, we're going to have to study their landing patterns for some time and good accurate studies are fairly new, so we don't have a lot of data. My theories intrigue me but I'm not a meteorologist.

~sniff~

The house just reeks of cannabis, LOL. I put the harvest into the dehydrator tower, one of those plastic things they sell on late-night tv. I got it 2nd hand somewhen and it's quite effective for bulk drying of herbs, fruits, etc.

I didn't get home from work till 8:30 so it's a late morning and I have to clean after the matinee today so I sure won't get much sleep but I'm going ahead and staying up a bit late anyway because I really need that hour or two of sitting. I needed to get some chores done when I got here too. Who goes straight from work to bed anyway?

I'm considering catching the play tonight, it looks fascinating. They're doing a Norwegian play translated to english, 114 years old, called The Dolls House. It examines the relationship of husbands and wives or something. I am not sure, I pick the plays by the energy in the building, the props and look of them, the style of play and set, etc. I just kind of know somehow when it's good or when it's bad. If I'm not sure whether I want to see it I may track down a copy of the script and read it. Sometimes I save myself a couple of excruciating hours of tedium thereby. Yes I get in free. I can bring a friend free too but I usually can't be bothered. Nobody ever wants to go. I don't hang out with artsy types as much as you'd think.

KMFDM is coming to town!!!!! WHOO OOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!! I haven't been excited about a music event in many years but for this I'm considering shaving my head again! I dunno, I just finally got those hair bits where I would shave to get as long as the rest of my hair. Ten years it takes for my hair to grow to my waist. Shave off some and it's a decade or more again before I get it all of a length. I'd just like to do something dramatic. Maybe something with upsweeping on chopsticks? I dunno. I'll probably spend the night before messing with my hair. Tickets are $20 advance so I'll try and get somewhere before wednesday's show to pick up a ticket. Yes I'll go alone. I can't think of anyone who likes KMFDM that I know locally. Maybe I'll run into old friends I'd lost.

Bike shop says no way to put a 3spd hub into that frame. The chain sprocket teeth for hub geared systems are different from derailleur system and I guess the bottom bracket is also a different size so we can't change the front gear to suit. Ergo, this frame is stuck, for now, with a derailleur system. I'll just go ahead and get the bike done up for winter anyway and hope I can live with the derailleur. Maybe it'll work properly all winter. Then next spring I can make more effort to solve the gearing problem. If I really hate the derailleur I can just transfer the carriers and trailer hitch back to the old winter bike that I"m keeping spare.

With my fancy bike, beater bike, winter bike and Dan's bike, plus moped, I will have lots of options for transportation at least besides using the car. I'm thinking of putting the car on the road a month early. The moped is stuttering which I haven't researched yet so I don't know what's doing it. I figure I can clean the spark plug for good measure and that could be what's doing it, but if it's more serious or because of the colder air, the moped may not make it through the month of october.

My feet sure are complaining lately about the work. Damn. They hurt!

When my folks were here I noticed something I'd never noticed before about my mother. I don't know why I'd never realized she's a control freak. Given that her control freak passive aggressive nature was my biggest family cross to bear and a frequent source of strife, you'd think I'd noticed, but it struck me wholly new, as if I was seeing her with experienced eyes finally. I mind that she's a control freak. I don't mind that she's in charge of Dad and her sister and sis's hubby. I don't mind that she's in charge in her marriage. I can certainly understand how that comes to be and why and she doesn't make bad decisions so it's no big deal.

It's easier if a marriage has got one person in charge sometimes. I'd rather mine worked by consensus, really, but sometimes someone's gotta make an executive decision I expect. So it's not that which I mind.

Knowing this about her suddenly I also felt understanding that she'd try to control me and I recognized suddenly the shape of the passive aggressive machinations I've had to navigate around her. My mother is so classic she seems glib and smooth at first glance. She's the generous one, the heartfelt one, the one that promises anything, sort of, with conditions, etc. blah. She has made the backhanded compliment into an art form and one rarely sees it till hours later at review! Well so what, then, do I mind about her control habit? It makes her dangerous. That's what. It means that she may not have a reasonable boundary. It's about where she draws the line in her bid for power. I don't know where that is.

I still don't know this woman that well. I didn't know her when I was a child because I wasn't allowed to. My parents filled a title, a role, they weren't intimates in my mind, but a sort of authoritarian power. They expected respect and the affection I felt for them diminished in the face of it. My mother keenly feels this lack of affection.

I've always felt a kindred spirit to my father. I wish I had been his son so his traditional headspace would have allowed him to teach me his mechanics. I would have done well Im sure. In feeling like I understand this person, along with my admiration for his staunch honesty with his family (he stole from work so I can't call him a completely honest man) and his astounding intellect it makes for a much stronger affection towards him in spite of the trials of my youth. Now most young women would grow into an adult relationship with their parents during their 20s. I fled the region as soon as legally possible taking what I could hike with and the $5 which was my only ready cash. That's a whole other story I oughtta tell someday, the trip out west, but since age 17 I've been 2,000 miles distant. Enough remove to rescue my tender sanity and let me spread my wings and find out what kind of flower I am. Too much to know my mother, so different from me, or have a clue who she is. The only thing I ever knew was that she was decietful and manipulative and very needy. I felt pity for the needy part of her and so have always tried to be decent and respectful even when seething with fury inside.

So realizing that power is a goal for my mother amps her up from someone who's merely too hungry for self assurance to someone who will do unreasonable things to suppress the people around her. No wonder I had to leave. She always blamed my father for my trials. I never did. I had the sense that I could come to grips with the things that were between him and myself. But my mother, she's a social animal and I'm staring to think, lightly psychopathic. She's not a psychopath who doesn't care about anyone, but the harshness of her youth could well have damaged her permanently.

My mother is the 2nd eldest daughter and 3rd child of a clan of seven. the family lived in a poor urban neighborhood in Rotterdam, Holland during the 2nd world war. My mother was just going through puberty when the war was ending, 7 years of her childhood spent in a war zone, occupied by Nazis. Meantime the family wasn't that healthy to begin with. The parents were dysfunctional and the family was poor. My mother was made to do a lot of hard work. Chores were tougher in the 1930 and 1940s than they are now. Technology has really come through for us. Plus the large number of younger siblings means lots of babysitting.

Well so what do I do with this understanding of my mother? At this point I'm going to study a bit longer to try and get a better idea of the woman. Ultimately I want to find a way to deflect her and keep us connected enough to claim family ties but at enough remove to keep out of each other's way. Much as I've been doing realy, heh. God forbid she has to move near me for nursing help when she's old. I won't be easy on her emotionally. I wouldn't ever abuse someone, I understand the ways of abuse and the traps that get you there, but I think I'd be immune by then to her passive aggression and she'd have nothing to threaten me with.

Ahh, the story of money. Sometimes my parents are so broke they're considering welfare and other times they're so rich I'm guaranteed a fat inheritance. Yah. Hmm. Ya know, I don't give a shit. I don't believe in an inheritance. Its' a fantasy for someday, a neat idea, oh I'd take owner ship of this or get X amount of $$, but have to make a proper show of grief for the dead lady... Hell with it. I used to maintain the relationship because of that, but i realized finally that my mother will probably live long enough that the money will run out or that I'll be old enough not to care much. I dunno, just seems like it's irrelevant to anything.

So I quit trying to please her then, but I never wanted to just tell her to fuck off. My brother did that in 1981 and never looked back and I think that's an awfully cruel and hateful thing to do. It's not like she picked us up at the SPCA and we hate her. She can't go out and get replacement offspring. I don'tknow, had I remained in Ontario, whether I'd have had to do the same thing, but the way things worked out is good. Far enough away to keep them out of my daily life, close enough to make visiting and communication feasible. Damn, didn't I ramble on tonight?

noodles

I love noodles. You can get all kinds of oriental noodle packs besides itchy bum, er ichiban and ramen. The ones I'm cooking tonight are stamped "a product of Sun Shun Fuk industries" which I thought was noteworthy. Hence this entry. I bet somewhere in china there is a man named Sum Yeung Fuk.

This movie is neat, The Final Cut Link opens in a new window (I hope, LOL, still new to livejournal).

oil prices

I don't mind the rise in oil entirely, there's good sides, but we do need to address the issue. The last time it was this expensive we entered a wicked recession that wasted a whole generation of people who to this day are still not fully participant in the economy or the culture. One of these days I'll have to share my knowledge of the term "generation X" and the symbol X as pertains to late 20th century social anarchism and dadaist movements. But at the moment, I'm referring to the early 80s when a whole decade's worth of high school graduates were marginalized and set aside then berated for it. I think the high price of oil contributed to that disastrous recession.

So the upside of oil prices is the drive to fuel efficiency and alternate energies. That's a very good thing. I think consumer gasoline prices ought to be extremely expensive. I think you should have to buy a business license and file business taxes to qualify for a gasoline rebate, or tax break, or account for instant discounts. Something like. There are bean counters out there who could hammer out a method whereby consumers bore the brunt of the increased gas prices directly off gas rather than passed down through all of their products and services.

Now there's another idea relating, our country is making a fortune on the current fuel costs because we are a net exporter. As I understand it we're the United States' largest oil provider. So we're making a killing but we're still paying the same high price as the States which is where the demand is being created. Why? Why do we have to go broke if our neighbor does? We're not giving it away to them, are we? Well I guess the money hogs of Canada have enough strings in the govt. to ensure they can suck us dry with very little excuse. Back to oil prices, so Alberta is going to be handing over $400 to each albertan citizen/resident whatever, I'm not sure how they will do that. The money is being called oil dividends! Not too shabby that.

Saskatchewan isn't quite so generous but last year they did this and again this year they're announcing a utility rebate refund that will be issued. All us who have utility accounts will see a refund, a free bill or two. They put the rebate amount onto phone accounts. Not wholly fair, since if you didn't have a phone in your name you didn't see anything, but it was nice for us who do have phones! So the government clearly does want to take some of the profits, and has access to them, and use those profits for the public good.

What I suggest is my idea about how to do that. Capital projects are good, so is dropping money into social programs, charities, and arts programs, but my idea involves a federal level. Wherein they figure out a way to give businesses gasoline rate discounts and the rest of us face monster gas costs. What happens then is it becomes cheaper to hire someone to deliver, or drive, etc., so we use more taxis and transit to get around, or use alternate choices like having groceries delivered or using bikes. All good. Why is having groceries delivered good? (and other goods) Well, my friend, a delivery guy (new job, yay) will do a route planned out to reach several customers in one meandering run vs each customer driving to and from the store completely. Make sense? It's more efficient. Even taxis are more efficient if only because they don't need parking space, but the gas discount to them would make it possible for taxi fares to stay low enough to make car ownership less attractive to occasional drivers. These folks then would not even keep a car, eliminating all impulse driving completely. Also, consumers who have to pay through the nose for driving will force automakers to provide very efficient cars.

Suddenly power will not be as attractive as fuel efficiency. It's not right to have products, like basic food stuffs, basic needs, as well as toys and luxuries and the things that bring pleasure to life, go dramatically up in price over something as stupid as transporting goods here and there when the country itself has a surplus of oil and is making a fortune on oil prices. Subsidize industry fuel costs!

So the recipe I suggest is jack up consumer gasoline prices to discourage private driving and subsidize industry fuel costs to lower the cost of living otherwise. Yes, farmers would be subsidized. Yes factories would be subsidized. yes it would be grossly abused. Of course it will. Everything always is.

There's another thing, we need to realize that whatever system we create someone will abuse it and leech it and suck it dry. We just have to keep the systems fluid and keep trying. Revolution would only drive the population into primitive conditions and engender pain and suffering but the shit still floats and the shit will still float to the top and start doing the same old crap. Lets keep working on making it hard for them to cheat us, but lets also plan around it.

funny thought

Everyone is leaving Galveston, except the media. Reporters stand decorously on the seawall demonstrating how puny it is in the face of a category five storm. Imagine that Rita hits with scouring blasts of fury, wiping galveston off it's island leaving said reporters stranded in flood and debris with no bridge connection, needing rescue? Imagine that FEMA said "No, you're idiots, everyone else left, even our EMS, so what are YOU doing there?" Well that's the funny thought.

First frost

Well there you go, summer is most indubitably at an end. The grass and plants are all covered in white rime of frost and the soft tissue flowers will melt to mush when the sun kisses them in an hour or two. I feel like friends are dying, just a little bit anyway. Now I have to make time to dig up what potatoes grew. I'd planted a whole lot of blue potatoes but precious little plant came up on top. Some did so I'll dig that up and carefully save any little blue potatoes for next spring. You can't buy them, these things are deep purple (I call them blue so I can mix them with red and white for an American dish for my American sweety.) potatoes, the flesh and the skin both are purple and they stain things the way beets do. It's lovely! You can get yellow yukon gold, new red and nice fresh white potatoes to mix together with the purple ones and the dish is beautiful. One could add in things like red onions and green oregano for a really gourmet dish. I do love cooking, it's a pity there's nobody to cook for.

Work went far faster than I'd expected. I think it's because I didn't have to clean the bathroom floors since they've just been replaced with new stuff, and I didn't have to clean the lobby floors because they'd been steam cleaned and I didn't have to clean the back stairs or booths in the auditorium because I'd done that on sunday. I put a little extra effort in and wiped down the outsides of the trash cans, some of which have never been cleaned. I scrubbed the concession counters and sink although that should be the house manager's job. I also did my usual stuff, cleaning the bathroom facilities, restocking supplies, polishing mirrors and windows, and mopping the concession and the one bathroom floor that wasn't replaced in the small single room off the lobby. Knowing I'd done the top two rows, back stairs and booths, it made the job of vacuuming under and around and along each tier of seats seem shorter and easier. In fact it was the same as ever, LOL.

I sure am glad they let me buy my own vacuum years ago because they always buy uprights. Imagine trying to get an upright in and out and under rows of seats. Well you can stop imagining it because in fact it can't be done, not in our theatre. No, what I used to have to do was take out the little hose on the back of the upright for little corners and apholstery, and use that over the entire auditorium, crawling along the rows dragging the upright by it's top handle with one hand while vacuuming with the other. It used to take considerably longer to do that job! The Rainbow vacuum I have is canister style so it just scoots along behind me as I go and I just have to watch that it doesn't fall of the tier when going across an aisle. The pipes and handle are long enough designed so you can stand as you operate it and the head is ideally suited for detail vaccuming and large areas too. As far as I'm concerned the only better vacuum is a built in vacuum where the user only has to plug a hose into a hole in the wall nearby! I sure hope they're bright enough to install that in the new theatre.

I wish someone would come and talk to me and ask about what things I'd like to see there and what concerns I have with how I do my job in the new building. The equipment and facilities I need. Unfortunately the popular opinion about cleaners is that we're morons and we're not consulted and what results is often much less efficient than it could be. It's frustrating though. Here we are designing a brand new facility from scratch and there's no better chance and I am too shy to just write up my ideas and present them. I hope the architect hasn't got his head up his ass and I am not faced with having to walk a quarter mile every time I need to get something from supplies and having to drag vacuums up long stairs. ~sigh~

I worry that when the new building comes and with it my full salary job, that I won't have it what it takes to meet the new requirements. I'll be getting a living wage but in return I'll be faced with full nights up to seven nights a week at times. I'll be tending a building three times the size of the current one. I dunno if I have what it takes. If I don't, I don't have what it takes to get off welfare because this is the very best opportunity that's ever happened to me. I'll put my everything into it and I'll make it through at least one season, but I dunno if I'll be able to adjust and live with it. What if I can't find enough time to keep my house clean and my yard trimmed and all that? ~sigh~

I hope Dan's here before that happens because then I won't have to do it all alone. I'm tired.

site rating

letter to council

I wrote the following letter to city council today, they're discussing a mandatory helmet bylaw for any form of wheeled transport, including roller blades, skate boards, scooters and bicycles. I am writing to you as an avid cyclist. I have been a cyclist life-long and was cycling through the winter long before it was common, as early as 1982, here in Saskatoon. Saskatoon is a challenge to bike sometimes but as cities go it is one of the better cities in which to be a bike commuter. I'm quite concerned about the proposed helmet bylaw. I agree that children and youth need to protect their heads while they develop their cycling skills but I do not agree that mandating helmet use for all citizens is a reasonable solution. Why can't we have an age related helmet law? Persons over the age of eighteen are considered old enough to make important life decisions for themselves and should be considered old enough to know whether they require head protection. I have very few accidents on my bicycle, in my entire career of cycling I have had less than a dozen spills, most during my youth and none involving head impact. I feel the hazard rating to myself is no greater than my hazard of taking a head impact while walking. The way this law works, it would logically follow that we should mandate helmet use at all times just in case we might get hit by a large vehicle while walking to the corner store! I can ill afford to purchase a helmet on my restricted income and part of the reason I ride a bike is the reduced cost. There are a lot of adults in my situation who will not see fit to take the price of a helmet out of their meager budgets yet for us a bicycle is utterly necessary transportation. Will the city be handing out free helmets to everyone or just slapping fines we can't afford onto us when we're caught using our bikes without one? Are we going to clog up the courts negotiating fine options payments for people who cannot afford the fine they got for not wearing a helmet they couldn't afford because they had to use a bicycle on account of not having the price of a taxi or bus or car? This would be extremely harsh and unkind. Will you instruct police to impound our bicycles if we're caught without helmets? That would promote bicycle theft on a scale greater than we've suffered yet. What will police do when faced with a cyclist carrying no identification and wearing no helmet? Those of us who can afford a helmet and feel concern for our noggins will already get a helmet. We have heard the message and if we care we are doing something about it. When smoking is illegal I'll accept the argument about health costs. When I don't have to pay health taxes to support the guy who got drunk and dove into a rock-filled pond, then I'll accept the argument about health costs and head injuries. Lastly there is one more issue that will keep me from wearing a helmet. I cannot get my warm winter head gear on with a helmet. I need to wear a lot of layers to cycle in minus thirty weather and I will not be trying to fit a helmet on over, under or within this winter gear. Yet another reason, however frivolous you see it, I cannot wear a helmet over my hair when it's tied in a knot on my head, a helmet restricts my options for hairstyle, reduces exposure to sunshine for tanning and lightening my hair, and leaves my head sweaty and oily in the summer. For all of these reason, from price to comfort to purely wishing to exercise my right to not be legislated in every miniscule aspect of my life I will refuse to comply with orders to wear a helmet on a bicycle and I will fight this law indefinitely. Please reform and reconsider your helmet law plans and do not mandate adult helmet use on non-motorized transport. Thankyou

crime

I went back to the apt where I'd had the moped fixed. Today I had harvested my plants because of the high danger of frost these days. I have them in a vase and I pulled the littlest one as a token thankyou gift for the people who'd helped me out. So I went there with it in a little rose stem water thing, you know the little receptacles they put on flowers to keep them fresh, a bit of water in the bottom. I thought I was being cute. So after she'd checked what I was Kelly let me in, the man's commonlaw wife. Kelly is a woman around my age, Jerry, the mechanic fellow, is in his low 30s, they've been together 10 years, so since Jerry was a very young man. It's nice to see. So I told kelly I'd brought her flowers from my garden as I produced the little marijuana plant doing it's level best to put on a flower display. They really are very pretty plants for all there's no flashy show of color. They'd make great foliage in bouquets. I sure wish they were legal, imagine a bouquet like THAT! Hehehehe. So we got chatting and I sat down and had a cup of coffee with Kelly. Jerry wasn't around but I think we really connected on a comfy level. I invited her to come around some time. i would have just given my number but she hasn't got a regular phone, just the cell phone Jerry carries. She was telling me about the crime out by her house and it sounds to me like things have gotten a lot more dangerous than when I originally moved in here. She's got two indian posse houses on that one block. That's one of the indian gangs here. In California you get hispanic gangs, in chicago they're black, in Vancouver they're asian, well here they're Cree and Dakota. You see, any time you take a population with clear culture and genetic heritage and tell the entire population they're crap and marginalize them, you're going to get a population where crime, abuse and tragedy flourish. From one crime of marginalizing people based on an inherited trait, so then flows more crime and sorrow than anyone can ever count. So there's around 50 gang member youth living just a few blocks from here and running drug and prostitution rackets, mugging people, breaking into places, etc. No wonder I've been feeling so much more unsafe lately. Breakins seem to be up around here too. Kelly sure didn't have any trouble believing my knife story, she shared a couple similar tales of her own including one in the last 2 weeks where both she and jerry were hijacked right in the open by seven youths with knives and had to give up their bicycle. Ironically the IP house they took the bike to is the one next door to the storefront in which their apartment is located. Yes, their apartment is a store front with a kitchenette added into it. The door is flush to the sidewalk with a little alcove, and there's a huge picture window curtained over in the front. If I were them I'd nail a great big board over most of it. They don't open the curtains anyway and that window would be so easy to break and then where would Kelly and Jerry be while they battle the gangs next door? Maybe I can offer some wood out of my scrap collection. At any rate they did give up the bike and it was taken next door, then they called the police who insisted they didn't have legal right to go in and sieze the stolen bike visible through the window! Jerry then waited till very late at night when he was able to catch one alone and, Kelly tells me, put a knife to his throat and used him as a hostage to demand the return of his bike! After my adventures this year, I believe them. It's a really nice bike. I can see me doing similar if I had the experience of street fighting at all. I don't, but Jerry will have been attacked enough in his life by the look of him to have some. Frankly I think the majority of men at some point are attacked by someone or attack someone else either as teens or young men, be it drunken brawls or half-hearted bravado challenges, or outright criminal assault. Heck, tons of women suffer attack at the hands of loved ones! I however have never been beaten by anyone. I've never been punched. I've been slapped around a bit by a couple whores years ago but they weren't hurting me, just scaring me. I was afraid they'd steal my brand new Walkman. That and the knife story (referenced here). Another story of a similar nature from further back in time can be read here. As you can see, when I am in a fury I really don't think about danger as much as might be healthy. Fortunately I'm fortunate. LOL. I'm very lucky and I know it's only luck that has kept me safe till now. What I don't think is that luck need necessarily run out. I figure I've got a luck allowance for life. A certain amount each month, week, day, whatever, and I can draw on luck in advance of a need and borrow against future balances too. What that means is that everything will be screwy on either side of a close shave or dangerous activity like taking a month long road trip in a beater with insufficient funds. LOL. So I believe that my luck isn't going to suddenly run out. If I tax it too much then yes I could see it fail me, but I'm not careless or stupid. Tonight I did walk out there in the dark but I carried only my keys and the plant and I had the dog, although she's not much threat. Sarah's a pretty teeny puppy. Still, it's disturbing. I hope we solve this problem sooner than later. What bugs me is the solution really is money. Double the budget for welfare and get more money into the hands of these kids' parents. Make welfare less horrible and crime becomes less attractive. You see, there's going to be a population of people taking from you, one way or another. That issue too needs addressing but cutting welfare isn't going to do any good. I'd rather they take from my wallet via government controlled payments than at the point of a knife, wouldn't you? We also have to toughen juvenile penalties for crime. I say we give them a criminal record opened to the public the day they turn 18 and they have to go a full five years clean probation to have their record of juvenile crimes pardoned. This allows for "doing stupid things" in our youth not ruining our whole lives, while also addressing habitual juvenile criminals. Between making crime more hazardous and welfare more liveable we'd knock the life out of the youth gangs, I'm certain of it.

wakey wakey, time for breakfast!

Oh my god, I'm laughing my ASS off here! Shaunavon SK was this morning's "breakfast with Jeff" town on Good Morning Canada (CTV) and in order to ensure a good turnout in this very small town they fired up the town's siren and fire trucks drove around with sirens and lights and loudspeakers waking everyone up. at 3:30am!!! Imagine it. You'd be up alright. Whole town showed up for the free breakfast, no surprise. I wonder if anyone resisted and stayed in bed? Can you imagine a wakeup call like THAT?

huh?

What if I am the me that might have been had something different happened except in THIS reality it did happen and in another it didn't and I'm her alternative reality?

radio fun

I had a nice evening! I went to both my stitch and bitch and my pagan coffee meetings which landed on the same day this month. I hadn't seen the pagans for some weeks and it was lovely to see them. There's a nice comforting energy, a sense of acceptingness. These folks are mostly just as socially awkward in some way as me, I guess, but they at least aren't sitting there on the lookout for attacks to defend against. Defensiveness can be so very trying for me. I realy don't have the social grace to avoid insulting people who watch for insults.

I'm running walkie talkies on scan. FRS radios are being used to a great extent these days by community patrol groups, small delivery outfits, stores, etc. and so scanning can actually bring fruit. My cobras don't have scan mode but the audiovox has. I set it on scan and let it listen to the channels from 1-22 for transmissions. I found one, on 7 and then I was messing with the cobra trying to set it up to scan (finally figured out it can't) and managed to hit the call button a couple times and pissed off the guys using the channel (call button sends out electronic warble on the air, loud.) so they moved. So I put the audiovox on scan again and found them on 22. I was going to park the cobra on that channel to listen in but it only goes up to 10. The cobra has advantage of having a mic/earphone plugin and rechargeable batteries but the audio vox has voice activation and extra channels. So now I have 2 kinds to mess with and still nobody to play with. I'm reduced to scanning for traffic to listen in on because I can't chit chat with someone on them.

Dan and I bought these during a summer visit, well the cobras anyway, so we could talk more easily on the bikes. It was nice, we used it in malls, on the bikes, etc. to keep in touch without haveing to be shouting nor always side by side. you could even use it to double time a grocery run and keeping in touch while you shop. I got the audiovox in a 3 radio set, there's 2 belt radios and a wrist radio with additional ear/mic piece YAYY, LOL. So that one out of 5 allows voice activation with ear bud and mic extension. It means you can drop the unit in your pocket once you've got the channels setup and you're handsfree and quiet.

Tonight you catch me with music playing instead of tv. I've got a surround sound dvd player that plays mp3 on disk, and radio, and auxiliary stereo in. I have a patch 1/4" jack to dual RCA jacks plugged from the little computer speakers (jack on the front to pass along the sound) to the back of the dvd player and it puts out the music in surround with dedicated sub bass woofer and everything. :-) By then hooking it over to my regular stereo system aux. jack I add the kitchen and bathroom speakers to it for stereo all over the house and surroundstereo in the living/computer room. Neato huh?

email funny

Got this in my email, it's funny:

Things that are uniquely American...

1. You can get a pizza to your house faster than an ambulance.

2. There are handicap parking places in front of a skating rink.

3. Drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store

to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at

the front.

4. People order double cheese burgers, large fries, and a diet coke.

5. Banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.

6. People leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

7. People use answering machines to screen calls and then have call

waiting so they won't miss a call from someone they didn't want to talk

to in the first place.

8. Stores sell hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.

9. The word 'politics' is used to describe the process so well: 'Poli'

in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures'.

10. Banks have drive-up ATM machines with Braille.

Well it's not all correct but it's cute. Got woken up to my friend gord with his new british cyber sweety. I'd left my back gate unlocked. I don't mind a friend coming in the yard but at the same time I mind that they walked around looking for an unlocked gate to come in when I wasn't opening the door in the first place. I dunno if they just wanted to see the garden while I seemed to be out. It was rather alarming though to be woken up to intruders. Well we visited a bit anyway. I could have enjoyed the visit if we'd had coffee and stuff but I just didn't get time.

Oh COOL

dactyl fractal zoom. Thats too coollllll!

psychopaths and money go well together

Reuters Oddly Enough News Article. Now that article says what I've always known, it takes someone with brain damage to value money highly enough to be a good investor! LOL Ok, I'm twisting it a bit but it's funny, they say "people with brain damage may make good financial decisions, the Times newspaper reported Monday." did anyone not already know you gotta be brain damaged to pursue that lifestyle? Heh.
Having a quiet monday here. Just the way I like it. Monday is my day off, if you don't count last winter and that horrible paper route. Then I didnt get a day off. Monday is the one day I never have any cleaning at the theatre. No shows and I plan my regular cleaning for the weekend. Monday has become a valuable thing to me not to book it for anything. So I tend to avoid booking events, appointments, or errands on Mondays. Some months it's the only time I get to just sit back and not pretend I'm not autistic.
I have got a freecycle thing to deal with today mind you. I am trying to give away my old couch and trying to get it moved today if possible. It won't tolerate rain and it's outside. Sure it's under the gazebo but I've learned that rain drifts in from the sides and the thing won't stay dry if we get wet weather. It could handle a light rainshower without wind, is about it.
Called Dan's mom again without asking to speak to Dan. Hehehe. I think Shirley must appreciate that. I didn't even ask if he's home. I did reiterate that I intend to marry Dan. She's trying to find out a nice dutch treat to offer over coffee, I sure hope my parents follow through, sounds like she's excited to meet them.

6 questions

You can ask me 6 questions. Any six no matter how personal, private or random. I have to answer them honestly (unless its my address or phone number etc). In turn you have to post this message in your own journal and you have to answer the questions that are asked to you. So go ahead and ask me any 6 questions.

sofabed arrives

Well wowee fine and dandy I feel like a queen. Rented some movies, 7 titles, $7 for 7 days. :-) Oh it's a nice thing to lounge on a hideabed with a good movie on the telly. When it's folded up and being couch, it's the nicest couch I've ever had. Considering it's the first I've ever bought, that's understandable. It's nice, comfy, fits my diminutive room. I think it'll be possible to snuggle on it with Dan too, although it's small. You wouldn't want to sleep two in it if they're older than 25 yrs. It's got a real sealy mattress, so it's not junk. I keep having pangs of guilt at not paying the whole $100 but she capitulated on the price after a single whine after all. I whined once, she said what would you rather, I said $80 she said yes and that's the deal. But it's so nice I still feel guilty. LOL Sarah can jump up on it and quite enjoys it with me and Freddy's been on it in couch mode. I think she likes it too. I have too many pillows now. THey're all piled hither and thither. Most of them are stuffed behind the couch but enough explode all around it to make the couch look like a fortress of soft. It's a bit ridiculous. However, the pillows are extremely useful for all kinds of choices of how to lounge and I don't have nearby storage anyway. I sure enjoyed that.

I watched this movie about a watkins salesman doing door to door, www.billporter.com is his website. I guess he's still alive. He's got cerebral palsy and the movie is about his life as a door to door salesman. He's a remarkable man, very gifted in empathy and acceptance. The movie is laid out in sections, scenes with titles and sharply defined. Each one includes a tear-jerker moment yet at no point does the movie seem smarmy or lose it's authenticness. I liked it. Check it out some time.

On another note, if you don't know if you'd like Fast and the Furious, and that's why you still haven't seen it, go with that instinct. I am cheap and rarely don't watch a whole movie I paid for but this one sucked too bad to suffer through. Riceburner Porn.

couch

Today I go get the couch, I hope. Loveseat size sofabed and I pay $100 for it but I can't be sure I'll get there because I'm relying on Ken and his truck and he's got to leave a party an hour into it to come help me. I wonder what I should do with the old couch? It's not a couch but a prop from the theatre, starting to fall apart. A sort of lounge thing. I guess post it on freecycle and hope. But where to put it till it gets a home? hrm. Gazebo I guess, the only place I can think where it'll almost stay dry awhile. Im sitting here with a nagging desire to load and smoke my pipe. ~sigh~ But just as much I want to stay sober till after the couch thing is done. I don't think being high will have much effect on my ability to function but it seems more respectful when dealing with others. I dunno, I think I'm gonna cave in. Not this minute though.

ignored

Work was quick and easy really. With only 2 days since the last cleaning most of it didn't have to be done again yet. I'll have to go in again on wednesday but now I'm free till then. I'd better make use of that free time too because with the show starting next week I'll have precious little of it again till after first frost. It's warm enough outside now that first frost feels at least a week away, if we're lucky, 2 wks.

Dan's been out of touch again. I only really hear from him once a week. Shitty way to build a relationship. I guess he figures since I'm not going to leave him that it doesn't matter how I feel. Maybe it doesn't. I'm learning to be emotionally independant anyway. I don't think he'll like that when he realizes it. At this point I guess it's convenient for him. I dunno. I don't like letting him treat me so this way. It's like he sees me as some kind of porcelain collector doll that he can leave on the shelf gathering dust. I resent that and can't for the life of me figure out what to do about it. I've ranted, raved, explained, cajoled, cried, retaliated and pouted and nothing seems to have lasting effect. At best, if I have a really good fit over it I get a week of his time then it's back to once a week or less even. If I died, he wouldn't figure out something was wrong for at least a month! Not that I'm going to die, but it's the idea of it all.

I wonder if I marry him whether it'll wind up just a financial arrangement of roommates who pass in the hallway. At least then we'll be able to access marriage counselling and maybe that will provide the missing link to hammer it into his head that a woman needs attention. If you treated your dog this way, it'd eat all your shoes and chew the walls down and leave you shit for a pillow in spite.

In case you're thinking how negative I am on this journal, well, yeah, that's why I do it. If I vent like this to people with whom I'm trying to build friendships, in chat rooms or over coffee, I'll alienate them. Nobody wants to hear all my complaints and concerns. Hell, nobody wants to hear any of them. But I still need to air them and I need to think someone is listening. So here on this blog is the place I do that. Potentially, someone might read it. More likely, nobody ever will and I'll have my privacy. Even if someone does read here it's slim enough they know me from other places and I'm not passing out the url to my acquaintances, so it's still relatively private.

passing time

I went exploring on livejournal and discovered where you can sample the latest entries of anyone public. I added a couple of them to my friends list. I don't know if that's rude or what, but I figured I'd like to read along on those and it'd be easy with the friends list and that seems to be it's purpose.

I've decided to go into work tonight instead of tomorrow so I can do my laundry without it being observed by Richard. I hate that there's always someone there. I'm allowed to do my laundry but I prefer to keep it discrete in case someone decides to change policies to save money on utilities or something. Better for me to fly under the radar when I can. I should give the laundry another look first though, heh. I dunno. I feel up to going in, took me 10 hours but I'm finally feeling awake, heh. If the sunny weather holds I'll have to make an extra trip there to mow the lawn because I'm pretty much working at night now and you really can't mow a lawn at night. Even if you can cope with the dark the neighbors would probably come out of their houses in their night clothes and beat you up.

I wish petey was half owl so he'd keep my hours. Poor guy spends most of his day waiting till I wake up and I spend most of mine trying not to disturb him too much.

I miss summer. I used to love being up all night but now I'm not so fond and I regret not having more daytime to get things done. I brought the fountain in from the gazebo. That's more or less the extent of winterizing it. I also tied the baby monitor broadcaster under the canopy in a plastic bag. It should weather the winter alright there and I'll hear Sarah if she's barking to come in and I've forgotten. The new location there is quieter and I hear less street chatter. I was finding it actually discomfitting to hear people talking as if they were in the next room but not quite well enough to get the gist of the conversation.

I still haven't done any harvesting. I've got some potatoes I'll have to dig, I will wind up having to pretty much dig the whole thing but working around the sunflowers which I like to leave standing for the birds all winter. They fly in and munch on the seeds. It's delightful to see them hang upside down from a nodding dried sunflower head in the winter.

Petey has a sunflower head. Victim of the storm last weekend, it has a lot of fresh seeds and it took me till today to get him to realize it. He just stayed shy of it till finally I was able to lay out seeds on top of it and pick out more to put beside it while he watched. I do wish he was a bit more inquistive however much this shyness makes him well behaved. He certainly is well behaved though. He never sets so much as one pin feather out of line! How in heck do I teach him anything if he doesnt' do anything? LOL

importing archives to livejournal

17 September 2005 @ 10:11 pm NB:This was when I moved the archives to livejournal, it's not for this site.

So I spent tonight copying and pasting and manually setting dates to import the blog from my home website to LiveJournal. Archives go back to DE2004. There's an awful lot of whining but now and then I managed to show other sides of my character... :-)

transitions

Some days I hate trying to put a subject on something unwritten. I oughtta fill in that part AFTER writing I guess. But hey, it's at the top of the window, right? So you're supposed to know in advance, right? sheesh. and what if there's 5 subjects covered? Pick the biggest? List them? Break it into separate subject headered entries? Again, sheesh.

I just realized something. I'm reading people when I interact with them, but not reading what I'm supposed to. As an autistic I'm not literate in the unspoken part of human conversation. I also have extraordinary ability to read animal body language and to read the character of a person with whom I'm interacting. The ones who most often get offended and angry with me for not picking up on their unspoken cues are generally also the ones I read as being the most false. Yet they don't see themselves false and most of the people around them don't either. However, true to the nature I see, they're the most likely to go on a selfish rage and do cruel things when I fail to be sucked into the image they're projecting. Yet I don't really see the projection. I see the projector.

Autumn has landed. The air changes color. Air isn't quite as transparent as we think. It's lack of transparency makes for a solid seeming blue sky in the daytime and that lovely violet distance haze we see on landscapes. Air's primary color is blue, of course, but locally it can take on color too. The color is so subtle that you don't see it as much as feel it. When the trees turn yellow, which is what happened here, the maple in the corner, hiding behind the spruce trees, has turned yellow. Also the neighbor's maple, and lost already a generous handful of leaves. So the light is a different color now. It's not a dappled green shade but rather a tired yellow, low lying, slightly grey color. It speaks of all the other things, the bite of cold in the air, the sound of crisp leaves, the smell of pepper in the lawn. The birds are mostly gone, so I know this year is going to be an early winter. I wonder if I shouldn't get that fountain out there disassembled and how soon do I have to harvest my garden? Will I get a week more of growing? I find this a sad time of year. I get into the beauty of golden trees and the fun of kicking piles of leaves like anyone, but I also can't hide from my terror of facing another winter and my regret at how slow the summer was.

I hate this night shift thing. I don't get any work done. By the time I'm done having my slow wakeup I feel like the day's over and I should be resting. Then I feel pressured to get things done and there's only an hour or two left in which to do them because the sun is setting. Bleah. Well would you look at that, I thought of a subject. LOL

holding air?

I got home on the moped from the corner gas station and it's still inflated so that's a fine sign. I'll have to yank up one of my plants and deliver it to the guy who fixed the tire if it still holds air tomorrow. Ken said he'd make time on sunday to pick up the sofa bed I found on Saskatoon yardsale list (yahoo list you can look it up). I stopped over there to see how he's doing. He showed me the hair transplants he'd gotten done and I was really surprised, I remember he used to be balder but didn't really notice the change. I figured he was washing it more often or had a better haircut. the transplants are really fine and neat so you can't tell except if you expect to see that it's transplanted follicles. Fascinating stuff.

beauty

I've always been an attractive woman, but also a weird one. I've been labled freak, flake, or similar, over and over throughout my life. Whether I was trying to mimic current fashion trends as a nice middle class woman, or exploring the costumes of the various subcultures, always they wound up treating me as someone beneath them. Unless they were men. Men who wanted sex. They're always nice to me. Dr. Phil is doing a show on looks. His son and a woman both did the experiment where they, attractive normal people, dress up as overweight with bad skin and oversized noses, the "ugly" sort of normal. Normal ugly people. They each went out with hidden cameras both as "ugly" and as themselves. What they found surprised them mightily. They hadn't realized how preferentially they're normally treated. I don't normally take close notice to the more subtle cues of who's looking at me or how, etc., but I recognized the way these two were treated in "ugly" as how I'm treated when I'm looking poor. When my clothes are cheap and shabby. Is it any wonder that homely people become ugly people? When you're treated ugly because you aren't pretty it's highly probable you'll start to feel ugly and then, instead of just being good old homely, you can actually become ugly. Fortunately not everyone is like that and lots of homely people have good friends and family who just love and respect them. So they grow up just as homely happy people. I think being pretty is a handicap too though because you're less required to develop a personality or compassion. Pretty people can get awfully ugly. In other words, ugly people are created by the focus on beauty.

commercial

Finally a commercial for feminine hygiene that I like. Always did this one. They had a cgi of one of their napkins that unfolded itself and then folded itself into a lounge chair while a woman's voice comments about how they've upgraded the covering because "if you're going to sit on it all day it better be comfortable." I laughed so hard. I'm not going to keep updating the home blog. This livejournal client (semagic 1.5.3) is just so darn handy. Just type and send (forgot to fill in the mood and music bullshit on the last one). With the home journal I have to write the line breaks and other webcode as I go along. I do need to increase font size in the display window on here if I can.

ewwwww, Sarah!

I woke up to dogshit and dog barf all over the floor today. Sarah's never done that before at all so I didn't make a big deal. I let her know I was grossed out and tossed her outside while I cleaned up. I figure to take pity on her because I stayed up 23 hours and went to bed in the morning for the first time since last winter. Shift changes are hard on all of us, not just me, and I blame her mess on that. So it's cleaned up. I'm glad to realize that once again nobody will see the inside of my house for weeks or months at a time and I can let dust build up till I can see what I need to dust. I can let the birdseeds linger on the floor till they annoy me instead of cleaning and sweeping and vaccuuming every morning in a frenzy. I liked having people see my house but it's a relief it's over. Parental visits sure are stressing. I've been decompressing from the social aspect too but I am reluctant to talk about it here in case my parents ever get tech saavy enough to actually find this. I have enough problems being required to defend and justify feelings I've not stated, let alone if I cut loose here yapping about it all!

tired

So it's 6am and I've been up since 8am. I walked all over 2 museums then walked my moped home and then put in 6 hours at work. Sheesh. My feet sting, my legs ache, there's a spasm in one calf and also the other foot, my back is tight and stiff, my head is dizzy and sore and my eyes and mouth are dry. I am so glad it's over.

flat tires and angels

Hmm, trying a livejournal client here, we'll see how it works. I was downtown with my moped and decided to just go straight to work. I got about 5 blocks when my rear wheel went flat. You can't get even get air for a mile from there in any direction so I pushed it for about 2 miles and put air in but the air was exhausted very quickly. I kept walking it. At the last block before I turn into my neighborhood a rough looking fellow in black leather with a lot of hair asked me what was broken. He'd ridden up from behind on a bicycle. I told him a flat tire. I was also feeling nervous because it's kind of dark and rundown there and there were a lot of people out on the streets, including rough young folk. However he right away said "well you just met the best bike mechanic in town, maybe I can fix it for you. Then he reached behind and there was his apartment door right there. I decided to pretend I wasn't a scared overly worried 40 something woman and I headed in with my moped. Still nervous. I entered a shabby rundown apartment stuffed till there was no floor to spare past walking with bike parts, boxes of stuff, tools, and more bike parts. There was the yellow film and ash of smoking and poor housekeeping. Now I was even more nervous but with all those bike parts it was very likely he was a very good bike mechanic. Heck, he could be a parts stripper/fence for all I know, LOL.

Well at any rate he's providing me with a very kind aid when I need it. So sure enough he got the tire off the rim and pulled the damaged bit of tube out. A furniture tack had wormed it's way into my tire. While he fussed with the tire I passed him my smokeless joint stuff with homegrown bud. Oh he liked that. That alone made it worthwhile but as a token of respect I left the money I had in my purse, something just under $10 (didn't count it) on his coffee table to pay him too. His woman woke up during this and poked her head out briefly but as she'd worked very late hours last night at her job she wasn't sociable.

Unfortunately the pump he has and the two I have all rely on a nozzle end that needs a few inches clearance in the spoke void. Unfortunately there's only enough room for a compressor pump hose like they have at gas stations so the tire can't be inflated nor tested. However I now know how it's done and while I won't like the job, I could probably fight with it enough to make it work. Tonight after a cuppa I'll take the bicycle to work and tomorrow walk the moped over to the gas station over the other side of this neighborhood for air. Then we'll see how she goes. Nice guy, just being a generous person. Doing duty as an angel.

I remember many years ago on a crazy month-long road trip through the mountains and my tires broke down and my shocks broke off and I fetched up like impoverished driftwood in kelowna. I was helped by a guy on parole for manslaughter and living in a rundown basement suite. He offered to steal me some brand new tires from a dealership but I told him that wasn't my style. Instead I rustled up some funds for 2nd hand tires and shocks and he installed them for me. Did all that just to be a good person. Doing duty as an angel. I have done this often enough that the events aren't logged in my memory anymore because it's just common enough. Stopping what you're doing to do something you can for someone who can't is when you're taking a turn as an angel. It's even better when it's for a stranger. :-)

customizing is fun

Wow, I can make it look just like home. :-) I've just finished hand customizing the whole setup, colors, fonts and sizes, like that. I liked this theme with the calendar on the side, it has a neat look. When I set the fonts up larger for easier reading I had to remember to keep the sidebar font small so that the calendar on the side wouldn't overflow the table. I've always had to expand text four sizes when I browse and read and so I turned up the text on my journal to where it would be comfy without expansion and still look good. I think a lot of font settings are not in keeping with usual monitor sizes of viewers these days. We set our monitor resolutions so high these days on our great big screens that fonts and icons all get quite tiny. When you're sitting back from the screen 30 inches or so, that's quite hard to read comfortably. Anyone out there who finds the text too gigantic, I'd like to hear how it looks for you and what kind of equipment you're using.

blog changeover to livejournal

I'm not certain how reasonable it is to try and import the whole previous blog. I think maybe not bother and let you go there

from here and read it.(link removed) That page is hosted off my home computer so if

it's down, try later. If it's slow, wait or don't. I only have 64k dsl

so expect loading to be slow. I'll be typing my blog entries there and then later pasting them here.

I've had relatives visiting and I really don't feel like sitting here typing. I just wanted to get this account underway.

dogfood

21:38 9/7/2005

I sure hope that I'm putting in enough good stuff... I'm feeding my dog raw food. Just spent 5 hours processing foods. The base is rice, carrots, parsley, olive oil, roasted seaweed, garlic, salt, eggs and powdered milk. Then I had 3 separate "recipes" one made of chicken thighs and livers with corn and uhm heh, tomatoes, that's it. Another is beef, extra lean ground and liver, mixed with blueberries and tomatoes. The last is minnows and seafood mix of octopus, squid, clams, shrimp, etc. plus apples, and peas. At least that's what I think... I keep forgetting to add salt but it'll probably be okay, it means she can have some of my salty snacks.

I love my dog so much. :-) So the freezer is filled and we have another 6-8 wks worth of food before me and my food processor have to go through this. It's so messy too. All that raw meat and it's spilling all over the place and chunks and clumps stuck on everything. I sure go through a lot of hot water on these dogfood days.

I'm so proud of myself though, I've gotten all the cleaning done and it's flowing nicely into the weekend when I expect guests and I even had room to cope with 2 emergencies. My toilet plugged up when a cleaning toothbrush went down with a bucket of dirty wash water. The other emergency was running out of dogfood.

The keyboard kept screwing up after a reboot but after using numlock for some calculating it just stopped being screwed up. Very odd.

I'm dead certain now that someone on the biteme network is responsible for the crashing via Mirc so I'll just use an alternative IRC client for biteme I guess. I don't care for having to waste time restoring my system!

kbrd err

19:04 9/6/2005

Something is wong with y keyboard. It skips soties and other ties holdsdown too muc (ik scroll and t seems even chooses the wrong charater rom what I pressed. very disturbing. See how bad it looks?

poor dogs

23:23 9/5/2005

As usual, I view the deaths of humans with detachment. Tonight the news showed the dogs and cats stranded without hope of rescue in New Orleans and I'm sobbing so hard. It's utterly gut wrenching to me to see that. Dogs even tried to swim to rescue after the news boats but the humans wouldn't help them. There's a concern that they won't know when a dog is dangerous! They are afraid of the dogs. Most of those animals would be just so grateful to be rescued and they aren't going to be. They won't even let in the animal welfare people who are trying to mobilize to rescue them! Five days in the hot tropical sun on a roof surrounded by the nastiest water a dog ever had to sip and nothing anywhere to eat and the humans won't help them! The humans just turn their backs on these faithful companion animals as if their value is no more than the houses on which they cower in the sun. They're so skinny now. I feel so helpless.

end times theory

5:04 9/5/2005

Now that folks have mostly been rescued and they're assessing things and starting cleanup the chaos has left and one can really get a better look at the damage. From checking outgoogle maps Katrina button on the new orleans page I can see how much of new orleans is not destroyed. There's a lot of damage and destruction but there are also large areas mostly intact. Based on that I think it's very likely the city will be back up and running as a damaged but functioning city by New Years. There will be old bars ringing in the new year with the die-hards, the repair crews, and the workers whose homes and jobs weren't lost in the storm. I'm sure too that employees who have businesses to return to will share intact homes with each other so that more of them can return.

More than anything what the FEMA incompetency coupled with Canada's own DART fiasco in the tsunami (and where are they now? I didn't pay attention, did they get dismantled?) shows us is not that this or that person screwed up, but that we pampered, petted, fat little north americans have NO idea how to cope with a real disaster yet. We're learning, the hard way, and I'm sure it'll get better when we see yet more.

One of my theories on the future says that the looming cloud of despair my generation and apparently most others in the culture has always feared won't come from nuclear winter or meteor strike but rather utter bankruptcy. Our wealthy countries will be brought to their knees economically by natural disasters and plagues.

US says it can afford this. It could afford the other disasters it's weathered, but where's the bottom of the barrel? The US is already heavily indebted and reliant on imported goods, what do they do when the credit runs out? What if they keep having disasters costing in the tens of billions of dollars? I think it's something we North Americans really need to think about and plan against. What if we go broke?

In truth I fear less about Canada going broke. I think we're more frugal, more resource rich, and more self sufficient as a nation and a population. We've currently got little or no national debt as I understand it and we're less prone to large hazards like hurricane, earthquake, and tsunami. Most of our coastline is in the arctic. Mind you, the thawing of the arctic will be a challenge. Still, we've got most of our land high and dry, albeit cold. Drought could screw us up, it has before. Some areas suffer flood but even Winnipeg's titanic flood problems haven't been as costly as the damage one hurricane can inflict! The disaster that could take us down, of course, is earthquake and tidal wave on the west coast. With only a small area there populated, however, our damage hit would pale in comparison with the same hazard for the US pacific coast!

So what happens if we become the rich country in our relationship with the US? I've seen it inferenced that it's a marriage between Uncle Sam and Miss Canada and I think we Canadians know better than the americans just how close to spousal abuse Uncle Sam can go. I hate to think of how he'd treat his wife if she suddenly was the one with all the money and wasn't opening her purse liberally to his extravagant ways. What would the americans do if they were suffering shortages and we were not? If we said no when they asked for more water, power, oil, lumber? We're sitting on a dowry that can send our kids, metaphorically speaking, to college, and our spouse is a corpulent, expansive, spendthrift with an attitude. We've seen how little respect they hold for the opinions of the UN and the international community as a whole. "May you live in interesting times."

body count cover up?

12:02 9/4/2005

The disaster in new orleans has been so fascinating I've spent many hours glued to local blogs and news outlets. One thing I keep thinking is maybe the authorities have been so casual with survivors' lives because there's no death count. One more body at this point doesn't add up. It's already going to be in the thousands, etc. Of course the suffering people won't agree and I wouldn't either, but maybe that's one cause behind the lackluster rescue effort we've seen. You have to take it in perspective of the overwhelming task they're facing of course.

a little creative writing

02:47 9/2/2005
Sloshing lightly through the green reeds he came upon a mouldy green chest with it's lock broken. The chest bobbed and swayed on the water as he lifted the lid, nearly capsizing itself. He had to lay the lid back onto the water with great care to free his hands to shift away the weed and algae that leveled the surface. Before long he had cleared away the green slime and bright sparkles and gleams wobbled up through the water at him.
He reached into the chest to gather the substance that shone and sparked, scintillating and lurid in the swampy mess. As he reached down and made contact with the gleaming matter, he suddenly went absolutely stiff, frozen in position, a rictus of pain wrenching his mouth awkwardly.
From his statue body a steam began quickly to rise, soon becoming smoke, lifting easily in the morning air from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears, and under his clothing all around. His clothes darkened, blackened, and flaked off his charcoalizing skin, also cracking, revealing deep coals inside as the flesh roasted to ash from within and without and all over itself. His legs in the water went hollow, the hip waders being unscorched, and his ash fell on the water over the case and drifted away.
The case shifted in the water, the lid floating upward, the case tipping backwards, the lid eerily closed and the case bobbed upright again, a mouldy green chest with a broken lock in a swamp.