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Sun Jun 18th, 2017
 | 09:00 pm - The rain it raineth every day, still
A number of people seem to have had broken nights last night. The current weather doesn't help on the sleeping front, but neither does the vague but persistent daycare malaise. When Daycare Hugh said 'It's been over a week and I still haven't got my appetite back' I didn't realize that means 'It's been over a week and I'm still vaguely queasy all the time'-- even though I didn't have the stomach version and he did.
Am informed that too much ginger causes rather than cures intestinal upsets, which may be a factor. OTOH I've returned to a weight unseen in fifteen months and have cut my anti-inflams to less than half the usual dose.
Current Gallagher has, as ever, married people who cannot keep it in their pants: small towns are indeed a hotbed of adultery and vice. But has also a dotty English family of the Cold Comfort Farm variety, which is a happy change. Also has a trope of the sea rising up and drowning us all etc etc, which in this high water summer, when beaches and Islands are closed because of flooding, is a bit too close for comfort.
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Sat Jun 17th, 2017
 | 09:08 pm - And other impromptu technical puzzles
My cell phone took itself into reboot mode last night when it was supposed to be innocently charging. Controlling my techno-panic, I googled on the desktop and managed to get it out of reboot mode. Mind, google wasn't that much help. 'Press the power and volume buttons simultaneously.' Does anyone tell you where the volume button is on an android? Not a hope, only how to use it to take videos or turn the phone on and off. I had to assume it's the only other thing that moves, and so it proved. Have I ever used it for volume control? Never- because I didn't know that's what it was.
Hottish day with thunderstorms, spent not unhappily in the side bedroom with the fan and a Ruth Gallagher. More of same tomorrow.
Acupuncturist recommended adding turmeric to my ginger tea to combat inflammation. To me, turmeric always has a suffocatingly dusty taste. But the Chinese greengrocers have fresh turmeric and I bought some today on impulse and chopped a little into my afternoon tea. Suffocatingly dusty taste and disagrees with me; also stains fingers yellow. Besides, I'm out of acacia honey; the unpasteurised stuff I bought at the health food store is overwhelming, and the linden honey I bought at the super is 90% crystallized, so I am displeased on that front. But the linden does well enough until I can get down to St Lawrence Market for the real thing.
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Fri Jun 16th, 2017
 | 08:29 pm - How all my *senses* do inform against me
Either I've got used to the noise my computer makes or it's stopped making it. Hard to tell with all the other ambient noise (its usual airplane taking off sound, the table fan, the lawn mowers in the neighbourhood.)
I rarely used my dryer because it wouldn't dry heavy things, but the stuff I did dry was OK. Workman replaced the vent hose in January. Just recently I've discovered that stuff I dry and leave in the dryer overnight or for a day or two comes out smelling odd. Stuff I take immediately from the dryer is OKish. On the off chance that it's actually the washer to blame, I'm running a hot water and bleach cycle through the thing. If there were fabric softener sheets that didn't give me headaches, I might start using those, but there aren't. The clothesline will be unusable for the next six weeks or so, so this is a bit of a problem. Sheets and towels I will entrust to the untender mercies of the laundromat, underwear and tank tops I can hang from the chandelier (truly: on those Asian hanging wheel things) or over the banister; but give us mug and neither of these last will work.
My sense of smell knows when I've worn a set of clothes before, even if they remain clean. One can't hang all one's trousers over the banister until needed again (for one thing, the wash is hanging there.) So I shall cover the- to me- obvious odour. Bought a cake of Dr. Bronner's lavender soap, which is currently scenting my t-shirt drawer. Shall saw it in quarters and distribute around the pants and sock drawers and hope that works. If I ever worry about having Alzheimer's, I can reassure myself that my sense of smell is getting better, not worse
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Wed Jun 14th, 2017
 | 08:01 pm - Worrit
Computer is making a new and therefore, by definition, worrying noise. Knees that barely twinge at home twinge desperately at work. Three hours of same makes me tired and light-headed. Back hurts and I can't seem to unkink it for all my stretching.
On the upside, came in from playground and said to staff, 'Among the many things this daycare has swallowed is my black-' and got no further, because staff said, 'It's behind the water jug.' And there indeed was my black velcro brace. We 'r' psychic at work, or that staff and I are, because she always stops mid-sentence for some reason. As earlier: "Did you tell--" "Yes, I told J's mother he's out of formula." It's like being with family.
( Wednesday againCollapse )
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Tue Jun 13th, 2017
 | 01:32 pm - Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep
The cherries must be ripening where I can't see them, because the birds are having a feast out there. Or maybe they just like unripe cherries.
I thought the massive quantities of dust in the house were due to the heating vents not having been cleaned in a decade. But the heat's been off for a month and the elephants are still there. Filled two canisters worth just vacuuming the study, hall, and bedroom, and am now itchy-throated as a consequence. I guess it blows in the windows, front (where there's a street, granted) and back.
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Mon Jun 12th, 2017
| 09:44 pm - Tropics
A day indoors with fans and books and little food is all very well, but by evening I was ready for at least a bike ride. Then looked out the back and got gardening gloves and clippers and hacked two bags worth of invasive vines and creepers from the end of the yard. Then had a shower in my camisole-bra because I'd have to rinse it out anyway. It will be dry by Thursday, I suppose.
Luckily I have Gatorade for this evening's lost water and salts.
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Sat Jun 10th, 2017
 | 09:23 pm - Luddite again
The "College of Early Childhood Educators" (sic) (or in Dorothy Parker's phrase 'sic as a dog') is a government-supported cash grab by a bunch of people who think a professional disciplinary body is necessary for care-givers. They don't advocate for us or for better daycare funding or anything like that, god forbid; they impose fees and fines and requirements and demand $150 annually for the privilege of being our overlords. Nor can they be arsed to send out renewal forms to their members. 'You can download and print the form from our site' ie *you* pay for the paper and ink and stamp, $12.50 an hour peon. 'Oh but you can complete the form and send it to us as an email attachment!' Yes well, I did that, and they wrote back that the form was blank. Checked my sent email, and yes, by golly, so it was. So refilled and saved and checked for sure that the form was complete. And back they come telling me my form is still incomplete but will not say how. Checked email again, on my phone, with three different .pdf readers. And two say the form is filled out- and one says it's still blank.
I hate .pdfs and I hate CECE and if I needed any further impetus to retire, this would be it.
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Fri Jun 9th, 2017
 | 09:05 pm - The week crawls to an end
I don't have the daycare malaise- touch wood- which is a good thing because it's intestinal and unpleasant and its side-effects last for weeks, but I have a malaise. So even though last night was ativan sleep on cool cotton sheets with a warm blanket, I've been tired and achy all day and am yawning at 9 p.m. Shower and beanbags and the window fan on tonight, I fancy.
(Brought all the standing fans up from the basement against the forecast highs of 33 and lows of 20 the next four or five days. Am distinctly not ready for summer.)
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Wed Jun 7th, 2017
 | 09:22 pm
Am not working much these days, now we have an influx of summer staff. This is good because my knees remain unhappy, including alas the one so efficiently cortisoned last month. And bad because work gives structure to my day and emotional payoffs. Ah well- what will be will.
( MemeageCollapse )
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Tue Jun 6th, 2017
| 10:18 pm - 'That the small rain down can rain'
Should note the chill air blowing in on this brown evening, because heat will descend on us by week's end if not earlier. But it's still bedsocks and beanbag weather, and the side bedroom window closed. This feels medieval, because I think the middle ages all happened in grey and rainy fall, just as ancient Athens was all cool and blue and sunny. And the first, no doubt, has something to do with the wet fall of... '68, was it? and Greece comes from first reading Plato in September of '67. Even the chronic rain of the rest of autumn '67 couldn't erase the first stout Cortez experience, that got all mixed up with the September glory.
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Mon Jun 5th, 2017
 | 09:46 pm
Did nothing today, which should probably count as a Gratitude: didn't need to do anything today. Did walk to the coffee shop that, it turns out, only has meals on weekends, and then to the coffee shop that has a limited range of sandwiches. Walking being something I've done little of in the last two years, it's a nostalgic return to an earlier self, and I'd like to keep on doing it. Of course, in the current damp June, the twinges will recur.
If I'd got farther into Winterson's Written on the Body I'd have discovered that the narrator's sex is not stated. I assumed it was female because why wouldn't I, and abandoned it after a few pages because it seemed so much in that Lesbian genre of 'let me tell you how I'm helplessly in love with this woman who is fickle/ perverse/ distant/ ambivalent/ straight-up Bad News.' Sita, Nightwood, and possibly that triangle with Marie-Claire Blais which I read too long ago to remember. Thing being, do heterosexual women write like this about their torturing love affairs with no-good men? No names come to mind: the trope is common enough, alas, but a whole book devoted to the affair and nothing else?
And also, obsessive love is dull. Not as dull as jealousy (is why I'm amazed anyone can get through Proust) but pretty damned dull nonetheless. Yes, I've been obsessively in love. It was adolescent and melodramatic and not something I'd ever give the details of to anybody.
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Sun Jun 4th, 2017
 | 08:22 pm - Another loose-end Sunday
Always a surprise to discover the sun still shining after 8 at night. The days grow longer quickly as one approaches the solstice, but they don't shorten as dramatically moving away. It's always the end of August that has me going 'What, dark already?'
Cool/ cold weather, but dank and achy with it. June; one must be grateful it doesn't broil. Still have sore throat and sore shoulders and incipient cough and feel invalidish.
Was forecast to rain all day, so I meant to stay in and read my Elly Griffiths forensic anthropologist book. Had forgotten that they're all written in present tense, 3rd person, which might up the suspense quotient except one knows the narrator will not die mid-book because the series is named after her. But this one turns out to be about child murders, for which I am not up. Library webpage said the previous book, about Arthurian doings, was in at the Gladstone library, so biked out there: to find it had been removed to fill a hold request.
So started a Mt TBR mystery, the first of the Cooper/ Fry procedurals. Diane Fry is even gittier in this one than in the following books. For someone determined to advance her career and make a good impression in this new posting, she sure sneers and snides at Cooper an awful lot. Makes for bleak reading.
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Sat Jun 3rd, 2017
| 07:41 pm - Nothing much
Rain gaiters were in some infant's cubby. Said infant's good-natured mother failed to remark on their presence.
Red-haired possibly Nfld cashier is actually from Ireland.
Reading Agatha Christie. I knew Sayers was anti-semitic, but Christie's version somehow went over my head when I read her in my teens.
The evergreen bush in front of my house was a low shrub 26 years ago. It's now a trifurcated spindly thing trying to reach the level of the porch ceiling and I just cut a third of it down.
Hard to tell these days if feeling generally lousy has a physical or a psychological cause. Trumpites stay happy because they don't listen to any news that would disturb their equilibrium.
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Thu Jun 1st, 2017
 | 09:53 pm - Little autumn
I love you, cold air blowing in the window. I love you, October clouds. Fall weather in early summer is like bacon and eggs for dinner: they're so much better than when served at the usual time.
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Wed May 31st, 2017
| 09:48 pm - Vexed and troubled Englishmen's female descendant
1. Three days of cloudburst and storm and heavy pressure, and both knees very unhappy. Cortisone is no match for mug, evidently.
2. My rain gaiters are the latest in the Vanished Objects dep't, unless they're at work in some unexpected place. But I suspect I left them in my pannier justincase, and someone took them from same.
3. One of my two under the kitchen cabinet fluorescents died. Took it to the oyaji at Weiner's who tells me it's a gro-light and they don't have them. Oh well, let's get a proper daylight fluorescent then. Put it in and shrink from THE LIGHT THE LIGHT IT BURNS MY PRECIOUSSS... The other tube gives a soft greyish-white light; a daylight bulb, yes, but Sylvania. This harsh atom-bomb glare is Phillips. The gro-light was a cheery soft pink and I miss it. But the Phillips does show where the dirt is, certainly.
4. Went out to do some fast gardening. Keep telling myself to put on garden shoes, not just traipse out in my Birks. Never do. Will from now on. Long grass hid some critter's poo and it got into the cracks of the Birkenstock's sole. Maybe they'll be dry by tomorrow but don't bet on it.
( Wednesday againCollapse )
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Mon May 29th, 2017
| 09:47 pm - Time to turn vegetarian
Well, that's definite. Am never cooking fresh fish again (ie not frozen when I buy it.) The haddock I poached Saturday night haunts my downstairs like a particularly smelly ghost. Cleaned all the pots and cutting boards, scrubbed the counters and stove top, opened windows, ran fan, washed floor, put garbage out just in case-- and still the smell is there. Worse, it's not in the kitchen but in the entrance hallway, do not ask me how.
Am burning Sabina's Aoyama incense to cover the persistence of Fish.
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Sun May 28th, 2017
 | 08:32 pm - Musing on dress
Since my 30s at least I've found t-shirts unwearable. Too hot in the heat, too cold in the cool: useless, essentially. I suffered with them in summer until I discovered tanktops and cotton hapi coats. But something has changed. Even last summer, a very warm one here, I eschewed my hapi coats because... because... because the t-shirts I had were thin enough to be cool. Even though the thin t-shirts I bought in Tokyo were never thin enough for here, twenty years ago. (Or there, for that matter, but in Japan one must cover up.) So now I can bring out my old shirts, basically unworn for a decade, and use them again.
My neck vertebra have been acting up since, ohh 2008 at least. I loosed a battalion of chiropracters and acupuncturists and physiotherapists on them and eventually things settled down. But I couldn't be having with bra straps: any pressure on the shoulder started the tingling and pain down the arm. Lycra tube tops were the answer, but no one makes them any more. (I don't mean bandeau bras: I mean camisole to the waist, if not beyond.) I mean, they do make lycra camisoles but they all have straps: they don't stay up by themselves. And I still don't have a solution. But Facebook in its infinite advertisementness showed me a video about a bra without underwire (loathe underwire) and soft straps that supposedly fit and support any breast shape. Ordered some. They came from China (!!) and came with inserted padding. Why they think a 3X size needs padding I don't know, but at least they're removable. And the bras are... well enough, in any case. I'd like a heavier band under the bra, but at least the straps aren't the monsters that sports bras are, which hit all the wrong places. So I am pleased, because a lycra camisole in the mug is a very unpleasant sweaty business indeed. Needs rinsing every day and doesn't dry easily. Also the bras come in gaudy purple and fuchsia and blue, and will look decorative at the sides of my tanktops: which of course have the men's style low cut armhole.
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Fri May 26th, 2017
| 09:30 pm - Ballade of Lost Objects
I would like my cell phone case back, but that's been gone for over a year. I would like my velcro leg bandage back because I had it last week. I think it's in the blue shopping bag but I can't find that either. I would like my hedge clippers back; possibly the s-i-l has them, but I think I guarded them more carefully last year.
I do not want the skunks back but there they were- or it was- permeating last night's clammy muggy night air. Skunk smells very much like marijuana, did you know? It's also possible that skunk will deter raccoons: a high price to pay, but I'll take skunk over raccoon any day of the week.
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Thu May 25th, 2017
 | 07:35 pm - The Glorious 25th
So there was me totally confused, thinking Doors Open was last weekend instead of this upcoming one. But the objections are the same- knees are unhappy in the cold rain and the subway is closed between two pertinent stations. If pressed, I could bicycle to Yonge, but it's not a happy route getting over there. Where the developers haven't taken up a lane for their condos, the streets are pitted with potholes that the city won't fix until the developers have finished building etc etc etc.
Thief of Time was something like the second or third Pratchett I'd read (can't remember, nine years later, if I read Night Watch before or after.) I wonder that I didn't notice how very strange it is, but then, I was convalescing from surgery at the time. As in 2004, it seems I could easily read stuff that was impenetrable when looked at later with a clearer head. In any case, the frequent shifts of scene confuse me as much as Diane Wynne Jones' trickier books do, and I seem unable to remember who anyone is. I fancy that the first time through it all washed over me unremarked, which is why I never noticed the connection to Night Watch until it was pointed out to me. Also why I remembered absolutely nothing about it.
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Wed May 24th, 2017
 | 08:55 pm - The leaden sky
Malaise continues. I think it's the weather.
Finished?
Carter, The Devil's Feasts
-- the yucky 1840s
E.S. Thomson, Beloved Poison
-- come-by-chance at the library, another of those mysterious floating books with no call number. Also the yuckier 1840s, because in this case we're emptying a church graveyard to make room for railways. But it leads me to wonder: all the characters are slogging through the churchyard which is full of mud, disintegrating bodies, mud that has surrounded disintegrating bodies, and doubtless animal shit as well. And then they come home and scrape their boots on the scraper but they're still up to the ankles in effluvium. Did people never change their disgusting shoes in the middle class? or did they just track mud all over the carpets?
Reading now?
Thief of Time, because I feel the need of a Pratchett.
Otherwise and lackadaisically, Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares, which wikipedia tells me has a shocking ending; Ronia the Robber's Daughter because it's there, and Salzburg's Real happiness : the power of meditation which to date tells me nothing I don't already know but is at least a bit friendlier to those whose knees and and back hurt them.
Next?
No idea. Maybe if/ when I stop feeling headachey I'll start something meaty.
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Tue May 23rd, 2017
| 10:48 pm - The megrims
Long weekend megrims? rainy ache megrims? muggy May megrims? Dunno, but I had a bad attack of the megrims yesterday which continued into today. Prompted a lot of unadvised eating. Fought them off this evening, finally, by the time-honoured ritual of Vacuuming Something. I wish cleaning wasn't so effective- so 50s- but one must accept that what is, is, and a clean(er) house is a mood-lifter.
(Oh, now isn't that interesting. Megrim and migraine have the same root. As well they might: megrims are the migraine of the soul. According to Meriam-Webster:Megrim and "migraine" share a meaning and an etymology. Latin and Greek speakers afflicted with a pain in one side of the head called their ailment "hemicrania" or "hēmikrania," from the Greek terms hēmi-, meaning "half," and kranion, meaning "cranium." French-speaking sufferers used "migraine," a modification of "hemicrania," for the same condition. English speakers borrowed "migraine" from French - twice. First, they modified the French term to form "migreime," which in turn gave rise to "megrim" in the 15th century. Later, in the 18th century, they returned to French and borrowed "migraine" again, this time retaining its French spelling. Nowadays, "megrim" and "migraine" can still be used interchangeably, but "megrim" can have other meanings)
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Sun May 21st, 2017
| 10:24 pm - Rainy Sunday thought
Those online question memes often ask a variant on 'What did you want to be when you grew up?' I never /wanted/ to be anything but this is what I thought I would be:
Helga
The wishes on this child's mouth
Came like snow on marsh cranberries;
The tamarack kept something for her;
The wind is ready to help her shoes.
The north has loved her; she will be
A grandmother feeding geese on frosty
Mornings; she will understand
Early snow on the cranberries
Better and better then.
Sandburg wrote a poem for each of his three daughters. This was for the youngest, published when she was two. Prophetic, in the event: she was the only one who married and had children, and devoted herself to animals.
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Sat May 20th, 2017
| 09:21 pm - Failure of the Will
Third weekend in May is the annual Doors Open event, which I've gone to several times. I'd thought in passing of going up to the Aga Khan museum, free admission and all, but my knee is being uncooperative and it's a weary trek. If I was going to the Japanese Cultural Centre on the same street (suburban, set amidst rolling grasslands, no lights, careless drivers) it would be easy enough: subway over to Broadview and Flemingdon bus up. But that lets you off on the north side. The alternate route, to get safely to stuff on the south side like the museum, is Bloor subway to Yonge, Yonge subway to Eglinton, and a slow infuriating plod along that main thoroughfare that's been reduced to two lanes by excavations for the LRT and the construction of half a dozen condo towers at main intersections.
(Have taken the Eglinton route for the JCC and risked my life crossing the street to get there, which is why one uses the alternate. For all I know there's a light near the museum, but I'm not counting on it.)
And I belatedly realize that I go to Doors Open out of a sense of obligation- 'I never go out, I *should* go look at buildings when I have the chance.' Architecture per se is not my thing. No doubt it's instructional to have been inside a synagogue or the Hare Krishna repurposed Methodist church or a Tibetan Buddhist temple at least once; but Anglican churches and Catholic cathedrals have nothing to teach me, nor do legislative buildings and architects' offices.
What I would jump at is a house and garden tour, because old houses are fascinating- especially if they haven't been renovated in open concept concrete. But both house tours and unconcrete are hard to find these days.
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Fri May 19th, 2017
| 09:33 pm - The year moves on
Oh well yes it's cool again, highs as before in the mid to upper teens, but the lows are not the lows of last week which required the furnace on. I suppose other people will be happy about this.
This is actually 'windows open' weather, before fans but after furnaces.
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Thu May 18th, 2017
| 09:18 pm - Instant summer burdens
I admit it was delightful to sleep in a single long t-shirt last night, after more than six months of going to bed fully dressed and then some. The absence of bed socks was especially pleasant. Still, a hot house is not a happy house, and I have no idea how fast it will take for mine to cool. So if I go to bed in semi-undress, chances are I'll freeze by dawn; if I prepare for that low of 10, I will broil in the current 22. Ah well- keep the socks and duvets handy.
Had enough time before acupuncture today to nip into the Duff Mall and check for summer pants, which were not there. Nipped out, unlocked bike, and found bike was somehow not locked at all. Down to Dundas, find a post, and lock won't lock. Somehow- and I wonder how- the casing had got shifted about so the tumblers inside wouldn't come out far enough, or came out too far, to catch the legs. Spent five minutes rapping it and twisting it so the holes were even, dropping both parts regularly as I tried to turn my key and couldn't. Managed at last, not sure I could get it off later: and indeed, it was touch and go. Resigned to spending $100 plus on a new lock, I came home and tried, as a last resort, some WD-40; and that seems to have done the trick. Next time I'm there I lock it to the inconvenient bike stand, not one of the iron benches where people can try to hack my lock.
( Musical meditationCollapse )
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Wed May 17th, 2017
| 09:03 pm - Summer 1, Ambition 0
So many people this evening, on my walk around the neighbourhood, saying 'Oh isn't this lovely? Isn't this just perfect weather?' High of 30, humidex of 35, brassy burning sun, sodden unmoving air. Let them move to Singapore, say I. My revenge: we go back to the autumnal teens for the long weekend.
Went down to Eating Centre and bought half a dozen tanktops. None as nice as the first ones I got a decade and more ago, but they will do. Will I throw out the thin ratty bleach-stained and much-darned ones now? Probably not; they might come in handy as dusters...
Having lost two kilos, plus/minus, I now feel flabby and fat.
( Unambitious memeageCollapse )
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Tue May 16th, 2017
 | 09:24 pm - The Widow's Mite
When I got my return back from the accountant, he said, 'You're getting a refund of a hundred and eighty-seven dollars.' I concealed dismay. It's usually closer to a thousand, and $187 is only a fraction of the tax work withheld last year. One of my stocks must have racked up some capital gains, is all that can explain the measly sum. So I get back just enough to pay my membership fees in our (spits) professional college, whenever the money happens to show up. They delay refunds if you file late, even by a few days.
Today I went to withdraw a careful $40 to cover acupuncture and transit in the next two days, tapped the ATM screen's 'show balances' to see how much I actually have left, and blinked at the astronomical figure displayed. Printed out 'recent transactions' and there, from Can Govt, was a deposit of $887. Am delighted with my riches, natch, but clearly my riches are going to have to pay for a hearing aid in very short order.
(My accountant is very soft-voiced but I don't normally mishear him this badly. As for the south London barista at my local and his bare thread of sound: him I have to read lips for.)
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Mon May 15th, 2017
 | 07:24 pm - Found around
Onto a Vast Plain
Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.
Book of Hours, II 1
( Cut for GermanCollapse )
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 | 06:32 pm - Merrily merrily merrily merrily / Life is like my dreams
Of course people my age dream about toilets as a subconscious nudge to wake up already, but I wonder why my subconscious tends to make them padded Louis XV jobbies, nice enough as chairs but useless for elimination purposes. Maybe it's the 'frustration' aspect that almost automatically goes with the 'toilet' part. Last night's dream, though, lacked the usual trope of 'looking for a toilet in Japan that isn't occupied and is usable.' I was in a Canadian and very probably Torontonian (going by its international denizens) mall or large restaurant. The Louis XV toilets were all lined up against the far wall, cheek by jowl and in full view of everyone: mostly occupied by people chatting with the stranger beside them while they relieved themselves. 'Oh yes,' I thought as I took my seat beside a 30-ish Italian guy, 'they have to be like this because of the unisex bathroom law.'
There were dragon kings involved earlier on, or in a separate dream, forgotten except for a vague fancy that it was about Gouen and sex.
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Sun May 14th, 2017
| 08:10 am - Cosplay opportunity missed
Went to take my lens out last night. Eye looked odd in the mirror. Closer inspection showed the quondam white was now a deep Dragon King red. Subconjunctival hemorrhage, it's called- don't click if close-ups of staring red eyeballs icks you- benign but very disconcerting.
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Fri May 12th, 2017
| 08:34 pm - Trompe l'oeil: out of season seasons.
It's a snow sky out there but of course it's not snowing, or even raining. That's just the cherries two doors down and the late-burgeoning trees in this cold May. Still it makes me feel all cozy, even cozier than in the real snow of real winter, because there's no problem with getting places. And trees filling up the sky all round are cozier than the stark emptiness of winter trees.
(In these grey skies I see glimpses of the cold iron May of '96, just back from Japan, or '89, just arrived in Japan, or Ursuline days in my serge uniform when the maples and lindens dropped yellow seedlings into the sand box in the yard and the lilacs overwhelmed with their smell.)
Temps will go above 20 next week and we'll be in a different world, so I make the most of the false-winter now; now that the Autumn Preview is a thing of the past, and March the mirror month of November is never guaranteed.
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Thu May 11th, 2017
 | 10:03 pm - Delight it is in age and May to see the morn arise,
And then to burrow back into all the flannel and wool and duck down and go to sleep again.
The cherry glows at night and a cold wood-smokey smell comes in the small crack in the study window (left open so computer doesn't overheat as I leave it on all night.) Mrs Islamic Studies was complaining today that her magnolia blossoms are so slow to fall in this grey chill. I went out to work in fleecy and cloth jacket and scarf and woolly hat and froze without gloves, so wore winter coat for my evening stroll up to the bank.
But the sun was out when I left work, reminding me that it doesn't take much to expel the winter’s flaw. When temperatures return to normal next week I shall forget this autumnal interval, as also- probably- my virtuous record of eating less and exercising more. Well, maybe: since every twinge of the knee reminds me of the threatened operation and various people's horror stories of how it feels to have metal in your leg during a Toronto winter.
(Oh, LJ, you are so unamusing. "Feel free to use hashtags! The # symbol is precedes the tag followed by one or more keywords that will properly lead individuals to conversations and discussions pertaining to a specific topic or theme." Yes, and that's why numbering things "#1, #2, #3" leads to links that go nowhere.)
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Wed May 10th, 2017
 | 09:10 pm - Still 'November with flowers'
My neighbour's cherry blossoms scent the air as mine never did. Petals scatter and drift from my tree, but the cold keeps theirs intact.
Roofers came today so I stayed in, on the assumption I'd have to pay them when they finished since I hadn't given them a deposit. I was wrong; Mr Demchuk will send me a bill. Mr Demchuk is a very trusting man.
So I was virtuous: today I...
- did my exercises
- removed humidifiers from bedroom and desalinated them
- mended two pairs of pants
- vacuumed bedroom where dust elephants still gather behind the bed
- stripped bed and put duvet out to air
- pumped bike tires
- vacuumed and washed front hallway
- gathered recycling and put in (new, pathetically small) bin
- washed dishes
- amended chicken liver dish I made yesterday which lacked a certain something; the something was the large hunk of ginger sitting on the kitchen table. So cooked that and more veg and added to livers and ate for lunch.
Then went by work to bill my hours, spent an hour or so with the Limpet, came back and put a wash through; and now I'm exhausted. Sitting on a sofa reading all day doesn't wear one out nearly as much.
( MemeageCollapse )
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Mon May 8th, 2017
| 12:30 pm - Well, that's that, then
Went for a cortisone shot this morning at unreasonable o'clock. $25 cheaper than at the old place and a much simpler transit, or would be if they weren't renovating the station. Meaning one needs a transfer to go from subway to bus except when the bus goes into the station as the Coxwell bus does. But as they're putting an elevator in- and about bloody time, guys, since you serve Toronto East General Hospital- the bus stop is out on the street. Either pay again and the driver doesn't give change period even if you only have a twenty, or walk. I walked. Lovely cool morning, white and blue, and bushes still white with blossoms, so worth it.
Tell the joint man I have bursitis. He manipulates leg painfully. 'What you have,' he says, 'is no cartilage in your knee at all and a bloody big bone spur sitting where the cartilage should be.' So, well: see what cortisone does if anything; strengthen knee muscles more; and lose as much weight as I can. To which end I broke my twenty on an egg white breakfast bun (250 cals) and walked back to the station.
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Sun May 7th, 2017
 | 08:10 pm
I'm glad Mary Robinette Kowal is devoted enough to make an Austen word list and not use anything non-period in her historicals; and I'm glad she has so many editors and beta-readers to help her out in the task. But for the love of God, Montresor, why did none of them disentangle her confusion over lie and lay? and why did she not notice Austen's usage of same? (Granted, Jane's grammar and punctuation is occasionally sui generis.) But the fact remains that the past tense of lay is not lay, and pregnant women in the Regency did not have laying-ins.
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Sat May 6th, 2017
| 09:41 pm - Achey weather
Yesterday's all-dayer has left me more wiped than I'd expected, given how limber I became after the split-shifts earlier in the week. Hope it's not the plague that laid so many people low last week, but that started as a cough and sore throat, so probably this is just the lingering effects of rain and cold and three days of early rising. Hot shower and bed, I fancy.
I see the knee guy on Monday and veer between intending to demand everything possible except surgery, and demanding surgery at once. Especially today when bones seem to be scraping against bone in a debilitating fashion. But then I remember to keep my abdominals tight and half the pain vanishes at once. Can it really be cured by correcting posture?
One of the Milk and Honey series was just fine, but now I wonder if I really want to read another three? OTOH they're the closest I've come to Carriger in many a long year and go down easily enough, so I shall persevere.
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Thu May 4th, 2017
| 08:51 pm - And all the rain falls down, amen, on the works of last year's man
I wish my rain gaiters would arrive from England because the rain it raineth etc etc. scattering polka dot cherry blossoms on my mudroom roof. Roofer was in touch about the flat roof, noting "the weather doesn't cooperate with us." However it's cold as well as wet, which suits me. Wish it boded a cold summer but that didn't happen last year and won't this.
Finally got to the accountant and finally picked up my laptop, by dint of biking torn-up streets and morning traffic to a subway station on the n-s line, and going from there. Note new coffee shops in places I might go to once they stop tearing up streets and/or repair the potholes already there. Went through Helen's old neighbourhood, via a quiet street that runs behind where her house was. Quiet because the north side is railway lands and tracks after a high embankment, and south is small ex-worker's cottages now going in the millions. But with flowering trees and small front gardens and peace, except when the infrequent trains come through.
No work today but still up earlier than I wanted to be, and same again tomorrow. Shall have a zombie sleep deficit by the weekend, but at least it's the weekend.
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Wed May 3rd, 2017
| 09:26 pm - Various quotidian
Cold and winter coat (and hat and gloves) at 8 this morning as I set out for work. (When a poor coughing child texts you at night saying 'I think I am pretty sure that I'm gonna be OK to go to work tomorrow', do not be surprised when she calls you, hoarse and apologetic, at 6:30 the next day; nor was I.) Sunny and blooming May on my break at 1, and sweating in same. Rain tomorrow and low of 5: thus May. 'Rain in the afternoon' they say, and I hope it is, because I must finally get up to my accountant's so he can file my return. My refund is less than his fees, but it is a refund, so presumably no penalties.
Also no work tomorrow, thankfully, because between today's six hours and Friday's seven I expect to be maybe just a little stiff-- though the hour's stretching at night seems to have paid off, at least so far. Also I need a break from The Limpet who was more limpetish than usual today. When her mother came and extracted her from my hip, Limpet twisted around and wanted to go back to me. Truly, Limpet, we can't go on meeting like this.
Was trying to remember what the plumber said about turning off laundry taps at work. We used to have the hot water shut off so people wouldn't use it for washing since the tank is very small. Alas, he said we should leave them both on all the time. I however have both mine closed shut because both leak water into the washing machine if left on. I mean, the tub will fill up anyway when I put a laundry through so it's not like it's being wasted, but it still feels better to use at need. Only I expect the ancient valves to break at some point if I keep twisting them righty-tighty lefty-loosey. Oh well- we shall pay that plumber when we have to.
My neighbours, including my s-i-l, lock their bikes to their porch rails and never seem to suffer theft. I wish I could- it would free up space in my middle room- but I can't forget that I lost the last bike that was stolen in precisely that way. I was in fact glad to see the last of it: it was an expensive disaster of a bicycle- but the prospect of being bikeless in my semi-disabled state fills me with dread. That there are better bikes for the stealing won't necessarily deter someone from taking my rusted battered Old Paint; the better bikes probably have better locks.
( MemeageCollapse )
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Tue May 2nd, 2017
| 08:59 pm - Cold and grey
Three days of rain and cold and crippledness. Acupuncturist discovers a small cyst by the side of my knee which will go away by itself but until it does makes walking a dicey operation. Thus had to cancel my accountant yesterday and will be filing late. And then there's a plague at work so had to cancel him for today and tomorrow. Maybe Thursday, barring more plague victims.
Cherry blossoms start to scatter in spite of (furnace-requiring) cold. Cold is no match for high winds,and them we got.
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Sun Apr 30th, 2017
| 06:32 pm - Cast not a clout redivivus
Nice November day out there, with creamy blossoms standing in for snow flurries. But on nice November days one shouldn't walk to the store in sandals and socks unless the sun is shining, and especially not when rain is forecast. But I did and it did so now I'm changed into jammies and bedsocks.
The Infidel Stain is indeed lots of fun, even if Carter uses 'begs the question' in a way no 1840s Englishman would. I don't know why, unless it's the American publisher who also changed the spelling. Shall read the next one; am not a fan of India so not likely to read the first. Mind, I'm not a fan of 1840s London either, but still. Will not spoil myself by googling Chartist to discover how the movement eventually ended. Badly, I assume.
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Sat Apr 29th, 2017
| 08:37 pm - Further techno-fail
Was vacuuming the upstairs and wondering why the upstairs Dirt Devil picks up so much more dust than the downstairs Dirt Devil. The downstairs one, bought in 2011, sucks at sucking; I think I messed up its inner alignment once while cleaning the upper chambers, where dirt isn't supposed to go but did. Have often considered putting it out on the sidewalk for someone who wants a semi-functional vacuum cleaner.
Then went to empty the canister of its admirable/ appalling load of dust. (Really, if dust is made from skin cells, I wonder I have any epidermis left.) And on the side, in white print I had never noticed before, was a box with an arrow and the legend: 'To maintain peak performance empty dirt cup and clean filter after every use.' Filter? Oh, this button here that says 'Press to access filter'? I press. Inside there's a filter on a piece of plastic sponge. Who'da thought? And the one downstairs? Same filter, completely clogged with dirt. So I take it out, and on the side of it these words appear: 'For best performance change filter every six months'. Six months, not years- even for someone as lackadaisical about vacuuming as I am.
So now I have two functioning Dirt Devils, go me.
(The 'clean filter after every use' message is absent from the downstairs unit. Obviously the company got tired of the mechanically challenged complaining about their 'defective' vacuums that wouldn't clean any more, and demanding refunds.)
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Fri Apr 28th, 2017
 | 09:44 pm - Techno-fail
Those who follow me on Facebook know I've been coping with mice this week, or possibly just with mouse. I set my tip-trap at night and there's always a mouse in it shortly thereafter. Same trap I used, fruitlessly, in 2010. This, by the way, is what a tip trap looks like. You stick bait to the non-arachnid end, mouse goes in to eat it, trap tips with its weight and hinged jaw shuts.
I always found it very hard to get the mouse out of the trap, which I put down to trauma. It took until this morning for me to realize you have to prise off the square end, not just open up the jaws, because the mouse can't turn around in the trap to get out the way it came in. Of course, prising off the end puts you in immediate contact with a traumatized mouse, so I may just go on opening the jaws and shaking the critter out.
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Thu Apr 27th, 2017
| 09:04 pm - Springtime blahs
Warm muggy headachey day. Cold front is moving through, so rainy thunderous headachey evening. Hopefully better tomorrow. Still, a dramatic sunset through storm clouds turning the sodden white plum and cherry blossoms apocalyptic orange.
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Wed Apr 26th, 2017
| 08:38 pm - Wednesday in April, with blankets
'The rough male kiss of blankets,' Rupert Brooke called it. He should have said, 'of English blankets.' A friend back in the 80s had a book that humourously listed the differences between English and Americans, of which I remember two. The American one was 'Americans think death is optional.' I can't quote the second (and google, which helpfully tells me that he book is probably Brit-think, Ameri-Think by Jane Walmsley, isn't interested in the subject) but it's to the effect that British blankets are heavy hairy leaden things that pin you to the mattress and keep you there. I met British blankets in the 60s and 70s, and yes, they are. Their colonial cousins aren't much better: a little lighter, a little smoother, but still a way of keeping you in one position in bed. I have a couple from the family home stashed away in the linen closet; I never use them but think they might come in handy some day, presumably if the power fails in winter and my duvets aren't enough.
But rummaging through said linen closet the other day I found something at the bottom of the pile- something smooth and soft and seductive. It was a pink woolen blanket, a rare single, of which I have no memory at all: but ahh, is it warm! I'm using it instead of the feather duvet- which is still too heavy for my twinging knees when I try to turn over. And this is why I never throw anything out.
Cherries blooming mightily down by Robots Library, though yes, several trees are dead or dying. Flocks of Asians out with cameras, and a very little girl in a red kimono with a red parasol being photographed by mother and older bro. Who were speaking Chinese to each other, but oh well. My cherries are peeping out here and there while the plums and the cherries across the way still hang on, aided by cold and lack of wind, which makes the view out the study window very white indeed. This has been your sakura update for the day.
( MemeageCollapse )
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Tue Apr 25th, 2017
 | 08:54 pm - Crown of Binding Thorns
House of Binding Thorns is pure Tanith Lee territory but it doesn't treat it in a Tanith Lee way at all: could not be more different, in fact. This is probably a good thing, because Lee is hot fudge sauce: a little goes a very long sweet cloying sticky way. But de Bodard is somehow too dry for my tastes as well. I'm not sure what the problem is but I noticed it in the Acatl books also. As if I'm being kept at arm's distance somehow from the events. Or maybe that the events are all tied up in plots and politics, which I find dull by nature: so that even with fallen angels and Vietnamese dragons and alchemical magicians and Paris in tatters, the atmosphere of the Pentagon Papers spreads its grey dust throughout.
ETA: *House* of Binding Thorns. The things my brain gets up to late at night...
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Sun Apr 23rd, 2017
| 07:55 pm - Sakura watch
The warmth and sun today may have brought all the cherries out in High Park (haven't checked so don't know) but they only persuaded the slightest bit of white to appear on mine. Which is fine: I'm in no rush.
But yesterday evening I went out to smell what few plums are left, and discovered a huge sweet-scented... *something* blooming whitely in my brother's yard. The s-i-l cut down a very large branch of the plum tree some time in the last few weeks- hence the dearth of blossoms- and at first I wondered if they'd just planted that somehow. Horticultural I am not. A phone call revealed that it's a currant bush and it's been there for years, putting out unnoticeable leaves and not much else. 'Doesn't have currants because there are no boy bushes around,' my bro explained. Well, neither does it have masses of blossoms either, but this year it does.
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Sat Apr 22nd, 2017
| 12:50 pm - Bloomin' Saturday
Bought a laptop yesterday. Was moderately pleased by it, though now I have second thoughts. Mostly about the clerk who sold it to me- 'I build my own systems, I know these things'- who assured me that no, Win10 upgrades *never* led to loss of internet even though that was an issue as late as last December, and no, Win10 can never be made to look like Win 7 even though there are webpages that will tell you how to do just that. Now I regret the additional $150 she assured me I needed to spend for them to remove Windows bloatware from the thing. Shall probably not buy their $17 a month service package either. Especially if it turns out all my desktop internet problems can be solved by buying a new ethernet modem.
Plums are blooming out the back. University cherry trees, though many seem dead. My cherry is at the knobbly stage. This seems a bit early to me because the years I remember cherries blooming about the n'hood were ones with warm sunny spells in mid-April. But it may be that only cold winters and springs have everything blooming first week in May.
Suddenly have Tuesday to Friday off next week. In access of optimism think 'I should go see someone out of town.' Not sure there's anyone to see, alas.
Washing machine has mystery leak- into the machine, fortunately. Come down to do laundry and find it 1/3 full. Turned off cold tap last time, find it 1/3 full again. Shall shut off hot tap next and see what difference that makes. Truly, plumbers and dentists are the curse of the modern bank balance.
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Thu Apr 20th, 2017
| 05:48 pm - Wet Thursday
1. Day off. Physio'd and acupunctured and got soaked both times. What I need is a butcher's apron or whatever, a wide piece of rubber I can tie around my waist and that covers my thighs. That's the bit that gets itchy wet when bicycling in the rain, and that causes colds.
2. If not for rain, I might have dropped in at work to say good-bye to the excellent student I didn't get to say good-bye to yesterday. Student break area is next to the laundry room, and for six weeks V. would go into the latter, empty the washing machine and load it into the dryer. No one else has ever done that, or at any rate, gone on doing that after they were hired full-time.
3. There was incense burning at acupuncture. Some people are allergic but I am not, and a different smell makes it feel like a different place.
4. I have an old robe of my mother's- what I would call a caftan except I think she bought it before caftans were known over here. It served as a temporary replacement for her regular black velvet hostess gowns when the latter became unavailable for whatever reason. Doubtless she found it unsatisfactory, which is why it still survives. I don't wear it much because, even though I was two inches taller than my mother, the robe is two inches too long for me. I know I've shrunk but why didn't it nag on her? Heels, perhaps.
5. The forsythia are having a great year of it in spite of chill and rain. Doubtless the clumps of yellow are cheery and all, but I find them a bit overdone. Keep that colour for daffodils, say I.
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Wed Apr 19th, 2017
 | 08:48 pm - Reading Wednesday
Last finished?
A Distant Mirror, finally. Now I know more about the 14th century than I did, but still think Tuchman more fun when talking about the 20th.
The Hanging Valley, an Inspector Banks mystery, no.1 in the omnibus I failed to give away. This is an earlier one where Banks is still happily married and he, or his author, is less likely to comment on the breasts of every woman he meets. It's also the one where Banks visits Toronto in a precisely rendered late 80s summer, either '87 or '88 (the book is dated '89), both of which were hideous. Banks hits certain areas I'm familiar with. Can't guarantee that Pauper's or the Madison in those days were truly Brit pubs where the expats hung out, but it's always possible.
Currently?
Started on no.2 in that anthology, and if it remains as weird about women as no.1 was in its way, I shall not bother to read no.3. It has a Lesbian couple, so no bets.
The Wandering Scholars of course, still.
Didn't start Carolingian Portraits since none of them were of scholars that Waddell mentions.
Next?
Have The House of Binding Thorns and still haven't started it. May need better weather or not-April.
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Tue Apr 18th, 2017
| 08:23 pm - 'Tonight we dine without the Master'
Waddell reminds me so much of (what I have heard about) donnish conversation in Oxbridge colleges- in-jokes, allusions, 'who needs no introduction' etc.The port goes round so much the faster,
Topics are raised with no less ease –
Which advowson looks the fairest,
What the wood from Snape will fetch,
Names for pudendum mulieris,
Why is Judas like Jack Ketch? Waddell at least is talking about more genial subjects than Larkin's smutty dons- well, I mean, Larkin, what would you expect?
"...But the new things are the anonymous lyrics, the glorious rhythms of
"O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina' and
"O admirabile Veneris idolum",
and still more significant in promise, the alba of the Vatican MS. formerly at Fleury, and "Iam dulcis amica" of the MS. of St. Martial of Limoges. The alba is more precious for its Provencal burden than for other merit: it still holds to Prudentius, and the cry might be to waken faithful souls rather than sleeping lovers, the enemy in ambush the Enemy of souls rather than the jealous guardian. But in its own exquisite phrase,
"Dawn is near: she leans across the dark sea".
For Iam dulcis amica, the quatrain halts a little, the rhythm wavers; Ovid's upholstery is in the background, a little the worse for wear. But its strength is in the sudden impatience with which the catalogue of attractions is thrust aside, the sudden liquid break like the first bird notes in the stuffy pedant-music of the Meistersingers:
Ego fui sola in silva
Et delexi secreta loca."
Maybe what she reminds me most of is Seidensticker's Tokyo diary, kept while he was translating Genji. It's the perfect companion to reading Genji itself, as Seidensticker chatters along about what he thinks of To no Chujo or Ukifune in between snarling at Mishima's obscurity and trying to find surviving bits of the Yoshiwara. The difference being that Genji is one book only, even if a long one; Waddell is referring to the whole corpus of medieval Latin lyric poetry, which one is supposed to have at one's fingertips. Naraba ii naa....
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