Hemlock B Bootsalotta

time is calling name by name

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 01:31:39 GMT

Note to future self, don't bother booking time off work in April if working on the house is the goal. It never seems to work out the way I want it to. (This time because of the weather.)

I did get one day that was merely damp and so the upper part of the yard is now graded and seeded.

And I discovered that at some point the rain and wind had pulled down two of the dead phone lines that cross my yard. They are now sagging from the poles and cross the yard at chest height. That means I have to deal with Bell again. Joy.

***

Lord Brock went back in for bloodwork and the numbers that concerned the vet show much improved. I never did get the urine sample because he flat-out refused to enter his litter box while it had the medical litter in it. It's basically tiny plastic beads so I can't entirely blame him, they would be slippery and uncomfortable.

So he goes back to the vet for a $60 hanging-out-until-he-pees session on top of the $30 I paid for the kit. This fucking cat. Maybe they'll reimburse me for the kit if I bring it back.

***

I think I've mentioned in here that my sister and I have been trying to gently persuade my dad's wife that it's time to move out of their house into a place with no stairs. It came up again this week because my dad climbed over the gate in front of the basement stairs and then couldn't get back up. (How he did this nobody can figure out, the man can barely walk.)

Sister found a link to a really nice condo for sale in their neighbourhood and it turns out it was in a building where they have friends. And they stayed there briefly while their bathroom was being renovated and their friends were on vacation. MIL was still hemming and hawing about it and apparently I said the magic words, "If you are worried about the work of packing and downsizing, I will come over and help." Next thing she called her realtor and two days later her offer was accepted.

So Friday Daughter and I went over and helped pack. Y'all, they have So Much stuff. There are two full-size book cases in the basement just for shoes, and that's not counting the two shoe-racks on the ground floor for the shoes they actually wear. A dresser AND a wardrobe AND two clothing racks for clothes, and that's just in the basement. There are three bedrooms on the top floor all will full closets and dressers.

Well, between the three of us we got 7 full contractor bags out of there just of stuff that has to go away. Today four more family members descended on the place to continue packing. The real estate agent wants to get the place on the market ASAP because apparently sales drop off when the weather gets good. So we've been strategizing ways to get as much stuff out of the house as possible as fast as possible, even if it means doing the actual purging at the other end. This is probably going to suck up all my free time for the next month at least.

The actual possession happens in August so fingers crossed she can keep my dad from going down the stairs bucket-first until we can get them moved.

***

Saturday Daughter and I took a taxidermy class. Not the best timing, given everything else that was going on, but I had already paid for it and I was looking forward it to it, so we went. I now have a stuffed rat in my living room. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about the practice - including what I will do differently the next time I try to do any taxidermy.

***

Back to work this morning and I was interrupted by a knock on the door. Three people on my porch asked me for permission to take a picture of the front of my house - one of the women had grown up here, the second had grown up across the street, and woman #1 had met her husband when he was boarding with woman #2's family. The couple had just celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary.

I invited them in so I could show them around the house and described what it looked like when I bought it 20+ years ago. They were super sweet and told me stories about what the area was like when they lived here 65 years ago.

Hilariously, she is a big Elvis fan. (Ex housemate loved Elvis and we still have a sticker on the door.) So we also talked about Graceland.

This is the second time somebody has knocked on my door because they grew up in my house. Advantage of having a house over 100 years old I guess.

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on target and we're flying blind

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 02:34:23 GMT

Currently listening to the Goths Against Fascism raid train. They're raising money for the ACLU and appear to be just short of their goal.

Current DJ is playing fantastic music but will not fucking shut up talking over it.

[EDIT] Very Talky DJ just raided to a new channel and it's somebody I knew back in the day. Heh.

[2nd EDIT] And now new DJ is playing a bunch of Spanish-language punk and goth and ska and it's fucking amazing.

***

Very productive weekend was had where I managed to cross a bunch of things off my to-do list. Lord Brock got his blood taken but I completely failed to get a urine sample because I have to collect it and then get it to the vet within a fairly narrow time frame and he refused to cooperate while they were actually open. I'll try again in the morning.

Which means having a conversation with my boss, "Hey if my cat pees I have to run out the door right away."

I've been thinking anyway, I need to sit down and have a talk with her about medical accommodations. My vertigo has been hell with all the rain storms sweeping through and that's going to be an issue every spring so it would be good if they're prepared for me to be around less when that happens. Unless they want to send me a driver or something.

***

Did another long walk on Friday. Stretching and being good in between. So far foot is still holding up well.

And I was thinking about this as I was out looking around at the various storefronts, Toronto has SO MANY cannabis shops. SO MANY. Some sections of particularly popular shopping streets has a half-dozen per block.

The vast majority of them are not licensed. Ironically our former drug-dealer premier could not figure out how to get legal weed shops sorted when they first became legal so people just went ahead and opened their own. Occasionally cops will go around and close a bunch but they're really the only ones who give a shit.

So anyway one of the things you see frequently here - no idea if this is true in other locations - is weed shops that say in big letters on the front that the owners are from a specific indigenous tribe operating on unceded land as per their treaty rights. I've always wondered if that actually got the cops to stop bothering them.

And then recently a friend pointed out there are also weed shops that say Sovereign people without the tribal mention, and those are run by Freeman and now that I know I see them everywhere.

(For those who don't want to click on the link, Freeman are a group in Canada who have decided that they if they don't "consent" to be citizens they can't be forced to do things like pay taxes or follow laws. I knew somebody who fell for their nonsense and I am absolutely fascinated to know how that's the kind of self-deception that outlasts the first speeding ticket.)

***

Current media consumption: I am binging Slow Horses with the gf and I am loving it. I'm not really one for spy stories, but I am really digging the personalities and the plot twists and the internal conflicts. Also the character Gary Oldman plays is amazing.

Mostly what I'm reading is terribly-written romantasy series which are entirely cookie-cutter and disposable so I can just tear them off the role and then forget about them. Kinda where I'm at for the moment. I will challenge my brain via reading material when it has less going on in the rest of life.

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don't fake a restless heart

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 05:08:59 GMT

I've been planning to recondition the ol' walking muscles for a while now, but spending 20 minutes putting on layers before you can walk out the door is not conducive to the casual stroll. Friday it was 20+ degrees and sunny so I went for a 90-minute walk, just in a big circle around the neighbourhood. I was not alone in this decision. The sidewalks were full, every patio was packed, and the ice cream store had a line down the block.

This morning I woke up and there was snow on my deck.

So that was second spring. We're due two more and then we enter smoke-from-forest-fires season.

In the course of my walk I found out there is a new brewpub at the literal end of my street. They will have a patio. This is going to be very very bad for my wallet.

***

Word has come down from Above, I am going back into the office one day a week starting the last week of May.

Completely stupid and unnecessary but it could be a lot worse. I suspect it's only once a week because they've received so much negative feedback from their employees and they'll try to bump it up to higher frequency once they figure we're resigned to it. But that's unlikely to happen this year.

Or you know, gas will hit $50 a litre and they'll have to either back off or pay people more. Which could also happen! Who the fuck knows, this is the most stupid of all possible timelines.

I'm taking a staycation to work on the house in a couple of weeks and after that I'm going to try to train myself to get up earlier on a daily basis. I would try to get up early on the monthly office days but anything that disrupts my sleep sets off the vertigo like woah, and I ended up leaving the house at the same time or later by the time I got it under control. It took me almost three weeks to get over the shift to daylight savings time. I figure I can spend a month being wobbly at home before I have to go into the office and navigate bright lights and too many moving bodies.

***

Lord Brock continues to develop concerning test results and cost me five million dollars per vet visit. But he still beats on a catnip mouse like it owes him money, so I have hope that whatever the underlying issue is it remains manageable.

While going through old paperwork to see what I could shred this year I found his original adoption records. He is 13 this year, not 15 as I originally thought. So he's definitely in his old man years, but not quite as old as I thought. So I might get a couple more years of being yelled at.

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will you recognize me

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 03:05:24 GMT

You get two posts in two days because I am procrastinating.

So the neighourhood where I live used to be a village called Brockton which was swallowed up by Toronto as the city expanded west. (This is where Lord Brock got his name, btw.) The plumber's supply shop at the corner was once the town City Hall and there are old goal cells in the basement.

The main employer at the time was a rope factory. Most of the streets at the time were little short things with lots of bends but there are two very long streets north-south streets near me that had no intersections that were used to twist the ropes. Even now the only cross-streets are the major thoroughfares the city built when they expanded out this way.

The factory owners, along with all the other wealthy people, lived south of the railroad tracks and down towards the lake. Big three-story houses with lots of windows and wide front yards and two staircases - one for servants. In the 50s the city built a highway along the lake and all the rich people moved out, a lot of those big houses were turned into apartments and boarding houses

The houses on my street were specifically built to home the factory workers and they are all row-houses on lots 15-feet wide or smaller. Most didn't have basements. They all had the same "summer kitchen" setup that I had to tear out. The insulation, where it existed, consisted of torn up newspaper.

My house is at the end of a row of three and was built in 1913. There are still sections on streets all over the area that were built at the same time, and also lots that were cleared and used to build more recently.

There are creek beds that were funneled into pipes and ravines that were filled in while they were building. There is a creek running under the next street over, you can hear the rushing water through the access covers every day of the year. Some of the houses we looked at when we were buying are settling into the old ravines, if you drop a marble it rolls the full length of the house and out the door. (Yes I did this once. The realtor tried to explain it away and I have no idea what he came up with because I could not stop laughing.)

There are history walks in the area all the time. I find this stuff fascinating.

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can i walk around my shadow

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:19:56 GMT

Achievement unlock.

Back when it first became confirmed that my vestibular damage was permanent I bought one of those bike stand things that turns your normal bicycle into a stationary bike. I figured even it was no good for transportation at least that way I could still use it, only without the falling off and throwing myself into traffic part.

I still do fall off it sometimes when the gravity is really bad. At least don't have to contend with cars.

Anyway that was 15... maybe 20 years ago now? I dunno, time is toffee. Anyway, the original stand had plastic bits, like foot-pads and adjustment pieces and they had been gradually breaking off over the years. So recently I replaced it with a second stand. And last week I was using it and there was a snapping sound and the bike just... sagged. While I was sitting on it. When I got off and took it apart it turned out that the rear axle - the one that supports all the weight - had sheared right off.

The axle was a part of the assembly kit and it was exactly the same between the two stands so I didn't bother changing it when I swapped. So I spent three days digging through The Stuff to find the second axle that came with the new stand. Which I found. Also the assembly manual. That manual was laughably useless, whoever wrote it wasn't even trying. BUT! There are videos online demonstrating how to assemble the stand, so I watched those to figure out how everything goes together. Assembly did not require tools. Getting pieces of metal that have been living next to each other for possibly more than two decades to now let go of each other, that required tools. (One of those tools being a hammer.)

Bike now functional. Skill upgraded.

***

Something that is very much above my skill grade, the stairs that lead up to my top floor go straight up until they meet exterior of the bathroom wall and turn and continue to go up until they meet the second floor. At the corner of the turn there is a light on the ceiling. It's probably 10-12 feet above the step immediately below it.

The lightbulb in that light has burnt out.

Fucked if I know how I'm going to get up there. There's no landing to put a ladder. I have a ladder that extends, I could maybe brace it against the door on the ground floor and then against the wall at the top, but then I'd have to climb up it while it's bent over and the idea of my permanently dizzy ass trying to stand on ladder rungs that are tilted?

Yeah I don't think so.

I have a nephew that used to have those rock climbing hand holds all over his bedroom as a teenager so he could make it from the door to his bed without touching the floor. I'm going to ask him to do it.

***

Tomatoes I seeded at the start of the month are growing like gangbusters. All but two of the seeds sprouted and multiple seeds have produced twins or triplets.

Not one of the peppers has broken soil.

This has been the story every year. So help me, I am going to figure out what I am doing wrong. I WILL CONQUER THE PEPPER.

***

I have a stack of paper on my desk that I am trying to force myself through. Scribbled notes with instructions and reminders, notices from the city, bills, voting information, appointments I have to make, letters I have to write to politicians, ugh.

I promised myself I would set aside a day and just dig through this pile this weekend. I need to set up a schedule, one day a month I will deal with all the "paper" crap. Otherwise it gets very large and overwhelming.

On the plus side, today I walked to the farmer's market and it was raining but also very warm. And one of the farmers had a sow that rejected her piglets so they were all at the market being carried around like dolls by the staff. (When I was a child I thought pigs got to be the size of a golden retriever. Then I visited my Irish family and one of them had a farm and introduced me to his sow. So I don't think that any more.)

There are worse things in life than being able to pet a sleepy piglet.

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our house. in the middle of our creek

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 02:10:39 GMT

Last week the temperature here went up to 18 degrees. All the snow melted. Then the next day it rained heavily, pretty much the whole day. Then the next day it snowed.

I looked out the back window at one point and realized the drainage ditch was completely full of water. Like an inch from overflowing. The opening to the pipe from the sump pump was completely submerged. Now that the snow has melted I can open my back door again so I went to have a look, and the walls I had built up with broken concrete had collapsed and there had been several clay landslides into the ditch.

I should have expected that really. Lesson learned. I have some pea gravel I had intended to dump on the top, now I realize I should have been using it to fill in the gaps between the larger rocks, both to give them support and to try to keep the silt from settling in the cracks. When the soil is dryer I'll dig it out and re-do it properly. Fortunately Facething Marketplace has tons of people giving away left over rocks from their landscaping projects because I'm mostly out.

On the plus side, the drainage ditch did operate entirely as intended in that there was no flooding of the rest of the yard. The basement stayed bone dry and the pump didn't get any backwash.

***

Saw a rat back behind the shed while I was out there. I kind of figure rats are like the coyotes, they're always there, just sometimes we also see them.

Still. He was a big fucker.

***

Left the house today to go to a seed swap that was happening a couple of blocks away. Didn't swap any seeds but I did have a lovely conversation with a man from a local group that runs workshops on things like pollinator gardens and composting. There were also some people there from the Anishnawbe food & medicine garden.

I remember walking past a storefront on my way to the gf's place last week and passing what used to be a big art supply store. It's been divided in half, part of it is now a medspa and the other half is a thrift store.

That kind of encapsulates the current state of the neighbourhood perfectly, we have condos and gentrification and chic designer stores. But we also have the Community Centre with the needle exchange program and the lawyers who will give you advice about your immigration case or your lawsuit against your landlord. The slumlords who own the highrise behind me lost an attempt to shut down a food bank that was started in a couple of empty units by the tenants. There are signs on every light pole supporting the latest rent strike against yet another slum lord.

There's also a goth/industrial club right at the end of my street, and do you think I've managed to drop in there even once? No I have not. Maybe when it warms up and the wastewater numbers are less dire. I know about a half-dozen DJs who hold nights there, so I should get one of those straw holder thingys you can fix to your mask.

Actually, now that I think about it, that would be a good idea for the days I have to go into the office and it's too cold to eat outside.

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field of dreams

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 03:35:10 GMT

My goals for this weekend were to get my tomatoes & peppers seeded, and to get my income tax filed. Both have been accomplished. Go me.

The weather has gone into above zero temperatures for the last couple of days and snow is melting everywhere. The sump pump is holding up magnificently. I went for a walk yesterday to enjoy it, and I obviously need to do that more often. The physio means all my tendons and connective tissue are fine, but my skin is coming up blisters because it's out of practice.

***

Two stories.

When I was very young and my parents were very broke one of the few vacations they could afford with three kids was to take us all camping. The first time they tried this they just packed the car and drove north but it was a long weekend and all the provincial sites were full. I remember that they found one spot the first night, but it was basically a parking lot for RVs and it was baking hot and awful. So the next day they packed up and kept driving. They ended up following some hand-painted signs stapled to the power poles on the side of the road and found a farm where the owners had mowed down part of the field closest to their house and were renting out spots to campers.

And it was perfect. It had lovely shade trees and a couple of swimming holes. There was a fence separating us from a wide grassy field full of cattle that also frequently spawned rabbits and other fascinating creatures and the owners had a roadside vegetable stall and gave all the campers a discount. We ended up going back year after year. My dad would sit on the porch with the owner and have a beer in the evenings. (If my dad had a superpower it was that he could make friends anywhere. He has a story about visiting Spain and watching the World Cup in a cave with a bunch of refugees.) I remember when my youngest sister was a toddler my parents set up her bed in an inflatable dingy inside the tent because she couldn't get over the sides and potentially wander off while we slept.

When I was in my twenties and going camping with my friends I inherited all of their old camping gear. The tent is long gone but I still have the camping stove, which is rusty and wobbly and a pain to light but still works. I also have their old cooler, a massive heavy thing with a metal body. It's scratched and dented and looks like it fell off a cliff at some point, but the metal is still solid. This thing has to be fifty years old.

Alas, parts of it are made out of plastic. My ex broke off one of the handles because it was jammed behind something in the trunk of our car so they just... pulled harder. (I have made it very clear they will NEVER be forgiven for that.) And just yesterday I realized that the little plastic stopper that used to flip down and plug the drain hole has snapped off.

***

The second story.

I mentioned here that I host my family for Christmas dinner in January. I bought too much food because that's definitely an Irish tradition and then people brought things I wasn't expecting. So I had leftover potatoes and carrots and onions, things like that.

I have a cold room under the porch, so I figured they would be fine down there. And I threw the bags into my big metal cooler and then kind of forgot about them. Yesterday I went downstairs to get a single potato and discovered my miscalculation. One of the potatoes had decided that it really wanted to be soup.

(That saying about one bad apple spoiling a barrel, btw? Could also be applied to potatoes.)

So about hrm, 60% of the potatoes were rescue-able. The carrots tried to get in on the act, but mostly when a carrot goes bad it just gets hairy and sprouts greens so I didn't lose anything there. The onions are fine. Onions can survive anything. But holding the metal cooler on it's side to tip the soup-from-hell down the drain was how I found out that the drain plug no longer exists.

So right now it's sitting on my porch to see if I can force myself to put it in the trash pick-up.

And even now I'm fantasizing about taking the lid off and turning it into a planter or something. I don't have a ton of good memories of my childhood. The memories won't go away if I throw out the fucking cooler! I know that. But I'm still wrestling with it.

This is ONE of the reasons why my house has so much crap in it.

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just a dry fish with anxiety

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 03:03:13 GMT

Somebody sent me another petition to get rid of daylight savings time. I'm sure there's a new one every year.

I guess that means the clock change is coming up again? I have no idea when it starts and I'm never prepared for it. If I was rich enough to be properly eccentric, I'd just ignore it.

***

I saw a video once about debunking bigfoot sightings. In one part they showed how a bear's footprint in the snow would melt out under direct sunlight to become a huge bigfoot-sized pawprint even while the surrounding snow was unaffected.

I was thinking about it yesterday when I was looking at the very human-looking footprints that go across my backyard to my back window. When they hit the shade of trees where they pass onto the railroad tracks they shrank into normal-sized coyote prints.

There is something else smaller roaming around back there too, it climbed down into the drainage pit and back out again. Could be a raccoon? I also saw a possum back there a couple of days ago so maybe foraging under the rocks. (Also three raccoons had a brawl on the back deck last night, I had to get out of bed to go open the window and shout at them to get them stop. Assholes. I'm even more convinced that Lord Brock is deaf, he didn't even twitch at the racket.)

***

I put a row of pots under the grow lamps in the kitchen, I have arugula growing like gangbusters, basil, parsley and cilantro that's looking pretty encouraging, chives and thyme that might just make it and rosemary that is threatening to die. I also have a whole bunch of spider plant babies and whenever it goes above zero outside I stick a few pots in the library out front.

Next weekend I'll start my tomato and pepper seeds.

This is how I make it through the dark winters when I really want to do is just sit in the dark and drink wine. I used to think I didn't have SAD because my brain always felt so much worse in the summer. Turns out I was just struggling to breath during the smog months.

I always have this vague plan that I'll work on interior stuff when the weather is cold but I never do. I can barely force myself to do regular housework I have such a bad case of don't wanna.

It will all resolve when it's warm enough to go stick my hands in the dirt.

***

There's some show on I keep getting ads for called The Empire Strips Back. It's being advertised as a burlesque show, but I'm guessing it's just a musical where the storm-troopers wear silver bikinis.

I also made the mistake of looking at a website for renting cottages in the province so now I'm getting non-stop ads for them. I swear it's not safe to go on the internet any more, and not because of the axe-murderers.

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force is machine

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 03:48:55 GMT

Dear Father, it has been a month since my last confession.

I am so tired, y'all. I've been working overtime for the past three weeks trying to stash some money away for the inevitable basement bullshit and it's been exhausting. (You wouldn't think a job that requires sitting at a desk would be tiring, but I feel like somebody threw sand in my eyes by the end of the day.)

Permit-wrangler is still trying to find an engineer. Apparently the problem is that I can't just dig a hole and have an engineer look at it and yes the foundations are good, they have to figure out how to reverse-engineer whatever was done to create new drawings - and that's going to be expensive regardless.

I sicc'd permit-wrangler on the engineer who got the original permits. "Tell him if he helps me out I might leave him out of the lawsuit."

***

I looked out my window this morning and there was a huge raptor in the trees behind my house. Couldn't get a clear enough view to make a guess at what it was but at least twice the size of the red-tail hawks I normally see back there.

I reiterated to the venerable Lord Brock that no, he is not going outside no matter how much he bonks his head on the window. (He is enormously offended by the squirrels.)

***

Last time I visited my dad I took my laptop over and started quizzing him about family. His memory is shot, but he does remember incidents from his childhood. What's hilarious is that he remembers the kids who pissed him off - I suggested one possible connection and he was all, "Oh yeah, Joey, he visited from the States. What a little prick."

He also remembered the aunt who baked cookies and the heavy-drinking aunt who was a huge bruiser and all the men were afraid of her. So if they left an impression he had me stories about them, even if he doesn't remember how they're related to him.

***

Somebody here was talking about how Skip The Dishes made up a new address for them, and it reminded me that I had the exact experience last time I ordered from them. The system sent the driver to an address a couple of blocks away and I only caught it because I got the ping that the order was five minutes away and when I looked at the map I didn't recognize the streets.

Calling their customer service did nothing because the driver was already showing as "arrived". But as soon as I hung up I got a call from the driver because the address they had given him was a park, so I was able to redirect him and get my food after all.

***

We have reached the part of the winter where I start to worry that I have run out of places to put snow. My yard is maybe five feet square and the snow is already piled up in a pyramid.

I keep wanting to go out with a hose and ice it up and build an igloo or something.

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can't wait to see your follow through

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 04:09:07 GMT

Achievement unlock!

Storage room was emptied with the help of a friend on the weekend - perfect timing because today was the billing date for the rental. (Everybody should have at least one Ukrainian friend. Every Ukrainian import I've ever met, if you ask them if they have time for a favour, they're immediately, "I can be there in 20 minutes.") This is the last of the big stash to be cleared out and organized. My house is once again full of crap but I've got most of it already sorted into piles to keep, give away, throw away, or incorporate into The Stuff.

Keep: One of the things I inherited from my mother was a tall skinny china cabinet. I cleaned all the dust off and polished the glass and it's now set up on my ground floor - a little dinged up from being dragged around but a touch of paint should fix it right up. She filled it with crystal glasses and clocks shaped like shamrocks. I'll probably fill it with skulls and gargoyles. Maybe dioramas from Hieronymus Bosch. Haven't decided yet.

Give Away: A couple of big bags of sweaters and blankets to go to the drop-in centre, so good timing on that as well. A big bag of shoes that will go to the drop-in next summer because they have no storage space. Neighbours have already called dibs on a few things I posted to the local group. There is also a big box of photos, so I will pull those out for my family to go through as they are conveniently all in my house next weekend.

The Stuff: This is what I call the things where I go, "That is future me's problem" and stick it in a corner. Furniture that will either go into the (some day) finished basement or will be re-homed if it's not needed, boxes of art that's going to get re-hung after I've patched/repainted the damaged walls, boxes of planters and exterior decorations I want to go through for setting up the new deck in the spring, boxes of material and sewing supplies I'm going to dig into mmn, maybe next winter if I'm being completely honest.

The Stuff is... I'm not going to lie, The Stuff takes up a lot of room and my sister likes to pull one thing out of the pile and hold it up and go, "WHAT ARE YOU KEEPING THIS FOR" and she's not wrong entirely, but... also I have been dealing with my own hoarding tendencies for a long time and this I absolutely know, I will throw it away when I am good and fucking ready and not one minute before.

(Also, if somebody stands up and says "EXPLAIN YOURSELF" my immediate instinctual reaction is No, Fuck You. So that doesn't help her get the response she's looking for.)

***

Achievement unlock #2, no hot water this morning. Of course the corridor to get back to the tank was filled with storage room stuff, so I moved that, and then sat on the floor to read the instructions on the sticker that was conveniently located 6 inches from the very bottom of the tank. Last time I had to light a pilot I was much bendier, but also I had to unscrew a side panel and then stick a match into the space under the tank. This just required pressing a bunch of buttons in a very specific order. The technology is much improved, IMHO.

Then I realized I had an appointment in 40 minutes and there was a mad scramble to get out of the house in time and I forgot every single other thing I was going to do today.

(Side Note: And holy crap it was cold outside today! My fingers went numb after about 30 seconds.)

***

I think the cat is losing weight again. I've noticed his appetite has dropped off in the last couple of weeks. I checked the label on his prescription and it expired in December, so I'm hoping that he just needs a fresh batch. He has a date with the vet tomorrow and I'll be picking up a new bottle, but I'm going to bring it up with them.

Other than that, his energy level is fine and he's still playful. And he will still roll me for his treats. So hopefully this is a temporary setback.

***

I don't talk about the news much on here. It's a lot. I've been watching the news and the on-the-ground videos and following my friends and... yeah. I don't talk about it much because I don't have much to say, but I'm still paying attention.

I yell at politicians. My MP can't even be arsed to acknowledge my messages and I'm sure her staff are getting tired of me. I think one day when I have the spoons I'll go to her office, it's not far from here. Then when she calls me a peon and dismisses my opinions, she'll at least have to do it to my face.

(I mostly hate her because she originally got her seat by claiming to be an environmentalist, but she has spent her term defending every decision to to buy a pipeline and subsidize oil sand development. Because her job is more important than her principles.)

***

I've been talking to the gf a lot about retirement. She's pretty much done with her job, and ready to call it a day. Honestly I could say the same. I mean I don't actually mind the job but I think about all the things that I could be doing with my time instead. Taking classes, learning skills, getting involved in community stuff, making things. Working is such a waste of time, never more so than when one can see how much is left.

But first I have to get this house bullshit finished with. Then I can sit down and figure out when I can afford to quit working. Maybe talk to HR, even going part-time for a bit might work out financially.

***

Media stuff:
GF and I finished watching The Morning Show. I love this show so much, mostly because there are SO MANY messy, complicated, multi-layered women. Jennifer Aniston plays a character who is often completely unlikable and yet there are so many times in the story when the viewer is dragged 100% into her corner.

Last week we watched the first two episodes of Pluribus. My take was; I wouldn't want that for myself, but it would make for a much better world to live in for everybody else. I'd probably finally take the opportunity to travel a lot - it's not like any of my family or friends would miss me.

Just started reading This Is How You Lose The Time War. I'm just a couple of chapters in. What a weird and fabulous book.

I've also started reading Wheel Of Time since the series was cancelled. I'm about a quarter of the way through Book 2. Honestly I probably wouldn't have stuck with the series on the strength of Book 1 alone, but already I think I like Book 2 better.

This would get my strung up by the bookcloaks but I can really see why the series changed so much. There is a lot of material in the book that is interesting to read, but it would get in the way of telling the story in a visual format. (And also the series would be 400 seasons long and feature lots of riding through countryside while feeling creepy. So. Yeah.)

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I speak machine

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 04:04:16 GMT

Still not King.

Did birthday dinner with the gf. I realized at some point like... maybe a month ago? That I spent the entire past year telling people I was the age I actually am this year. How am I SO BAD at dates that I get my own age wrong for an entire year? I can't even blame senility, I have always been like this.

***

Finally heard back from the permit wrangler. He spoke to the engineer and the answer is no, he will not sign off on the work. This doesn't shock me. He told me the fucking contractor didn't even follow the blueprints that were used to get the permits, so he has no confidence that the foundations were actually built to spec.

So permit wrangler says he's going to go back to the city and try once again to get in touch with the original contractor. I really appreciate his commitment to trying to find a better solution, but at this point I'm kinda resigned that I'm just have to tear up the floor. I just want to get it over with.

***

So in the meantime I'm still here just cleaning and de-cluttering the rest of the house. Got a wild hair up my ass to pull apart the corner of my office where my weight bench sits and was able to vanquish much dust and dried cat-puke.

I still have too much fucking stuff. This would be simpler if I didn't have such a huge aversion to just tossing stuff into landfill. This is partially the environmentalist side of me, and partially because there was a time in my life when a third-hand hotplate might have actually saved my life. So I have trouble throwing out a perfectly functional hotplate when somebody out there might be in the same position I was in 30+ years ago. But you know, figuring how to get rid of this stuff takes time and so... Things leave, but in much smaller boxes than if I just hired a bloody dumpster.

***

The plus side of not being able to do house construction work is that I have have been spending a lot more time on my b-list, which is 1) plants and 2) family tree. The kitchen island is so huge that I have been able to devote an entire half of it to a bunch of pots that I have seeded with herbs. I installed grow lights in the chandelier[1], so it's going to be an experiment.

[1]Hauled my wobbly ass up a ladder. Did not fall off. Victory achieved.

I had the brilliant idea that if I started tossing birdseed on the deck outside my office, I would give Lord Brock something to look at that would distract him from screaming at me for attention while I'm working. This has backfired spectacularly, because now he climbs onto the window-ledge and screams at me to make the birds happen.

***

On the plus side, digging through my family tree has led me to discovering the other out queer person in my family which is pretty cool. (Statistically I figured it was unlikely I was the only one, especially given just how big Irish Catholic families tend to be.)

A question I hadn't anticipated; I keep coming across generations where there are multiple people with the same name but different birth-dates. I'm trying to figure out if they are cases where one source I'm drawing from has the wrong birth year, or if there were families where they re-used names when babies died. Like there is a French branch were they seem to have named half the boys after the father but with different middle names. Was that real? Was that just Anglos fucking up non-English names? (That happened so often with the Irish names, I don't have any problem believing they also did it to the French.) Or am I finding birth records, but not their death records in families where infant mortality was really high?

Also, I have no explanation for how researching my family name led me to an Irish vampire movie, but now I really want to see this film.

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get your brits out

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 04:53:14 GMT

Engineer visited. He was... not encouraging.

I swear, if I ever run into this contractor ever again, I'm going to punch him right in the dick.

I'm not sure what happens next. Engineer said he would talk to permit wrangler and see what they could come up with, but that hasn't happened yet. I suspect he's trying to close out a bunch of work for end-of-year, so hopefully early next month there will be a plan.

***

Walked past a dog park on my way to the gf's a couple of days ago and a few of the owners had laced LEDs in different colours through their dogs' collars. It gets dark at 4:30 in Toronto, so all I could see were these clusters of bobbing lights running around in circles. It honestly took me a while to figure out what I was looking at.

Fucking genius to be frank.

***

Physio continues to go really well. I'm now running into the problem where I have been off my feet for so long they are a bit de-conditioned from walking so I'm getting sore arches and blisters as I get back into it. S'fine, I know that part is temporary.

( cut for brief weight talk )

***

I don't know if the news elsewhere is talking about it, but this year's version of the flu killed a couple of kids here in Canada, so it's getting talked about. It's either mutating faster than usual or the vaccine wasn't exactly for the right strain, because it's dodging the vaccine and it's an especially nasty version.

So my dad's wife has laid down the law about masking if family wants to visit him this winter and I am very relieved. I plan to remind everybody prior to the "official" Xmas dinner that they need to mask for the couple of weeks after New Years and partying like it's 1919.

***

I finally opened up the ancestry account and I've been futzing around with it a bit. My brief exposure to people who get into genealogy is that it's mostly retirees who take it up as a hobby and I can see why - it's time consuming. (Maybe possibly being from an Irish Catholic family where everybody has 12 kids does not help with that.)

So far I've found a bunch of relations that hie'd off to the USA and one possible connection to Australia. I'm mostly mining other peoples' family trees at the moment. There is a higher level membership that gets you access to newspaper archives, I figure I'll do that one when I've collected enough hints to make it worthwhile.

***

Spent too much time listening to Kneecap and now the Youtube algorithm is sending me Irish language bands.

I have no complaints.

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you choose such a backward time

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 01:13:39 GMT

There's a store on Queen Street that has a sign out front that says "Ice-cream fixes everything."

Yesterday I walked past a bistro on my way to the gf's place that said "Wine fixes everything".

I am prepared to review their respective arguments, especially if said arguments are made via wine and ice cream.

***

Note that I said "walked" in that story, because I am WALKING again, no cane required. My physiotherapist is fucking magic. I'm still on a bit of a leash so I don't overdo it, but the gf's condo is a 25 minute walk from my house and not only did I walk there, I walked home after and my foot felt fine this morning.

Plans to set the entire world on fire may be temporarily placed on hold as a result.

***

Got my boosters last week. Spent most of my spare time for the next three days sleeping. My immune system calmed down eventually but the first day at work was kinda rough.

***

My dad is doing much better and his wife decided he doesn't need the hospital bed since it's a rental. She was planning to buy him a regular bed, but since I still have the Old Man's old bed frame in my storage locker I offered that one. My sister has a pickup truck, so the two of us hauled it over and set it up.

We're both encouraging her to look into moving to a condo but she's not really receptive to the idea. Thing is, she's also running out of the ability to take care of the place, especially since she's doing it alone and taking care of my dad at the same time. She already hires people to deal with the yard.

***

Still waiting on engineer.

***

( cut for the endless gauntlet of house shit )

***

I have the overwhelming desire to put together a playlist for my family's Xmas dinner. This desire was sparked by hearing Laibach's version of Jesus Christ Superstar on Twitch tonight.

C'mon, it would be hilarious.

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in the middle of our street

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 04:52:56 GMT

Did not hear from engineer today. Fingers crossed for next week.

Visiting dad got put off until tomorrow so that meant I got to spend some more time sorting out the basement bathroom. I got the caulking done and... boy, I am not good at that. I was thinking if I got the hang of it I would also add some to the kitchen tiles where the contractor missed it but... no. I have gained many new skills during this phase of dealing with the house, but this is definitely not one of them. It looks like I put it on drunk.

Big stack o' paper has been sorted out and divided into things I am keeping for tax purposes, things I am keeping for insurance purposes, things I am keeping for grant purposes, and things I just threw onto the stack because I didn't know what else to do with it. I'll do the actual scanning and uploading on erm, maybe Sunday.

I also spent some time going through my credit card statements last night looking for proof I had paid a couple of bills and in the process I discovered that I have some charges I don't recognize. They're for small amounts which is why I didn't spot them earlier, but there are a bunch of them. Two different small companies in the US and when I looked at their websites they use the exact same templates. Everything is identical except for the text and the photos. I sent one of them a 'hey, who are you' email and got an immediate auto-response saying if I was disputing a charge I should list all my email addresses and my credit card number so they can look it up.

(Also? One of the websites sold makeup. I think the last time I wore makeup was 2010.)

So. That card got cancelled. I put in a fraud claim and hopefully I get the money back.

***

Physio is going really really well. I've stopped using the cane for short walks and so far my foot is holding up great. I cannot tell you how fantastic it is to be able to move normally again, even if just for short distances.

Every time I go to the physiotherapist we go over the exercises I'm doing and she adds a slight modification that makes it slightly more difficult and apparently my body really likes being challenged because it's making a huge difference. And then she spends 20 minutes doing what she calls "deep tissue work" which is code for finding every single sensitive spot in my foot and lower calf and using it as a platform to balance her entire body weight on her elbow.

Fuckit, if it's working, I'll take it.

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another to-do list

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 05:11:18 GMT

( stuff. miles and miles of stuff )

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the victory of optimism over experience

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 05:18:50 GMT

There's always at least one task on my to-list that I really really don't want to do. Usually because it requires sitting down for an extended stretch of hours and figuring out what the fuck happened so I can then figure out how to fix it.

Back when the house nonsense started I applied for a grant being offered by the federal government to make your house more energy efficient. Since I was going from UN-insulated wooden box to an insulated wooden box I figured I would qualify for at least some money.

Well that was a whole Prime Minister ago, and after two extensions and lots of missed targets I finally got the final energy audit done this summer. Something went wrong though and the application was never completed so I sat down today and dug through a stack of email attachments to figure out what was missing. I think I'm on the right track, so wish me luck I can get it fixed. A few bucks to offset the money pit would be very very useful.

Next on the donwanna list is compiling the full list of contracts and bills and fix-it work that has had to be done. If I can get a comprehensive list together of what has and hasn't been done up to today's date it will be easier to add to it as things go forward.

***

Nothing yet from the city inspector. I spoke to the permit-wrangler and he left a message with her on Friday, so hopefully she gets back to him this coming work week.

I haven't done much in the basement while I've been waiting to hear back, so that means I have time to finally put my living spaces in better order. Lots of moving furniture and cleaning up cat puke. Finally made homes for a stack of pots and pans that have just been living on top of the stove. And I finally installed the new front door lock that's been sitting in a drawer and waiting for me to deal with it for um, about 18 months.

***

My sister got an email from a woman in Australia who said her DNA test with ancestry.com showed a match. I'm pretty sure my mother told me we had relatives in Australia but I don't know how we're connected with the little info I have. I had an old free version of ancestry that didn't have much info on it, so I upgraded to a paid version and now I just need to find time to start adding stuff to it.

I have an aunt who is charge of remembering all the family members and how everybody is related so once I have a skeleton together I'll reach out to her and see if she can fill in things like how many kids my cousins have, because I have no clue.

It's a project I've been meaning to get around to for pretty much years. But maybe I'll have a little bit more free time this winter.

***

Physio still going really well. Crossing my fingers I'll be back to normal in a couple of months.

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To-Do List

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 16:04:56 GMT

( nothing to see here )

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nothing is sacred nothing is safe

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 05:35:35 GMT

Welp, it has been a week.

I didn't really plan ahead for the day after NaDruWriNi, so I had to drag myself out of bed to work on Sunday. I woke up to a message that my dad was in the hospital. The medical issue was dealt with promptly, which is good. Thursday they announced they would be sending him home the next day.

Problem being, he has been getting weaker really fast and after almost a week in bed we were worried he wasn't safe to go up stairs on his own - they live in a two-story row house. So his wife rented him a bed and equipment to set him up in the living room. Since I'm the only family member who doesn't work Fridays I went over to haul furniture around and make space for the delivery. Their 100+ year old house has a staircase that gets narrower as you get higher, something I discovered while hauling a marble-topped fucking table up the stairs. (They've lived there for 30+ years and they have SO MUCH stuff.)

But room was made, bed was installed with no issue, and today the rest of the family showed up to finish organizing, hang a privacy curtain, and install some child-gates and locks. He was wobbly and exhausted when he got home on Friday, but reports are that he's a lot stronger today after a good sleep.

***

Meanwhile I got a call from permit-wrangler that he was showing up at the house on Monday with the inspector and to have the blueprints available. Last I heard she (the inspector) was going to talk to her boss about what could be done. I haven't heard anything back, but I'll follow up on Monday so cross your fingers for me.

I haven't done anything more in that basement room since I figure I'll wait to see if I have to rip it all out first. So today was spent trying to sort out my shit on the first floor. I'm trying to make enough room that I can empty out the storage unit, because that will save me just under $300 a month.

***

I spoke to a friend who spent the summer dealing with a broken ankle and he gave me the name of the physiotherapy clinic he goes to - which just happens to be barely a block from my house. The woman I met with came to the conclusion that the plantar faciitis is actually healing just fine - but that at some point my achilles got involved, and that's what is now causing the majority of my problems. She's been treating that for the last two weeks and holy shit, it is SO MUCH better. I'm still using the cane to protect the plantar fascia because that's not 100% yet, but already have so much less pain. Halle-fucking-lujah.

***

Goths Against Fascism are raising money for the National Immigration Law Centre this weekend. So listening to tunes after a day of hauling my own furniture around.

As I posted elsewhere, I would like my times to be less interesting now please.

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Fashion Plate: Chapter Five

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 07:23:26 GMT

Dione! Bed!

Turning off my alarm clock for tomorrow because oucyh.

( final chapter )

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Fashion Plate: Chapter Four

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 07:12:03 GMT

At least one more gin & tonic went into this chapter.

Everybody else hsa buggered off to bed and I really want to be done so I can do that too.

( chapter four )

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Fashion Plate: Chapter Three

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 06:47:14 GMT

I have legit lost track of where I am.

I think two gin & tonics went into this chapter. Ish

( chapter three )

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Fashion Plate: Chapter Two

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 03:21:14 GMT

I have just finished the wine and will now be moving on to the gin & tonic

I am now at the point where I only vaguely know what's going to happen, but if I keep drinking I'll figure it out, right? Right. Onward.

( chapter two )

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Fashion Plate: Chapter One

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 01:18:15 GMT

I am drinking my third glass of wine. I usually start earlier, but I've been running behind schedule all week, so here we are.

Maerchen1313 is doing an hour-long stream in the middle of her writing night and she is hilarious. Right now she's talking about writing a poem about sheep in her walls.

( chapter one )

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NaDruWriNi point O

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 23:44:48 GMT

Right. NaDruWriNi

Rules here

I am on my second glass of wine. What shall I write about?

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toys for mad scientists

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 16:06:47 GMT

Huh

I have picked up enough points from the workplace awards program that I could get a free 3-D printer.

Hmmm

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