the_siobhan | Entries tagged with the gin palace

HOUSE

Painting is taking longer than normal because the humidity is 5 billion percent. I put spackle on the wall that claimed to dry in 8 hours, tried to sand it 24 hours later and it was still soft. So I've been letting stuff dry for longer than normal between coats.

BUT. The new room in the basement is 100% done with patching & painting.

The old room - the one the contractors weren't supposed to do anything to - needed several coats of heavy primer because they wrote all their measurements all over the walls in marker for some reason. I'm doing the trim in there next weekend and then that room is done. The bathroom is also patched and I'm going to give it one more layer of primer.

Then we wait while the The Final ~~Boss~~Contractor does his work on the steps etc. There are some odds and ends to take care of still - like swapping out fixtures - but that will wait until the contractors are done in the basement.

CAT

ALL of the elderly furball's tests came back with flying colours and I have been told to reduce his steroids down to a fifth of his previous dosage. I found a duck-flavoured hypo-allergenic wet food he will tolerate, and he likes the hypo-allergenic treats. So that's going really well. He now has enough energy to follow me around the house and yell at me non-stop because just like with my human family, I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing.

A thing he has decided that I find absolutely hilarious; we are supposed to eat together. Like a family, dammit. I have been able to get away with eating at my desk because there isn't an easy way for him to sit next to me, but when I'm on the couch I have to set a plate out for him at the same time I have my supper. I think it's hilarious that this is a thing and he probably thinks I am very stupid that it took me this long to figure it out.

ME

Foot seems to be actually improving, in that it's still stiff as hell when I get up in the morning but it really doesn't hurt much any more unless I do something exceptionally stupid, like forget to take my cane on my mandatory in-office day.

Now that the work on the house is getting to the point where it's less urgent I am going to start setting aside time to exercise again because I am a bundle of raw nerve endings. I was dealing with that by doing a lot of walking, but obviously that plan fell right off a cliff. So I'm going to try and get back on the stationary bicycle more regularly and maybe that will stop me from chewing the ends of my fingers off.

One can hope.

Got my orthotics today. My foot still hurts. This is taking too long to sort itself out and I wish to register a complaint.

***

Lord Brock has figured out what time steroid dosing happens and has started reminding me about it because he knows he'll get treats immediately after. He still hates getting medicated, but he hates it so much less than the gabapentin (I think it tasted worse) that he will almost barely tolerate it and then happily snarffle up the treats once the dosing part is done with.

***

Roof repairs unlocked. Dude also does the kind of work needed for the stairs so he's going to give me a quote for that as well. AND he thinks he can work with his plumber to drop the sump pump into the floor properly so it takes up less space and won't leave an open water feature in the room. He send me some links with examples of what he wants to do, and honestly it would be a huge improvement.

***

Project raccoon did NOT go as originally planned. Original contractor had said that the stairs would just flip up so I could clean underneath them. No, not so much.

The problem is that the wooden stairs are basically a triangle set in a sunken concrete hole. The back/top of the stairs is supported by a piece of wood in the shape of a T. To get under them you have to pull the whole thing towards the interior door to make room behind the triangle to flip it up on it's back. Only the T isn't solid enough, when I tried it the bottom of the wood stayed in the same spot while the top cracked and splintered. I was able to climb to the top and kind of kick the T forward but not far enough to make room to flip it. So I could stand there and hold the stairs up, because they're not heavy, but I couldn't get under it at the same time.

Yesterday and today daughter came over to work on the yard, and this afternoon the ex-housemate & their wife dropped by to pick up some government forms that had been delivered to the house. So the four of us picked up the stairs bodily and moved them out of the staircase. The ex-housemate has anosmia, so they volunteered to shovel up the very very decayed raccoon. Garbage day isn't for another two weeks so we just dumped him out by the railroad tracks and covered him with dirt. And then shovelled up the accumulated mud and vermin that had collected under the stairs and dropped it in the same spot.

It was so gross, y'all. So gross. But it's out of my basement doorway now and it's in a spot where it will be unlikely to bother anybody except the occasional passing coyote.

The daughter and I spent the next three hours digging the drainage pit. I found the sand layer I was hoping for, and then underneath that (about four feet down) is a layer of a broken shist which I think will work even better. We have probably about 80% of the trench dug out - one more day should be enough to finish if off. Then I'll line it with cinderblocks and start filling it in with rocks. The trench is probably four times as big as I'll need to be in any normal year, but since 100-year storms are coming every 10 years now (and probably every 2 by the time I ever leave this house) it seems like a good investment of labour.

Entertainment was provided by a juvenile robin that realized all that turned earth was a worm goldmine and got increasingly braver about getting close enough to us to grab them as the day progressed.

Then we ate our own weight in pizza.

Needless to say, every part of me hurts after two days of digging, so I'm taking tomorrow off doing any more building/fixing things. Chores only. And I might check with the local massage clinic to see if they have a free spot because I know I'm going to feel like somebody worked me over with my own shovel.

Steroids are fucking magic, yo. They have returned my cat to his normal bitchy emotionally needy self. They have also taken most of the stabbing out of my foot so I can walk without limping, at least while I'm moving around the house. I cheated a bit and put some of the foot cream on my arm because I officially overdid it with the shovelling, and as a result I can now lift a water glass without wincing.

What a country.

Upper third of my yard is now graded and seeded. My daughter came over and helped. She's not getting a lot of hours at work so she has an open invitation to come over and help me move dirt from one place to another whenever she wants to make a few bucks and be given beer and dinner. It works out well for both of us.

Basement guys came back today - they said they figured they had about three hours of work to finish. More swearing in Polish ensued. In the end they were in my basement for eight hours, but they got it all done. They had to build entirely new frames to hang the doors from and there was at least one hardware store trip to replace borked parts in the storm door and BOY HOWDY did they have something to say about that, but everything is now perfect and the basement apartment has functional doors that work and close and lock and everything.

Next step: I got somebody to come over and have a look at finishing the wood work. This consists of:
1. The stairs from the kitchen door to the backyard. Currently about a three foot drop, which I have been climbing up and down but that's not a perfect long term solution. (Especially in winter.)
2. The stairs from the basement apartment into the yard, are flimsy, wobbly, and don't have any hand rails so they are definitely not code. They are also resting on a base of wooden slats that just randomly shift if you put your weight in the wrong spot. I have no fucking idea what Original Contractor was even thinking. They need to be replaced with something that will pass a city inspection and that also will not kill you when you try to use them.
3. I want to put some kind of a sound-proof bench over the sump pump, because that fucker is loud. Also I figure an exposed ginormous battery is possibly a safety hazard of some kind. So the guy who looked at it said they can build something that acts as a solid bench but you can flip the top up if it needs maintenance, which sounds perfect.
4. My original blueprints include a deck on the kitchen roof. That would be really nice if I can swing it, but we'll see how much this all costs. Mainly it would be an additional place for me to grow herbs and stuff so it's in the "nice to have" pile.

( CUT FOR GROSS, SERIOUSLY YOU WERE WARNED )

Every time I see my doctor she asks me how the Not Drinking is going and every single time I'm all, FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK.

Workmen arrived at 9:00 this morning to install three (3) doors and finish off the framing of one (1) window. Ostensibly less than a day of work for two people.

Lords, ladies, and gentlethems, it is now 9:30 PM and they just left and only one door and the window are finished. Original Contractor did something funky with the framing of the doorways and nothing is squared properly and so they have to buy some more materials and come back later in the week to finish fixing it.

There was shouting. In Polish I think. They are very clearly not impressed with Original Contractor.

Any vindication I might have felt that Original Contractor was in fact just making it up as he went along is somewhat overshadowed that I have to pay tradie's rates for a second day of work.

CAT!

Lord Brock is now on prednisone. (I remember the name because it's the same steroid my sister was treated with when doctors first diagnosed her auto-immune disorder.) Two days later he was eating his weight in chicken and four days later he is following me around the house and yelling at me like nothing happened. Complete turn-around. Fingers crossed this is the magic bullet.

HOUSE!

Inching along. Work on getting the walls and doors fixed was delayed by days of rain, but dude promised he'd be here first thing tomorrow morning. Haven't heard from roof guy, probably for the same reasons. I have started calling around for quotes to get the stairs built from the kitchen.

ME!

I have shit feet. They hurt pretty much all the time, but lately they've been extra special painful. So off I hobbled to a podiatrist, who immediately told me I have plantar fasciitis. This is a Latin phrase that roughly translates to "shit feet".

I can't even blame age for this one.

He gave me stretches, a prescription that has to be compounded, and an order to stay off my feet. So far I have managed one of those three things. Eventually I will manage to find a compounding pharmacy in this city that is open more than two hours a week, but not walking is going to be harder.

Hopefully my insurance will pay for orthotics. But I draw a hard line at Birkenstocks.

Haven't posted for a while, mostly because I've been working my ass off.

I had the week off and once again planned to get some work done on the house. This time I wanted to get the backyard sorted. My daughter came over at the start of the week, and the two of us spent two days pulling up the waist-high weeds in the hot sun. We filled five yard waste bags and I put cardboard over the bare dirt around the house. I did some initial raking around the house to try and slope the soil away from the walls. Somebody is coming over this week to finish the covering on the bottom of the exterior walls - once he's done I'll finish raking the dirt so at least the upper part of the yard is properly graded and then I'll toss some clover seeds all over it. That should hopefully help keep water out of the basement.

Then on Wednesday it started to rain.

And rain and rain and rain.

Thursday the ex-housemate came over and the two of us worked all day in the pour. The sump pump was dumping massive amounts of water into the yard and it was just - collecting on top of all that thick clay until the backyard turned into a flood zone. We built a clay dam along the fence to keep it out of the neighbours' yard and dug a six-foot long trench under the pump outlet. It's just a big water-filled pit right now, but at least it managed to keep the water in one spot.

Then we dug another long trench for my vegetable garden. We framed it with the wood the contractor had left lying around. I filled the bottom with the branches that had been left behind by the felled tree, and mixed four bags of composted manure into the dirt. It's covered with cardboard right now, just waiting for my seedlings to get big enough to plant.

When the backyard dries out enough I'll deepen the trench and fill it with rocks. Both of us vaguely remember from when we built a pig-roasting pit years ago - and the vegetable garden digging seems to confirm - that there's a sand layer about 3-4 feet down, so if I can get the trench that deep the water might actually drain instead of flooding. That's a project for later in the summer though, right now it's just a sea of mud.

Apart from the bags of weeds I have also have two extra bags of trash to put out this week, just from the garbage that the original contractor left behind. Apparently they just dumped all their left-over coffee cups and pop cans and chunks of plastic and scrap wood and metal onto the ground and threw the clay fill right on top of it. More than once after prying the imploded corpse of a bucket of drywall compoud out of the ground with a spade I felt the urge to stand upright, fists clenched at my sides, and shout at the uncaring sky, "Who Raised These People?!"

***

Got my head eplayed, so the vertigo is considerably less than it was.

Still managed to hit me a couple of times this week because I spent most of it digging, and there is nothing like being half-bent over a watery trench with a shovel full of heavy mud to make one's inner ear decide now is the time to send one's sense of "up" into a random dimension. I managed not to actually tip over, although I did have a couple of episodes of just having to tripod with the shovel until the world stopped spinning.

***

Lord Brock is - not great. He ended up having an endoscopy on Wednesday, which found a large mass in his duodenum. Now I'm just waiting on the biopsy results. In the meantime, he's on a steady diet of painkillers and appetite stimulants just to keep him eating.

I'm bracing myself for bad news.

I have decided I do not like drywall.

It would probably be fine if I was just dealing with flat slabs, but corners are fiddly and a pain in the ass. At least now I can say I know how.

( keeping track of house progress )

When I dug out my cold room I found a bunch of old seeds I collected last time I grew tomatoes. I assumed most of them would be dead after all this time, so I threw them into some dirt to see if any of them were still alive.

I may have miscalculated slightly.

(Anybody need any tomato plants?)

The aloe pups you see in the background are because one of my aloe plants decided she really needs to make her mark on the world. Fortunately the neighbourhood yard sale is in late May and I always put a box of cuttings on my lawn for people to take for free. I am going to have several boxes to contribute this year.

Accomplishments Unlocked:

My first ever attempt at mudding drywall. Getting that shit smooth is a skill people - mine looks like a Joy Division album cover. (I figure I'll just slap on multiple layers and it will all wash out in the sanding, right?)

Plumber called that the parts are in so he'll be here tomorrow

Got a somebody to build the frame around the exposed pipe in the basement, he'll be here on Sunday

I contacted a few places about making the doors since they are odd sizes so they have to be custom-built. Prize goes to the guy who got back to me right away, was really clear and helpful, and was able to make recommendations.

Door-making guy mentioned the possibility I might need a fire door downstairs since it's on the same floor as the furnace and the laundry room. (Apparently laundry rooms are the second highest source of fires after kitchens.) After many emails and phone calls to the city, the Fire Marshall's office, and the engineer who drew the original blueprints I have -- three completely different answers. Head, meet your faithful companion, desk. I'm going to go with the one from the Fire Marshall, since if I get in trouble they'll be the ones doing the inspection.

---

Somebody who hasn't been following me since the start of this nonsense asked for the background on the house. So to summarize:

( the saga of the Gin Palace )

It's a warm today and I am itchy and sweaty. I have spent two days in the shed, pulling out boxes and cleaning up spider webs and mouse poop. SO MUCH MOUSE POOP. And one dead mouse.

I'm taking a break right now. when I go back outside I'll stack the things that I know are staying out there onto the shelves and finish taking the rest of it into the house. Then I'll finish going through the boxes. This is the last place in the house to be cleaned out and I've already found the paining supplies box, so I'll make a list of whatever I'm missing and tomorrow I'll hit the hardware store. I'll also be able to make the final get-things-out-of-the-house push so maybe that will make some room to empty the storage unit. We'll see.

While I'm working I'm also taking pictures of all the stuff the contractor didn't finish. I keep noticing new things, like spotting a new light switch leading me to a light fixture that was never installed. I should also take screenshots of the text messages where I repeatedly asked for receipts I never got.

Everything is taking too long. I keep offering to give money to people for help and they keep not showing up. Which in itself is frustrating. Like if you're not available, fine! But tell me so I can make other plans!

Lord Brock is doing well except for shouting at me whenever I come back from outside because how dare I not be in the room when he decides he wants to sit on me.

I should probably book a massage on the last day of the week. I already feel like somebody beat me up and it's only Tuesday.

Right. Back to the salt mines.

Lord Brock has been checked into the hospital for the night. The vet wants to give him fluids, and given his heart murmur that is apparently a risky treatment so they are doing it gradually and under observation.

He stopped eating again and giving him the meds I came home with last time only got a few small nibbles into him. All he wanted to do was sleep, which is pretty much what I want to do when I'm not feeling well.

This will cost me approximately three million dollars. I'm trying not think about that part. That's why credit cards were invented right?

After I dropped him off I figured maybe I could salvage some usefulness out of the day, so I started walking towards the storage unit to grab a couple of things. About an hour into the walk I got really light-headed and clammy and I started to panic. Was something wrong with me as well, did I catch something and give it to the cat, cat's can catch covid, what have I done...

And then I realized that I had been so worried about being ready to leave the house the second I got the callback from the vet - I forgot to eat all day.

Caught the bus home, shoved some food in my face, I am fine. Just a dumbass.

I was told to expect a callback with an update when the night shift finishes. At 7 AM on a Saturday. Ugh. For somebody who didn't get much useful done all day I'm still friggin' exhausted, so just as well I'll want to go to bed early tonight.

Current Mood: tension

Yesterday was indeed 18+ degrees. I chivied myself out of the house as soon as work was done and walked up to the farmer's market. It was lovely.

Today is also lovely and I threw open all the windows to get some air in the place while I worked. And to let some dust out, because today was more basement. I have now cleared out all the space in the coldroom and have uncovered 1) many more tools including a screwdriver set that is so old the case is made of actual metal instead of plastic 2) more painting supplies including some drop cloths that will definitely come in handy 3) a bow? I only can only guess this is from the LARP that one of the ex-housemates plays. There were some lanterns and a brass oil lamp along with it. (I rubbed the lamp. Alas, it was all out of genie.) 4) a fire-proof safe that has been locked for over a decade and the chance of ever finding the keys gets smaller with every room I clean 5) a stack of plant pots and digging tools 6) more spiders and 7) SO MUCH MOUSE POOP. I was wearing a mask because of the dust and I am really glad I did because I do not need hanta virus. SO MUCH POOP.

The bins and boxes of Stuff are piled at the bottom of the basement stairs while I wait for the dust to settle. Tomorrow I'll wipe it all down and make the keep/throw away decisions. The garbage bin is already full again for the third time just from broken plastic and mouldy chunks of carpet. (Garbage pick-up here is only once a fortnight, and there are extra fees if you want to throw out more than fits in one bin AND I have the smallest sized bin because I almost never use it.)

I'll have to see if I can get a locksmith to open the safe. Somebody dropping off a safe and saying, yeah it's mine but I lost the key seems kinda dodgy to me, but I'm sure I'm not the first person in the world to ever run into this problem.

(Bet I open it and it's full of mouse poop.)

I am absolutely crusty with dust and there are spider webs in my hair. This THIS is what I got the new water heater for.

Current Mood: dusty

It snowed today. It's supposed to be 19 tomorrow. WTF Toronto, go home you're drunk.

The new hot water tank was installed yesterday. It's very shiny and not rusty. More importantly, I was able to take a shower where the water stayed hot right up until the very end. Luxury!

I had a moment of concern when I asked the installers where they had put the old tank. "Oh it's gone to the scrapyard." Uh, it was a rental? And they might want it back? But I called the company that owned it and when they realized how old it was they went yeah, fair enough. So that's sorted.

Ex-housemate was in town for a couple of days dealing with medical stuff, so they came by today. They took away as much of their stuff as would fit in a backpack. They also dropped off a switch that lets me run multiple computers through a single monitor/keyboard/mouse setup, so that means I can pack away the jury-rigged setup I had on my desk for switching between my work and personal systems AND I can now use the unneeded peripherals to more comfortably set up streaming to my television. This is all somewhat self-indulgent compared to the rest of the work that needs to be done in the house, but I had a folding table set up behind my chair so I could switch back and forth between the computer that has all my receipts and the old Windows box that was the only one that could read my old tax forms so I could make sure everything was filed correctly and now I don't have to do that.

Now that I think about it, that also means I can play games again if I want to! I might make another attempt at WoW - the one time I tried I bounced off the racism pretty hard, but if I can find a start point that has slightly less of that maybe I can get to a level where some of friends are playing. (Insert your faction / server / guild recommendations here.)

The venerable Lord Brock was so happy to see the ex-housemate that he howled like an air-raid siren for an hour straight. I am convinced that cat is broken.

Tuesday was the last day I had booked off from work. It ended up being an ice-cream-for-dinner kind of day. I had plans to catch up on housework and instead my brain said "NOPE. You're taking the day off."

Yesterday I got the forms I needed for the last of the tax info, so that's now done. Once I hear back from them I can sort out whatever balance there might be and close the bank account.

Today I tried to put the bathtub plug back together but it no longer seals, so that's a trip to the hardware store. I also scrubbed the layers of paint, crusted drywall mud, and hardened caulk from the bathroom sink and emptied out the cupboard underneath - more stuff to go in a box for the ex-housemate. Cleared some more boxes out of the cold room, evicted some more spiders, started sorting tools into labelled boxes.

Hitting the shed or anything at all to do with the yard will have to wait until next week - it's supposed to be freezing rain all weekend. Traditionally we get one last snowfall in April (and Torontonians are shocked and appalled at the treachery of the weather every single time) but for the last two years it's just been rain instead. So maybe this is it for winter. Who knows any more.

Appointment was made for the water tank to get swapped out on Tuesday morning, so before I do anything else tomorrow I need to remember to clear the path between the basement door and the current tank. There are several stacks of flooring in the way right now and it's not super heavy but it's awkward and floppy to carry. I'll stick it in the apartment and worry about what I'm doing with it later.

I am very tired of ALL THIS but also... it's kind of exciting to be getting closer the end of it. I can see progress every time I touch something.

Current Mood: dusted

I just walked past a window and did a double-take - there is snow all over everything. I had the doors and windows thrown open earlier today because it wasn't overly cold and I was busy raising clouds of dust all day. I imagine it will be gone by morning, but it took me by surprise.

I scheduled a couple of days off work so I could get caught up on All The Things and so far it's been pretty productive. It took me most of a day, but I scooped all the water out of the bathtub, took apart the plug, and spent some time scraping clay, hair, clay, and what looked like pieces of the husks from Invasion Of The Body Snatchers plus more clay out of the pipes. Then I scrubbed the shit out of it. It's now a pristine gleaming white and the water runs clear down the drain without any pooling. Go me.

Before

After

Yesterday I went to a seed swap that was hosted in one of the local community centres. I came home with some arugula and some suggestions for local ground covers. I didn't buy more because honestly I think the yard is going to be a multi-year project. I went outside to poke around and it's... gonna be some work. Basically they took all the clay from digging out the basement and threw it over the yard and it's full of broken glass, broken concrete, whatever trash they uncovered. And the original plan said it would slope away from the house to reduce runoff, that is definitely not what I saw when I went out there.

In the short term, I'm going to just rake up as much crap as I can and then throw some white clover seed over it. Long term I'll section off a piece at a time to rehab with some compost to dilute the clay. I'll start with a square of garden and work from there.

But first the basement. I spent a lot of time digging through all the crap down there and trying to organize it. I found more things left behind by the housemate, which needs to be boxed up so it can leave with the rest of their stuff. I filled the garbage bin again, and there will be another full bag to go in once that's taken away. I have uncovered a lot of my tools and supplies that will come in useful. And lightbulbs. Apparently my housemate was ordering a case every time we needed one - they were cheaper that way I guess? But then promptly lost track of the box when we needed another so just ordered another case. I have so many lightbulbs y'all!

Also found some full wine bottles so tomorrow might be slightly less productive than today was, but I'm ok with that.

So much dust. And so many spiders. And I'm only halfway done down there.

Current Mood: i blow my nose in colours

Inspired by

luzula who was posting about new cooking experiments.

I had my first major cooking fail last week. I tried a new a pasta dish and it was awful. Ended up throwing it out.

I'm still playing with the curry recipe. I made a batch without any habanera and mixed it with my first too-hot batch and I thought it came out perfect for me - but probably still too hot to feed to my gf and I'd like to have a version I can cook for her. I tried some of the no-habanera at all on it's own and it's definitely missing something if I make it that way.

My next round of experiments will be to adjust the base spice mix - maybe keep the habanera and reduce the red chili, or reduce both and ramp up one of the other ingredients to offset. More roti for me to eat, alas.

The other thing I have been making in big batches is soup. When it's hot out I always want salads for lunch, in the winter I crave soup. So far I have found recipes for a pumpkin, a carrot-thyme, and a curried sweet potato that I really like. I've also tried a variety of squashes combined with various other things - apples mostly - but I found those ones pretty meh. The ones I like the most also seem to be the ones that freeze the best, so I make big pots of them and then spend the rest of the week fishing them out of the freezer to nuke for lunch.

I did try the garlic noodles, with bok choy. They were pretty good? But not enough by themselves, they need to go with something and I haven't quite figured out what yet.

I obviously need to watch more youtube videos.

Last night's movie was The Substance. Everybody who has talked about the film either loved it or hated it so I was curious.

I can now say that I fall firmly into the hate it category. I didn't get the body-horror aspect of it at all - it was all just closeup shots of how nasty meat is and how much aging sucks. And I thought the ending was terrible and overly stretched out. What's annoying about it is that I think there was a solid concept at the root of it and some a-list actors. It just seemed like they just ran out of ideas about half-way through.

--

Finally heard back from my contractor - he's going back for more surgery on Friday. So I think it's safe to say he's not going to be around to finish any of the work. It took two weeks of calling him every day to finally get the receipts I needed for energy audit, but that's finally in.

I've booked some time off work at the end of this month so I can clear out the crap his workers left behind and figure out what's left to be done. I'm waiting for a callback from a plumber and I will probably have to bring somebody in to finish up the HVAC. There's some residual drywall to deal with and I've never done that before but I can probably tap a friend to help me out and there's always youtube.

The trash I can deal with, but I'm really torqued that they fucking plugged up the bathtub. It looks like they were throwing silty water in it, so now it's plugged and full of dirty water. I've been asking him if he's sending somebody to snake it and not getting a response, so I guess I'll just pay for it and hand him the bill. I don't know what the fuck they were thinking honestly.

--

It was lovely and warm and sunny today and ended up going for a long walk just because it felt so nice to get out of the house. The longer days always make me restless. Probably just as well I feel like I'm hitting a period of having too much energy when I'm facing up to a week of hauling trash and painting.

I went out back to check on a few things and wow. Field of mud. I might just grab some clover seed to throw on it and see how it does - it's mostly clay so I'll have to rehab it a section at a time if I want to grow vegetables out there.

--

Did my vote thing last week. My province elected an absolute fucking clown shoe once again. He is doing back-and-forth waffles about electricity exports to the US and making announcements about going down for trade talks even though trade is not a provincial responsibility. I hope the feds fucking sit on his head. I already reached out to my federal MP about his proposed deal with Starlink and suggested that they might want to get involved in that from a security perspective and she was receptive to the feedback so we'll see if anything comes of it.

Meanwhile, we have a new Prime Minister as of a couple of days ago. Ish. I think he has to be confirmed or sworn in or anointed or whateverthefuck they do when somebody gets picked to sit in the Big Chair. The party overwhelmingly voted for an economist over a politician and I suspect the brand new Trade War has a lot to do with that choice.

Now whether or not that party gets to remain in charge will depend on the next election, but given everything that's been going on lately it looks like they have a pretty good chance. Lots of people on social media have been posting photos of grocery stores with shelves bare of Canadian products while the American stuff is untouched. That's certainly been the case in every store I've gone into in my neighbourhood.

Gonna be a fucking weird couple of years, y'all.

The Bad: His Lordship, Lord Brock of the Brockton Brocks, has been feeling poorly. He stopped eating for a few days, which is apparently really bad for cats - their organs can just shut down. A visit to the vet found him underweight and dehydrated. They gave him an anti-nausea shot and an appetite stimulant and I have been monitoring his intake (and his outgo) like a hawk watching a rabbit warren for the past week.

He had another exam today and he appears to be mostly out of the woods, but I did go home with some more meds to give him over the weekend if anything goes south.

(I will not tell you the stuff I learned at the vet today about anal glands because what the hell, nature?)

Anyway. This meant cancelling on the nephew I was going to help move today, because there is no way I'm leaving town for a whole day until I'm sure he's stable.

***

The Good: There were two contractors involved in the building of my kitchen, the guy who built the frame and the guy who did the interior. I got to watch them have a full-on meltdown at each other over who's fault the frozen pipes are. Wednesday the interior guy came by and moved the pipes and insulated them so in theory this problem should now be solved. Fingers crossed. I haven't had a problem since, but also it hasn't gotten below -5 C yet this week.

Basement guy is now saying he'll be done on Tuesday. ! Could it be true!?

I expect I'll have to do some additional trim and repairs down there. (And painting) But the idea that this could actually be fucking over soon? Be still my tremulous heart!

Next house goal: get a new boiler. Right now I can a) take a shower b) run the dishwasher OR c) do laundry, but I cannot do two of the above on the same day. I might spring for one of those tankless ones, I have to do some research first.

***

The Ugly: I have almost no teeth left in the back lower jaw. If I could speak to my 12 year-old self, one of the things I would stress is to stay on top of the teeth during those few years I would have insurance and DO NOT go to the very nice lady that your dad recommends, because being a completely painless dentist was apparently not as good a thing as everybody thought at the time. My current dentist is a semi-retired Egyptian woman who makes me cry on the regular, but she was able to extend the life of most of my teeth far past the point where I thought I was going to lose them all.

Aside: Teeth not being covered by provincial health insurance is a crime against humanity.

Anyway., So now I have this bridge thing that I'm supposed to wear every day, at the absolute minimum whenever I eat. I hate it. It's uncomfortable and I don't like having things in my mouth. The thing is, I could same the same about my bite guard (I clench my jaw really hard in my sleep) and that I wear every night. But this thing - I can never remember. It's like a mental block, every single day I eat dinner and as soon as I'm standing up to get rid of my plate I think Oh I forgot that bridge thing, I need to remember to put it in tomorrow. Every day. Every. Day. For the past three months.

What the fuck, brain?

***

All Of The Above: I got my election bribe money today. I immediately donated it to one of the other parties.

Current Mood: titties&beer

I started listening to twitch DJs when lockdown first happened and a lot of stuff went online. I'm still using twitch for most of my music steaming these days because fuck Spotify. I have found lots of good music that way. I've also been doing it long enough that I'm now starting to recognize people when we run into each other in steam audiences.

My current favourite is maerchen1313. She's actually somebody I've known in real life for a couple of decades who recently got into streaming and she's managed to create a really positive friendly space. It legitimately feels like the online version rolling into Cheers and everybody yells NORM when you walk in the door. Plus she can go from playing ABBA to Kawaii metal to Fugazi in a single evening and make it feel like the transition is totally smooth.

So that's my substitute for clubbing in a city where nobody gives a shit about accessibility.

***

I went to an work event hosted by the disabled employees network and I was the only one masked. It makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

It did raise an interesting question though, a couple of the people there lip-read, and when you are meeting in person rather than virtually most of the accessibility features for people who can't hear just aren't present. I looked up masks with clear panels, but they were all cloth masks so not actually N95. So any of the lovely people out there know of lip-reading accessible N95 or better masks, let me know.

I should probably learn ASL. Might be more immediately useful than the Spanish.

***

I have come to the conclusion that I have the spoons to organize shit, or I have the spoons to clean up after myself, but not both. My living space looks like an alien made out of paper and coffee cups took a shit on it. The lumbering machine of lawyers and banks has woken up and this requires me to run around like a maniac to feed their hungry jaws. Whatever, I can clean any time, as long as that time is not today.

I was trying to articulate to the gf why life is easier now even though I'm doing all the work around the house. Because when the ex-housemate lived here, if I left a dirty plate on the counter even once that meant they never had to put their dirty dishes away ever ever ever because they were "following my lead". I no longer have to check all the doors before I go to bed to make sure they're locked, or the stove to make sure it's turned off. If I want the snow shovelled I either do it or I hire somebody. I don't have to ask every single day, "IS THING DONE YET[1]" I either do it... or I decide it can wait. No pressure.

Fucking miraculous, not going to lie. Some days I feel like I'm stretched thin, but it's because there's a lot to do, not because somebody sat on something until it turned into a fucking emergency without telling me.

I'm still finding boxes of shit they told me they dealt with years ago and instead shoved under a pile in the basement.

***

[1]EXCEPT FOR THE CONTRACTOR Holy shit this guy. Definitely ADHD. I am so so done with ADHD. Don't mistake me, I recognize that it is a legitimate disability, it is just one THAT I WOULD LIKE A FUCKING BREAK FROM FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS PLEASE AND THANK YOU.

BUT. Shit is happening. Floors are being... floored. I dunno, I never did get that schedule I asked for. But I wake up every day to the sound of hammers and drills and saws and when I sneak downstairs after hours it's obvious that new things have happened. This is most excellent. The funding for not being thrown out of my fucking house was predicated on being able to rent out the downstairs space so seeing progress is most excellent and relief-making.

***

My friends have been talking about the recent political climate and how we're going to deal with it. I have had several friends say that they expect they will see war over water. I'm all, ha ha, no that won't happen Poilievre is going to win the next election, and he will just give the country to Trump, there will be no conflict.

I used to think people learned from their mistakes. I don't think that any more.

Current Location: Sisyphus' waiting room

I keep telling myself I will post here and then not doing it. Then I look at the time stamp on my last entry and a month has gone by.

One of the things that definitely fell off the bus around the time of the funeral was my Spanish practice. I'm disinclined to go back to Duolingo since they brought in AI - I've seen lots of commentary from Spanish speakers that it's introduced a lot of errors into the program. But Duolingo did make it really easy to build a habit around practising, so I now I just have to figure out how to build a new one.

I'm also trying to build up the habit of doing Write Every Day again. And I started doing drawing exercises through DrawABox. And I'm trying to build a habit of going to the gym regularly again. That's really not a long list and none of the things on it are particularly difficult but I suck at changing multiple things at the same time so that does kind of explain why I keep running into a wall.

(Also new meds and learning to feed myself and big work stuff and the cat is also on new meds and ok, maybe it's more than four things.)

***

In very good news, contractor's tests all came back negative. No bone cancer. So he's back to work on Tuesday. I am very happy he's healthy, because I genuinely like the guy. It also means I can now yell at him without feeling guilty. He texted me that he spent all day yesterday driving to stores to pick up supplies.

One of the things that has been waiting for the end of the construction work is to get my fucking toilet fixed. I paid off the last of my credit cards this month and said great! Time to rack that baby up again! And called a plumber. He decreed the ancient throne to be unsalvageable so I have a new one winging it's way towards me. Some day very soon I will be able to crap in my own house without having to haul buckets of water from the shower to do so. What a country.

***

Saw my dad on Thursday. He wasn't doing great. It's alarming how fast his cognitive function is declining. Summer before last he would lose the occasional word. Now he only manages a few words before he starts struggling.

I sent an email to all family members and said, look I don't take risks around infection so we can do one of two things, either we do it at my house and everybody masks religiously for two weeks prior, OR we try and find a heated patio. I really didn't think the masking would fly, but much to my shock everybody agreed right away. The nephews said they mask anyway because they're both at new jobs and don't want to take time off. Everybody also said they are happy to do the family get-together in January, which means some gap after work events and NYE parties. So that's what we're going to do. This also gives me some extra time to get the kitchen sorted out - right now it's still full of boxes of crap. I don't want to unpack until the back window gets torn out because that's going to be filthy. But if I have a couple of extra weeks I have time to 1) harass the contractor to finish it 2) clean up after 3) put in shelves and 4) unbox everything.

Wish me luck.

***

I have been absolutely fascinated by everything that's happening around the CEO shooting in Manhattan. Not so much the shooting itself but the social media around it. Conservative commentators are getting pushback from their audiences when they frame it as "lefty's celebrating". People in New York actively telling each other not to cooperate with the police.

This article is a good example, there are people who spend their spare time solving crimes who have have done a lot to close cold cases and they're all saying nah to this one.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/internet-sleuths-say-wont-help-find-unitedhealthcare-ceo-suspect-rcna183228

It's been like a real-life Leverage episode and it's fascinating.

It has also led to a lot of Americans talking about their personal experiences with private healthcare. It's always been a horror show, but I feel like it's gotten worse in the last 10 years as the capitalism pressure-cooker gets hotter. Companies can't just make profit, they can't even just make more profit every year, they have to make a higher percentage increase in profit every year - until they hit the wall of course, because that shit's just not sustainable in the long term.

I am really hoping that Ontarians are reading these stories. Because our province is pushing for private healthcare and that's going to be very very bad news if the public just lets them get away with it.

Current Mood: aeon flux

My dad is in the hospital. His wife brought him in because he was unable to speak. Or rather he could speak, but it came out as nonsense. He woke up the next morning completely fine, but they are keeping him so they can run tests. This is the second such incident.

So that's worrying. At least they are trying to get to the root cause this time, which is an improvement. Last time they just said, eeeeh, he's probably dehydrated and sent him home.

***

Lord Brock had his cardiac consultation. (I should be mad that my cat is able to see a specialist in less than a week, but honestly I'm too tired.) He has thickening of one of the valves and that's causing backwash, hence the heart murmur. It's not immediately life-threatening and it doesn't preclude his dental surgery but it's another thing to keep an eye on.

I am going to rename him Colonel Steve Austin because ouch.

***

I am trying to expand my cooking horizons. It seems ridiculous to spend the amount of money I did on a kitchen and not learn how to cook. And like, in theory cooking your own food is cheaper right? Which will help me pay for the fuck-off expensive kitchen.

I may have logicked myself into a corner here.

Anyway, I bring this up only because I decided to experiment with a West Indian curry tonight. I made a very large error when I estimated the amount of habanera to put in and hooo boy.

Despite the fact that it scorched the eyebrows right off my face it was otherwise delicious. Definitely making this again.

***

I took the last week off work thinking I would use the time for organizing. I think I was fairly productive? As it turned out my timing was good because the lawyer came through and so that sucked up a lot of time.

I am starting to lose my patience with the contractor. I think I've been pretty reasonable up until now about cutting him a lot of slack around health issues and staff issues and every other fucking thing that can go wrong. (And has.) But I gave him a (written!) list of three things that I really need from him.
1. A breakdown of what I have paid for so far, given that the original costing went completely off the rails.
2. A breakdown of the new work with numbers.
3. Dates for when everything that is outstanding is going to get finished. I especially said that I need to know when the stuff around the energy audit is going to happen.

After poking at him about it for the last three weeks he finally dropped off an envelope this week. It has item 2. Only.

OK, look.

I wrote down everything I needed from this guy. On paper. Numbered in order of importance. It took him three fucking weeks to ignore two-thirds of what I asked for?

Buncha texting back and forth happened and in theory he will be here this week where we can talk about it in person. In the meantime I'm hunting for somebody else who can do the weatherproofing needed for the energy audit, because for fuck sake, this has been waiting since July and I'm on my second extension.

I have a bad habit of being the person that gets put on the back-burner because I don't complain. But here's the thing, just because I don't like being an asshole, doesn't mean I'm not perfectly capable of it. And now I'm pissed off.

Current Mood: that's my secret captain

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Hemlock B Bootsalotta

I didn't get this far in life by pacing myself

wanted no applause, just another course

"dust in the wind" my entire ass

nothing matters but the weekend from a Tuesday point of view

one must imagine Sisyphus happy

BIRTH! SCHOOL! WORK! DEATH!

i am like quicksand

the battle of order vs chaos

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

sharpening my beak on the cosmic mountain

a bean of no small worth

i contain arachnitudes

in like a lion and out like a different lion

a far and distant land

what i did on my march break by siobhan

setting things on fire as my ancestors did before me

slouching back home from Bethlehem

i contain unquietudes

i contain aptitudes

other than that, how was the play Mme Antoinette?

send lawyers guns and money

Profile

July 2025

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags