Off the Cliff

Once again world events interfere with my attempts to stop drinking.

But I vacuumed and dusted the side bedroom yesterday, which made me sweat mightily and left me unaccountably stiff this morning. But then I screwed my courage to the sticking place and removed the drawers from under the futon frame so I could sweep out the dust elephants of ages. I doubt I've done this since 2020, if then. Ideally I'd push the whole frame out to get at the underparts, but doubt I have the strength for that now. Even manhandling the large heavy drawers back in place was a challenge. As for flipping the futon itself, hahaha no.

And I feel so much better looking at the clean bedroom. Cleaning always works to cheer me, and it always annoys me that it works, but shou ga nai.

Would have gone out to buy those things I forgot to get on Friday through not remembering to bring my phone, but it snowed last night, enough to coat the sidewalk.  Mind, my stretch was clear because I put down salt yesterday evening against the plunging temperatures, and by day's end so was the rest of the block. But it's -6 with a wind chill of who knows what, so I remain indoors.

Dream last night of coming up my street, or maybe Christie, but there were two walkways-- the public one by the street and a private one, screened by bushes, that belonged to the (nonexistent) housing coop with its low buildings and green lawns that straggled up the street, clearly referencing the RL Bain Coop in TO. And very pleasant until a large dog came up behind me and either started nosing my bum or actually bit it, one or the other.

Enbridge did not email me a bill this month. No idea why not. They've also raised their prices. But this may explain why I didn't pay last month. I'd go back to demanding paper bills but they charge for those too. 

I know intellectually that six days is not the longest I've spent indoors, but I notice that even the knee replacement four years ago only kept me in for seven. Oh dear.

Dreamed of having to leave my dream!house at night to consult a professor? police detective? some kind of expert? because there was an unwrapped mummy!!! under my bed eww yuck. He sent his minions in and discovered that there were actually four of the things so I couldn't go home till they'd been disposed of. Turned on my other side and dreamed of going to what passed for the daycare to see my old friend L who was still business co-ord, but problems kept cropping up and she couldn't get away. So I wandered into the Infant section where my old coworker S was changing a baby. Neither L nor S have been at the DC since the turn of the millennium, or possibly before-- unreliable memory says both left in 1999-- but that baby I remember well. He had no off switch when it came to food and we always had to cut him off after three large bowls, to his extreme displeasure. His umm leavings were in proportion to his intake, which was bad enough when he was still in diapers but disastrous when it came to toilet training. Ah yes, I remember B well.

Woke in cold and started downstairs to see if it was just the thermostat set to moderate or if the vent had somehow got blocked. Furnace came on as I was still descending, but since I was there I steeled myself to check what damage holiday indulgence had wrought. A kilo, which could be much worse, but eventually I must stop drinking Black Russians and start drinking more water. And moving more somehow.

Anyway, went up to Loblaws for pharmaceuticals. No sane person shops on New Year's Eve but it wasn't that bad. Of course there were fields of ridged ice at several street corners and driveways, but that's winter in this here burg. Snow and snowflurries expected all week but will eventually get that book back to the library. And my backup lenses from the Extremely Expensive But Reliable company arrived in good order, so I now have eight weeks' worth, by which time maybe my preferred company will at last get the two boxes of 90 each that I ordered out to me. Knew I shouldn't have ordered two boxes-- absolutely tempting fate-- but I'm tired of having to a) order a month in advance every two months and b) wait on tenterhooks to see if c) they have them in stock or d) if they're on backorder and if so, e) will there be a postal strike that prevents them getting to me? This got old years ago.

Reading-wise, finished Silverlock. Mr. Google cannot in fact tell who everyone is, even though there's a webpage that has some annotations.
http://anitra.net/commonwealth/refindex.html

Dreamed I was at an apartment/ dorm room/ residence in Japan and my mother, brothers, and sister came to visit. Mom asked how things were going. I complained that I had fruit flies. 'They come from Belgium,' my mother said. 'Yes, that's what someone else told me too.'

Many decades ago, almost before the advent of email, I had a letter from a young man in one of my APAs talking about one of my fics. 'I finally got around to reading your story. To my surprise it was actually quite good!' (direct quote,  were you wondering.) Then he went on to say, in effect, 'Now tell me more about what you liked about mine.' I wrote him back advising him that this was perhaps not the best line to take with, well, anybody. I thought I was being straightforward but not unkind, but I ran it by my sister just in case. Who said 'No, you absolutely cannot send that. You have no idea how you sound.'  This phrase has haunted me ever since because no, I don't have any idea how I sound. It's like an Aussie friend in Japan who was traumatised back into monolingualism when it finally hit her that in Japanese it's not so much the way you say things-- as in English your tone of voice can soften your expression,  for instance-- it's what you say, and she didn't know if she actually knew the right form to say stuff. Like, were her verbs and verb forms giving unintended offence or not? (Someone else harrowed my soul by recounting a run in she'd had with the head of her company. He'd said something and she'd asked why? But she'd said Nande?-- just that, which would be brusque and bad enough. But even worse, nande is familiar Japanese that she'd learned from homestay, used within your in-group or to inferiors, and never ever in a million years to a superior, let alone the head of the company. I think that for once I was shocked into silence.)

Am recalling this because there's someone who regularly crops up on my FFL and whose comments, and responses to comments, are what my Brit-influenced soul registers as gratuitously ungracious and abrasive. Yes, they're American, but from an area that I understand to usually prefer roundabout phrasing. Maybe they've outgrown their roots. Or maybe they just don't know how they sound. Or maybe they really are a jerk. What I *know* they are is a fandom gatekeeper, so you pays your money and takes your choice.

Have finished nothing this week except maybe a Dr. Priestley, and maybe not even that. Read on, desultorily, in Madame de Pompadour, and (rationing myself) in Diana Wynne Jones' Unexpected Magic. I'd wondered if there were in fact two of her story collections, because I remembered none of these until I got to Little Dot and her encounter with the closest Puccini got to shriek opera. Len Iggmy son of Trey, etc. Also the latest Charles Finch, with a bunch of people waiting for me to finish it. 

Will get back to not!Spirited Away eventually.

Woke early from semi-nightmares about trying to find a place to live in in Tokyo. Thus was vertical at 9:15 which gave me a jump on the day. There's a funeral in a week that starts at 11:00 which I might get to if this unwonted wakefulness continues. OTOH it goes on till 1:30 so maybe I should just watch the broadcast. 

Laundromat achieved, timed just right so that I came in when the woman with the Monster Wash was already folding her piles and piles of clothes. Between whiles got up to Blawblaws for more moleskin sheets and callus pads which, um, they didn't have. Bought what they did have and will try them on the Morton's neuroma on my foot. The moleskin and pads worked a treat yesterday but they were near to the end of my stash. Anyway, the Rexall down by Bloor probably has them.

So I trotted down to Bloor and, because the day was achy, stopped for a cocktail and sandwich out on a restaurant patio, last chance probably unless November  blesses us with mildness. Then debated going to the drugstore before going to the bank. But drugstore is on the way home, so bank first and up to drugstore, arriving at 3:05 and discovering they close at 3 on Saturdays. Not being godless Shoppers, they don't open on Sunday. Ah well. If Monday is dry I'll try to get down there then. And I got 6500 steps in according to my unreliable phone.

Toyed with the notion of gardening a bit before tomorrow's rain but warm weather is achy weather and frankly I don't like cutting vines while Oliver the dog has conniptions. Really time that pup got used to people; I wonder he-NND can stand it when he goes out back to smoke.

It's being a perfect Labour Day weekend, first time in living memory: not too hot, not too cold, deep blue skies, occasional white clouds. So a pity I stayed in all yesterday, hiding from the air show, and only went out for a massage today. But did read a murder mystery in which, amusingly, the murderer was Emma Woodhouse near as dammit. I notice this time that Mrs. Elton is appalling, not merely because she's appalling, but because she abrogates to herself position and privileges that Emma thinks are hers by right. Umm yeah, 'a disposition to think too well of herself' indeed. But I'm not sure Austen means that in a social sense as well as a personal one. Maybe Austen thinks Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield really should be the queen bee of the village. Lord, but the 19th century English were as nice and finely graded in their social ranking as the Japanese, though at least in England you didn't have to decide which form of which verb to use with which people.

Granted that female hysteria is a running sub-motif in the book, I'm still of two minds about Miss Bates. I hate talkers because I hate to be talked at. Talkers take the position 'I want someone to talk at, you're going to be it, and what you want doesn't matter.' Drives me batty. But Miss Bates is always in company and is always talking at everybody, which maybe mitigates it somewhat? but still. If she knows it gets on people's nerves, why doesn't she just stop? At home I can imagine she'd drive Jane up the wall. Highbury is criminally forebearing when it comes to selfish horrors, like Mr. Woodhouse. And that, I assume, is also part of the class system?

The massage today did that odd thing where it makes my bad knee worse,  so I will see if I get to laundry tomorrow, either at home or at the laundromat or both. As also the back yard with its vines and unwanted bushes. Thursday will rain, which may start the long rains of autumn,  so must be done soonish. 

Slept to noon for no good reason and dreamed of being in Florence, at a hostel, trying to wash my underwear while some ill-natured girl hogged the washers or wouldn't give me change or something. I was down to my last two pairs of underpants and asked the woman who ran the hostel, who was our business coordinator from the daycare, where I could buy new ones. But underwear was the monopoly of an Italian noblewoman, a Marchioness who wouldn't let just anyone buy underpants. That was really not worth sleeping in for.

Mercury is in retrograde: my tablet has gone wonky, the Libby app on my phone won't open my book, and the email I sent my money woman seems to have got lost in the ether. This happened with the old one as well. Maybe I should start calling her instead. 

Finished Northanger Abbey, a leisurely reread. Since I remembered the what but not the how, I was subject to embarrassment squick in the last chapters, but Austen was kind to my sensibilities. Probably should reread Persuasion next.

Continue with The Way Spring Arrives, skipping some of the essays, though the one on translation suggests just how much I'm missing. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is a favourite with me precisely because I know who it's talking about. And I know, from what various friends have said, that there are probably a million allusions in the original that either can't be translated or that I simply don't know. Maybe I should go through those slim volumes of Chinese sayings I bought ages back and find the equivalents of 'Meng's mom moves three times' as applied to, I don't know, birds or food or something. Which won't help with the present volume, of course.

Started but on hiatus is a Victorian-set mystery, A Death in the Small Hours by Charles Finch. Pleasant, but Spring has several people waiting for it and I must finish it first. Should probably send it back for the nonce because the earlier volumes might come in in the meantime. This one is something like vol.6 and was the first available.

The library didn't have a dead tree or ebook version of The Masquerades of Spring, just the audio which, no, not with Aaronovitch and his infinitely confusible white bread names. Hardcover was some hideous price so I bought it from Kobo. And a good thing too because dead tree would have me tearing my hair out. The names are bad enough even with a search function, but the action defeats me completely. I still don't know where that blasted saxophone came from, much less which version of its origin is fiction and which fact. Doubtless this has something to do with my occasional inability to parse text on screen, but maybe the action really is that twisty? I suppose three rereadings might straighten it out but am not hopeful. OTOH it's a lot less silly twit Wodehouse pastiche than I had feared, so otherwise an enjoyable read.

This morning's dream was again of AJC and an apartment she rented and a disabled-indeed, moribund-- roommate we had to get down the stairs somehow. Segued somehow into a rewrite of Autumn Term, with Nicola home for half-term thinking how different everything looked after three months at school. Of course she'd only been gone for half that time, but dream!Nicola didn't know that.

Just before waking dream of being at the daycare/ a daycare, two very large rooms, one for babies and the other- where I had my shift-- for toddlers. But I was early and spent my time holding a four or five month old baby. My sister was also working there and when I realized that, I thought I could have asked her to take my shift, but she'd left by then. Still, nice to be among kids again.

Hydro bill came in today, something ridiculous like $14 because I overpay in the warm months. I'd been expecting to be dinged a good $100 even with overpaying, but then reminded myself that June was cool-- and then reminded myself again that the last ten days of it were anything but-- that was when we had the heat dome-- and I'd certainly run the fans and AC a lot then.  So I overpaid again because the nights are still not cool enough for just a window fan. July is a hot month, period.

Though when I woke this morning the room was, if not warm, at least not as cool as the 18C/ 65F I'd set the AC for. But that was because the curtain had fallen back across the unit as a result of my midnight thrashing about, I assume. Must anchor it better in future.

Otherwise I sit indoors and read Stone and Sky, very pleasantly, though whether it will stay pleasant with the North Sea oil shenanigans remains to be seen.

The only way I will not drink is simply to have no alcohol in the house. OTOH if it weren't raining and I didn't ache from vaccines and gardening, I might not need alcohol at all.

Have several books on the go and don't much want to read any of them. Discover that yes, I did read Network Effect and Exit Strategy in dead tree last year, is probably why they made more sense then. Sent Meddling Kids ebook back to the library because it was clearly heading towards Lovecraft Land and I have very limited patience (read: none) with abominable eldritch horrors and elder gods and whatever else horripilated that very unpleasant man's skin. Also The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society, because it was set sort of this-world, not the pleasant otherworld of Waggoner's first two books.

Have KJ Charles' Think of England which is clearly heading towards disaster! before I presume happi endo, and I don't want to be there for it. The mystery set in ancient Athens with a playwright is pedestrian, because anybody writing theatre in ancient Athens is up against Mary Renault, even if I *know* Renault was cheating. She cheats so plausibly,  is all. The Path of Thorns is growing tedious for no good reason, just it is. Have yet to start The Scholar and the Last Fairy Door, simply because Perry and I are a bad fit. So I read Paarfi instead, and even Jhegaala, because I am loose-ended in the extreme.

Did dream pleasantly last night, or rather this morning, of cleaning up at daycare with Daycare Hugh who in RL is as retired as I, and about to become a grandfather. Which segued into me buying a dress at a dress shop on the second floor of a nondescript outlet, sort of hidden from the masses behind a special door. Dresses turned out to be hand-decorated by the middle-aged woman who let me in to the large room where the special dresses were. 

Other reason I can't get out is that my feet crack deeply and constantly unless I pumice and moisturize them before the cracks get too deep. I have a crack across the instep of my right foot which is hard to get at, what with pumice, elbows and ticklishness being as they are, so I have essentially a deep cut on the sole of that foot which is taking its own sweet time closing up,  in spite of first aid cream and bandaids and all. Have bolstered the bandaids with panty liners to cushion it,  but it still hurts to step on. So yeah, couch potatodom it is. 

Sigh. Five years of pandemic. Do wonder if I've ever caught it and that's why I keep shedding like a sheepdog. And can't find lint rollers anywhere to remove it from my dark clothes.

Must have been Tuesday that I called the dentist's secretary to straighten out the confusion over my receipt. She had no idea how I came to have a receipt for $13,000+ either. But the correct one came in the mail today, so that's one thing off my list. I might even get my forms to the accountant before April, first time ever.

Read somewhere the account of a guy who was in a coma or anyway unconscious for a spell and in that time lived a life in minute detail with a girlfriend whom he married and had kids with: and then woke up to find that his very real life didn't exist. Not that bad for me, but in my two hour sleep-in this morning I dreamed a whole affair with this guy from when we started dating to when I broke off with him because, basically, I really didn't know how to have a relationship with someone and especially not this guy. Who had gone and rented an apartment for us without asking if I wanted to move in with him. Which I explained to my mother was what's called a red flag. This was at a pseudo-Bedford but much larger and fancier with my family still living there. No wonder I didn't want to move into an apartment.

Hydro bill also comes in, with a minus amount. Fine, that's a good fifty dollars saved. And then run across a FB ad for a Muslim food bank which, like all food banks in this burg, is running out of supplies, with the added wrinkle of halal and Ramadan. So send them the money saved on overpaying my electricity last month. Goes around, comes around.

Dream of vaguely Edwardian setting except for Mother's friend Mrs. O'S in an emerald green 50s dress with patch pockets over the chest whose flaps stuck out at a 90 degree angle. Problem was actually who would inherit the throne of England, there being something wrong about George V. Possibly that his name wasn't in fact George.

A few days ago found some empty peanut shells near the stove's burners. Figured I might have dropped a few when decanting shell holder into bio garbage bag. Came home to day to find more peanut shells by burner, and hear something scritchying in the kitchen. Happened same time that NNDs returned home, could have been little M doing something in the hall, but peanuts suggest it's much more likely that mice have moved in for the winter. Have put trap by stove in case.

Apparently our warm September means no fall colours this year. A pity, but my gas bill thanks me.

Finished the four volumes the library has of Daemons of the Shadow Realm and immediately want vol.5, orderable from the mighty river. But after 5 I will want 6 which doesn't come out until November, and 7 in March. So am trying to possess soul in patience till then.

Uneasy dream last night of accidentally running into a (non-existent) former lover whom I had not only ghosted but whose very name I couldn't remember.  Very embarrassing. She looked disgusted, not surprisingly, and told me what it was.  I can't now recall what language it was, though I may have *thought* it was Greek, but I knew that in that language her name meant 'hope.' Make of that what you will.

But since it was barely light when I woke from that,  I turned over and went back to sleep and dreamed, more cheerfully, of attending Japanese classes on the main hall of a sort of Shaolin temple. I sat up at the front- on the floor, of course- but everyone else was clustered at the back. The only trouble, when I left the classroom and went out amid various pupils practising sort of kung fu moves, was not being able to find my shoes, which should have been at the door of the main hall. Not there, and not in the rooms after it (which may or may not have segued into that non-existent restaurant on Bloor, back of the Colonnade) but with relief appeared at the foot of the wooden steps leading up to the temple.

Dreamed again of That Place I Used to Live In where I left all my books for years and years. Though this time I'd come back to it and was renting it with my upstairs neighbours Jeanette and Juliana from Brunswick. But my books weren't in the closet where I'd left them, the shelves were totally bare, and I was perplexed at what the landlord could have done with them. But on the third floor of the house/ apartment were these drawers and in them were-- something thin stored on their sides: record albums or anime cels or maybe comicbooks in plastic? which were as good as my books, I think.

Rain and thunder at intervals all day. Stop and start, sun comes out and then dark again. Streets have flooded out west though I never noticed the downpours here, either because they didn't happen or because I've been on the couch all afternoon, looking at books from-- um, not my childhood exactly, but adolescence certainly. Egypt Under the Pharaohs by Leonard Cottrell, in which ancient Egyptian generals become old Malaysia hands from Blighty oh dear, and The Last of the Wine, whose print is much tinier than my 17 year old self remembers. Have never been able to read Renault with an open mind since (her early 70s snarking at feminism in The Mask of Apollo) an early master's thesis I read that said,  basically, all Renault's heroes have daddy issues and Theseus is a dork. They do and he is.

Met SND out with her new pup, name of Oliver. The theory is he's part chihuahua but his markings are, I'm told, more Jack Russell terrier. To my untutored eye he looks like nothing more than a miniature beagle. J says one can do DNA tests on dogs now: always a market. I'd only do that if I suspected herd dog DNA so as not to be surprised by herding behaviour.

Spring. After weeks and weeks of only crocuses and snowdrops, daffodils and tulips come up in sunshiny spots. A cherry is blooming down on Barton. I am moved to do some dusting and mopping and furniture polishing upstairs, to take advantage of the bright unfiltered sun before the trees burst into leaf. But I also rerereread Agatha Christies: zoomed through Lord Edgeware Dies and Curtain and Cat Among the Pigeons. I owned a copy of the latter as a twelve year old and read it so often that I have much of it memorized.

Had a pleasant dream the other day of being back in Tokyo and out at night with Finder Jean and Mary senpai, on a broad street that was partly University Ave here and partly some unnamed boulevard seen from a taxi, back in 2001, with Fearless Leader. In the dream we were, as ever, heading for an archetypal Tokyo bookstore, but I believe some people stopped us and talked us into taking their baby.

Dreamed I had a house with an enclosed paved front garden in which I kept a male lion. Occurred to me that I hadn't been feeding the lion recently so took the lion shopping for meat. Rest of dream was frustration in not being able to find meat or not getting the lion to follow me etc etc. I believe the lion was behaving like a cat, hence the frustration.

Days are essence of early December, sweet cold and dry sidewalks and clear lustrous light of the temporarily returned sun.

Now the library's 'print from the web' function is back, I discover there's no need to print out an application for the dental rebate or whatever it's called, because the govrrnment will mail an application to those eligible. And thus we cope with ancient Luddites.

The trouble with sleeping past 11 is that I can't roll over and go back to sleep as I can do if I wake at 9. Yes, well. Life is rough.

Of course I also woke out of a frustration dream of trying to get three babies back to daycare, at night, in a triple stroller, through the University College (UofT version) campus, gone suddenly baroque with steps that aren't there and narrow gas lit passages, also with steps, that lyingly promised to take me up to Hoskins and Trinity College (again, UofT version: universities in the Brit-sphere have no innovation with respect to either names or architecture.) Could gave done without that, especially as my Christmas Eve dream was a  charming cosy murder mystery. I believe the white-haired Miss Marple-ish sleuth was in fact the murderer.

Weather is mild but grey and dank, and is supposed to rain all week, which is par for the Dead Days but also dispiriting. We may see some sun on Saturday. I went out today since the PoP was only 56% and got misted on. Tony Korean restaurant was fairly full, even at 3 in the afternoon, but the Koreans make the most of their holidays. When they get them, because the big supermarket and greengrocers were open. Bought celery for future turkey salads but was so full from egg and beef donburi that I skipped dinner. 

Sun in a dry November, especially a warmer than average November like this one, lifts the spirits amazingly. Have been humming Sting's Fieldsof Gold for two days now as I trundle about the city. Physio today followed by laundromat. I cleverly left the face cloths to be washed draped over the bathroom waste paper basket as a reminder to take the scrubby nylon cloths too. They live behind the shower curtain so I'm apt to forget them. Alas that I didn't have a mnemonic for my terrycloth sheet as well, which I only rememberd once I was at the laundromat. At least there was hot water for my towels and sleep hoodie. But now I discover what the deal is with the new washers whose price seemed to change arbitrarily. It's not arbitrary. Cold wash is four dollars, warm is five, hot is six. There are still a few one price for all machines but they don't take the large loads.

Had a donwanna morning, loath to get out of bed, wanting only to roll back to sleep. But doing that got me once again the persuasive 'Remember that person you killed back in the 70s?' dream, so I perforce had to pull myself awake to shake off the horrors, which only disappear once I'm actually out of bed and into the reality I'm trying to avoid. I think I need a few more meatspace people in my life. Chatting with my Korean physio helps but once a week isn't nearly enough. This is why I wanted a dog, she says wistfully, so I could chat with all the other dog owners. But even if I could walk, dogs mean getting up at 6 a.m. which I simply can't do.

Well, if you stay up to 3:30 ayem reading Marcus Corvinus, you can't expect to wake up much before noon, so I consider myself virtuous to have been up at 11:30. Though not so up as all that, given the time needed for exercises and all. Also was dreaming of being at the cottage with my bro and Mom and Dad, remarkabe because I never dream of my parents these days, and an amazing rainbow in colours that rainbows don't come in, and going off to get them something from the store but being distracted by the appearance of a charming 3 month old baby girl, and 'Sorry, I have to go play with this little one.'

Windy day, extremely windy in 'knock 'em down' fashion, but that might have been the fault of where I was walking ie along Dupont to Spadina, with all the condos a-building, and then down Spadina to Bloor where all the condos have been built. Well, highrise apartments,  anyway. Also they're tearing up Spadina on the west side at Lowther-- sewers, one hopes-- requiring a detour to the east side amid both the rubble and the crocodiles of school kids coming up from ohh I dunno, the JCC or something. Though there seemed to be a school tour of high or middle school kids congregated outside the Native Canadian Centre, so they might have been coming from there. Anywaym I limped down to my old sushi restaurant that I frequented two years ago, pre-operation. And it still seems I was in better shape then than now, except for the knee. But I strongly suspect I was a good deal lighter then than now. Whatever, I keep on keeping on, hoping that walking will strengthen *something*.

Why I was walking on Dupont was to get to the Shoppers Drug there, one of the select few that sells Seniors and Students TTC passes. My current Presto card is a regular one, and minor though the difference is ($1.05) and little as I use transit, it still bugs me to pay full fare. So now I'm set up for the future, if any.

Happy new year to those who celebrate.

Either massage yesterday really did release a bunch of stuff, or the back brace I put on today (first time since I stopped working 3.5 years ago) really braces, but walking today was almost a pleasure.

Also my sister's hip replacement surgery seens to have gone well. Much relief all round.

Great dream last night about a French sorta steampunk library or was it a university, with these bibliomanes/ connoisseurs of erotica looking for porny books. Wish I could remember more than the bare bones.

 Lost day. Too stinky to go out, too achy to do anything but sit on the sofa. At least I got the recycling out, or rather, Sadie's mom put it out for me.

Dream of taking my (really an ebike but I never thought of it as that ) from dream! Daycare, situated sort of across from the museum instead of several blocks west of it, through those tony non-existent restaurants and hotels south of the Colonnade instead of north of it, threading narrow corridors in an attempt to get out of the buildings and finally managing to get out into a conglomeration of the AGO's back lawn,  the Victoria College campus, and Trinity-Bellwoods park way down on King St. Accompanied by a person of uncertain gender who might have been the DC cook crossed with someone else. The area back of the Colonnade with the tony restaurants is one of my frequent dream locations, though it never looks like itself, since there are no stores there and it quite often pretends to be in Tokyo. 

The downstairs tablet used to stick an icon of anything I googled into the 'most visited' dash, which was a nuisance because I want my most visited sites there. But now it won't put any icons there, including my most visited ones. First world problems but still annoying. 

There was the yearly environment drop off down at Central Tech, which feels far away in spite of being a lot closer than my old massage studio. But it's south and anything that isn't east of me registers as far away. And I had several sacks of old batteries to be disposed of, but there was also a rainfall warning (also thunderstorms and funnel clouds) and I didn't want to chance being caught in a downpour. So some day I'll take them over to the putative drop off outside Huron School, which is east of here in a straight line but well past Spadina. I'm told that the recycle store at the end of the street also takes them but I can't unload bags of the things on them, and they probably want the ends taped as well.

I dreamed, very realistically, that I tried to get on my old bike and could, no problem, and thought Well that's a relief, must remember to carry my keys now. And then I woke up.

Succeeded in finishing the doorstopper that's due next week at the library. Unfortunately the doorstopper is Company of Liars which has nothing in common with the Canterbury Tales and whoever said it did is, well, a liar. Unlike some people I liked the ending well enough in its Ima Ichiko-ish way but the book itself left me bilious. Have been unable to read anything but Thorndyke since and even Thorndyke is putting me off now, so I play Squaredle instead. This will change eventually and I'll get back to Scarlet but right now I don't think I can face the French revolution either.

So after yawning my way through yesterday,  last night I couldn't get to sleep. No reason, just I was awake. And stayed awake. And got up after an hour and went and read Dick Francis one-eyed until a quarter to four, which is cut-off for no headache sleeping. Rewarmed the beanbags and got into the wool and feathers and eventually drifted off, to dream of sorting out my various treasures in what purported to be my bedroom at Bedford, only it was twice the size of that not-unsizabe chamber and also thought it was somehow part of that Dick Francis novel. 

I woke, as expected, at 10. I can't count on 4 a.m. bedtimes resulting in only 6 hours  of condensed sleep or I'd do it more often, but at least I wasn't a basket case. Didn't accomplish anything today, of course, except dishes. And finishing Dead Cert. Francis is wonderful comfort reading if not indulged in too often. Helps if it's one of the ones I don’t remember and this was, in spite of that annoying mystery topos of love at first sight and will you marry me after two? three? meetings.

I've had these black tops for years approaching decades, as witness the bleach stains covered by my amateur embroidery, as also the fact that the store I bought them from closed five years ago and they weren't new then. But once take them to the laundromat and wash and dry them in hot and they shrink. Shrink! It's like I never washed them in hot water before. But I never put them in the dryer, and I'll know not to do it again. And luckily it was both ragbag tops and not my one remaining respectable one. The two new tops didn't shrink either,  being clearly of better quality.

Yesterday I decided to do at least one of the foot-dragging things I've put off and opted for flipping the side room futon: to discover that I can no longer flip that heavy leaden lump. For a bit there I thought I wouldn't even be able to get it back on the bedframe, but much heaving and puffing later it was back in place. Being hefted about seems to have fluffed it up a bit so it no longer dips drastically at the side where I sit down on it, but clearly I must seek the help of one of my muscular male neighbours. I suppose not hefting kids for four years will remove whatever muscles one had to start with.

The Korean super has marvellous tuna mayo onigiri but they cost and they don't keep. Never as good the next day. So when I was last there I bought some nori sheets and some Korean tuna in case that makes a difference and made my own at home. Can't say they were a huge success. I can't shape them in the neat triangles that the Koreans do, while the tuna was oily and probably needs proper Kewpie mayo. Not that the originals have much tuna or mayo in them: they're mostly just rice and seaweed and thus carb-heavy. Ah well, shall save them as an occasional treat.

Have been troubled all day by obscure flashbacks to this morning's dream which was something palace conspiracy-ppoi. There are no details remaining but stray emotions attached to it  keep floating past my brain anyway.

 Had a nightmare where I was somewhere doing something but suddenly felt a sharp pain in my elbow that made it impossible to lift my arm, and though I called to my friends for help they didn't come as the pain got worse and I got more desperate. At which I woke with a sharp pain in my arm from sleeping in a funny position or something. That's the elbow I can no longer straighten because maybe it got chipped in that accident 40 years ago, and which aches most of the time anyway.

Went back to sleep, woke again at quarter to nine, took meds, used bathroom, rolled back into bed again and drowsed, listening to M next door running up and down the corridor, went back to sleep, and woke some time later to hammering from next door. Seemed odd that the tenants would be assembling Ikea furniture but who knows? It was only when I was up and ready to go out that I realized it wasn't Ikea, and hadn't been M either: it was workmen putting in new windows. Which lord knows were needed, because the old wooden ones leaked air.  But the new ones aren't sash, like the old ones. They're  swing-out casements, and those have a tendency to list over time, pulling downwards because of the weight. That's if the opening  crank also doesn't get pulled out of true so you can't open them at all. But that's the kind of windows they're pushing these days, when they aren't installing the five foot square jobbies that put your life on display for the neighbours or require you to live behind closed curtains or blinds like Italian grandparents.

Then returned from erranding, I saw they'd replaced the front downstairs window as well. Now my front window has never been opened in the 35 years I've been here, because I had it fitted with a plexiglass cover advertised to keep noise out.  Which it does marvellously, as well as heat and cold.  But next door wasn't as efficient, so yes, replace, but to do it they had to take out the stained glass transom over the sash window, which was one of the charming touches to these houses. So I'm a bit sad about that, even though it isn't my house.

Uneasy-making dream last night of me, for certain age-difference values of me, taking up with a young woman and being very ambivalent about having her as a lover. I think the idea was that I hadn't really wanted to start anything but hadn't said no in time. Not helped by (I think) being backgrounded by the family home. Certainly Bedford was in my draams somewhere but not necessarily that one.

Got out today for Japanese food and then a latte. Maybe it was the gin in my gin-and-Sprite or maybe it was not moving yesterday or maybe it was low-key allergies, but I was very low-energy walking home.  There are times when I seem quite limber and able to dispense with the walker, and then there are days like this when it's all that keeps me upright,  which is discouraging.

Did a wash because temps will be 'turn on the heat' tonight at least, and they can dry on the lines in the furnace room. Then began the task of bringing records up from the basement. Managed precisely one bag full because lower back screamed in protest. Given that I was so reluctant to descend the basement stairs that I waited till I was completely out of clean underwear to go retrieve the ones I washed ten days ago, two trips is an accomplishment.

I was having a very nice dream about the four dragon kings who turned up for what I think was a cheese-tasting somewhere, with intimations that the other guests were maybe not human either, but I had to get up for a chiro appointment so all that remains are the bare facts and a vague impression that I was Gouen the Black Dragon.

This does not excuse the piggery of today, which included a Macdo delivery and chocolate, but at least I got my 30 minutes of biking in.