Off the Cliff

Yes, thank you, that's how you prepare for an election: id cards with  when and where to vote, and time and place of the advance polls, delivered three weeks before the date. DoFo, take note. This election is odd in that, when a Liberal pollster knocked on my door last night, I greeted her with open arms and arranged for a sign in my front garden, which isn't a lawn please note. Ordinarily not a fan of Freeland but these are not ordinary times. And it will at least discourage other pollsters. Four doors up has a PC sign, again. Rugged individualist or failure to read the neighbourhood. My younger bro is showing signs of leaning that way, or at least is moaning about the terrible last ten years under the Liberals. What he has to moan about I can't imagine, but probably has to do with insufficient funding for the air force.

My days of eating Japanese and Korean may be numbered. Hands simply cannot cope with chopsticks anymore. Unless I swallow pride and ask for forks, or eat sushi with my fingers which of course the Japanese do, but I don't know if our Koreans know that. Hands also have trouble with soup bowls, and I shall mention that miso soup stains something awful. Or rather, cannot be rinsed out and requires the full laundry treatment.

Have finished Whispers Underground and am actually able to follow the Misérables journey through London sewers this time.  Might move on to Broken Homes and see if I can now follow all that architecture on Skygarden. Skipped Moon Over Soho which was never a fave. But also have High Vaultage from the library and that Paarfi I never even knew about in transit which should keep me busy. And the never ending George Bellairs to read on the phone/ tablet in restaurants/ while biking.

Put tax stuff together last night without undue pain, aside from the perennial Where's my property tax bill??? which was not in the envelope with the other stuff, nor in the interstices of the lamp (don't ask) where I file important papers but *was* in the basket with cards and such. Sent it off by Fedex today and hope all is well- guy tells me to take a photo of the label and I was seriously tempted to disavow all knowledge of smartphones. Am still not sure photo will tell me what I need to know to track. Ah well. Mail also brings a reminder to renew my dental plan by end of June, and renewal can't happen without filing taxes. I suppose it's good that it's seemingly geared to income but if it's not, why do I need my tax assessment? Mind, Eeyore thinks PP will be elected in April and at once cancel the dental coverage program for everyone as he's promise-threatened.

Finished Ji Yun and False Value and The Farthest Station and a couple of George Bellairs mysteries. Bellairs thinks everybody except his Chief Inspector is a hen-pecked hard done by put-upon husband. This gets tiresome. Haven't started Mexican Gothic yet and have something else waiting at the library, which might get to tomorrow before the rain sets in on Friday. With the forecast temps we might avoid the freezing rain event but if not, I still have a bag of road salt to dispose of. 

Got downstairs yesterday before breakfast to weigh myself because I was afraid my bagel and butter habit of the last week plus not moving much on my twinging leg would have had deleterious effects. Mind, the aging metabolism doesn't usually register these things for ten days, but still. In the event, am exactly the weight I was last week. So I'm not gaining, or at least not yet.

Got out to the store yesterday in between thunder showers and shower showers. Missed a chunk of Fidelio on the CBC thereby and when I came back they were playing something else, very oompapapa.  Except that was the end of Fidelio.  No idea how they stretched a two act opera into three hours: must have been a long intermission with talking heads. And since the voices of the CBC's male talking heads annoy me in their lack of mellifluousness, just as well I missed it. Mind, I'm impossible to please, because the extreme mellifluousness of Classic FM's female announcers irks me even more, and yes, Marilyn Lightstone, I am looking at you. 

Stayed in today because there was no break in the rain until too late for a Sunday shop.  Beaver on through False Value which is bearable-ish once you get past the split nareative chapters, and don't try to unravel the relentless Douglas Adams' references, which in my case I have not read, and for a break read Abigail, which is far more entertaining.

My my my. Seems there was a shootout across from my laundromat with one guy holed up in one of the empty houses after trying to get into the laundromat itself. Dispatches on FB from the man who held the door against his entry. Massive police presence with dogs and weapons and all neighbourhood schools on lockdown. (The Essex schools I can see but Palmerston? Eight blocks away?) Anyway, they got him handcuffed safely and into custody, so all's well that ends well etc. Wouldn't have gone there today anyway, even if I hadn't gone Monday because rain has kept me in all day, as it did yesterday.

Finished a couple of Bellairs golden age mysteries, one with a note at the beginning warning for period racist language 'which we do not condone' and my word, wasn't there just. Unthinking use of the n word and equivalents, all in the absence of any Black characters. Did a fast reread of Peter's Room, skipping the Gondal parts, because I don't think I've read that one more than twice, if that. Never had much use for Forest's strictures that LARPing inevitably leads to arrested adolescence. Am sure she'd have disapproved of fanfic if she'd known about it: such a waste merely having fun with other people's characters when you could be writing real stories for publication.

Slowly making my way through Seidensticker's Low City, High City, an oddly dry history of Meiji and Taishō Tokyo from 1867 to 1923. Rereading Foxglove Summer which I was so sure was a novella that I had a hard time finding it on my shelf. May also reread Abigail, just because. Have also had my own crise de conscience over a book I want that's a 9.99 ebook on amazon and $35 in paperback from Indigo. Indigo is nearly as bad as amazon morally, but it's also Canadian, so Indigo it is.

Had my annual phone call from the money woman this morning, who says the money I want from them and the money they feel comfortable giving me exactly matches hurray, supposing markets don't completely crash, but also that at that rate I will run out of capital in nine years or so and will have to live on my house. Which she's nudging me to think about selling now, which hell no. Market is depressed, houses sit for weeks and months, no one's buying. We may never go back to the interest rates that fuelled the real estate bubble but they will go down eventually, enough to reassure buyers. And if nothing else, no rental will come as cheap as this place does. So I will be here for maybe another five years. If I can avoid complete crippledom, which sometimes I despair of. Maybe it would help if I did all my exercises as many times as I'm supposed to but dear god they're so dull.

Finished a couple of Maigrets. Maigret depresses me; I shouldn't read him. Think I will abandon Dark Lord of Derkhelm, which isn't doing it for me. Have David Mitchell's Unruly, and not sure I want it. There are two David Mitchells IIRC, and I think this is the wrong one. Anyway, Winter's Gifts arrived yesterday from across the pond and I'd rather be reading that.

Eating my belated breakfast yesterday (belated because I was indulging in a blissful warm lie-in amongst the feathers and flannel) I heard an odd low noise from somewhere seemingly in the house. Got up to investigate, got to bedroom door, and warm air puffed around my ankles. The furnace had turned on. Early in May when the lows still got to single digits C, I shoved the thermostat down to 15, figuring if it got that cold I'd be glad of some extra heat. When I got downstairs and checked the thermostat,  the thermometer part said 18, but obviously my furnace wanted to show willing. Turned the whole thing off because it's spring easing into summer here.

But then after I ran the water to wash the dishes, I could see steam rising from the sink. This doesn't usually happen. May be because the cold in the house is also a damp cold. But whatever it is, the chill has happily continued into today when that muggy warm air mass moved in. A cold house gives the AC effect of making outside seem warmer and damper than it is, which is one reason I stayed inside today. The other was that I took a water pill. Taken everyday, the effects aren't that noticeable; taken every few days, now that my ankles swell in the heat as they didn't in the cold, you'd better have a strong pelvic floor or court disaster, and I don’t have a strong pelvic floor. So I finished Abigail instead, and a very satisfying read that one was.

Then I go back to my library John Dickson Carr and his uniformly white upper class cast of characters, and oh dear, the contrast. Though I was wondering, all through Amongst Our Weapons, if Aaronovitch was being a little starry-eyed about his police force and the English public. Like, do white Londoners really not object when they're being questioned by two black policemen with no pale faces in sight? And Seawoll, who apparently prefers to mentor women rather than men, even if they're lesbians or Somali. This does not sort with what I read about police forces in the Graun.

Didn't go out yesterday. Instead sorted through a ripped paper bag full of VISA statements and ancient tax returns needing to be shredded, separating out utility bills that can just be recycled. Did a lot of bending to do this- everything was on the floor- and today I have deep aches on the inside of both legs.

Also yesterday I began feeling utterly vile in an all-over nowhere-everywhere fashion. So I cancelled today's massage, hoping it wouldn't turn out to be IT, the more so as the night before I went to bed at 1 and slept straight through till 11:30. This morning the malaise was gone completely, so I'm ascribing it to the codeine I took mid-day for rainy weather aches and pains.

Because I misread an email from my accountant, I thought my tax form would be coming by courier on Monday and have been fretting ever since. No, he couriered it on Monday, and I'd normally expect it today. But it's tax season and Fedex pleads high volume. Of course, if they'd work on weekends they could reduce that, but they won't. So even if it comes tomorrow and gets sent back same day, I'll be filing late. Which is a nuisance, given that they had my tax info on the 6th. 

Also does anyone else find Amongst Our Weapons to be too tightly bound? The pages will not stay flat, or even flattish, no matter what I do, and I have to hold hte book open by main force. Publishers getting slack, Horsefall.

Actually, Petronia herself put her finger on why I prefer online friends to meatspace ones. The latter think I'm weird and I have to fake nonweirdness around them. The former are all fans, and as P said, 'weird is what we came for.'

Apropos of yesterday's furor, I wish I had made a note of the passage in one of the early Rivers of London novels where Peter remarks of black women's hair, that you do not touch it under any circumstances without permission, not if you're friends, not if you're sleeping together, not even if you're married. The same could be said about talking about it.

Otherwise very much not my circus, not my monkeys.

As someone said about similar circumstances to my own. So, I've finally read The Silmarillion, AKA 'why we can't have nice things', as well as most of Unfinished Tales, and will now know more or less who everyone is in those First Age LOTR fics. Or maybe not. Still can't tell you you who Finrod is off the bat, or Finarfin or Thingol or any of the other elven lords, all of whom ended badly.

Have been at home for three days but saw that it's supposed to snow tomorrow so went to the conveni for Pepsi. Wore gloves which should appease the little anxiety ants that ask 'Why are you coughing?' I'm coughing because it's March and I always cough in March, and hope that being indoors will lead to coughing somewhat less than usual, just as my intake of anti-inflams has been cut in half by spending most of the day not moving. My weight also drops as it does in March, which will be nice until my consumption of gin and chocolate catches up with me.

Coworker said the women at her gym swear by THC balm from some west coast firm, so I ordered a jar, which arrived today as I was limping upstairs with my breakfast toast and soy. So I could sign for it right away and not have to trot out to a postal outlet to do so. Opened it up- serious overpackaging, including wrapping paper and ribbon- and slathered it on twingy knees. And then slathered methyl and camphor heating cream because dear god it pongs. A vaguely marijuana smell, but the worst skunky notes of marijuana. And of course hard to say if it works or not: certainly no miraculous cessation of pain. But put more on tonight because elbows had a major tendinitis flare up this aftrrnoon that had me crying and swearing as I unlocked my bike and rode it home, and it does seem to have eased the lock-and-stab somewhat. A tentative win.

Also delivered today was the latest Aaronovitch from Waterstones, which doesn't require a signature even though they said they did. So that awaits me when I finish the current Rebus. I'd been very careful to note names and try to remember who was who, but once again we're reaching the denouement with a character I have no memory of at all.

I finished The October Man last weekend. It's quintessentially Aaronovitch in that I couldn't keep the names straight at all. This may be me, not him, but evidently it doesn't matter if the names are English or German, they all register to me as nondescript and confusible.

Also Aaronovitch's style reads very flat after Wolfe's. Or maybe it's Tobias' voice, because I bet Peter's would have felt different, even though Tobias had some very Peterish moments.

So I reread Sorceror to the Crown instead, assuming Regency pastiche would have style enough to penetrate the heat-hazed brain. And it was well enough, though Zacharias is really such a-- err well, perhaps 'slave of duty' isn't the best phrase for it; so well-behaved and squashed a dutiful son that he seems almost as flat as Novik's Laurence. Really I much preferred Damerell. Especially as I'd remembered the deal with Georgiana but completely forgotten the one with Rollo. Shall go back and look at their passages again, only slightly hampered by not being able to remember the plot even a few hours after finishing the book.

Long because Canada Day is a Monday. Next year it'll be a Wednesday and, for the first time since 2015, a singleton holiday.

Tumblr is getting on my nerves. Posts from people I'm not following show up randomly on my dashboard, over and over again, and it seems the only way to get rid of them is to block the poster. FB at least has a 'hide this entry' function, which amazingly puts it one up on tumblr. Equally, I understand that 'fandom is on tumblr now', but judging by the second hand noise I hear (people I follow reposting someone else's answers to a third party's posts), tumblr fandom is a) very young and b) wankier than anything seen previously, GW and HP included. Because now it's youth plus self-righteousness, slamming Neil Gaiman for gay-baiting(!) and Rowland for associating with TERFs (and therefore being a TERF herself, since youth has never heard that guilt by association is a fallacy.) Fandom Wank, thou shouldst be with us at this hour.

Am slightly cranky because my body woke me up, irrevocably, at 4:15 this morning for no good reason. Eventually took an antihistamine and went back to sleep ca 7 a.m. Body then proceeded to cough all day from draining sinuses choking my throat. It's a bad allergy year, and probably about to get worse with next week's heat. Is also the stink time of year when the fragrant flowers of May give place to... oh, I don't know what: lilac wannabes and linden droppings and mock orange.

Incidentally, my front lawn tree was supposed to be an ironwood, but the arborist says it's really a basswood , ergo a linden. 'Fragrant flowers', the webpages say, which is one word for them. Could make a soothing tea from them, or put them in my bath to reduce hysteria. Yeah, sure.

Cherries are red red red and the noisy birds feast on them all day long, which makes me happy, because sweeping up pits is much easier than sweeping up half-rotted fruit. Gorge your fill, little birdies. Now, at the end of my seventh decade, I realize that I can't tell birds apart by their cries but am newly aware that they do make different sounds. None of them strike me as melodic, mind : I'm especially puzzled at Shelley's 'profuse strains of unpremeditated art.' Shelley was smoking the good dope. As for nightingales singing in Berkeley Square- well, someone posted the sound of a nightingale to the Rivers of London FB group and, er well, I'd be tempted to chuck a stone at something that made a noise like that. But then I have little use for birds at the best of time. They're still dinosaurs by me.

Was home late last night because of deadly boring CPR refresher seminar, during which I had both a coffee and a Coke. So took an ativan to guard against wakefulness till 6 a.m. and slept blissfully till 10. Padded to the front bedroom to do exercises and retrieve cell phone, which promptly rang shrilly. Staff asking 'where are you?' as she'd also messaged me (twice) and left a voicemail. Seems I had an 8:30 shift that I'd totally failed to notice on the schedule, probably because if I see a name starting with J in the morning section I assume it's Jessica. 'Don't hurry in, we only have seven kids, there's only an hour left anyway and we have the student.' She was much more concerned that I wasn't lying unconscious on the road having slipped on the ice pellets that had accumulated overnight. 'You may not have to come in for the afternoon shift either, call before you start out...' 'Yes, but we still have the First Aid seminar, right?' 'Oh yeah. Right.'

So I shovelled white stuff off the sidewalk and salted it and walked down to the subway because the Christie bus can't be counted on in a storm. The Spadina streetcar also failed to materialize so I walked the three blocks to work. (And am resigned now that I can't cross Bloor on my own steam in the winter. I simply can't go fast enough for the light. This is the second time I've sought the aid of a sturdy young(er) man's arm to lean on, and still barely made it to the other side before the amber. Twenty-five seconds from curb to curb is just not long enough, guys.)

Turns out that the early co-ordinator also failed to appear, thinking she'd hired a replacement for today when it was for next week. I will say the toddler staff were very forebearing in the face of this double dereliction, since they had to take in the orphaned infants who arrived before nine. The orphaned infants of course were *delighted* to be taken in by the toddlers and didn't want to leave.

But meanwhile we had more freezing rain warnings for the rush hour period, so first our First Aid outfit called asking to cancel, and then- wonder of wonders- the St George campus decided to close early, at 3 p.m. So parents came to get their kids and I came home early. And, exerciseless all day and unmedicated for much of it, hurt like a mofo.

Tomorrow I'm off. But conscience suggests I come in anyway and help out on Horrible Thursday, when we have no students and the messiest snack of the week.
( Wednesday )

After yesterday's extreme cold warning, when I was easily able to cab it from the subway station to work, we had two inches of winter slop followed by sloppy rain, and not a cab to be seen. So I chanced the subway, and stood while three trains went past crammed to the doors. At last one came along that had room to fit myself in, and so two stations later I got to Spadina. Where, for a wonder, the lineup for the streetcar did not go three times around itself and back down the stairs. There was no lineup at all. So you win some and lose some: but I was told by those who transit regularly to avoid 9 o'clock trains if at all possible. (Doesn't help that the n-s line is still experiencing quarter hour delays because of faulty signals, reacting to both the cold and the slop. Lord knows what ails the e-w, because they were coming every two minutes at that point, which is clearly still not enough.)

And then I got on a crowded 5:45 Spadina car up to the station, to find the platform black with bodies again. But this time there was a police presence. (The police walk through crowds single file, with a hand on the shoulder of the cop in front of them. Works.) Cop came back telling us to stand away from the elevator, and was followed by medics with an older white guy on a gurney, head bandaged and blood down his face, evidently the victim of a fall; and a short Indian woman who appeared distressed but had no obvious injuries. They whisked away; cops and medics blocked the platform still talking about who knows what. Three trains passed, backed to the doors, but I was moving down the platform away from the stairs and escalators. The third train was, by Tokyo standards, only a bit full, so I said 'Room for one more?' to the guys by the door, and stepped on, no problem. And got off at the next stop so I could have sushi and vodka Sprite. I wish the eateries near work weren't all pubs with beer and wine; I mean, they may have vodka too, but it's served with pub food, boo hiss.

Tomorrow I don't have to be up till 9:30, thank god, though they're still calling for more snow after today's rain cleaned the streets off. The sidewalks are all icy patches because of people, like me, who didn't shovel the slop this morning.
( Meme )

Years ago I bought a map of London to help, I think, make some sense of The Midnight Mayor. I have the feeling I threw it out because 'Google Maps, who needs paper'. A mistake. Probably I should just ignore all the place names that Aaronovitch throws out as Peter drives about London, but I need to see what's going on, and the new Google Maps is fricking useless when I'm trying to follow Peter veering round Euston Station and ending up at Bishopsgate. Google Maps is cluttered up with a million eateries and markers for tube stations without the names, and coloured lines that I assume are Underground but also not named and also useless, and the roads are all A-whatever so if you don't know that the A-10 is Bishopsgate, sucks to be you. Again, this shouldn't bother me, but Aaronovitch knows what he's seeing and I want to know too. The first book made so much more sense when I could see what St Paul's Church looked like.

This is why I don't upgrade my desktop: because this old version of Chrome gives me both names and numbers, eventually, and the little walking man icon at need. But it's nothing like as good as a paper map.
( Wednesday again? )

1. Having spent the last month and more rereading the Rivers of London series to refresh my memory, I embark on the latest offering, only to discover in ch 1 practically a character I don't remember at all. Follypedia tells me he appeared in The Hanging Tree. The books of six weeks ago vanish from memory like the snows of spring.

2. Opened one of the unsatisfactory duvet packages to see how it looks when spread out. The label says 'heavy duty flannel' but it feels like heavy duty cotton ie very heavy, very rough, and not at all fleecy, let alone warm. If I'd wanted a weighted blanket, I'd have bought one. In the event it cost me nothing, and I now know to avoid that brand. But gakkari, certainly.

3. Told myself it was pathetic to go whinging on about 'I can't walk anymore, my knees hurt and my back hurts oh what shall I do?' My piriformis won't unkink unless I *do* walk, so I did, not unhappily, to the store and the coffee shop and back. And stretched afterwards to be safe. But now everything is knotted irretrievably and my back hurts almost as much as it does after a massage. My body is perverse.

1. Sun and dry.

2. Plague at work has thinned the ranks of tinies so I had yesterday off. Am sorry for the feverish tinies and their desperate parents, but a sunny holiday is nice.

3. Went back to the Evil Empire of Walmart and got a 4x tshirt. Still not as long and roomy as my first one, but covers what needs to be covered ie I can answer the door in it, which I can't in my usual sleep shirts.

Also bought a pair of 3X pants, floppy cotton-nylon blend. And must take them back because in pants, 3X is enormous on me. Sizing- the mystery of the universe.

4. Alas and alack, staff and parents have been bringing in Christmas cookies. The chocolates I can resist, but I never met a sugar cookie I didn't like.

5. The RoFo gov't stiffed us casual staff of our salary supplement for December, but work still rustled up a $100 bonus, which helps.
( Memeage )

My copy of The Mortal Word arrived today, five and half weeks instead of the usual five and a half days after it was mailed. Am much relieved; the PO has been known to generate spontaneous black holes.

Otherwise we stagger through the last eight working days till Christmas. It is not I who am working ten hour shifts without breaks, presumably voluntary; and I hope those who are have a lovely ten day break. God knows they deserve it.
( Can I even remember what I've read? )

Oh dear. The ebook of Lies Sleeping has arrived. To read in that uncongenial format or not to read? Must decide, and soon, because people are waiting for my copy.

A December thunderstorm. How charming. -_-

Possibly not surprising after the October temps today- 10 or 12C, into the 50sF. Wore a tshirt under the winter jacket, because until the sun came out mid-afternoon it was a grey and dank 10C. Also wore the Mystery Trousers, which are the only non-elasticized waistband pants I own, and which I now fit into after the recent 10 lb loss. But. I bought-- and more importantly, wore-- them in 2007 when I was thirty pounds heavier than now. Thirty pounds is a lot of me: you'd think they'd hang on me now. But no: fit nicely, no more. I can only assume that, post-menopause, my weight redistributed itself again, putting it where ten pounds ago made the pants fit tight.

Finished The Furthest Station, which is another lost text. Lost because my mind retained the impression of pages and pages about High And Over which required me to google the real building to see what it looked like. That description isn't in the book. What *is* in the book is the unexplained (AFAICT) fox slaughter. OK, maybe the neighbours did it; but why include it at all?

Got Moriarty as an ebook from the library, and well enough, but the constant misuse of 'shall' is driving me batty. Yes I had to look it up to find out why it struck me as wrong, but turns out my ear had it right. As a future tense, 'shall' can only be used with first person. You can't say 'It shall be very enjoyable.' Has to be 'will'.

If solitary, be not idle: so to combat accidia I did the weekend laundry and dishes (bare minimum achievement, though why must this single person do so much laundry? I did two washes during the week as well.) (Answer: in winter I wear long-sleeved tops that sticky-fingered infings grab hold of, so one top = one day. Thus: extra dark washes.) Then vacuumed the downstairs and kitchen, mended my one remaining nightshirt, and darned a sock that's been sitting waiting for me to do it this last month. Might even write a few more Christmas cards to crown the day.

Odd disquietening thing happened yesterday. Went to my acupuncture studio down Spadina, locked bike to bike stand by the curb, had appointment. Came out, bike was no longer there. It was leaning against the store next to the studio building, and the open lock was sitting on the carrier. No idea how, because the keys were in my pocket, but the rubber casing had been twisted around which has happened before when people tried to meddle with it. So... someone unlocked my bike but decided not to take it after all? Just to show that they could? (For once I *know* I didn't leave it leaning against a building with the lock open. I will sometimes wonder if I actually locked my bike to the stand, because on occasion I've succeeded in locking the bike to nothing but its own frame. That usually happens if there's another bike there with a short lock that makes it hard to angle my own in. But I do turn the key on the lock and I'd never leave it leaning against a building.)
( Wednesday again )

FB RoL community reminds me that Peter wanted to be an architect, which Watsonianly explains why all the clear as mud descriptions of various buildings and housing estates. Doylist me still thinks it's just Aaronovitch having a hard-on for architecture. Since I'm as architecture-onchi as can be imagined, especially anything recent (my criterion is always 'does it work?' and the answer 90% of the time is 'no way, mate') this is decidedly a bug, not a feature.

Gave in and Googled The English Patient, which saves me having to read it. Evidently the book is different from the film, but still is all about People Being Stupid because of their great passions. That's a pet hate of mine onaccounta not believing in great passions in the first place. It's like saying that you had to do something because you were stoned out of your gourd. That's not a reason, let alone an excuse, let alone an admirable excuse, for destructive behaviour.

And my suspicions of Ondaatje's women seem to have been justified. From a Goodreads review:

I’m going to venture out of my normal review style here, and instead do a Q & A with Hana (the, erm... MC, maybe?!)

Me: *puzzled stare* Moving on: Why do you seem to have a pseudo-sexual relationship with all the men in this book, despite the fact that one is purporting to be "like an Uncle" and another is entirely bedridden??

Hana: Well, I am a woman surrounded by men, need I say more?? *shoulder shrug*

Say no more.

It's been a decade since I used amazon Japan, so I'd forgotten the sad lesson I learned there: if a company uses Fedex, run away as fast as possible. $30 US shipping for a $48 order, plus Fedex fee for border paperwork, and Customs or HST on top of that. And then Clear the Air sends me an email telling me how to use their bags, with this helpful addition, which in a spirit of spite I will share with everyone here:

If you do not want to wait for bags to be shipped to you, it is possible to make your own bags:

Go to PETCO and buy Clear the Air Cat Urine Odor Eliminator. It is in the cat section near the cat liter (sic). It is in a pink canister with a white cat on the front. Most PETCO stores carry this product. Buy at least three or four canisters. PETCO SKU # 1564420

Pour the contents of one canister into an old nylon or sock and tie it off. One 14 oz canister will make one bag that will cover approximately 75 square feet.

Hang bag in room to be deodorized and, they claim, odours will vanish within a few hours. This I very much doubt. Vanish for others; not for me.
( Still Wednesday )

Canada Post never delivers on Saturdays but sometimes it does, for packages. I do not understand this at all. But in any case, I now have The Farthest Station from incandescens, for which I am very grateful, since today was one of great wanhope. Many many thanks. Aaronovitch is a great lifter of spirits.

Have put maktak over the study/ bathroom vent and run the air ionizer, so Ratso's ghost is not quite as overpowering as it was. I'm resigned to a good two weeks of faint hints and cold back rooms, but that's how it goes.

Not a day off- had to go in for an hour this morning which but-of-course screwed up my sleeping. But after that I took myself down to the Art Gallery and caught the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit after buying myself a membership which will pay for itself in four visits.

It was a tad too crowded for comfortable viewing: nothing like the terracotta warriors, but those guys were up on plinths and nobody much was trying to read the plaques on the other stuff. This crowd was elderly with canes and wheelchairs, or middle-aged with avoirdupois, so I didn't get to see as much information as I might. Not that it matters. I like houses in my art and when O'Keeffe did those they were very nearly abstract, like that famous patio door which in the paintings hangs above the ground like a black window to nowhere.

So I'm left with flowers that look sexual to me if not to her, and landscapes that relate to nothing I know. Except that her hills look like meat, or liver, or like that dead thing in Dali's Persistence of Memory. Intriguing but disquieting.
( Still Wednesday )