Off the Cliff

1. Fiesta has pinwheel party sandwiches. Salmon, egg salad, and a ham and cheese I've only heard about. 'They went in about five minutes,' says the cashier.

2. I have pâté! and gherkins! and tiny pickled onions! (which ought to be sweet and aren't, but OK). And olives and avocado and camembert and crackers and rye bread. IOW, I have canapés to go with my Johnson cocktail, yum.

3. (the biggie) Walking in boots is agony for my left knee. In shoes my knee will sometimes pang and pump and do the '100 watt jolt to the kneecap' routine, but it's inevitable in boots. I ponder the cause. crtainly my shoes are tighter, but it was to avoid tightness that I got these boots, after my old lace-ups trashed every tendon in my lower leg. Still, maybe feet need more support? I still have that size-down pair of Toe Warmers sitting on my shoe rack. Try using the left one of that with the half-length orthopedic, and the X-wide right with my usual orthopedic, and venture out into the snow.

Huzzah! Barely a twinge, even though I slip and slide in the slush. Thank you thank you thank you, Toe Warmers!

(This is all the more necessary as my doctor departed on vacation without filling my pain meds prescription. Have been taking one or two a day instead of the usual four or five. Conclusion: prescription meds are not as necessary as when I had Baker's cyst. They're still a lot easier on the stomach than Tylenol.)

Was going out to lunch with my one remaining university friend, but it was a cold dank achy day and her pain meds weren't working, requiring a double dose that ruled out driving, so we rain-chequed it to Saturday, and instead I went off and bought a metropass from a machine. Machine was not intuitive, so the fact I succeeded was a gain. Even with senior discount the pass won't pay for itself, but the blessed relief of being able to use the centre doors to enter the packed 6 o'clock streetcar is worth every penny. And no more fussing with paper transfers in winter pockets, stuffed in with keys an gloves. My coat is a reasonable coat but its pockets are much too shallow. It's a men's coat too- where do they think guys keep their wallets?

Thought 'Great, now I can get to that sale at the shoe store' and realized that no, actually, it's still December and I can't use the pass yet. Decided to have lunch at my local, but the local was closed. All my locals are closed. Happy for other people's holidays, but Second Cup isn't quite the same. For one thing, their hot sandwiches aren't.

I won't repeat the refrain about how ghastly the last year was and could next year puhleese be better. After a certain age the ghastlies are inevitable and one copes. I have books telling me how this is done. It involves undoing the habitual thinking of at least sixty years. Oddly enough, this is actually possible.

So, undoing the Eeyore thoughts of over sixty years, I shall wish you all a happy new year and believe it will actually happen.

1. Round about Christmas I started smelling green tea in my living room. Green tea isn't a pleasant smell for me- used to choke on it in the basement food section of any Japanese department store where they have the stuff loose and open in large metal bowls and don't as me why. Suffocating, I find it. This was the faintest ghost of that but still itchy-making. Finally traced it to my little tree, a pine branch embedded in a round of wood. Can't remember when I bought it- the weekend before Christmas seems about right- but it didn't take long to go bad, if that's what it is. Put it outside, and found it still had some pine scent left to it; but the musty smell was there too. Sad: little Christmas lights are cheering in the gloomy returned-winter (snowing) darkness.
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What have you just finished?
An Artist of the Floating World which, along with the March-like damp weather and the uncertain gut, has left me feeling bleh.

What are you reading now
Hilary McKay, Binnie for Short- enchanting McKay as ever.
Peter Dickinson, Merlin Dreams- not sure if I'm fantodded or not.
Sophie Masson, The Tempestuous Voyage of Hopewell Shakespeare- ditto.
Dick Francis, The Edge- set in Canada, full of pleasant bland Canadians and one very nasty Brit. Should speed-read to discover what the nasty Brit did to all his poor suicidal victims.

What will you read next?
Probably all the above, plus whatever book G gave me for Christmas.

I'm sure there's some self-help skill or cog-behav method to kick one out of the Christmas doldrums. I might try it one of these days when I stop being so bloody tired.

Otherwise there was a strange beetle in the side bedroom yesterday with a kind of triceratops frill about its head (luckily no horns.) Did the glass-and-paper trick and dropped him on to the flat roof. Windows have *not* been open in spite of 10C highs so he probably originated in the house and may not survive the Great Outdoors. OTOH it's 14C tomorrow, so maybe he will. (And tomorrow is supposed to be 17. Daffodils bloom.)

I read an article lately that said the days of spam were over. Not nearly over enough. For several months now I've been blessedly free of those 2 indubitably spam messages my filter used to release every weekday, and the messages in the spam filter itself were minimal and generally legit except sorry UNICEF I only give money when I have it. But now I get four insurance or burial plans or earn money fasts a day, while the spam program only holds on to Doctors Without Borders and such. Christmas. Bah, humbug.

amazon.uk fails to deliver my book when it said it would, and amazon's website gives you no recourse to inquire directly as to what's going on. They wouldn't answer anyway. Christmas. Bah, humbug.

Last week's intestinal revolt shows every sign of coming back whenever I eat. There were indeed several kiddies who couldn't seem to shake the thing and kept relapsing, to their parents' despair, and I seem to have that version. On the up side of that, this morning I weighed something unseen since mid-summer. This also puts paid to the notion of med-caused gain. It were those croissants and cookies all along.

Can't believe that two early mornings in a row would leave me this wiped. Last week's upset must still be hanging on. Or something.

But I only have to work Monday next week and could, if I care to, have seven days off in a row. Shall wander by anyway: I get depressed when I spend all day without talking to anybody.

1. Rather more money in both bank accounts than I can understand, but the figures seem to tally.

2. A $10 miniature tree which may not last till Christmas but which makes the downstairs smell splendid,

3. Christmas reading: Hogfather, the first Pratchett I could bring myself to read since The Shepherd's Crown, and working well because it was never one of my top faves and I haven't reread it since post-op spring of '08.

Small displeasures: gastro-intestinal outbreak at work, hitting six of our ten. Not sure if what I have today is that, or an extreme reaction to the black beans, rice, and smoked paprika lunch at work yesterday: certainly I was awake with heartburn most of the night. Have cancelled everything cancellable this rainy weekend and hope things will be calmer tomorrow. If not- well, it's a fast way to lose two kilos and hot beanbags help the aches attendant on no painkillers at all.

November was a long month. Hallowe'en seems like another age. I have no impression of the month overall but there were isolated high points: I got a new water heater, had a tooth out, wrote a story, backed a few Go Fund Us-es, and acquired all the Rivers of London comics.

Reading was all forgettable Stephen Booth and The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. There were stunning leafscapes and skyscapes seen from bikeback, but memory refuses to hold on to an image of them. I have to enjoy the scene in the moment because I know I'll forget it as soon as I arrive at home or at work. (Memory holds on to bad weather just fine: rainy days, muggy days, indifferent smoggy days: I can see them perfectly in my mind's eye.) (There are people who don't have mind's eyes. I find this inconceivable.)

Otherwise the usual saga of ouchy knees and IT bands and gunky lungs. Have had all these for a decade at least: they just seem to be worse nowadays.

The week of Early Risings. (Doctor, acupuncture, shift, dentist.) Also first snow early yesterday morning which, thank you god, did not stick on the pavement down here in Greenhouse Effect-land. But I bicycled through several large dumps off cars that had come in from the burbs.

(I have new boots- yet another pair of boots- guaranteed double-E width. May still not be wide enough to accommodate orthotics and liners and bunions. Am told I need to replace orthotics every two or three years, which is-- you think I'm made of money? Am also told that the orthotics I have are designed for running shoes, not boots, which is-- let's try anything but the Walking Clinic this time.)

Anyway. Wednesday meme:
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Blah. Teeth hurt. Neck stiff. Cough is back. Hope for better tomorrow.

Rather too many Senior Moments of late, though SMently I can't remember what they were. Except today's, where I checked the library shelves for the hold the computer said was in, couldn't find it, and involved not one but two librarians in the search for same. Of course it was where it should have been, under the last four digits of my library card. I'd been looking under the last four digits of my phone number, which is the password for logging into the library site.

Also am annoyed. Perimenopausal symptoms do occasionally occur long after menopause and I can mostly handle them with soy milk. But now I'm having a recurrence of the drawing pains in the breast from ten years ago. Granted it could be muscular ('results from strain or lifting') but sure feels like the old stuff. Supposedly handleable with evening primrose or iodine, but I don't know if I can take either with the meds I'm on. Which means 'see your doctor' except that's always a problem in our present understaffed situation at work.

I shall be sad when this sombre brown-coloured autumn is over and all the trees are bare. (It's sombre because cloudy; otherwise, as I've said, it's very yellow.) Brown autumns take me back to nearly-forgotten places and times, and because nearly forgotten I can't tell you what they were. New York, perhaps? Some deciduous area of Tokyo? (But Tokyo was always disconcertingly green.) Something says 'mid-late 80s and the new, unheard of coffee shops on Bloor that served lattes in china bowls.' Back in those days you had to go to Little Italy to get your espressos and cappucinos at all. Another country- they do things differently there.

Otherwise a long plotty Peter Grant and Nightingale story. I surprise me by not caring for the m/m part. For once I want someone (Peter) to be robustly heterosexual because to make him anything else feels like yaoi, not slash: arbitrarily making a character's sexuality what you want it to be for a hot story, in spite of any evidence to the contrary in canon.

Yellow fall is boosted by returned warm weather. (Why *can't* I call it Indian summer? I grew up believing that was what the (then) Indians called it, even if that doesn't make sense: last chance to harvest and hunt before the snows kept people indoors, sort of.) Time out of time, even if it was warmer a scant three weeks ago. That was an autumn warmth: this is more like a mild March, except for the burning trees. Middle of night trip to bathroom last week revealed an oddity: a reddish light shining through the front door onto my stairs. Went down to investigate and discovered across-the-street's porch light was filtering through my front lawn trees and thus casting red shadows. Which is odd, because by daylight the trees are uniformly gold or saffron or yallery-greenery.

Whatever, I have the windows open again for a while. This after having the furnace on last night because my house holds cold and the weekend had lows near freezing.

Chrome goes weirder and weirder. If I follow a link from LJ, when I come back, everything in italics is invisible. Today's special: everything *except* the italics is invisible. Seems to be confined to LJ, so that's a relief.

Rains, of course. Yesterday took a rake and cleaned the grates at the end of the block, which were already plugged with rotting wet leaves. (From when? Last Saturday, I suppose.) Forgot to check side alley by my house, but when I remembered this morning, some forethinking soul had raked the leaves away from the drain already. Thus no lakes.

Searching for dubbin to protect new shoes, accidentally cleaned up catch-all cupboard in kitchen. Unearthed many brown garden waste bags, pieces of bubble wrap (never know when it will come in handy), fluorescent 40 watt bulbs (which will never come in handy), vacuum parts that may belong to the Dustdevil, and a decorative cloth shopping bag. Plastic bags have been stuffed into each other and will go to work, the better to hold the tinies' shirts and pants that have fallen prey to overenthusiastic feeding habits and M's need to hold her bankie even while eating spaghetti bolognese.

Took bike in to have brakes tightened. 90 minutes later, came home with tuned-up, new chain/ new brake-pads/ new brake cabled bicycle, whose wheels had been cleaned with acetone and whose dinged and banged up frame had been treated with some kind of enamel. This is why one goes local- none of the big guys have ever overhauled my bike like that. OTOH guy talked non-stop about personhood and manhood under Common Law- evidently not the same thing- and how graves have names in caps just like the names on gov't docs which marks the names as 'person'- this having something to do with Dep't of Agriculture having installed video cameras at the farm of the guy who produces and promotes raw milk. Not quite loony but certainly bee-in-bonnet.

Woman feeding a stack of 649 tickets into the lotto machine yesterday, says to me jokingly, 'This machine is broken. It keeps telling me 'not a winning ticket'' as she checks the last one, which brings up 'Please sign. Winning ticket $50.' 'I've never won that much!' she says stunned but happy. I take her place to check the one I found in my change purse, which has to be the non-winner from last week's 60 million that I didn't discard at the time. Haven't bought any since. Machine tells me it's worth a twonie.

I may be on to something here.

How can a day with a forecast high of 18 have been so cold? Well, because it dawned 12 and then went down, so the fall jacket didn't cut it at all. Winter jacket worked just fine, thanks. Tomorrow sounds to be just as mixed-up. Ah, October.

What have you just finished reading?
The Third Policeman. Does leave a hangover. Can't decide if CS Lewis did this better or worse. Suspect it was worse ie much more flat-footed.

What are you reading now?
Another Stephen Booth mystery, name forgotten. It's a Stephen Booth, about Derbyshire detective Diane Fry and sidekick cinnamon roll Ben Cooper. I of course thought the author was Susan Cooper, having got his sex wrong, having confused his name with the protagonist's, and having remembered the other protag as being Diane Rich. Luckily Mr. Miller the bookseller was able to penetrate my brain-fry.

What will you read next?
Depends how brain-fried I remain. Have White Teeth and Aki: the Years of Childhood and The Famished Road still sitting in the pile; money is on White Teeth, because it's set in a cold grey England that matches cold grey Toronto.

I've always been zen about elections. (This from the common wisdom that an active interest in politics is an American trait which Canucks consider vulgar.) Time enough to find out who our new masters will be in the morning, and meantime here's a good book or webpage or whatever. I have never, in my three-score years and five, sat watching election results, even when it was a question of Rob Ford or not Rob Ford.

I am watching them now. Shall quit when the Liberals reach an official majority and I can sleep in peace.

Lost the stylus for my phone long ago, so bought one intended for tablets. Works fine, can be stuck in top of phone at need. (My thumbs don't text. Period.) Tuesday for some reason I had the stylus without the phone and pants with no pockets, so stuck stylus in my bra and forgot about it. Tuesday night I'm undressing, stylus falls onto rug, 'ah there it is.' Finished undressing, threw clothes in laundry basket, put on bathrobe, went to retrieve stylus-- and it wasn't there. Looked under dresser and bed though I hadn't been near where it was and couldn't have accidentally kicked it away. It wasn't there. It's gone. I don't know how.

I'm hoping this is just one of those accesses of brain shutoff that had me, on the weekend, looking down at the gear wheels on my bicycle and thinking 'but they ought to be on the left side of the bike, they're always on the left side, how could they have moved to the right side?' Checked all other bikes in sight and all had the gears on the right side. But I had a distinct memory of looking down at my gears to be sure that I hadn't slipped onto the smallest wheel, and the gears were on my left.

Noting gorgeous days doesn't help me remember gorgeous days afterwards, but I'll note anyway. Sunny and warm as a Tokyo November, shirtsleeve weather, but not oppressive. Leaves not especially autumnal, but my sunglasses have a pinky filter that turns the universal bleached yellow into flaming red, so I am content.

Wonted haunts both today and yesterday were oddly unpeopled, which one expects in Seaton Village whose middle-class residents all have cottages to go to, and how spacious that leaves the cafes; but remarked the same in the underclass section where I was today, only I've forgotten what that section was. Luckily was also true of my area's advanced poll for the Fed Election: Friday was by all accounts a horror show and Saturday not much better. But then again, this (newly gerrymandered) riding is split between the Liberals and the NDP, so the Regressive Conservatives had no need to try the shenanigans reported of them in more contested areas.

There is no point detailing the weird things that happen when you hear your physiotherapist advising you to 'duck walk' in the pool. I should have googled 'duck walk' and discovered that whatever it is, it is not what I thought it was. Had I done that my knees would not have hated me as blisteringly as they have these last three days.

Still went walking around the burnished gold neighbourhood after dinner. Yellow leaves are almost as transient as cherry blossoms and must be enjoyed when one can.

Quiet and grey and cold, if not cold-as-all-that. Turns out I'm more limber after yesterday's marathon than I have been all week. No accounting for bodies. So I finally tried out my new steam cleaner on the living room rug. Does not remove old stains but makes the carpet look marginally less grimy than before. Grime is on pad, which I suppose one must wash frequently. Seems to work on vinyl lino as well, at least as well as a wet mop and much more easily; *almost* as good as getting down on hands and knees and cleaning tile by tile, which, trust me, is how I did it in the ancient past.

Made fava bean dill rice with ham bits. Discovered that frozen favas (which the package says are not cooked, however soft they seem) must be second-shelled before boiling. Boil in the shell and the beans turn to mush. Leftover rice turns to mush as well when steamed. (Maybe it was the short-grained basmati that perplexed our cook by becoming porridge instead of individual grains?) Hence the Persian recipe is stodge, but then I have no quarrel with stodge. Even if dried dill doesn't taste very dill-y either.

Otherwise acquired a copy of I Conquer the Castle at a come by chance garage sale round the corner. Guys running garage sale had no idea how much to ask for their (putative) books. Something a bit sketchy about the whole thing. Certainly the rather louche gentlemen involved didn't look like people who'd ever read Dodie Smith, or indeed anything at all.

And up on Dupont a bus was parked at my corner, or rather idling forever, its destination given as 'helter bu'. The s's weren't lighting properly. Who was being sheltered and why was not apparent: there were a few people inside and a lot of suitcases, but no sign of disaster anywhere in the neighbourhood.

What did you recently finish reading?
Dear Enemy by Jean Webster. Sequel-ish to Daddy-Long-Legs. Book from youth, unvisited by Suck Fairy, unlike so many others (Anne of Green Gables, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, much of Narnia etc.) Casual racism is of its time and slappable rather than horrific. Best of epistolary novels.

What are you currently reading?
Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton. Because it's on the shelf and might be better than it is. Life is too short to read come-by-chance like that unless one reads much faster than I do. But I keep on. See title.

What will you read next?
What indeed? Webster is the first female author I've read in two months, and she was casual bedtime reading. So might finish either of my other one-the-goes but abandoned; might finally read the last Max Gladstone; or might get into White Teeth. I want fantasy and steampunk; I am currently 40th of 42 for The Watchmaker of Filigree Street; that's a long wait. Money is on Gladstone.

In RL, finally had teeth mended at the dentist's for slightly under $400, even with the discount she kindly gave me. However was not rackled by spasms of coughing, so shall count it gain. Cough syrup is nearly all gone ad I hope I have no more need of it.

Oh hello, semi-full moon in a clear sky that's supposed to be raining. Where were you last night?

Every time the temps dip down to 9 and 10 at night I start thinking 'maybe time to take the fans down to the basement?' And then we have heavy grey mug like today, a 22C that feels like 28 (low 70s that feel like low 80sF) and I think No, not yet. In 2007 it was 90F on our Thanksgiving and their Columbus Day ie the second weekend in October. Halloween in soon enough.

Lovely sunny autumn day, finally feeling cool instead of just 'supposed to be.' A trick of September's- when it's ever so slightly humid that high of 21 (70F approx) feels short-sleeved summery; when it's dry, one reaches for a jacket.

So in brisk September I washed dishes and did laundry and gave the kitchen floor a good scrubbing. And then, alas, took a break to google for reasonable versions of Pyramid solitaire, and found one, and that was the rest of the day gone. Except for making fish and rice in the evening, stupidly, because I used dill, and dill is the messiest herb known to woman, and now I must sweep and mop the kitchen floor again.

1. The search for a cold morning coffee.

The milk companies' iced coffee is too sweet and calorie laden. Sabina's tip for iced coffee (pour water over ground beans, stick in fridge, let stand: cuts acidity almost completely) is messy, and of course not sweet or thick enough. I add it to chocolate soy and chocolate milk, but then the calories add up. Had a brainwave, went to Korean supermarket and bought two cans of JCC iced coffee. Still not quite thick enough, but the taste at least is right.

2. The search for distilled water

Needed for my sinus rinse (though boiled is supposed to work as well), humidifier (winter is coming), and steam cleaner (the instructions for cleaning the thing of hard water deposits are terrifying: intend not having them in the first place.) That's a lot of distilled water and a lot of plastic, even if I buy the Green water in recycled plastic jugs. So I hauled out the reverse osmosis machine my bro gave me (nearly 30 years ago) from under the sink (never throw anything away) and will soon have lots and lots of pure water. Just as soon as Bro explains how to hook things up to the tap. Am unmechanical to a degree and fundamentally scared of all machines.
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