flemmings | Entries tagged with rl

Well, so that was the year that was. A year ago I was marginally less crippled than I am now- could still work sorta, and get up and down from chairs without as much effort, and walk to the subway occasionally. Cannot walk now if I'm wearing shoes or boots without my walking staff. Hopefully the knees will get done this year and hopefully all the lower back and hip flexor shenanigans will get better then.

If I must be retired and crippled, being retired and crippled during a lockdown is the way to do it. Mind says 'these are Special Times, don't expect normality' and so I had an extended holiday of nine months. If I feel low now, it's because it's winter and snowing and I can't get out to the stores I used to go to which provided a sufficiency of brief, masked, socially-distanced social interaction. Also because it was Special Times I managed to do two things I'd been postponing for years- got that stripped wire to the garage replaced (though it looks to me now that a bit has come loose from its retaining cord) and got new steps (though the wood is warping already.) I drag my feet from a conviction that anything I have repaired will cost a lot of money and will never be done satisfactorily, and so far I'm rarely disappointed. However I suppose next thing will be to have a plumber come look at my leaking shower apparatus and tell me what it will cost to have a shower that doesn't leak.

I also got my weight down to something not seen since the 80s, but Christmas and normal eating has got it right back up to where I was in September.

Ordered dinner in Monday and groceries in Tuesday and then got my Visa bill for the last month. Opened it with trepidation, because I've done a lot of online shopping since November, but discovered that mid-session I topped my account up by several hundred dollars and so my credits more than covered my debits. But really should start keeping track of what I buy since we're in this for the long haul.

Last finished?

Greene, ed, Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: the Crooked Counties
-- I have an omnibus edition of all three Rivals books, but it's succumbed to the drying effects of time. Not only come loose from the cover but also split into two parts. Seems I never read vol 3 and now I have. Pleasant and undemanding but dear lord I can do without that smug oaf Arsene Lupin.

Hume, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
-- which Greene thinks to be the best detective story ever written. Wouldn't go that far, but it's good enough. I note that everyone calls Hume an Australian writer even though he says distinctly and short-temperedly in his foreward that he's from New Zealand. No one listens to him, then or now. If the story's set in Australia the writer must be Australian.

Lewis, The Magician's Nephew
-- I'm sure the Suck Fairy has been at most of the Narnia books but this one is still bearable enough.

Reading now?

Cogman, The Burning Page
-- vol 3 being where I start losing track of What Happens When, so rereading to refresh the memory.

Yuasa trans, Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
-- I have several texts and translations of Oku no Hosomichi, and ought to get them read finally, before tackling that behemoth, Miner's Japanese Linked Poetry

And next?

More Library, probably. In the new year I may regain my ambition and tackle something meaty, but at the moment Dead Days weather (grey, dank, cold) has me in a constant state of Ow where I feel the need to coddle myself.

The rest of the day- all four hours of daylight I was awake for- was devoted to laundry and dishes and double crostics. I have to start rationing those: there's only two books left in the series and I want one for post-op whenever post-op happens. But the one I did today, with clues I couldn't begin to answer and had to google, resolved itself halfway through into the first four lines of Ginsberg's Howl that I almost have by heart, so I had to do the one after that to make up for it.

Slept deeply and continuously until past 11:30, wakened only by the ringing of a non-existent phone which pulled me from a frustration dream of trying to block pop-ups that a Japanese anime webpage had put on my computer, whack a mole style. Having learned my lesson yesterday, I did half an hour's stretch and strengthen before breakfast and for no good reason found myself remembering Seoul in 1991, the three unpleasant days I spent there that July. Got rooked by a taxi driver coming in from the airport, got stared at by everyone on the street, was confronted by belligerent men carrying long iron bars at the doorway of every public building, this being right after the riots. Coming back to Tokyo I forgot my bag on the Skyliner and was going to let the staff at the inn call JR about it but then thought, No dammit this is my country- for certain values of 'my'- I can at least speak the language here, so went to Ueno's lost and found myself and of course the honest Japanese had left my bag in the overhead compartment where the train staff had collected it and turned it in. Score one for Japan.

The rest of the day- all four hours of daylight I was awake for- was devoted to laundry and dishes and double crostics. I have to start rationing those: there's only two books left in the series and I want one for post-op whenever post-op happens. But the one I did today, with clues I couldn't begin to answer and had to google, resolved itself halfway through into the first four lines of Ginsberg's Howl that I almost have by heart, so I had to do the one after that to make up for it.

Friend from work, not seen since 2015 or so because she got a F/T job elsewhere so is now a FB friend, has been baking sponge cakes. I ordered one and she delivered it today. But the scale this morning reported the Christmas damage as two kilos and rising so- reluctantly- I took it over to south NND as an incentive for her to keep shovelling my sidewalk, since she did it again this morning. From which I discover that she has very sensibly duplexed her house into an upstairs apartment and a downstairs/ basement. (Naturally I rang the wrong doorbell first, but her tenant is a courteous person.) For all I know, the house was always divided like that, since there were tenants from time to time in the past. But like my house, the units were probably not partitioned off- my study was a second floor kitchen when I bought it- and now they are, very handsomely.

This is one way buyers carry the incredible mortgage loads an over-inflated housing market imposes on them: it may be zoned as single family unit but if you paid over a million for it, you don't get to live as if it were. What intrigues me is that she evidently never intends to occupy the whole house (see: partitioning walls) and I'm wondering if down the road she intends to have her parents live there, rather than doing the garage over as a laneway dwelling as first suggested. For one thing, the garage isn't a discrete unit: it shares a common cinderblock wall with mine. Putting on a second storey would be iffy, and even renovating what's there strikes me as a difficult undertaking. And the result is a very cramped living area: there's probably more floor space on her second floor apartment.

Anyway, after that I went to acupuncture, very unhappily with knees twinging in the cold damp and two surly cab drivers. My fault for not stretching properly this morning, but anyway: I needn't go anywhere unil Thursday when it's supposed to be well above freezing and raining, so at very worst can wear shoes. I have a grocery order coming Tuesday so can stay indoors and practise social distancing. Unless I decide I really really want a chicken to roast and decide to hazard the two blocks to Fiesta to get it. I don't trust Loblaws meat to be humanely raised, and even if organic, it's still far more expensive than Happy Cluckers at Fiesta. But we shall see. There's plenty of fish in the freezer needs eating, besides two packs of Happy Cow that I bought to make meatloaf with if I feel ambitious, or beef fried rice if I don't.

Achievement of the day was bringing my bicycle inside, which I haven't done since the spring-- mostly because of uncertainty as to whether I still could. Several times this year I've had kind strangers call from the sidewalk asking if I need a hand, which suggests that I certainly *look* as if I can't manage. But evidently part of the problem was that broken wobbly step that required fine judgment as to where one stands on it, and another part was the width of the old steps, which were wider than usual. In any event, yes I can still push my bike up the stairs and it's now warm and dry inside while the snow and sleet fall outdoors. Whether biking is done for the season remains a case by case scenario, because we're promised inching-above-freezing and occasional rain for the next little while. Whether that will melt the promised 4-6"/ 10-15cm remains to be seen, as equally whether we actually get the promised 4-6"/ 10-15cm. I may hope not, but will definitely be shovelling something come tomorrow. When I don't need to go anywhere, not even next door.

First time ever, left the house to go shopping and halfway there realized I wasn't wearing a mask. The lineup was probably just as long then as ten minutes later when I showed up but the lineup still took a quarter of an hour. Put a container of yoghurt in the kid seat part of the shopping cart and it slipped out through the leg holes and cracked on the ground. Then I forgot two of the items I wanted even though they were on the list, and I certainly can't go back for them any time this week. Still get stuck trying to mount the bike and still can't figure out why. Made myself a cup of cocoa as consolation, put it on the table, pulled out chair to sit down, chair arm was wedged under table and pulling it out jarred the cup and slopped cocoa all over the tabletop. Boots I'd ordered online came- lightweight and waterproof that I'd hoped would let me walk more easily than my regular boots, and that I might wear down to the basement because my back hates my birkenstock now- but their 9.5s are too tight to wear with socks and don't feel as stable as my sock feet.

Ah well. Rain and snow aren't supposed to start until later tomorrow so maybe I can get my forgotten items from the conveni. Acupuncture Monday and after that snow, so an end to erranding. Come the new year I can go back to grocery delivery, and practising being a shutin for the spring (we hope) Real Thing.

Dusting of snow, no more, but cold. Stayed in and people came to me: my CDs of The Marriage of Figaro a day early, my wine order, and my bro bringing me road salt. I'd hoped he might stay for a chat- he has a cell phone and calls to him are a frustrating garbly gabble; how he ever managed to do business on it I can't imagine- but my s-i-l needed beer toot sweet for something she was cooking so off he went to, I hope, Loblaws and not the beer store farther away. Gather he's suffering winter melancholy: stuck now in their tiny condo with no restaurants to go to and few places to visit. Granted this is the guy who lived in a bachelor apartment for fifteen years, back then he could leave it at will. Have suggested they transfer to a larger condo in the building now that rents are plummeting and owners are desperate for tenants, but the trauma of moving out last January may still be with them.

Finished?

An Ian Rankin thriller, one of three he wrote. Mindless fun and no sodden coppers chasing Edinburgh gangsters, thank god.

And now?

The Dark Archive, large chunks of which I'd either forgotten or weren't there first pass through.

Next?

Pursuit of the Millennium is going nowhere. I want a big thick book, default reading, and am oh so strongly tempted to see if I can still read Ulysses. I had no trouble with it in my twenties but that was before the net did its thing to my brain, and everyone says it's unreadable, and god knows I couldn't get anywhere with Flann O'Brian because who cares about his wittering Irishmen? Joyce may much much more of the same, and life is short...

Snow fell last night but disappeared sufficiently by afternoon that I was able to get up to Loblaws for my prescriptions and some holiday stocking-up. When there's a lineup outside I can only stop by the pharmacy, since they let people in who are just there for the meds: and innate honesty keeps me from buying anything else. Today the only lineups were at the cashiers, and were long enough to suggest to me that maybe there ought to have been someone monitoring the numbers entering. But if there had, I'd be without my frozen turkey roll and stovetop stuffing. As it is, I'm now set for Christmas dinner. There are dozens of places that advertise their Christmas dinner catering on FB, but that's catering for groups and large families and runs to the hundreds of dollars. President's Choice may not be top of the line but it's cheaper than that and better than nothing.

No saying if the winter storm down south will dump anything up here, is why I wanted to get out today. Next week is supposed to be mild and rainy but is also preChristmas and no time to be shopping, even in an ordinary year, much less when cases go over 2000 a day in the province. Meanwhile I lead my timeless semi-shut-in's life, losing track of days, sleeping late except when woken by fraudulent robocalls about Social Security issuing warrants for my arrest, and forcing myself to exercise. Spent the weekend reading my old fanfic and cruising Youtube for clips of the Seven Samurai ie time travelling. Started The Pursuit of the Millennium, ballasting reading, but the print is so tiny that I think maybe I should read Montaigne instead. And then I go back to my genre reading and acrostics and feel futile.

Spent the entire day in lounging pyjamas which feels odd given that I've never been able to wear lounging pyjamas before. Conduces to a lack of ambition so when I actually had to do something like dishes I put on a tshirt instead, knowing I'd get my shirt wet and probably smelly as well.

Speaking of which: I might imitate that 18th century peer who hanged himself and left a suicide note that said only, 'Buttoning and unbuttoning.' Mine would say, 'Washing and drying' except that I don't dry. But it feels like I need to do dishes every day these days. And laundry. I'm not working, I can wear the same outfit two or three days in a row if I want, but somehow my hamper is always overflowing and I'm always limping down the basement stairs or sorting heaps of clean clothes.

Googled Kaguya-hime last night. Hot mess is too kind a word for it. Thus I am done with Kaguya-hime.

I heard some of Loreena Mc Kennitt's work when I was in Japan and bought her whole backlist after I came home. Now all her earliest stuff says 'spring of 1996' to me. 1996 was a weird alternative dimension, precisely because I was just back after five years in Japan. So when I come across it again- as now, when my exercise music has started into the vocal stuff- I'm in a double reality shift. The oddness of 2020 looking back at the oddness of 1996,

Saying oh it's been so long, you've been so long on the sands
So long on the sands, so long on the flood,
They have married your Jeannie, and now she lies dead.

P/T staff from work dropped by today to deliver an orchid and a goodie bag from herself and one of the F/T staff. (Also a take out Ethiopian dinner and a latte. Dinner will last me three meals, the way I eat now.) It was sweet of them and I'm sad, but also, from things said and unsaid, aware that the place is as dysfunctional as it ever was and I'm well out of it. A. is now into her ninth month of pregnancy, and though it's a bad time to have a baby (grandma can't fly in to help) I'm glad A. will also be out of it too.

Last finished?

Ovidia Yu, The Betel Nut Tree Mystery
-- I see there's a third volume of this which I'll give a miss. It's 1936 and the Japanese army is already devastating China.

Ima Ichiko, Hundred Demons 28
-- my heart fails within me. See, the last three or four volumes have been all about a collatoral branch of Ritsu's family, his great-aunt's children, grandchildren, and for all I know great-grandchildren as well. One of whom is supposed to have killed another girl when she was young but I can never remember who she was because these are all female children etc who marry and change their names. And now it seems maybe the murdered girl wasn't murdered after all? or it was someone else who died? And I really don't want to have to wade through the last four tanks in an attempt to figure exactly what's going on.

Reading now?

Down in the cellar was a box with the umptymany volumes of Kaguya Hime which, on evidence of the first tank, is an unholy mess. 'He found this dead baby in a bamboo grove but she wasn't dead so he raised her himself and neglected his wife so that they separated so he had to put the child in an orphanage from which his estranged wife adopted her five years later and made the girl her artist's model and also her lover only now the teenager has been abducted by these American army brats with yellow hair and Japanese names one of whom can fly jet fighters perfectly the first time because he's practised on flight simulations...' It's Japanese practice, I suppose.

Have the first Phryne Fisher in e-format but it's not grabbing me, partly because Phryne was poverty-stricken in childhood but now wears designer clothes huh? And wears a lot of designer clothes, I mean seriously this is fashion porn.

Next?

The Dark Archive arrived from G today. Am tempted to drop everything else and just read that.

Electric company now gives one the option of being billed either Time of Use with IMO heart-stopping rates during peak hours, or flat-rate. They'll calculate what you're likely to be charged under each schedule, going by past performance. In my case flat rate saves me literally pennies in winter, rising to a stunning $1.03 a month in summer. But the freedom to do laundry at any hour of the day, a freedom I tasted this spring when the gov't set the fees to mid-rate all day, ìs quite enough to convince me, so flat rate it is.

Also got gas bill today, and even being home all day most days, I'm using half the gas I did last year at this period, so go me.

There's a guy in the neighbourhood, younger than me, who uses a walker but bends his torso almost double to do so. If I used my walker that's what I'd do too, because my legs are happy to clop along if the weight of my upper body is taken off it. This I discovered while zooming about with one of Loblaws' short shopping carts, and that actually is what I really want for walking with. All walkers want you to support yourself on you arms, which is a problem if your arms aen't up to it. Something that takes the torso weight is what's needed, and I'm surprised no one here has designed it. But it took forever for walkers to get over here, decades after I used to see them everywhere in Japan. We lag, is all.

House, it was very nice of you to return the vacuum extension that's been missing for fifteen months but what I'd really like is that $200 you somehow swallowed.

Get into the shower yesterday and water is coming from both the faucet and showerhead in equal amounts. Heigh-ho. Soap and scrub and go to turn water off and see that now barely a dribble is coming from the tap. Delayed action white vinegar for the win! But still squirt heavy-duty delimer into moving parts, and then open bathroom window and run bathroom fan because dear lord it stinks. Give it 15 hours and rinse out. Then step into shower, and water is coming from both the faucet and showerhead in equal amounts. Heigh-ho.

I said I'd wait till I heard the results of my tests and current blood sugar levels, but no, actually, I won't. Ordered gin and wine online and bought an eight-pack of sugary tonic water. It's December and I need sweetness.

Well. So I was putting together that grocery order from Loblaws and I see they have frozen turkeys on sale so great, get one and have turkey dinners for a week, fine by me. Should read the fine print. Turkey is 5.5 kg ie 12 pounds. Is roasting now because I barely had room in the fridge to defrost it, let alone room in the freezer to do it later. And I'd happily freeze half the meat but part of that grocery order was Enough Frozen Veg And Fruit To Last Till Spring and my freezer is already 2/3 full.

But at least I got out to do my bloodwork so that's done for another three months. And was pretty limber getting it, a nice relief after yesterday's all pain all the time. There must be something for lower back shenanigans but in three years I have yet to discover what.

Vinegar bath not only does not ungunk the bath faucet, it seems there's marginally more water coming out of it when the shower is on. Boo hiss.

Well, there's hope. It snowed a little last night and when I went to sweep off the steps, there was NND's four year old coming to do it for me. Did a reasonable job too, though part of it might have been delaying tactics to avoid kindergarten.

Last finished?

Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders
-- oh John Dickson Carr, what hast thou wrought? There's locked room mysteries and then there's contrived unlikely tortuous locked room mysteries with unfollowable MOs, and this is one of the latter, *clearly* an attempt to do JDC in Japanese. What a good thing I decided not to get him in his native language. The Inugami Curse was actually OK, but I need reassurance that his other titles aren't Carr pastiches.

Reading now?

Ovidia Yu, The Betel Nut Tree Murders
-- I'm afraid I find these slow. Plucky girl detective wants to be stationed whetever a murder has taken place so she can observe the suspects, weary police chief wants her not to. Prefer Auntie Lee because I sympathize more with aging women, especially nosy ones with families.

Hazel Holt, Leonora
-- like Sheila Mallory, say. Though I think I spotted at least one gimmick lessthan 100 pages in. Never say that Character A finds Character B unplaceably familiar, 'reminds her of someone but can't think who' because the who is nearly always obvious. Though Holt then subverts the trope when Sheila meets a woman who looks unplaceably familiar, who then introduces herself as 'used to run the newstand in town', precisely the sort of person who is unplaceably familiar.

Still with 100 Demons, still slow, and trying not to read it till 3 a.m.

Next?

Good question. Yokomizo rattles off a list of famous western locked room mysteries I might want to look at, but none of the English ones are in eform (which I have to use now that snow has begun) and all of the French ones (Gaston Leroux) have painful translations.

I must be succumbing to lockdown again because November registers as a nothing month. I did things, things happened- boy, did they happen- but nothing made much of an impression. Not the two weeks long week post-election, or the eight days of false spring that overlapped it, or eating out on patios. It rains and snows and memory says it has always rained and snowed and anything else... didn't happen.

Am reminded of that don in Gaudy Night who remarks that some muddy-complexioned woman should eat carrots and clear out her system, because I roasted carots last night and jeez, how does anyone? No matter how long you bake them for, no matter how much oil or liquid they sit in, they remain rock hard while the marinade caramalizes and carbonizes around them. Ate them anyway because I was too achy to cook anything else. They cleared out my system. Thank you, carrots.

Got a grocery order in today, including a self-indulgent strawberry-rhubarb pie, and indulged in a large slice of that for lunch. Innards will alway be soothed by sweetness and starch.

Currently reading The Honjin Murders. The translation is awfully Gee golly whee! Wonder how the Japanese reads and am nealy tempted to order a volume from honto.jp. But prudence, prudence.

Things I never knew: that the valves inside a shower get gunked up with lime and so on and need replacing every decade or so. This is why my shower leaks from the faucet, though the water pressure from the shower head is still fine because I removed the doohickey that's supposed to conserve water by restricting flow. (Which has never made any sense to me, because with restricted flow you have to take longer showers to get wet or rinse shampoo or whatever.) Well, fine, I have heavy duty lime remover knocking about at the back of the bathroom cupboard. But it has an adult-proof cap of the push and tutn variety and I can no longer push hard enough to make it turn. When it stops raining/ snowing and I can go up and down my steps I might ask NND to apply his male upper body strength to it. And meanwhile I shall see what a bag of white vinegar wrapped around the faucet can accomplish. Not much, I expect, because it's hard to get the shower mechanism submerged. Would pay for a plumber to do this but COVID cases in Toronto are well over 500 and no, I don't want to take the chance.

Make my way slowly through 100 Demons, still very confusing, but the third story is all Kagyuu's kids at the house and Aoarashi planning mischief. We still must deal with the Niigata family but at least not that much. And I despair that my months of kanji review doesn't help me with vocabulary: I forget the on-yomi or the kun-yomi or sometimes both of charscters I've reviewed a dozen times. Truly, reading Murakami gives one a false sense of mastery that reading manga at one explodes.

My one reason to regret that the owners didn't move next door is that He-NND regards me, I fancy, rather like his mother who just moved into an apartment of her own last spring. So eg if he saw me putting my garbage out he'd immediately offer to do it for me, and would put my bins back after the truck came through, and would hump my bike up the steps onto the verandah for me, for all of which my elbows were very grateful. Thus it's a certainty that he'd shovel my walk once the snow starts, and I know from last week that his tenants definitely won't. South NND might, or even south of south who used to do me and Mama Pisani's back in the days, but I can't count on it. So I've applied for city clearing aid, which means they'll come around and pour several inches of road salt on the sidewalk in front of my house. What they won't do is shovel the walkway and the steps, which strikes me as half-assed, because even if you're housebound, people like letter carriers and delivery guys still have to go up and down them. However, assuming I get approved, come those wintry dumps my work will be cut in half.

I'm bemused by the fact that I did all the prep for this (xeroxing my ID, DLing and printing the forms, putting them into an envelope and going out specially to mail it) without footdragging: because this is precisely the sort of thing I footdrag over. Can only think it's because I'm not working. My thinking, if it can be dignified with that word, was always 'since I have to work I shouldn't have to do anything else I don't want to' like dishes and vacuuming and writing Christmas cards (but not laundry or cooking, for some reason.) And now, though I may feel a ghost of the donwannas, there really is no reason not to. The one thing I want to do but can't make myself is start doing those chair Pilates exercises I bought last spring. Maybe I don't believe they'll have any effect, though I still do my strengthening exercises twice a day while believing they don't have any effect either.

What evidently does have an effect is my half hour of bicycling. I can't believe the fabulous number of calories the machine says I've burned but the fact remains that my weight continues to inch downward in spite of the 'oh whathehell' reintroduction into my diet of white rice, white flour, chocolate, and even the occasional bit of cheese. Mind, my sister once did Weight Watchers and said that you had to eat the prescribed number of calories a day because you wouldn't lose by eating less. Me, I never found my body going into starvation mode and holding on to weight if I ate fewer than 1200 calories a day, but I suppose it can happen.

However I also suspect that ratcheting the machine's resistance up to medium is what's made my knees complain so much this past week. So no machine today and shall go back to the light side tomorrow and hope that helps.

Somehow in the process of ordering furnace filters from Home Despot, I managed to encode a password for the tablet. No, it doesn't have a password: it never leaves the house. Fortunately I got it unencoded in short order, but would really like to know how I managed it in the first place.

(Remind me to stay away from Home Depot. I can have furnace filters and Energizer batteries delivered for free, but add Swiffer pads or Swiffer cleaner or Duracell batteries and there's suddenly a $20+ flat fee. Fortunately I had to pick up a prescription from Loblaws and fortunately there was no line outside, people having more-or-less finished their lockdown panic buying last week, so was able to get another kind of battery-- not Duracell because they only had 12packs of those, but the house brand-- in case the Wordtank takes a dislike to Energizer, as my Wordtanks are wont to do.)

Must admit I'm doing a certain amount of stockpiling myself, against the snowy winter when I can neither bike nor walk. There are workarounds, I know: the pharmacy will deliver if I ask, and there are shopping services. But nothing beats seeing the product for oneself. As in, no one stocks cold water laundry detergent anymore, so I had to cruise the shelves to assure myself that cold water Tide pods exist and will work. I dislike anything I have to put in first and wait to dissolve before adding clothes, because my machine of the last 30mumblety years has a tray at the top where you just add your powder after dumping the clothes in. Turn dials, walk away, no waiting around.

In the changes dep't, my accountant is retiring. Fortunately he has a replacement lined up but still. Vexatious to the soul. And my new south neighbour has had what I took to be a black wicker table in her backyard, but hearing merry voices in the 6C weather and Sadie's occasional yips, I looked out to discover bright flames in th supposed wicker table and a couple of friends seated around it, possibly grilling hamburgers. Couldn't tell: it gets dark at 5 these days. But hardy Canadians will hardy.

The sleeping past noon thing was getting past a joke, so decided to reset my inner clock. Took half an ativan, went to bed at 1, and woke happy and refreshed at ten past eleven. What with exercises, that was still breakfast at noon.

It's a comment on my sad lockdown life that a visit to the dentist leaves me feeling so cheerful! for the human interaction. And a little sad that neither of my cabbies was the chatty type. But I got to talk! with the assistant! about politics! and travelling! and idiots who won't wear masks! and the emergency clinic that was supposed to give me my xrays but didn't, and when asked to fax them over to my dentist, sent a photo of them taken with a cellphone, oy vey. But we decided to wait and see what my tooth does before bringing in the heavy artillery ie root canal from a specialist (= add a good $1000) plus a crown and possibly a partial plate. Teeth, man.

Not helped by me throwing prediabetic concerns to the wind afterwards and ordering in from a dessert company: grilled cheese, ice coffee, chocolate cake. Yum. Back to vegetables tomorrow.

Ima Ichiko grows no clearer with time. First story in the tankoubon is a Kai clear as mud one. Wish I had a living dictionary, not so much for the Japanese as to point out the detail in the picture that I'm so obviously missing in my oblivious gaijin fashion.

Lord, what an achey day. Dank, cold, grey. You know, Toronto. This is going to be a long winter.

Two nice things to report. Had to cab it to acupuncture. If I wonder where those lost 7 kg came off of, as I see no great diference when I look in the mirror, I need wonder no more. I can now find the clip for the seatbelt easy no problem. No Kama Sutra contortions required.

And there was a slender parcel in the mailbox when I got back. I'm expecting boots and this was not those. No, it was Hunded Demons 28, taking only six weeks to arrive airmail from Japan, not 2.5 months like the last time. Is also the 25th anniversary of same. Eheu fugaces...

Sleeping in till nearly noon is one thing. Sleeping in till nearly one because umm I was warm under the duvet and my dreams, if unremembered, were interesting and the snow outside made it look still dark and possibly codeine makes you sleepy if you haven't had any in five years BUT MOSTLY because my bedside clock said it was barely twelve when I first checked it. No, the clock hadn't stopped, it had just slowed down. What is it with my timepieces this weekend? Luckily I had a free tripleA battery, which I hope I won't need for the Wordtank. The snow will mess up tomorrow's travel but should be gone by Thursday's high 7 following Wednesday's high 6, and the worst of the panic shoppers may hopefully be done as well, so I can stock up on non-food essentials before the snow returns.

Acupuncture is still on for the moment- health providers exempt from lockdown until further notice- which is a relief even if it means taking cabs to go a mere nine blocks. And if there were no bike lanes on Bloor the cab could drop me right in front of the studio, but there are, hence no parking lane, and Toronto drivers won't stand for cripples taking their time getting out of a cabs while everyone has to wait behind her and can't pass. So I hope I can walk again by tomorrow with just my cane.

Well, on the day I was slated to have surgery, I hit the weight I was aiming for at last, and the city gets scheduled to go into lockdown Monday morning. And wasn't I clever to have cancelled the surgery two weeks ago and scheduled two grocery orders last week? But this probably means no acupuncture for a month unless I can convince her that, as I live alone and am allowed to have close contact with one other household, she can be it. And since my elbows just did their 'once a year ballistic' routine, where they freeze and do lightning jolts of pain, I hope she'll agree.

Swapped out the summer polyester duvet + wool blanket for the winter down duvet. Oh so warm and cozy under that single layer, and I don't have to wear socks any more.

That sock I mended on the weekend used wool from a bag of mishmash darning wool I inherited from my mother, meaning it's a good 50 years old. Investigated bag later to see what else it holds and discovered my long lost and much missed wooden darning mushroom. (Full disclosure: I used a tennis ball to darn my sock.) Wonder if I can use it for embroidering over those bleach stains on all my black tops, because embroidery hoops don't work that well with thin cotton.

The slowness of shopping apps added to the tendency of one of them to erase my entire order led me to inadvertently buy two bags of carrots as well as two bottles of shampoo. The shampoo will last me at least a year, given the shortness of my hair. The carrots, well...

If one believes the bike machines dial, half an hour of medium resistance biking burns 1500 calories. I don't believe it, but it would explain why my weight continues to edge downwards. Might even lead to mad indulgence like eating white rice and butter again.

The forms for property tax rebates came out late this year, so I didn't know when or- in view of my evident prosperity- *if* I'd qualify, but indeed the city lowered this month's installment by a month and change worth. Of course since the current withdrawals average in the three spring months they didn't collect, I still had to pay something, but that's $650 to the good. Or to the credit card, to be more precise.

In the unease of this too warm, suddenly windy, suddenly rainy, suddenly cold day I somehow wound up crossing everything off my foot dragging to do list. Darned the high quality wool sock that shouldn't have developed a hole where it did (upper) after less than a year, and then mended the cheap quality cotton summer trousers that *will* pop tiny holes, and then blanket stitched the fraying cuffs of one of my old waffle-weave work shirts. Old work shirts are the only ones that don't develop mysterious odors under the arms, while all Old Navy and Mark's Warehouse ones do. Am sure they're all made in China, but the waffle shirts are better quality.

Because of that cold wind gusting to 90 km an hour, I shrinkwrapped the leakiest of my bedroom windows, the one with the AC unit in it. Other people take their window ACs in for the winter, but other people are men or have access to same. I use shrinkwrap and curtains and screens, and it works well enough. I even managed to get the backing off the double sided tape for three of the four sides. The fourth wouldn't co-operate so I used it like ordinary tape, as one must. They say it's a la niña winter, so maybe it won't get too cold, but that usually means snow as well.

So in a fit of 'winter is coming and I hurt' I ordered massive quantities of soy milk and diet Pepsi and toilet paper and this and that for home delivery. I hope to be biking for some time yet, but it's a relief not to have to carry heavy or bulky things home with me. Then I remembered this and that other stuff I wanted, and the wp said I could change my order any time up to 12 tonight, but the small print said I had to do it by phone because I'd scheduled the drop off for Tuesday, and it was now less than 48 hours before delivery time. Screw that, I said, and went and ordered from another neighbourhood super, the one with the good veg. So I should be set for a while there, if it all comes through.

And then I thought What about that new bike machine? the one I've avoided assembling for ohhh about a month now? The one that weighs a ton, yes, that one. Well, ok, I did get it assembled but it's really a two person job, one of whom has upper body strength, because screwing washers and nuts to a bolt that fits in vertically is a fidgety operation. I didn't attach the two cords you can pull to exercise the upper body because my elbows resent me pulling anything, but everything else works. It's a heavier mechanism than the other, but smoother, much more like riding a bike, and it's not only easier to change the resistance, the dial tells you what the resistance is. The chronometer will give you the time elapsed as well as your speed and the number of calories burned. I have no wish to know the first, because it's always 'cripes another twelve minutes!?', and the other two are guaranteed to be disheartening. So I'll use the detachable one from my first machine, that I can start and then put face down on the table, and ballpark the time from how many CD tracks have played.

Transpires that misdelivered Amazon package wasn't a scam but an actual mixup. It was supposed to be a crossword book but the labels evidently got switched. Useful of- and, clearly, necessary for- the delivery types to take a photo because otherwise I wouldn't have put two and two together.

Morning lie-in dream had me at my brother's house which I think was still the other half of mine but quite different in configuration. Bro was changing the paintings on the wall as one does in a new season, but they were all virtually the same landscape except for small details. Neighbour's kid popped her (short cut dark-haired) head in at the window, rather to my surprise because we were on the second floor. Her dad came in by the door to pick her up. Neither was anyone I could identify. Bro mixed me a cocktail, which was dark green. Dreams are what I do instead of socializing these days.

Books finished?

Three slim volumes of Japanese love poetry in translation: Ten Thousand Leaves, The Ink Dark Moon, and The Burning Heart. Nice to have the Man'yoshu and its notes, though I think for once Miner did it better in the Introduction to Court Poetry. Komachi and Izumi Shikibu just don't translate well, especially out of context, which renders The Ink Dark Moon not so useful. Mind, I also finished Izumi's poetic diary in Miner's translation and find she doesn't work that well in context either. Passionate love affairs in Heian involve a great deal of moping about on her part and ridiculous jealousy on his, which rather makes one wonder why anyone bothered. And Heian poetry in general is untranslateable, so yeah.

The Burning Heart gives a nice selection of poems but Rexroth doesn't include any of the Kamakura women poets of the Kyougoku school that I rather liked.

Basho's Narrow Road in Miner's Japanese Poetic Diaries. Who also works better in Japanese and isn't quite as clever clogs with the language as the court poets.

Ovidua Yu, Meddling and Murder
-- another Auntie Lee Singaporean set mystery. Fun, but jeez the life of foreign domestic workers sucks.

Reading now?

Have to press on with Kafuka because I may not be able to renew it. Someone has a hold on it but I can't tell if it's active or not.

Brower trans., The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu
-- with copious grammatical notes and diagrams and such, all very necessary but also underlining the fact that Heian prose is clear as mud. Not fun reading.

Rexroth, A Hundred Poems from the Japanese
-- exercise bike reading, mostly to have it read

Reading next?

One book waiting at library, two more Ovidia Yus in transit, a Vinyl Detective in ebook. Shall get to them in good time but right now I have to read forty pages a day of Kafuka and as the action gets hinkier and more Murakami by the page, am not sure I want to.

Ascription of a poem: 'the poetess Ono no Komachi.' This following a biographical note about 'Ono no Komachi' and followed by another poem* ascribed to 'Komachi', period. Yes, 1955, I know: but if you can do the last two you can just easily not do the first. Especially as no other woman in the collection is called a poetess.

(*a really feeble translation of Hana no iro wa, by the way)

Unexpected unexplained delivery from Amazon yesterday, a 'memorial bracelet' with a note from no one I know commiserating the death of the recipient's father. Cannot blame the overworked, underpaid Anatev- uhh Amazon workers for misaddressing this, but obviously had to alert and send back to Nevada. I mean, it's not that many hoops to jump through since I actually have both padded envelopes and stamps to hand, but still.

More happily, on my way to mail the above, stopped by the local cafe and had a latte sitting out in the warm sun amidst the last of the golden leaves, all so very reminiscent of sitting in certain European cafes back in the globe-trottting 80s. Weather page said it was 24C today, upper 70sF, which you can't prove by me. Still needed a light jacket. Whereas back in 2015 on the Sunday of the Santa Claus Parade, Nov 15, I distinctly remember biking and sweating in a tshirt, but Environment Canada is adamant it was only 16 that day. Temperatures in this town are never absolute. Rain and cold return tomorrow. I should rake leaves today but I hurt too much, sorry.

Since peanuts in whatever form pack on the calories, as does even 90% chocolate, I need another snacky thing to indulge in in the evening. May have found it: air popped popcorn. Feels indulgent, and because I'm slightly corn intolerant, is not something I can eat too much of. Also comes in various seasonings, to combat sense of 'same old'.

To celebrate the moment, and because my new card came yesterday, I ordered in for dinner. So did everyone else, it seems, because in the ten minutes I stood on my ill-lit front porch, wearing white so I'd show up even if my house number didn't, two other Door Dash deliveries arrived for two separate houses across the street. My guy called me because, like many people before including myself on occasion, he or someone had writen my 543 as 534. I'm inclined to blame the map Door Dash likes to use, which showed my house to be on the west side of the street where the even numbers are. Though when I checked it again, they had me on Manning, the next block over.

I've ordered from these guys before but don't remember them being so generous with their portions. Granted I always order at least two dishes to make it worth their while, I still had a large bowl, looked at what remained, and thought 'Well, that's dinner sorted for the next four days at least.'

To work off some of the excess (pad thai noodles, hem hem) I did an extra 45 minutes on the bike machine. Turns out Handel's Royal Fireworks is the perfect music for this. Didn't even notice the time going by. That's half because I was reading my phone part of the time, and when I wasn't I was doggedly plowing through The Burning Heart, which is Kenneth Rexroth and a Japanese woman translating women poets of Japan. Granted the book dates from the 70s, and granted Rexroth or his co-translator have some satisfyingly nasty things to say about that dweeb Yosano Hiroshi- '(he) was a typical emotional exploiter of women. He attempted to disguise these proclivities with romantic nonsense about the spiritual glories of clandestine polygamy'- when we get to the classic poets who are translated by Rexroth alone, one finds this note on Izumi Shikibu: 'There survives a book of her poetry and her diary, one of the masterpieces of Japanese literature. Most of her poetry is erotic: she seems to have spent a life largely devoted to making love.' Yeah, sure, just like Catullus' life was largely devoted to making love, or Diana Rigg's. Like, we know Izumi Shikibu had a daughter and served at court. It wasn't all men all the time, even if men like to think so.

The book is falling apart and I'd happily trun it- Rexroth is so not my translator any more than Miner is- but I have no other translations of Yosano Akiko, so...

However, in other come-by-chance news, it seems Ovidia Yu has a series of detective stories stsrring a teenage girl in 1930s Singapore. Have put holds on two of them and shall pleasurably await their appearance.

I'm happy, yes, and hopeful. But I wonder how deeply the DOJ is in Trump's pocket, and if they'll let his threatened lawsuits go through up to the Supreme Court, and how power-hungry his appointees there are, and how long they'll tie things up. You'd think 290 votes would be unarguable, but Trump is not known for his grasp on reality.

What I really want to see is his venal erstwhile cronies scrambling to get away from any association with him before the *other* lawsuits start happening, but I don't trust they will. Moscow Mitch has never shown any regard for accepted procedure; why would he change now?

It's wanton extravagance to turn the heat on when the temps were in the teens most of the night but dammit I was *cold*. (yes ok spellcheck, only one e in extravagance. I'll remember for next time.) It was 18 yesterday and I sat outside in a jacket and I was cold then. And yes it was a restaurant again and yes I had Irish stew with an extra serve of potatoes and that, it transpires, is far more food than I can comfortably handle in a day.

I bought another cycle machine that had good reviews suggesting it wouldn't stick if you looked at it sideways. I've barely got it out of the box because it was jammed in unmovably and bound round with a super sticky cellotape that must have some kind of war time usage because nothing civilian needs to be that adhesive. The reviews say the assemblage is easy. I don't believe them.

Last VISA bill had an unfamiliar item, some cosmetics shop. Called the centre, got a woman with an unfamiliar accent that I had difficulty understanding who said she couldn't tell me anything about the charge aside from what was on the bill, so I said I'd dispute the charge. Was transferred to guy with machine gun delivery whom I had to ask twice to please speak more slowly, who said they'd previously flagged a couple of items which of course they didn't mention to me at the time. Presumably they only do this when people try to buy $5000 chimney inserts with my three figure balance card. Or maybe they were legit purchases on my part. Whatever, I'm now cardless and the mails being as they are, even up here, who knows when I'll get a new one. And meanwhile must figure a way to pay things like Patreon that automatically debit. At least the cell phone guys have numbers one can call to explain the situation.

What I do have is a gift VISA card Bell gave me for changing plans with them, that nobody will accept online because it doesn't have that authentication number on the back, thereby rendering it useless which is what one expects of Bell. And in the course of doing exercises I somehow pulled a muscle in the groin area so that walking is even more unpleasant. I see why people take to their beds, like my grandmother who spent the last twenty years of her life travelling from spa to spa and taking umbrage at doctors who told her she needed to move more. But she had money and thus nurses and companions, and I do not.

Meanwhile Toronto school board has stopped buying equipment for kids who have to attend online so a call has gone out in my neighbourhood for used tablets, laptops, even cell phones that can be wiped and refurbished. And I look at my loathed laptop and think 'I'm not using it I'll never use it let them have it.' The drop off place is near my old acupuncture studio, a merry spin in the old days, but something I'm a little antsy about now. Do I trust the members of that online group enough to ask them if they'd come pick it up? Shall see.

I play CDs while peddling my under the table peddling machine because it helps distract me from bored-silly 'has it been thirty minutes yet?' thoughts. (No it hasn't. When the pedals stick is when it's been thirty minutes.) Am currently on the opera Best Of collection, visiting old faves. But somehow in the 90s I missed the Best Mozart Aria Evah! which is Soave sia il vento from Cosi Fan Tutte. How I missed it is a mystery, since it's on vol 3 that has a bunch of other fave arias like Puccini's Ch'ella mi creda and Ebben, ne andro lontano from La Walley. But now I have, and can listen to it on repeat, except that I've moved on to disk 4 that seems to be either Wagner and his ilk or Donizetti and his bel canto buddies, both of whom I can do without.

Best version on youtube seems to be this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a_0FHyF3Pyk

Today's post-acupuncture indulgence + consolation for owie everything all weekend tsuris , frustration dreams all night tsuris, and snow and wind while biking tsuris (ice on the front steps, ice in the fallen leaves, 50 k/ 30 mph wind gusts) was pepperoni pizza after a good year without. A hefty 880 calories but since it was lunch and dinner, and the rest of dinner was a salad, I won't repine. Nor will I repeat, because two slices should have left me stuffed but instead left me craving more pizza.

The time had come, the lobster said, to get seriously winter about my bedding, now they're calling for snowflurries. So last night I went to get the polyester duvet and put it into a flannel duvet cover. But the polyester duvet wasn't in the storage box under the bed- that was the blue wool blanket- so where could it be? Finally tracked it down to a zip case in the hall closet: and with it was the woollen shawl G. made for me last year, which I'd put there and not, as I thought, in the storage drawers under the futon. So now I can be warm again when I'm downstairs. But I begin to think I need to leave myself memoes at season's change so I know where things are. That, or look in my closets at regular intervals to remind me What is Where.

(Like I've misplaced my electropulse thingy that sometimes helps muscles untighten. I know where it was last spring but it's not there now because I tidied it away, fool that I am.)

Then I wrestled duvet into cover after five minutes of increasingly hysteric attempt to locate the opening, because the opening
a) is not at the hem like every other duvet cover in existence, but two inches in from the edge
b) fastens with clear plastic buttons that are effectively invisible, which
c) for some unfathomable reason I did up before putting it away last spring. I think *maybe* that was because I was actually using it as a double thickness sheet but that's still no reason to fasten buttons you're not using.

And then I put the duvet under me for sleeping on because experience in Japan taught me that having warmth underneath is more effective than having it on top. And slept like a baby last night.

Woke at dark o'clock this morning, limped not too painfully down to bathroom- oddly, because yesterday I was crippled- and came back for a few more hours sleep. But sleep wouldn't come, a function of having to actually be awake by a certain hour. That hour was ten a.m. and I should have drifted off for another 4.5 hours. But sleep disorder was having none of it. So I was up at 6:30 for a change, reading one-eyed on my tablet.

Bathroom waking at least let me remember what I was dreaming, which is that

daegaer and I had met at a fannish convention of some sort, but the talk was all about her last academic paper concerning the three non-Jewish ancestresses of Jesus Christ. Ruth the Moabite was one, and I'm pretty sure the second was historically inaccurate Noami, and the third was someone I'd never heard of whose polysyllabic name began with La.

Acupuncture again, and again the restaurant sirens sang to me, so I went and sat at an unheated table (they have heated booths but not enough) on Pauper's patio. Was determined to cast cholesterol prudence to the wind and have pasta! with cream sauce!! but saw that their beef stew in Irish stout is back on the menu so gratefully had that instead. Mashed potatoes are far more glycemic friendly than penne pasta, and beef is (yum) beef. Almost made me feel like myself again.

Oh, seriously? I've been reading that title wrong for what? five, six years now? It's Umibe no Kafuka, shore, not hamabe, beach. Helps to actually look at the kanji occasionally.

Next door's music as well as the tedium of peddling a balky machine for thirty minutes straight has the upside of reintroducing me to a bunch of CDs bought in the 90s and rarely listened to since. These include several boxed sets of Dance Music Through The Ages and Best of Bach, bought to drown out my neighbours at International Women's House in Heiwadai. When I came back here it was no longer necessary to drown out my neighbours and, since I prefer silence to anything when I'm studying or reading, silence is what I opted for. Also my bought-here boombox, though a lovely Sony made in Japan beastie, in relatively short order (6 years) became picky about what it would and would not recognize, and the boxed sets were first to go. This made me sad because I still listened to the opera ones. But now, Renaissance dance music is just fine for bicycling to, though it really is a bit monotone.

Balky bike machine is why I can't do anything else except bike. Stop paying attention to where my feet are and it sticks. Otherwise I might be biking for hours.

Cold and rainy again, and I realize that this year I won't be able to turn down the thermostat and go partake of someone else's heat for five or six hours a day. So I turn down the thermostat and layer up, starting with the insulated longjohns I've contemplated throwing out for several years now because long underwear is far too hot once you're inside any Canuck interior. Never throw anything away: you never know when the world will turn upside down and you'll need it again.

Yesterday I had a package to mail and because this was the first time in six months for it, I took it to the postal outlet at the end of the street which is now one customer at a time, no exceptions. So stood for fifteen minutes while the woman inside addressed a label, stopped to admire her handwriting, addressed it some more, stopped to tilt head and regard label, addressed it some more, spoke to the clerk, addressed another label, tilted head to inspect handwriting, addressed it some more, lather rinse repeat for fifteen minutes, and finally paid and left. I go in, say 'I'd like this sent airmail', am told what I'd blotted from memory: 'we only do Fedex, that'll be $40.' The postal outlet doesn't do post anymore. (It will sell you stamps but only in multiples of ten.) 'Shoppers Drug sends parcels.' Agh. I hate Shoppers Overpriced And Inconvenient and I hate Canada Post for partnering with Shoppers, but OK, I will bike over to Spadina to mail my bloody parcel. (There are in fact two Shoppers closer to me but, as I say, inconveniently located, while I can bike to Spadina in my sleep, even with dodgy knees and consequent imperfect control of the bike.)

And I will say, the clerk there was friendly and efficient and my parcel got off for under$10. But I was feeling ill-used and the day was sunny and unseasonably warm so I threw caution to the wind and went to my local eatery of the last forty years (seriously, where did that extra decade come from?) and sat on their distanced patio and had a Cosmopolitan *and* a glass of wine *and* their Eggs Dilemma, which are meatless Eggs Benny with dill in the hollandaise and to die for, *and* a crême bruleé cheesecake to follow. How little did I appreciate these things in the long ago days when I did them every week or ten days, and how nice it was to do it again for probably the last time in a long time, because winter is coming and restaurants aren't allowed inside seating. To say nothing of blood sugars, cholesterol, and surgery.

But since I was in my old stomping grounds, I went to BMV books to see if they had Hazel Holts, which they didn't, but did have an Ellery Queen double book, half of which I read last night while marvelling at how fast and loose EQ plays with police procedure, and *not* doing any of my regular routines- no exercise bike or kanji or therabands (which seem to annoy the elbows rather a lot.) Pure self-indulgence, and very nice oo.

It's not just the half ativan I took to counteract the 6 pm Pepsi (also obscure back twinges.) I really do feel better today because I went inside an actual *bookstore* for the first time since March, and bought a pile of *books* (all Reginald Hills, which is what I was looking for in March when there weren't any, though today I was looking for Hazel Holts, but there weren't any) and it's just different than shopping for food, is all. Bookstore was closed for four months during lockdown and is only able to stay afloat because landlord cut the rent in half for the duration. Other places on the block, like the nail salon, are closed and empty. And I do so wish the 20 to 40 crowd would get their acts together so our Covid cases would drop again: though my understanding is that cases cluster now in areas of low income and high rises, suggesting it's partly an employment problem as well. Though the cluster is also in the luxury condos by the lakeshore, suggesting elevators and bloodymindedness factor in as well.

But since one must be satisfied with the world as it is, I shall be satisfied. Especially as I'm snug in my side room wearing the dragon scale arm warmers a friend crocheted for me and under a couple of incandescens' autumn coloured quilts. Having nice things around me is distinctly happy-making.

How did I used to get up in the morning? Or maybe, why did I use to get up in the morning? Well, usually it was to secure a place at the local coffee shop before all the laptops arrived to hog tables, and now even though the coffee shop now has patio seating I can't have pastries and lattes so when I wake up at a reasonable hour, I just go back to sleep again. I mean yes, part of it is that I don't hurt in bed, mostly, whereas if I get up I *will* hurt because I do get up to limp to the bathroom. But after limping back to the bedoom, instead of stretch and strengthen for half an hour, I pull up the heavy comforter and blanket and roll back to sleep...

...to dream I'm sort of back in the house I owned, most unhappily, in 1987 trying to get my new laptop to work and suddenly it's 4:25 oh lord is that the time? Cathy O'Neill's birthday party will be almost over!' (friend from grade school through first year university). My mother tells me to get my clothes on- 'but I forgot to buy a present!' so she hands me a stack of hand towels she bought, no time to wrap them, and my hair looks like Nancy's of Sluggo and Nancy but I can't brush it out now, and I get my purse (I don't use purses and never did: it was shoulder bags before backpacks) and Mom drives me to Cathy's as people are leaving. I know that second waking dreams are always anxiety ones, but I still prefer that to being awake for an extra three hours.

Earlier night dream was a variant on the old murder topos, where I'd stabbed but not killed my workplace nemesis and was lying low but I had to go out and walk along a street where she might see me and did, so I took shelter with a Chinese family in some ur-Torontonian-Chinatown.

October is being a slow month. Thirty years ago I was travelling in Japan and have been mentally following my journey then, as well as I can because I've forgotten several days of even that ground-breaking trip. And it's been 'this is the day I was in Ise' and days later 'this is the day I was in Takayama, how come that was only two days ago, I should be in Kyoto by now.' It took me forever to get to Matsue on the double tenth, and now, a seeming four days later, I'm finally in Fukushima for the 12th. I suppose things will speed up now but I'd just as soon they didn't. Am not looking forward to November.

Ah, ok. So the trans character in Kafuka that I didn't notice was trans when I first read the book (or at least didn't remember as a salient detail of their character) might equally be intersex. The no breasts and no periods ever are suggestive of that, a detail one notices more when reading the Japanese.

That 'oldest thing' meme going around got me thinking what the oldest thing I own is. Thought it was the early 19th century Chinese vase I inherited from my father until I remembered the neolithic pot shard a Saiyuki fan sent me once. Then I tried to remember who that was. Old ML names after 20 years... but I think it was lorelei who might also have been figbash. Figbash I actually met, though I'd forgotten the fact. Must have been after the second Shoujo-con in New York. And I think she was the one who lived just up from the twin towers and watched the deadly dust rise up. But that would have been two months after the convention. And was she the same as lorelei? I thought lorelei was earlier...

And then I remembered that I have still messages in my old OE dating back to the late 90s so I went looking there. Still don't know if I'm conflating two people but boywas that a lot of instant time travel. Have been disoriented ever since. Adding happily to the disorientation is that my knees and back have miraculously stopped hurting, or at least stopped hurting any more than they did in mumble mumble 2016. Don't expect this to continue but right now I'll take it.

Vexatious day. Stiff for no reason, and achy with it, which resulted in several episodes of can't get on the bike/ can't get off the bike. Fortunately there's always some nice person who stops and helps me with this, and if it happens, as it invariably does, up by Loblaws that someone is a nurse from one of the retirement homes in the area who will even lift the uncooperative leg back over the bar for me. Solution is not to try getting on/ off bike anywhere but at the corner where the sidewalk slopes and gives me high ground because I can no longer be sure of managing it on the flat. Bummer.

I don't want the hassle of a knee replacement. I want my knees to work again. But if I'm inclined to get into a state about the hassle, I can console (!) myself that our rising tide of Covid cases, which have hit heights unreached even in April, will send the hospitals back into lockdown and preempt all elective surgery.

Then my Hazel Holt mystery arrived, the one that's not in the library system, and somehow turns out to be not only in the system but one I've read. No idea how I managed that because it even has the same title ie is not one where the Americans renamed the book completely.

My turducken dinner was... not the best turducken I've ever had, and generally a letdown in the way of seemingly all delivered meals. (Not all. Only western food.) But being bloody-minded by that point I ate it all, *and* the mashed potatoes * and* the cranberry sauce *and* the bread stuffing (which was baked in a kind of scone shape and very disappointing) * and* the pumpkin mousse dessert. Starch and sugar again. Tomorrow I shall have the salad that came with it and maybe the roasted vegetables, though parsnips and turnip are not favourites of mine. But today has been a vacation of not-doing of all my daily To Does, so now I will drink a Pepsi and read my library Hazel Holt.

In the brisk midAutumn
Gusty winds do blow

so I sat on my porch and watched them do it, first time in a long time- August was too hot, September too cold. Am displeased to note that I have a harder time getting out of the low porch chair than I did in July, three kilos ago. Ah well. Exercise, exercise.

Finished?

Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
-- not as resonant as when I first read it, but may be down to having read more Gaiman in the interval so that his tics are more familiar now

Coupla Hazel Holt genteel mysteries. Note that nice Mrs. Mallory never has trouble suspecting her friends of being murderers. Nor does anyone remark on the number of murders that happen among her circle of village acquaintances. Maybe we're supposed to assume that each murder happens in a separate trouser leg of time and is the only one in her experience.

Reading now?

Next Vinyl Detective book, again wih murderous record collectors.

Earl Miner, Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry
-- now that Waiting for the Wind draws near its end, back to the basic sources that Carter has been referencing all through it, though in fact what he cites is the much heftier Japanese Court Poetry by Brower and Miner. Which I don't think I own, having decided in my unilingual ignorance thirty-five years ago that Japanese court poetry has no there there. It's true that in English it decidedly lacks resonance, but once you come at from even an imperfect understanding of Japanese, it becomes delightful. Miner has a passage in the Introduction about poetic vocabulary and how there's a range of terms that the English translator can only render as 'sad'. Also I notice translators will work all the lines of the poem into a coherent English sentence, where what I'm seeing often enough are the nongrammatic juxtapositions you get in haiku

winter's solitude
and the world is one colour-
the sound of wind

Kafka chugs along, Villon doesn't. Should probably start something else in French.

Next up?

I keep forgetting I have Piranesi to read. Should read it.

OK. So that's how it works then. Because my allergies have taken another new lease on life right when there's nothing to be allergic to, and because I had acupuncture today, and because I really don't want to be coughing during acupuncture, I took a swig of my precious prescription cough syrup. And some twenty minutes later became aware of a mellow cheerful optimistic glow, the sort wine or scotch used to give me but don't anymore. Truly, that cough syrup didn't do this the first two years I was taking it, but now it does; and now too I see why people take opioids for the buzz and not the analgesic effect. Luckily or un-, I have very little of it left and am not sure my new doctor will give me more. What I do have is an OTC cough syrup that's supposed to calm tickly coughs. It's also the one that works *with* the Covid virus. But my chances of being infected are infinitisimal, since I'm in close prolonged contact with absolutely nobody. My acupuncturist is the only person who comes within four feet of me and that's in an open breezy room with both of us masked. So I shall chance it. But would obviously rather have the addictive codeine-and-whatever concotion.

I've grown progressively clumsier with age, certain to knock anything over if I don't reach carefully and consciously. Spilled a whole tin of Pepsi onto the bedroom carpet the other day. Today I sent the stylus flying off the bedside table, which then rolled under the futon platform drawer and out of reach. Virtue of necessity, I shoved furniture out of the way, removed drawer, and swept underneath the platform, retrieving my stylus and various pills and rather fewer dust bunnies than I expected. But this let me go through the drawer itself, which I can't do ordinarily because it won't open fully, and I discover that that's where all my pantyhose were stored. I never wear them, of course, but periodically I've wanted to for dress up dinners and the like. Now I can, if there are ever dress up dinners again in my lifetime.

Equal virtue of necessity, since I need something to drown out next door's music, I've been playing those myriad CDs I bought over the last three decades and, well, never listened to past 2002, or occasionally ever. There's stacks of them denuded of their cases, which I will reunite some day. Another quarantine project. But now I listen to the whole album while eating supper or pedaling my bike machine, rather than my usual habit of skipping everything but the one or two tracks I like. Result today was bicycling for almost half an hour when I'm usually ready to quit at 15 minutes. So yay me.

System can take five CDs but there seems no way to go from one to another using the remote. The controls on this thing are not intuitive. So I treat it as a one disc system, which at least alleviates technical anxiety.

Cold rainy day. Have turned the heat on- low, 15C- but presumably more economical than running the electriity-gobbling space heater. We still have another month of flat rate electricity, but if this was normal I'd be paying low rates (all weekends) rather than middle.

Allergies suddenly go gangbusters so I relax my no extra sugar rule to allow me to drink sweet milky tea for the scratchy throat.

Dreams alas seem to have reverted to their normal selves. Alas because I woke in the deep night from one of the classic recurring topoi, 'remember how you killed your best high school friend twenty years ago and threw parts of her body from a train?' Had the usual twist of 'yes, you thought you'd dreamed about it before but that was because it really happened and you'd sublimated the memory.' 3 a.m. is not the time to try convincing oneself that said friend is actually still alive, especially when you haven't seen her since 1999. What did it finally was the conviction that since I hadn't seen her since 1999, I couldn't have killed her in the early oughties. Rolled back to sleep and dreamed of my bro and s-i-l in their 'house' that had a whole hidden apartment in the half basement, except that J had taken all my laundry baskets from the laundry room and I couldn't connect to the broadband to get online.

A minor Sunday pleasure is gone. Post Secret no longer registers in my outdated browser on my outdated OS. Reading on the tablet isn't the same.

Next door is on a Wagner kick. Well, maybe Strauss, but something that involves shrieking sopranos and nothing else. On the minute his kid is out the door at 9, off while he picks kid up at 4:30, back on at 5 and through dinner. Must tell myself that it's better, so much better, than rock music, but I wonder how his wife can stand it.

There's a down side to the kanji study, which is that I start to review them in my head as I'm falling asleep, and then get wound up because I can't remember the radical of one I reviewed today, or the reading or the meaning. I can look them up on my phone in the dark but the wp is like molasses, and if- as is invariably the case- I misremember any of the foregoing it's an exercise in extreme frustration. Mogi no gi 擬, not benshou no shou 償. And so on.

Finished?

A Hazel Holt mystery. Somehow felt I needed the next one, and because the library didn't have it I ordered it from Indigo. I now have my credit card number memorized and must seriously stop using it.

El Cid from Medieval Epics. Tells me no more than the recap in Medieval Myths but is a lot bloodier. Have put ME back on the shelf because I'm not in the mood to do this all over again with Roland and Siegfrid. Though reading the introduction to Roland I find there's a bit of a mystery to Roncevaux. Roland died, not in a battle against 400,000 Sarcens, but in an attack on Charlemagne's rearguard by Basque warriors as he returned from a Spanish campaign against the caliph of Cordoba. On the way back he sacked and burned Basque cities, and the Basques attacked in retaliation. It was a skirmish rather than a pitched battle, that still cost the lives of many nobles and all Charlemagne's booty from his campaign. But why was the baggage train in the rear of the army when it should have been in the middle as was usual? Wikipedia has nothing to say on the subject. Overconfidence, military SNAFU, or simply not knowing the terrain through the mountains, maybe?

Pratchett, Making Money
-- been so long since I read this that I'd totally forgotten the plot. A nice palate cleanser.

Reading now?

The perennial standbys: Muromachi poetry, Claudine, and Kafka. Claudine wears on me. Want to swap her for someone else. Wonder if I still have that French translation of Tanizaki's Manji (Buddhist swastika)? OTOH Tanizaki is as likely to wear on me as Claudine. Oogey writer, that.

Next up?

I have Piranesi but I'm not sure I want to start it in my current scratchy state. Am having a rare attack of missing People, which I will deal with in the usual way, but that takes time.

The day was blowy and sunny and warm and I got out on the bike to tootle around the neighbourhood and eventually to the yuppie conveni for organic eggs. With which I made a Spanish tortilla, using my last-for-a-long-time potato. Tortillas involve sauteeing onions and thinly sliced potato in ridiculous amounts of olive oil until tender, and then dumping beaten eggs on top, letting it cook slooowly until bottom seems to be done. Then comes the hard part: cover pan with a dinner plate, flip pan over so tortilla falls onto plate, hopefully! in one piece, and then slide it back into the pan to cook on the bottom. Today for the first time in decades I managed the feat, though because of curved dinner plates and weak wrists I did it via two plates: flip onto back of curved plate, slide onto right side up plate, slide back into pan.

Because I don't have measurements for this dish, it's always a toss up whether I use enough eggs or not. Today I did: 4 eggs to one russet potato. Could have used twice the onion and probably three times the salt, but the latter must be restricted, so.

My boring life makes for a certain sameness in the brief entries I put in the daybook. Thus I have no idea what happened when because it's all 'did kaniji, did exercises, read French'. Anent someone's mention on the FFL I've started a bullet journal where I can simply tick off these repetitive tasks as well as noting things like when I washed my hair or vacuumed. I think that will work well.

I had wondered why RBG's funeral was postponed for a week. Googling around, I find, "It is forbidden to allow the body of the deceased to lay (sic) unburied unless it is being left unburied for the honor of the deceased."

Which certainly fits the case here.

Got a call from work: two of the Infing staff wondering how I was doing. So nice to hear their voices again, as well as the yelps of the currently two babies present, both of whom wanted to play with the phone. And now, having been reminded of what work is or can be like, I miss work.

In the week or so that I've only been going down to the main drag a whole buncha trees have turned colour. Really must get up to the end of the street more often, before they fall.

Today was over to the bike store to see if they, or rather he (Dave of of the aptly named Dave Fix My Bike) had rain covers to shield Poor Bikos from the autumn tempests, or drizzle, or whatever. The one I bought last spring at tony Curbside ripped within a few months, most annoyingly. This one is a heavier duty material and will hopefully last till winter. And while there I got Dave to pump my tires and tighten my brakes, the first of which my elbows can't do in this sunny warm muggy spell we're having and the second of which I don't know how to do, except it looked like all he did was twist something on the brake cable with his fingers. Cool, if so.

Profile

flemmings

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

The rodents are running hurrah! hurrah!

Entries tagged with rl_20

Expand Cut Tags