Les Semaines

My sister and her family deserve heaps of praise for looking after her so well and so long, and my poor dad for struggling on alone at home with the dogs.

She and my sister will be on the plane a week Monday. Hooray!

This has been a funny week. Exam week at work. Busy and slow in fits and starts. Trying to get the last things sorted out before the Clarion West workshop begins. We start on Thursday this year moving things into the sorority house. It's going to be a particularly hectic start, since the Locus Awards and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductions are the same weekend and some of our students are coming early to attend those.

Alas, my email is more out of hand that ever. Inbox rapidly approaching 500 messages. This is utterly ridiculous. Someone needs to have a stern talk with me about letting things get so out of hand. I guess it's time to sit myself down.

In better and more entertaining news, a few weeks ago, in a moment of serious needing to do something else for a while at work, I wrote:

A silly poem about Zach

Old man Zach has wobbly legs
They're thin like pegs
They's fragile as eggs

Old cat Zach he got Parkinson's head
Fills me with dread
He's nearby dead

Old bones Zach he mostly sleep
But he still do shriek
When wanting meat

Old codger Zach love his heating pad
Sophia drives him mad
When she's lively & glad

At night when Zach he gives us hell
His breath do smell
Like a sewage well

Old skinny-shanks Zach he still can purr
Like a motor whir
Under that stripèd fur

That's all that I have got to say
He still okay
He's alive today

Listening

It's weird that recently I've been in a space where I haven't been listening to music with the same intensity I usually do. I do love listening in the car and when Jim puts music on, especially when he plays DJ and plays a series of songs, I really enjoy it. I just haven't been focusing on music myself. I suppose because it's a distracting time right now.

Reading

Jane Stevenson's The Winter Queen is the story of a emancipated slave who is a scholar and almost ready to take his degree and become a missionary when his benefactor calls him to help with his scholarly work. His course disrupted, he throws himself into this task, and when his benefactor dies, he is left to make his way by telling fortunes using a oracle he learned as a young man in Africa, reconciling it with his strong Christian faith. When this brings him into contact with the widowed and displaced Queen of Bohemia, his life is further altered. I found this novel alternately fascinating and trying. An odd combination.

Charles de Lint's Widdershins was delightful throughout. In it a fiddle player on her way home from a gig has mechanical trouble, and finds herself waylaid by a band of bogans, who have just killed a forest spirit in the shape of a deer. She is rescued by a bird spirit in human form, who starts her car for her and leaves. Instead of immediately leaving herself, she buries the remains of the deer and plays a lament over it. For that act of heart she is rewarded by the father of the spirit, who appears to her and promises to help her should she ever need it. The bogans are none too happy with being stopped from their games and resolve to make her pay, which fits in well with a vengeful salmon spirit who has bartered with them to help him with his revenge. This is a tangled tale, full of engaging characters. Lovely.

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Writing

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Retrospective: old journal

Monday, May 18, 1992

→Sandspit, Moresby Island

Stopped off in Masset graveyard before leaving--wonderful place in the forest--moss-covered graves, cedar, huckleberry, hemlock, spruce...and a raven feather I picked up at the gate, then left behind before leaving--heard a raven talking as we left.

Dad drove us back down to Queen Charlotte City. Stopped at Rocky Beach just to walk. No diesel station open, so go in ferry line and ate crabs our host had packed for us--messy business. Dad spattered me opening his claw up, got in my hair, my face, up my nose.

Finished eating on the ferry. Then we were on Moresby. Drove to where staying at Sandspit, and spent the afternoon napping, reading, looking for Mom's glasses. Made dinner here, had showers, now bed.

Tuesday, May 19, 1992

Moresby Island

It wasn't long before a truck passed, and then Sarah followed in the van--they'd given her a lift most of the way, thought she'd run about 1.5 km. Bill decided to try tomorrow because the wind was pretty stiff and we'd be getting such a late start, but we drove down to Moresby Camp anyway--while caps and wind. Then back to the Guest House, via Skidegate Channel Road.

Went to SuperValu, then I was feeling sick so they dropped me off and started down Copper Beach Road, but gave up because of active logging and turned back. Rested most of the afternoon while Dad walked up the beach and we picked him up on the way to Sandspit Inn for dinner. We had chicken & scallops in tarragon sauce while Dad had chicken cordon bleu and on the way out we sang Happy Anniversary. Then we checked out the gift shop and got postcards and the Charlottes names book.

Then home and read. Quiet night.

Next entry in the Queen Charlottes/Haida Gwaii 1992 journal.