Rachel has gone to the river with Montana and Olivia.  Ian and Joey are watching videos.  Kirsten and Caitlin have gone to the movies.  At 4:45 I have to fetch Kirsten and Caitlin from the movies, and at 5:20 I have to fetch Llewellyn from the sea-plane terminal.  Then Caitlin and Joey are going to their grandparents at 6:15, Rachel's coming back from Montana's at 6:30, and the four of us who live here, and Llewellyn, are going to the fireworks.  Afterwards, Rachel is sleeping over at Montana and Olivia's, and Llewellyn's sleeping over here.  Then I have to be at work by 10 tomorrow morning so I'll have to retrieve Rachel and return Llewellyn.  Clear?  Yup, I feel the same way.

I'm writing my euthanasia paper.  Not all that difficult, actually, which may be a bad thing...  however, in the spirit of procrastination, this is interesting on the dynamics of internet groups.

It's good to be home for the day.  Ian just came to show me he has hacked Kirsten's Furby, to make it burp uncontrollably.

The other day I came home to a message informing me that I am still under consideration for the Residential Schools research job... to my surprise, as the deadline had come and gone. I am still trying not to think too hard about it, but I find myself at odd moments thinking, mmmm work from home, no customers, no lottery tickets...

M is in Connecticut and New York until the 26th. He managed to get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and spent an evening there. I wish I could have gone with him.

My eyes haven't been hurting as much lately. I have even been driving a bit, with very dark sunglasses that I bought from Zellers for 5 bucks.

It looks as if I might have a day off today. I've been working a lot since Cindy broke her foot, which is ok as sales are really down right now and I can't afford to pay so much labour.

I got a call from the family, this afternoon. Apparently the car refused to start outside West Edmonton Mall.

Other than the teenagers in my cherry tree at 2 am (this I think is karma and I should just bow to the universe for things I did in Vulcan as a teenager) and the neighbour's dog getting a cat cornered in my yard at 5 am, I seem to be ok by myself at the moment. A bit lonely, I'm reading a lot and doing a lot of schoolwork, trying to fill my head with words. Took mum and dad out for dinner for their respective birthdays which are both coming up, had a good time, all in all.

When we were first married, in 1988, we came out from Alberta to Vancouver Island for an immensely rainy honeymoon. My abiding memory is of renting a car and driving to Qualicum Beach from Victoria to the accompaniment of the windshield wipers and CBC Stereo. He loves rain, so we decided that our first definitive act as a married couple would be to drop everything and move out here. He dropped out of university, I rounded up enough courses to complete a three year degree, we quit our gas station jobs. We stuffed everything we owned into his truck and my car, including my cat, and headed out for a trailer park just outside of Nanaimo.
The trailer was a hand-me-down, given perhaps somewhat reluctantly by his parents. His father had gutted the inside of it to make a painting studio, and it smelled of oil paint and cigarette smoke. The people who were moving it for us showed up on Friday morning and hooked it up to a semi trailer. We were on our way. I loaded the cat, Mao, a black sleek tom with an attitude the size of China, he loaded his guitar and the go board, we set off. Three minutes down the road from Alberta Beach, Mao took a huge dump in the litter box I had thoughtfully provided in the back seat. I stopped for an air freshener.
I drove through the mountains, happily listening to Journey and Boston on the tape player and singing along. It is mostly downhill from Blue River to Vancouver, and I coasted. Mao was not ideal company. He complained in a dying cat voice, panted a lot like he was dehydrating, and kept insisting on being either on my lap or underneath the gas pedal. Finally I reached the outskirts of Vancouver, two packs of cigarettes and numerous tapes later.
It began to be warm. It was April and I had left some snow in Alberta. The sun was shining in Vancouver and I decided it was time to lose my sweater. I rolled down the window a bit. Eventually I stopped at a stoplight and began to take off my sweater. At just that moment, Mao decided to make a break for it. Just as I rolled my sweater up to my shoulders, he leapt up and tried to squish himself through the window. At the same moment, I realized I had also pulled up my t-shirt and was sitting with my sweater and shirt around my head, trying, clad mostly in my bra, to stop the cat from going out the window, and the light was changing. In one of those bizarre convergences, everyone stopped around me was looking at me while I struggled with sweater, shirt, cat, and window, and no-one seemed to care that the light had changed…

Well, they've all gone off to Alberta. Except the dogs. I've made coffee, and am settling down to my violence paper, which is due on Thursday. Ack. I went to Victoria last weekend for AVP, so no writing got done, but it was a good workshop. One of the men had gone up for a faint hope hearing and he told us all about it. He was unsuccessful in gaining early parole, but he felt that the experience was good for all involved. At the end of the two week hearing, the family of the woman he killed came up and hugged him and cried and told him they were sorry he had to stay in prison...

Can't sleep. My right hand has gone past the non-working stage into the swelling up stage. As usual when it's acting up I spent the day throwing money at people. Everything is of course exacerbated by the fact that it's damn hot. But the Globe and Mail printed my letter, so right now I don't care. I'll just stay up all night and surf...

woohoo -- my name in print

Dear kate,
Here is your horoscope
for Tuesday, June 22:

The universe steps in and bails you out. The rest of the month suddenly looks much better. Now you can concentrate on better things, like having some summer fun.

Ok, I'm still waiting. Get on with it, universe. As in, any time right about now would be good, for the bailing out. Cindy, one of my three employees, has broken her foot so I ended up at work today on my day off...

In my email inbox: "cough syrup ruffians". What do they do, scream themselves hoarse?

I enjoyed this today, on how prisoners can now vote.

And it's Sunday. Rachel wants to go see the Garfield movie. She's a big fan. All the high tech stuff in today's world, and she loves the scruffy books I had when I was a kid. Most of them are missing covers, but she's got them all in her room and she's always coming to quote me something.

Whatever happens, from hereon in, one thing will remain the same. Madonna will always be ten years older than me...

I handed in the drug policy paper. Now it's violence. Thank-you to all who sent me ideas, I appreciate it.

I feel a bit better, mentally. I seem to have managed to get the delusions/obsessions under control. Or they're controlling me and I've become comfortable with it, it's hard to know which.

When Reagan died, I was standing at work watching the news coverage on the tvs at the Telus store, and one of my customers, a man who drives his wife to work at one of the stores in the mall, came up. We had the following conversation.

Customer: So, Reagan's still dead.
Me: Still dead?
Customer: Yup, I've always said he died in that assassination attempt, and they replaced him with an actor.
Me: There's a name for that sort of theory, you know. Impostor something-or-other. It goes along with thinking that people have been replaced by aliens.
Customer: I can't talk about that with you. You're probably an alien. Why did they raise the prices on the lottery?
Me: I don't know. It's a conspiracy.
Customer: Damn aliens, they're everywhere.

I don't know why, but "tigger is gay" on this list made me laugh quite a lot. I know, I'm procrastinating.

Here we go. Summer has arrived, it seems, kids are playing with water balloons and my garden's growing nicely. Trying a different kind of lettuce this year, a red variety, and green beans instead of yellow. Had a couple of good weeks of rain.

Almost finished the harm reduction paper, it just needs a concluding paragraph. Which is good, because it's due tomorrow. Then I've got two more for this term. One on violence and one on euthanasia. I'm supposed to discuss whether I think society is more violent than it was in the 1950's. Not sure why they picked that decade, but oh well. If anyone has any thoughts, please share them with me...

green. what do you think?

my dog

like I need more dogs. M's boss (the poster child for financial mismanagement) has left his dog here while he's in Calgary. It's a cute dog but my own are nervous, and it's pretty much walltowall dog this weekend. they all seem to be shedding.

I'm procrastinating, as usual, the harm reduction paper needs about 500 more words. luckily I still have plenty to say, which is amazing considering I didn't think I cared very much. but harm reduction seems nicely realistic.

The cemetery plot people have disappeared.