Sunday, July 24, 2016

Cat Nap

I wish I had the ability to sleep at will in any position like my Salty...


Wednesday, July 20, 2016

We're Friends Now.

Nothing to see here. We have just decided to curl up together. No big. Move along.


Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Kuğulu Park, Ankara 2009


My Turkish-born baby in Kuğulu Park, Ankara, Turkey. Still not Canadian.

Same place, 4 years later:


With the internet lockdown in Turkey, few photos are emerging of the violence during the coup (I can't bear to post what has been shared from the Bosphorus Bridge in İstanbul where my first baby took her first steps on my 30th birthday... death, blood, my heart breaks.)

Türkiye Erdoğan tarafından tahrip edilmiştir.

Erdoğan suçlu.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

My Punk Rock Girl



She can rock out. She's announced that k.d. lang should watch out, because there's a new lesbian from Alberta who is going to be a bigger star.

She knows all the lyrics to Hallelujah but is pretty sure she sings the song better than k.d. She also knows all the lyrics to Punk Rock Girl by The Dead Milkmen, Joy by Lucinda Williams, It's A Hard Knock Life from the musical, Annie, and, courtesy of her other mother, F*ck The Pain Away by Peaches.

This girl is gonna take the world by storm. (And I'll use my good camera, not the crappy iPhone camera next time she asks for a punk cut.)

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Ama vejeteryanım

Embroidery on MRI images from my left thigh. Conducted in Turklandia (Ankara,) in 2009.

Depending on angles, my leg looks like bacon or like ham. 



Part of a larger series I'm working on about bodies, taboo, revulsion, and prudishness. 

Friday, July 15, 2016

A Wee Spot of Weather (aka torrential downpour number two, today)

 Massive torrential downpour, round two, today alone. Heavier than any to date including the earlier one in the day. Climate change, you are a bastard.



Look pixelated? That's the hail falling.

Usually this is a road, not a river.

Our eaves and troughs couldn't keep up with the onslaught.

Of course, there was beauty in it.

Puzzling, A Family Affair

We've been doing puzzles together. This one was finished tonight. We're working on a donut puzzle too. After that one of the Rosetta Stone. 1000 pieces for the first two. 800 for the artifact the Brits stole from Egypt. 

A nice way to spend family evenings.






Thursday, July 14, 2016

Bird On The Wire


Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee

If I, if I have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go by
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you
Like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, "You must not ask for so much."
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

Oh like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir have tried in my way to be free
~Leonard Cohen


Why not ask for more? I want more of this world. I want more kindness. I want less death, less murder, less pain... and until it happens, I want more people to CARE.

Everything is wrong and horrible and dripping in blood, revenge, hate and people are more interested in capturing Pokémon on illegally downloaded apps.

What is the cure for apathy???

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

A Very Special Friend Has A Birthday

So I made Indian food for her. No final product photos. Just some in progress snaps. We had a mixed vegetable curry, dry okra, kale in mustard oil (with rainbow chard and collard greens,) Gujerati green beans, green lentil dhal, pink himalayan rice, and naan bread.

And a "special" cake for dessert.












Eerie Coincidences In Pain

 Me: My doctor doesn't understand why specialists won't prescribe benzos long term. Sure, they have side effects that are dire for the liver, but isn't it better to live pain free while alive than to live longer with a healthy liver but in pain for decades? That's what she asks.

Jen: Right?!? I'd so much rather live pain free for less time than in pain for a long time. Quality of life matters.

Me: I'm just going to check the mail; I didn't have chance today.

Jen: Okay.

And this:



Not benzo, but eerie.

Also? Can someone explain how I have reached an age where chronic pain is a casual conversation topic? Didn't I just yesterday get held back by my fellow 16 year olds when I tried to offer a beer to our friend's stepfather, an RCMP officer breaking up our bush party? From reckless, drunken fun to "I need protective gear for assembling puzzles; padding for my knees and something for my back when I am leaning over the table for extended periods." Oh yes, spoke by ME, today. TODAY.

Officially old. Demographic marketing successful. Help me change how I think about pain relief. Sigh.


Monday, July 11, 2016

NOT What You Want to Find On Your Property

Last night? The night before? They blur into each other with sleeplessness: insomnia, children awake, thunder, sirens, people screaming.

There were people fighting. It might have been last night, the night before, and the one before that... it's not irregular.

Today I took recycling to the pick up point behind our garage.

I found this:



Not, for the record, a comforting discovery.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

What Love Looks Like


The only devilish thing about this devilled egg is the wicked pissah wife who made them (oh yes, more than one, though the depicted HAS been devoured) for me.

This is what love looks like. It's daily moments of care.

Saturday, July 9, 2016

Glaring at Phone

This week Liam was on the couch, on his phone, glaring at it- an uncharacteristic expression for him.


Me: Liam, why are you glaring at your phone? What's wrong?



Liam: I'm not. This is just my face.



Me: No, your face doesn't usually look so angry.



Liam: I have Resting Bitch Face.



Below, the photographic evidence of his mother's recognition of the impossibility of this:




He caught me so off guard with his comment that I couldn't spout out the obvious response: "I do not think those words mean what you think they mean!"

Just laughing, probably much like above. (Isn't she beautiful???)

Shaving More Than 3 Decades But...

...still cut myself sometimes.

Bandaids under tights. Only change? 30 years ago I would NOT be caught dead in lacy tights. My bandaids were worn with pride under cords, poorly fitting 70s jeans, sporty short shorts.

Former tomboy/butch. Current proud femme. 

Friday, July 8, 2016

Disarm


Gun Culture, USA. All photographs from Plymouth, Massachusetts. All photographs from one block.

Ban idiots? But one is the Republican Presidential Candidate who loves guns, hates Jewish people, and thinks the world would be better with more hate.

How do you ban the idiots when the idiots have the guns?

Disarm. Disarm. Disarm.

Sometimes the obvious and simple solutions eludes the idiots.

(The store selling "Guns Are Welcome On Premises" sign was also selling a 'vintage' Canadian $20 bill (the $20 bill in current circulation) for 25.95 USD. The bank next door? 15.33USD for 20 CAD.)

I don't think 'vintage' means what they think it means.

The idiots are S.M.R.T.

How about we ban idiots AND guns? Seems a lot more intelligent to me. And we do it EVERYWHERE. I'm not a sanctimonious Canadian who thinks Canadians are immune to gun culture. We have less access to the types of guns but every nation in the West and many in Africa, the Middle East, and South-East Asia are infected with the gun culture disease.

How many more people of colour around the world have to die before people do the right thing???

Fuck the right to bear arms! The right to not be murdered with easily accessed, automatic, military grade weapons should be a prioritized, superior right. The *anti-choicers should put their pro-life efforts into lives that exist and are being extinguished.

*anti-choicers seeking to control a woman's right to bodily autonomy will be featured in photos on this blog soon.



Wednesday, July 6, 2016

All Gender Washroom: Doing It Right

I took two 10 year olds for lunch and board games at The Gamer's Lodge today.

I had to pee. The Gamer's Lodge wins for well-played (see what I did there?) and as it should be:


Black and white because it should be as simple as that.

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Post Op

Tired Kiddo, post op.




You pounced me. When I feel better, there will be consequences.


Monday, July 4, 2016

Thing 1


Thing 1 and Thing 2 joined our family recently. They have already grown so much! 

They are aptly named mischievous house-wrecking balls of destruction and delight.

Thing 1, in a rare moment of repose:

 

Doll Me

I had a beloved Auntie Bea. I had planned to name my child after her and after my Great Nan: Beatrix Violet. It never happened. Perhaps this doll can receive the name instead.

Auntie Bea had not completed the doll she was making for me when she died (it's been about 15 years.) My Nana, whose name I have, couldn't leave Doll Me, now Beatrix Violet, unfinished. I had mailed a portion of my hair for the doll. My Nana learned to make human hair into a head of doll hair. It's my hair on her head.

The porcelain version of me. In shoes and clothing sewn by Auntie Bea (whose name was not Beatrix, but Beryl, though I didn't know the truth of her name until she was dead. I always assumed "Bea" was short for Beatrix,) the doll version of me is more carefully assembled, attired, and prepared for the world than I.

It's a shame she sits in our bedroom where no one but us sees her. Auntie Bea and Nana worked so hard.

Beatrix Violet is cherished.




I wish Auntie Bea had seen the completion of her beautiful creation.

University of Alberta Hospital Bathroom Stall Graffiti

Hospitals are sad. I sat in one today, waiting for my little one undergoing dental surgery (just a reality for him/us; not the more heartbroken or sorrowful reasons that take many people to ER, surgery, disease/illness treatments.)

I'd had a latté and a bottle of water so I needed to pee.

The bathroom stall I chose was surprisingly up-lifting. Bathroom stall graffiti is usually cruel or mean-spirited or shaming... this was quite the opposite. I only had the camera on my phone to capture images with, meaning the phrases in ballpoint pen were too lacking in contrast with the stall wall to be picked up.

I will go back. (Let's collectively imagine me skulking around hospital bathrooms to see if this was an isolated stall or a hospital bathroom movement...)

For now, I offer this one phrase of encouragement scrawled in what appeared to be Sharpie marker:


A lovely thing to encounter in a place full of desolate, desperate people, illness, and death.