A weekend on the Sunshine Coast

At Raspberry Showboat's 50th birthday party on the 18th, his husband Jasmine Amethyst invited me to a come to the Sunshine Coast this past weekend to celebrate with other Faeries. I got a ride with my close friend Stitch, who picked me up from work at lunchtime. We made the 1:30 ferry to Langdale and were at Tulip's home, the Landing Place, an hour or so later.
Why is it called the "Sunshine Coast"? Why did the Norse call that island iceberg "Greenland"? Why is North Korea called the "The People's Democratic Republic of Korea"? Why does Microsoft Vista claim to be problem-free? Who knows; it was raining of course.

Jazzy and Raspberry Showboat were already there. They had brought a mountain of food that Jazzy had bought or prepared. We sipped tea, relaxed and waited for the others to arrive. Epick finished his banquet work around 4 and Jazzy drove to the ferry to pick him up around 5:30. Morgain Lessloss didn't arrive until much later, around 10pm. Tangerine was ill, Sat Dharna ate something questionable and Temple was tied up with work so there were only seven of us.

It was a great weekend. I felt very pampered with all of Jazzy's cooking, which was delicious. There were tons of sugary snacks but I was able to avoid most of them. Saturday was deliciously sunny. The others participated in a sweat lodge and late evening hot tub soaks. I couldn't do the sweat lodge as even crawling inside and sitting upright for one or two hours isn't possible for me now. I wouldn't want to anyway, as I hate high heat and dark, enclosed spaces that are not easy to escape from. So I had plenty of quiet time Saturday afternoon to read. I am reading Thomas Moore's "Care of the Soul". I think I could have done the hot tub, but it is always tricky for me to get out. As it was, I was too tired by late evening anyway.

The real blessing of the weekend was being assigned to sleep with Epick, a Faerie I had not got to know well before. He's chatty and likes to talk about himself, as most young guys do, but he is intelligent and has had a difficult and interesting life so it was fun listening to him. He is handsome too. In bed, he wanted me to cuddle him. It has been a long time since I have cuddled with another man all night, and even longer since doing with someone as attractive and fit as him. Both of us are wary of casual sex, so it worked out perfectly that touch, not sex, was our mutual priority. The fact that he likes to sleep under half a ton of blankets was forgivable.

Two nights of cuddling did wonders to sooth my soul. I felt I was floating when I got home. I told him I would be open to doing it again. He said he'd think about it. I think we are beginning to trust each other fairly well but one usually prefers the convenience of his own bed and living arrangements. I know I do, and I cannot get into his place with all the stairs it would require. At least I hope we remain friends.

PHOTO 1: Jasmine Amethyst (Jazzy)
PHOTO 2: Raspberry Showboat & Bonna
PHOTO 3: Morgain Lessloss, Epick & Stitch
PHOTO 4: Jasmine & Tulip in kitchen
PHOTO 5: Tulip & Bonna
PHOTO 6: Stitch & his son Kevin

Rough month

Things have finally settled down after a rough start to the month. The sore throat I acquired on the 25th of September turned out to be the H1N1 virus, in retrospect. My symptoms, including the blistered throat without phlegm, the dry cough, lack of congestion, chills and aches, matched the symptoms published. It hammered me hard for three days, and weakened me somewhat for a couple weeks.

Of course, with the Vancouver International Film Festival starting on Oct 1st, it was challenging to take in 5 or 6 films per day. I tried meditating or just staying quiet between films but it was draining. Then I discovered my bed bug infestation after only two days of the festival and I missed out on seven films while I was washing, "roasting" in a hot dryer and bagging everything in my drawers, closets, etc, while I was still sick. I missed a few more while I waited my old mattress and box spring to be collected and my new ones to be delivered. I also had to make arrangements for others to help me bag the new ones with vinyl covers to avoid reinfestation.

I feel good that the pain and chaos is now all behind me while the hype and panic about the virus is swirling around at its loudest. It's rather like having already seen a film before everyone starts raving about it. I am sure this could be a serious virus for those who have frail health, but the hype is not justified. The Feds have finally got the vaccine ready for the public but it will likely do more damage than good now that the virus in already rampant in schools and workplaces. The vaccine is 50% owned by Donald Rumsfeld's corporation, which has made a couple billion dollars from the over-heated hype, while many of those who get the vaccine will get sicker because of it. One co-worker even says she plans to get the vaccine even though she has already had it. There is no sense speaking logically to anyone who has bought into the panic and hype.

With these troubles behind me, the later part of October feels like a summer breeze, albeit a rather cool, wet one. This week I'll get a letter off to strata council asking them to pay for my spraying of my condo. I doubt they will do, as they have not notified my neighbours above, below and on either side, who are possibly now going to be infested. I will give them a month to answer before approaching a lawyer about their removal of the disabled access through our courtyard, since my efforts to get their attention or a response from City Council have fallen on deaf and disinterested ears.

I also promised Raspberry Showboat a stained glass hanging of an ankh symbol for his 50th birthday, which I need to design. Both Butterfly Menace and Epick are interested in lessons and I feel drawn to design a Celtic window for Tulip's front door at the Landing Place. It's time to get my creative juices flowing again.

New bed

The new bed and box spring set has arrived. Fred and Eric turned up an hour later to help me put on the vinyl covers and tape up the zippers so future "pets" will have no place to live. The thought of them still sends a chill up my spine. Afterwards, I took the two of them out for lunch at Joe's Diner.

Today I begin the second half of the film festival. I'll put the rest of the condo back in order over the next couple mornings now that the bed is in place. It's 80% back to normal anyway. I feel luckier than ever to have my place and know that I won't lose it anytime soon. Last night I saw "Home", a French-financed documentary about what the human race has done and is doing to destroy the planet--very depressing--and the Lee Daniels film "Precious", about an illiterate, severely overweight Black teenager, pregnant by her father who raped her, who struggles to get on her feet for the first time in her life. Both were very powerful, perhaps the best of the film festival so far.

I sent an e-mail to Tom and Tibi yesterday morning apologizing for having to kick them out so quickly and saying I would still like to be friends. No answer so far. Hopefully they are not mad at me, but I can live with it if they are. I wouldn't have done it differently. Perhaps they have no use for me now that I am no longer their host, but that's OK too. I saved them about $700 by letting them stay so long.

Sunday's aftermath

The spraying is over. For the first day, I couldn't enter the bedroom for the strength of the fumes. The exterminator failed to remember to leave the name of the insecticide or a sample so my sister could clear me on it, and he also forgot to leave my key, which he says he will do immediately, if he remembers. He was also suppose to call yesterday to set a return date on the 17th or 18th, which he hasn't so far.

My place is still in chaos, boxes and bags piled mountainously high on my kitchen counters. The odd item has returned to its old placement but I have moved nothing back into the bedroom yet. I will wait until it is reinspected in two weeks.

I have decided to get rid of the old mattress and box spring. The mattress wasn't too bad, according to the exterminator, but the box spring had several nests inside of it. Regardless, I don't feel like sleeping on all that toxic spray. I suppose I could just seal both in plastic. If any bugs survived the spraying, they could not live long inside the plastic with no access to their host.

Anyway, it has all been an ordeal. I have been exhausted for several days. Now I am returning to the film festival. I could only handle 2 films on Sunday, while my place was being sprayed, but I handled 5 (barely) yesterday. I did have a great sleep last night though, and feel much better today. I plan to get some of the bags unpacked today and the stacks of books taken off of my kitchen counters.

Fred has convinced me that I need a maid.

A week from hell

I think the worst is over but it has been definitely the worst week of the year so far. It started off with a sore throat on the 25th and by the 28th it was totally blistered and raw. I was achy, feverish, with little chills running through me, and I was exhausted. Tuesday night, the 29th, I struggled out of bed at 11pm scarcely able to breathe, as my throat had swollen almost shut. I couldn't utter a syllable but I was tempted to try to call 911 anyway. I didn't though. When I got the bright idea of spraying nasal decongestant down my throat, my situation got a lot better and I was able to sleep. I even had a good night's sleep and my health turned for the better.

That was also the first night that I noticed itchy welts on my arm. They spread to my back and legs over the next 3 days. I thought I had somehow picked up fleas, but at 4am yesterday morning I felt something small scampering along my arms, like a bead of sweat that was running half horizontally. It was 4am. I switched on the light and saw the bed crawling with bugs. I freaked.

I haven't been back to bed since. I told the two Hungarian couch surfers that they must leave the following morning. Amazingly, they asked if they could stay one more night, though I would not have a place to sleep if they did. Of course I told them definitely not. I sat up from 4am until 9am waiting for them to wake and start packing. I decided to go for breakfast for the coffee, not the food, as I had no appetite. When I returned they were packing.

The pest control company told me to wash all fabrics throughout the apartment, or at least to put them in a hot dryer for at least 20 minutes, then stored them in air-tight clear plastic bags when I brought them back into the apartment. I was exhausted but I had no choice, and no one I could think of was available to help me in my still-weak condition.

My sister suggested I rent a large storage container and a parking spot down the street and she offered to bring in large cardboard boxes and a dolly to help me load all my possessions into it for a couple days. It seemed way too involved and she couldn't be available until Monday. I wanted the spraying to be done today and besides, the pest control company needed my furniture to be on site so they could treat it. It was difficult to do it all myself but it was better than waiting for help later.

It was a minor miracle that no one on our floor wanted to use either the washer or dryer on that Saturday so I was able to put through about 15 to 20 loads. I emptied four full dressers, did all the bedding, table cloths and emptied my closets, cedar chest and bookcase, and throughout it all I couldn't stop scratching myself. Every speck seemed to be crawling and it drove me crazy.

I slept on the futon in the living room last night, freed of its serve to couch surfers. I slept off and on for about 10 hours but I was hype-aware of every itch. This morning it was harder to get going, in spite of the rest, but I continued in a haphazard way until my friend Fred arrived at 11 to help me move the boxes from the closet and to lift the mattress. The bed bug nests were visible in two corners of the box spring.

With the last things fed through the washer and dryer, Fred and I dust-mopped and washed the floors and took a couple more loads of garbage out. It is amazing how much stuff I cleared out--a silver lining to my cloud. The pest control guy showed up an hour later than promised but Fred was still able to squeeze in a quick breakfast with me before leaving for work.

I talked with the fellow who did the treatment after it was done. Besides forgetting to leave my key or a sample of the insecticide for my sister to clear me on, he told me that the box spring was heavily infested and needed to be replaced. I will replace it and the mattress too, as soon as possible. This whole exercise will coast me just under $1,000.

Shit happens. Everyone I have told is pre-occupied with how I got them. It is impossible to say. I have learned that they can take two or three months to manifest themselves, and I was in 3 hotels in Utah in June. They weren't nesting in the living room where the couch surfers have stayed, so while I suspected them at first I am not so sure anymore. I am more interested in getting my life back to normal, health and condo-wise. I missed 8 films at the international film festival. I have paid $350 for a pass and had only seen 16 when I found the bugs. I may lose seeing a couple more waiting for pick and delivery of mattresses, but it has to be done. That process I'll start tomorrow morning.

Rough start to VIFF

Yesterday was Day 1 of the Vancouver International Film Festival. I am still recovering from a powerful influenza, which gave me a small fever, a blistered throat and complete laryngitis a day and a half earlier. I was exhausted after seeing 2 films at the media pre-screenings on Wednesday so the effort of seeing five seemed daunting in and of itself.

I made it through, but the day was difficult from start to finish. It began in the ticket line-up at the start of the day. I got there just after 10 and the first film, "Milk of Sorrow" from Peru, was at 11. The computer that prints the tickets wasn't working so we stood in the line-up almost an hour before it started moving. It was raining steadily and I was quite wet.

Finally, they ticket manager pulled those who wanted to see "Milk of Sorrow" from the line-up and ushered them in, but in spite of the ticketing problems the theatre manager had started the movie without an audience. I missed the first crucial 20 minutes of the film, and while I got the gist of the plot, there were still many unanswered questions at the end.

When I came back out to pick up the tickets for the remaining 4 films, two of them were already sold out, so I picked a couple films I was not keen on seeing. My laryngitis returned from being damp so long.

The second film was a French one, "Bluebeard", a period piece featuring a mixed bag of anachronistic costumes and manners that made little sense. The main girl, who played Bluebeard's bride, could have been my present couch-surfer Tibi's sister. It was followed by a Chilean film "The Maid" in the same theatre, but we had to leave the theatre so the director could do a sound check. It was an excellent film with the dour lead so well acted. One of the children, a pubescent boy named Lucas, was terrifically cute in looks and mannerisms too.

My throat was still improved greatly over Wednesday but the blisters were being replaced by a deep, chest-rattling cough. Fortunately it wasn't too frequent. The last two films of the day were both documentaries in Theatre 1, the first being a laconic Swedish account of farm life, called "The Way of Nature", which I thought amusingly of as "Way Too Much Nature". It featured camera close-ups of colourful roosters, hens, goats, cows, turkeys, dogs and the goings-on on the farm throughout three seasons of the year.

It was very quiet hour sitting in wait for the next film. Until five minutes to play time it seemed I'd have a vast area empty around me, but the crowd who can't arrive on time arrived and pressed in around me as the film began. The last film was called "At The Edge of The World" and traced a two-month campaign by the Sea Shepard organization to hamper the Japanese whaling fleet in the Ross Sea of Antarctica. The was exciting and visually chilling. There was a Q&A afterwards and I was hemmed in on both sides for an hour after the film ended. Beware of Q&As and sit near the aisle when you see one coming....

My place was a mess when I got home, every room, as my two Hungarian couch surfers have made themselves at "pig sty". I refuse to clean, shop, or cook for them anymore. I'm not even taking out the garbage for them for a couple days and see how they like that.