I've been whimsically noodling at this on and off for a couple of years now as a mnemonic (derailed by successfully memorising it long before I could quite get it all to scan) but a recent/ongoing Situation at work has provided incentive for me to perfect(**) it as an emotional regulation aid. Because it's super emo! but also super chipper! All exclamation marks are intentional!

O! Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me!
Deus, neque in ira tua corripias me!
Miserere mei quoniam infirmus sum valde!
Quoniam conturbata sunt ossa mea sana me!

(Um diddly iddly iddly um diddly ay! bis!)

Et anima mea turbata est valde! Et tu,
Domine, usquequo? Et tu, Domine, usquequo?
Convertere et eripe animam meam!
Salvum me fac propter misericordiam tuam!
O! Quoniam non est in morte qui memor sit tui!
In inferno autem quis confitebitur tibi!
Laboravi in gemitu! Per noctes lavabo
lectum meum! Stratum meum lacrimis rigabo!

(Um diddly iddly iddly um diddly ay! bis!)
<modulation>
(Um diddly iddly iddly um diddly ay! bis!)

Turbatus est a furore oculus meus!
Inveteravi iam inter inimicos meos!
Discedite a me omnes qui... operamini iniquitatem!(*)
Quoniam exaudivit Deus vocem fletus mei!
O! Dominus exaudivit orationem meam!
Dominus suscepit deprecationem meam!
Erubescant inimici mei vehementer!
Conturbentur, convertantur valde velociter!!!

(*) Cantandum valde velociter

(**) While googling to double-check my spelling for this post I discovered Gabrieli also created an arrangement for Psalm 6 and, having listened to it on YouTube, I'm sorry Gabrieli your polyphonic harmony is very pretty and clever but I think you'd agree my version is infinitely superior.

Day 4 - must have been Sunday. I did a *lot* of dishes, and cleaned out almost all of the Disgusting Things In Jars. Also made a rēwana bread/brick using my kūmara bug, having made every possibly blunder along the way except that I didn't in the end burn it. It's tasty enough though. At the last minute before cooking I even rescued some of it as a bug to continue (something I was meant to have done a few steps earlier in the process, oh well...)

Then in the evening I made dinner (chicken baked in soy sauce, pineapple juice and ginger, with rice and greens on the side; icecream with chocolate for dessert and a wee sippy glass of port. There's a special name I'm sure for these, but I just find them delightful, it's like a grown-up sippy-cup slash straw but made of glass and for port so you know it's definitely for grown-ups not babies. Also they look like headless cats sitting up, the tail being the sippy straw) and went on a Zoom dinner date with the friends I usually visit each Sunday.

Day 5 - another day of wrangling people's technology. Also budget stuff, sigh. Our budget is to the bone as it is; obviously we'll be saving on conference travel this year and a few other natural consequences, but there's a limit to what you can cut without cutting vital services. Oh well, senior management's going to do what senior management's going to do.

Did I mention I was crocheting? My headset is Of A Certain Age and the cheap earpiece covers chose last week as the perfect time to start disintegrating. I thought it'd be simple to sew some cotton over them, then my brain went to knitting, then someone suggested a crochet pattern. I haven't crocheted since I was about 10 so thought "That should be easy!" then watched the video and went "????!!!" Searched on some more videos however and figured something out. My wool, a black mohair blend, is lovely and... a bit tricky for a beginner really because not quite even, but that quality also makes mistakes completely invisible. So by the weekend I'd completed one earpiece cover, and as the other now feels cold and hard in comparison I've started on the second.

At some stage thought I smelled smoke and walked up and down the street in the rain to check no-one's house was burning down, but it must have been either someone's woodburner or someone's joint.

Spent the evening developing a descendant language of Ancient Greek for some random worldbuilding I'm doing with a sibling, as you do.

Day 6 - Random day off because it was planned for last week, I worked through it instead to troubleshoot, and even though I'm not finished the troubleshooting I got tired of putting it off.

Sleeping in until 10am is glorious. The sun coming out after days of rain is even more glorious. Went for a long walk in the sun (as did many others!) Had a lovely chat with a sister. Did a bit of gardening and a bit of dishes. Set off my smoke detector cooking dinner (meat and rice and stuff wrapped in grape leaves).

Learned that-- Well, look.

I don't think you can fully understand about Briscoes unless you were born in New Zealand and have lived through a lifetime of opening the newspaper every Tuesday to find that, once again, Briscoes is having a sale.

Until last week the lockdown was announced, going into effect last Thursday. A meme very shortly went around touting Jacinda as "the woman who finally ended the Briscoes sale".

Until day 6. Tuesday. It was announced that certain businesses can sell (online only) essential items like electric blankets, heaters, etc. Businesses including Briscoes.

You may admire Jacinda. She is indeed a kind-but-badass Prime Minister. But even she cannot defeat the Briscoes Lady. It is Tuesday, and Briscoes is having a sale.

My last post was six days ago, on Saturday.

Over the weekend, our prime minister (hereafter referred to as Jacinda because that's how New Zealand rolls) announced a four-level alert system and told us we were on level two, and what would happen if we reached levels three or four.

I have asthma - mild to moderate so somewhat vulnerable though not technically included in the "stay at home" recommendation under level two. But it seemed a good idea in general and my work is good with this kind of thing, so on Monday I went to work with the plan to just finish up ensuring that our key staff all had mobile devices and instructions to take them home each night, and then I'd start working from home on Tuesday.

Midway through Monday, Jacinda came on for her announcement. I watched it live and I could tell from her tone she was going to ramp it up to level three. And then she ramped it up to level four, and said at the end of Wednesday the whole country would be in lockdown and I think I said "Oh my god" out loud.

So from Tuesday I was working from home and trying to remotely help 40-odd colleagues all set up their own work-from-home systems on a motley range of work computers (their own laptops; laptops I'd reassigned from other people; old tablets I'd got reimaged late last week in a fit of desperation) and personal computers (goodness even knows what) while ITS were still frantically trying to finish getting a more robust VPN set up (they'd also been working on it since at least last week). Trying to talk someone through setting up a VPN, on a device you've never seen, when they're not at all technically inclined, over the phone, is intensely painful. Also my home office is not a very heatable part of the house. By the end of the day I was tired and cold and in a bad fit of the blahs. Visiting my parents for a "last supper" and making a plan to be "lockdown buddies" with my sibling who lives with them (as Jacinda had mentioned if you live alone you could join another household's 'bubble') was a great comfort.

Wednesday was better: it was sunny so though the work was just as hard at least I was warm. And I got to go get my flu vaccine, and my ISP sent a tech to finally after three weeks fix some persistent issues I'd been having with my internet, and my gardener came to mow lawns and trim hedges. The earpiece on my headset disintegrated but that'd be fine, I could crochet a new one. Not sure what to do about my threadbare slippers but I'll think of something.

Thursday was the first official day of lockdown. I was still troubleshooting and had only managed to mark off 6 people out of 40-odd as definitely having access to everything they needed for work. Over lunch I went to the supermarket, which was surreal: I could cross the main road without stopping, and there was no music or announcements over the PA system at all. Then more talking people through accessing Outlook over the web, as the simplest possible prerequisite to getting them instructions to set up a VPN and access share drives. Some of the people were getting stressed by it all so I had to calm them down as well as deal with the technical problems. By the end of the day I was utterly exhausted. I was also hearing suggestions that the "lockdown buddies" rules were stricter than anticipated and since I'd pinned my mental health plans on that I was pretty distressed. I ended up taking meds for a headache and going to bed early without dinner.

[Summary of the rules for New Zealand for the next 4+ weeks, unless you're an essential worker like a nurse or a supermarket shelver:

• you can visit a local supermarket or pharmacy, preferably alone; you can even take a bus if strictly necessary for this purpose


• you can leave your house for some exercise each day, alone or with people in your household, but you can't drive to that exercise; keep it local


• you can talk to your neighbour over the fence

Anything else? Jacinda says no. The more you think about it, the more restrictive it is. Want to order some books online to get you through? They'll have to come from overseas. Want to post someone a care package to get them through? Post shops aren't open and it's not clear whether couriers will pick up non-essential deliveries.]

Friday, more troubleshooting. It feels endless. I think I reached 12 or maybe 14 people ticked off so really it is making progress. I'm also starting to understand some of the quirks of the systems myself. (Some things obviously need the VPN; others, bless them, only work properly with it off.) But I'd still had it by mid-afternoon so did as I told one of my staff to do and logged off early. With that afternoon time I caught up with a sibling and we trialed a few web-based comms systems. Unfortunately we both have ancient computers, so we've currently had to settle on a text-only Discord server, but will keep investigating options. Have invited the other siblings too, and almost all of them have turned up. [ETA 3 seconds later: all of them have turned up!] So am feeling a bit more settled and hopeful now.

I imagine I'll have many more emotional ups and downs. Because there's the initial questions and adjustments, and things still constantly changing, and the anticipation of loneliness and how to mitigate that. And all this is stress.

And I'm coming up to the time of year I need a holiday anyway so with this on top it'd actually be kind of nice for me if the lockdown was a break. But instead I still have to work my regular job but harder, so not only do I not get to pick up any new hobbies but I'm too exhausted for the normal ones. But at the same time I feel a bit guilty about wishing I didn't have to work, because so many people are losing their jobs or uncertain about keeping them.

This isn't strictly true. I feel it's inappropriate to complain about it because of that. But I also feel it's perfectly valid to wish it. Because like I tell everyone, and everyone needs to know, just because others may have it worse, doesn't mean it's not bad for me/you/everyone right now too. We're all allowed to feel sucky, and we all need to be kind to our brains and get plent of rest and destressing in.

This evening my calendar reminded me to go to the city library's annual booksale tomorrow morning. I'd been planning to go after my Saturday morning swim. I swam last Saturday; that afternoon the pools all closed; this Saturday the whole country will have been closed for three days. I knew something like this could be coming, but not so quickly.

This Monday I was going to take the afternoon off for a massage. That's now cancelled. Today my shoulder's started throwing a wobbly.

Before now I think my most isolating experience was living in a small apartment (bedroom and bathroom and an illicit electric frying pan to cook in) on a New Caledonia high school campus. Once my computer died, and for the three weeks while I waited for my father to ship me a solution, my only contact with home was to walk 40 minutes to the town library and hope a computer was free to email from; then 40 minutes back. Even when I did have the internet in my apartment it was an isolated existence. I had maybe 10 hours of teaching a week. I had a few friends and colleagues. There were geckos and millipedes and too many mosquitoes. I read all of _Les Miserables_ in the original French.

I can't remember the feelings of isolation very well. I know that I began to say that New Caledonia was a lovely place to visit; and that I vowed never to teach English overseas again. (I then reneged on this and taught it in Korea, at an academy which was much more supportive.) I remember how much I relied on emails with home, and how excited I was for an upcoming text chat with the whole family -- and how devastated when they didn't show up for it. I felt utterly abandoned and forgotten. It turned out Dad had had an accident so everyone had to go suddenly to the hospital and they didn't know how desperately I needed for them to have paused for one minute to send me a quick email first. (Yes, half my life later I'm still mad about this.)

I've got better internet this time; we all have. And we're all in the same boat so I don't fear being forgotten the same way. But I can't go to the beach or the zoo or the Phare Amédée so it's kind of swings and roundabouts, you know?

I'll find ways to cope - I think most of us will; and it needs to be done; but it's going to be really hard.

[or: wow, there really is a character limit on the title of Dreamwidth entries]

I was dreaming, as is my wont.

And someone was complaining about how the St Martins New World had been built in a location that blocked out the view of the church. And I was all, what are you talking about? The supermarket was built in the place that's always been (for want of a less grandiose term for a mere half block) the commercial centre of St Martins. When I was a kid there were shops and an empty field full of goldfinches; the goldfinches were replaced by the supermarket and a parking lot, and since then the supermarket and the shops have vied with each other and shuffled around a bit, but they've always been there and the church(es) haven't. One church is way up the end of the road near the school; another church is small and forgettable but still a couple blocks along; and the other church, mine, which seemed to be the subject of their complaint, is even further along than that and around some corners.

[So far I know all this to be true, so clearly the rest of my dream must be also.]

So I was walking that way, first along Wilsons Road, and I noticed that instead of regular houses, each property seemed to now have high-density housing on it: two or three storeys, timber-clad and painted blue, each storey with room for a couple of apartments. I realised this must be the future, and I looked back towards the shops (which had always been one storey) and saw they were now more like CBD towers, that shiny black architecture with neon lights and looming.

As I kept going towards the church, turning at the roundabout onto St Martins Road, I heard some boys laughing at me riding a bike, such an old-fashioned thing. One of them wanted to take a photo, and at first I said no, but then reconsidering that I was going to need money to get by in the future I asked how much he'd pay. Yeah nah he wasn't going to pay; I just got more laughter at that.

I continued but the layout by this point in the future had changed, and I found I was going to have to cross what looked kind of like a park with a grassy knoll but also kind of like someone's residence. So I started up and when I saw the owner I asked if it was okay for me to come this way, explaining I needed to get to the church. Impressed with my courtesy she let me through her house. The floor was grass and there were no walls but I saw a kitchen space and at the doorway where she let me out, she fetched a shaped and polished plank of wood and fitted it onto a step down the hill for me.

As I went down there was a flood of people coming up. I realised I was again even further in the future. I remember a sense of threat from the people, who might have been high school boys, but I can't remember details; in any case I got down and found myself in a maze of intersections, high-rises everywhere, all sorts of streets I'd never heard of. One was a St Davids Street. I knew I just had to find St Martins Street again to get to the church, and finally I saw it, but had to cross a road to get to it. For some reason I didn't wait for the lights to change but dodged traffic, first to the median line, then the lights changed: I think they'd detected me. There may have been sirens warning the cars, which were essentially hovercraft. The lights turned orange, the cars stopped, and I finished crossing safely.

I'm unsure of the connection to what follows, or the sequence of events. Maybe I reached the church and that's where this took place; or maybe this happened and the church was forgotten. But I was with friends entering a... museum/historical reenactment place thing? We took our shoes off stepping inside. Another door led to a courtyard where it was or had been raining. My friend went out there immediately, and went to a man from one of Jane Austen's novels. In this alternate timeline some romantic entanglement had gone divergent from the books, disappointing him, and, in holding a grudge against some group of people as a result, he had made decision after decision that precipitated various wars that should never have happened. My friend wanted to intervene in some way to reduce the disappointment ('to heal his broken heart' being a bit too dramatic a way to describe this) and avert the grudge and wars. I felt she was going to make a hash of things, with embarrassing consequences, so hurried out after her with no regard for wet feet.

After this, chronology and causality go very hazy. I saw more of the man's history: he'd lived through the whole period from his own time to this future, becoming possibly a mad steampunk inventor. There was a point where various of us were going through a public transport station with vending machines and I marvelled that items in the future were priced the same as in my own time; or maybe it was that a 2020 dollar specifically could buy the same amount of future goods since it was rarer so worth more than a future dollar.

Things fizzled out, as dreams do. There was no moral, though my waking mind notes that, though it's true in 2020 that the supermarket never blocked out the church, clearly by some point in the far future all those new roads and high-rise buildings effectively will.

Bits of rubbish blow in from time to time, of course. Neighbours' children throw toys over fences. Other things are less explicable.

5. A tooth
An apparently human molar tooth. Why! Do not want! I was minding my own business digging out the onion weeds, and suddenly, a human tooth. I was planning to put more strawberry plants along there and now I feel I should put a rāhui on the place instead. (I probably won't, but all the same!)

4. A half-rotted jandal
I see what happened here: someone's jandal came off and they moved house before they could be bothered picking it up and putting it in the bin.

3. A cufflink
Some cheap metal, brass or something idk. Initials W.R.C. Found in the same patch of ground as the molar tooth, come to think of it. Should I be researching old unsolved murders?

2. A stone turtle
This is technically intended as a garden ornament so technically it's not that surprising. It's just that it's small, and easily covered with weeds or dirt, so I get to enjoy finding it again on a semi-regular basis depending on how much I've kept up with the gardening.

1. A $20 bill
New Zealand notes are made of plastic. This wasn't done specifically to enable them to be buried in one's garden, but it certainly helped prove that while money doesn't grow on trees, it can sometimes be found under them and only needs a bit of a rinse. Score!

I like a good con movie. And I like a movie with lots of women in it. I'm not so much a fan of physical comedy (particularly the variety where people get hurt to the extent of risking concussion) but despite that I loved the Hustle.

Until the last 5 minutes.

( Here be spoilers )

PPS: If you're still planning to watch the movie, be aware there's a post-credits scene.

So I was attempting to filk "Let It Snow" in order to be more appropriate for local Christmas weather conditions, and I accidentally made it inappropriate for almost any possible purpose.

With apologies to Cahn and Styne and to Browning: sorry not sorry....

Porphyria's Lover's Christmas

Oh, the weather outside's disgusting
But your eyes are just so trusting
And since you love me again,
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!

It doesn't show signs of ceasing
And my joy is fast increasing.
I can't let this pure moment wane -
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!

Now I've thought of a thing to do.
I'm strangling you with your own hair.
Your lips match your eyes' clear blue.
All the night long you'll be there.

Oh, the gale has got quite violent.
It's weird though that God's so silent.
I'm quite sure you felt no pain.
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!

(because cats have four feet. You see. Ahem.)

A Battle of Legendary Grease

I have fried bacon and the beast has awoken.
One narrow gold eye has slitted open
At the scent of fried bacon wafting through the air.
Steam curls in tendrils from my three rashers of bacon,
Drawing the beast, nose twitching, from her chair,
To pad, all a-saunter, back stretching on her way
To survey my plate and the bacon thereon.
I slice into strips my plateful of bacon,
And the beast lifts one gentle, tentative paw:
One gesture describing her nonchalant interest
In one of those strips of bacon for herself.
I spear that strip, and eat, and it is good.
And in that moment the beast turns upon me
Her wide, hurt eyes, and gestures once more.
My fork returns to the bacon, and folds it,
Pink meat and golden fat in glistening stripes.
The beast reaches for it; is evaded; and sits
In grim contemplation of this untoward state.
Observing the bacon twice more travel past her,
And smelling its savoury, illicit lure,
The beast hunches lower, ears back-folded.
Her tail swings quietly side-to-side, as her eyes
Follow the fork. Four metal claws
Deftly rake the bacon up to my mouth,
And four beastly claws dart beneath them.
Faster than lightning the beast lashes out,
Dashing a strip from platter to floor.
My precious grease splattering on the floor!
My fork clatters. The beast jumps down.
Nimbly she lands outside my grasp.
In her jaw she seizes the bacon,
Tastes the salt, the oil, seared flesh —
Yet, in her rapture, still the beast sees
My second grab for her, and fiercely defends
Her prize of dust-encrusted bacon.
She will have her strip of bacon!
Battle is joined hand to claw.
Unholy yowls rend the night.
The beast too voices her displeasure
As I rip the bacon from her slathering maw,
Battered and torn. The meat looks no better.
I throw it out. The beast licks her paw.
Turning her back, she stares at the wall
While I — I finish my cold bacon in cold silence.
There are, as they say, no winners in war.

I first gave blood last December, having realised that being on holiday meant it was actually practical to schedule. All went well except afterwards they kept making me sit down again because apparently I looked extremely pale. It doesn't take much to make me look extremely pale, on account of how I am in fact naturally extremely pale, so I didn't really think much of this. On the other hand I did feel a little bit dizzy, and also they were bringing me chocolate biscuits on a plate and I never say no to chocolate biscuits, so I humoured them.

Being on holiday again, I scheduled in another visit, and this time as a preemptive measure I decided I would visit Drexels on the way. I don't know if Drexels is an international chain or just a Christchurch thing, but it's a breakfast restaurant, of the kind that serves eggs and bacon and pancakes, and when you order exactly the amount of decadence you think you'll be able to eat they say, "Certainly, I'll just bring you some toast while you wait," and it comes with creamed butter and jam.

I did get to walk it off a little on the way to the Blood Service (they've cunningly located themselves in the middle of an area several buses skim the edge of) but was still feeling quite replete when I arrived. I was also feeling quite confident, because I was well over my latest cold, my latest mosquito bite allergy had died down, and I'd checked they don't care if you had the flu vaccine five minutes ago.

Then they pricked my finger and put a drop of blood in their dinky machine and said, "Yeah, nah. Go away for six months and get your iron levels up."

They also asked if I'd been feeling tired recently, and I said no, because I hadn't. Had I. Right.

And on the way home I stopped by an op shop and bought some books, and read and dozed on the couch in the sun for a few hours, and when I woke up I thought: Oh, maybe they meant tired, like "desperate for a holiday"-tired. Or like "close to tears complaining to a friend that I've never felt so exhausted"-tired. Or like how last holidays, just coincidentally after last donating blood, "sleeping for 10-12 hours a day for a good week or two"-tired.

Maybe that wasn't just catching up on sleep deprivation after all (though it certainly was partly that).

So I guess I'm going to be eating more red meat for a while.

I don't know how many of these methods I'll keep up in the long-term, but I thought I'd list them in case they're of use or interest to anyone else.

Essentially I found myself in a mood to ask myself, just how much plastic is passing into the environment via my purchasing habits? Even though I send a lot of it to recycling, that's its own use of energy. Mostly I was looking at my grocery shopping:

• I already take my own reusable bags (or reuse old plastic bags) at the checkout, and for fruit as well. I do like to get the occasional new plastic bag for use as bin-liners; I'm going to try emptying their contents directly into the red bin for a while, instead of tying the bags off and putting them in all together. But I haven't found myself throwing much into the red bin since making this resolution so no data on how that goes.


• A 2L plastic bottle of milk every 7-10 days. And you can't even reuse milk bottles to store water against emergencies; hygiene aside, the plastic breaks down over time. Speaking of emergencies, though, I'd been considering getting a bag of milk powder for my supplies. So I thought I'd try it in every-day use. So far it's worked well in baking, yoghurt-making, hot chocolate, and morning cereal, ie all my normal uses except drinking straight from the fridge, which will wait until summer for testing. It takes a few moments extra in the morning to mix it (my preferred method: boil the jug, dissolve the powder in a bit of boiling water, then add cold to desired strength) but it's become part of my routine over the last couple of weeks so I think I will keep this one up. Bonuses: here at least it's significantly cheaper than fresh milk; no running out at inconvenient moments; and conversely no finding that it's gone sour before I've finished it.


• A plastic bag around my bread each week. I've revived my bread-making to avoid this; to be honest it's the one I'm least likely to keep up. OTOH I have discovered that if I bake the bread and let the oven cool somewhat but not completely, it's a great place to incubate yoghurt overnight. And the bread is so tasty - it's just the time it takes. We'll see. I may just keep going through phases on it.


• A plastic bag of muesli every week or so. I'm experimenting with pick-n-mix (taking my own bags) but pick-n-mix rolled oats alone cost about the same as (budget) prepackaged muesli. :-( Does anyone know why rolled oats and muesli come in plastic, when flour and sugar come in paper??


• A couple of plastic packages of shaved ham every few weeks. (The recycling status of which I was never sure about, so red-binned them!) Careful attention revealed that cheap ham at the deli is cheaper than cheap ham prepackaged. Moreover today I was brave and found out that if you take your own container along they'll use that instead of a fresh plastic bag. (At least the guy I struck today did, and even set the scales to discount the weight of the container though I wouldn't have minded that little bit.) So I just need to keep organised.

Beyond plastic - I've also taken to washing dishes in a tub, and using the water on the garden. (Someone at church has set up her laundry pipes to use water from that on the garden; I think I'd just flood the house.)

And recently I came across SolarAid, a charity whose selling point is that you can 'offset your carbon' from flights you make by funding solar-powered lights for personal use (eg kids doing homework) in developing countries to replace kerosene, which besides emitting copious carbon dioxide is expensive, not that bright, and seriously unhealthy. It seems win-win-win so I looked for a catch but couldn't find any.

Anyway this came at a time shortly after a) I'd made some international flights and b) I'd received a tax rebate from last year's charitable donations so next thing you know I'd apparently donated enough to get sent an example solar light in the mail. It just arrived today, and it's cute and lightweight and works out of the packaging, and I'm weighing up whether it goes in my emergency kit or to City Mission here because goodness knows it's not just kids in the developing world who can't do homework due to lack of money for power.:-(