A Star Is Born

This past fall I decided it was time to shake it all up a bit, make some new friends, get involved with my community in some way that wasn't just going to the grocery store.

I don't want to work for money anymore. Enough already. I have faith in the rest of you.

Keep at it, please, that GDP isn't going to raise itself.

Instead, I signed up for a class, then another class related to the first class, and so it was that two nights ago I wrapped a performance in a play by a local author.

Not me and I don't have the name handy but I hope it will be me next fall.

It was fun. So much fun I'm doing it all over again. No, don't try to stop me, it's too late.

I'm hooked.

Meryl Streep get out of my way!

Anyway, the original title of this blog entry was going to be "Leaving Normal", and it was the result of being online more than was good for my well-being. We all have our rabbit holes, and mine was increasingly bleak. It's easy to lose perspective, though, which is the real problem for some of us social media users and political junkies. So to save what was left of my sanity, because it's looking pretty... not good... out there, I knew it was time for something completely different.

Real life!

Well, fake real life!

Shakespeare, who I read online the other day may have been plagiarizing Emilia Somebody, was absolutely right. Turns out, the play really IS the thing! Who knew?

Originally, my idea was to take the scariest class I could think of, which was Improv. But once started, Improv seemed right up my alley and not scary at all. Meanwhile, an Improv classmate assured me acting would be the fright I was looking for and so I took her advice and signed up for an acting class.

I didn't realize at the time, even though it says so right in the course description, it meant putting on an actual play in front of a live audience, or I never would have done.

Also, I really only took it to learn how to adapt my book into a play, not inherit TWO ROLES when two different people dropped out for this or that reason, including the classmate who'd assured me acting would be the fright I was looking for but she'd be there to calm my jitters.

It was. Oh indeed it was. But why didn't I have even an inkling how cool it is to take on a different character and act out a fiction for the sole purpose of entertaining a live audience of friends and family? Times two because two very different characters: An insecure young stage hand who accidentally outs herself during a monologue to the director and an assured and bawdy costume designer paired with an older censorious one trying to outfit the wrong actor for a community theatre production gone off the rails.

Terrifying!

Also, just what I needed, I guess, because I feel so much better than I did going into it all.

It's the people, of course, the social interaction, sense of purpose, feeling of accomplishment.

The power of the arts?

And now, bonus, I have a template for turning "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It" into a play, the process of which I plan to blog on Kathryn Writes Here so it actually happens.

(The play's the thing but only because the audience is REALLY the thing.)

So stay tuned. In the meantime, get out there and be with other people in whatever capacity you can. Hell is us, yes, we can be, sometimes. More often, though, we're the antidote to it all.

Finally, a fun story about men vs women that sums up a lot of our (women's) suffering while men live out their lives reasonably content to be anywhere at all while not doing much of anything.

A fellow improvisor asked me what I was doing for Christmas. After a long involved story of explanations, rationalizations and justifications as to why I basically don't do anything for Christmas anymore (oh except for making a grabillion dollars and hours of labour worth of organic granola to give as presents) I returned the favour and asked him what he was doing for Christmas.

"Nothing", he answered.

It was during a break in our Improv class, ffs - I could've gone with, "Christmas? Wtf is Christmas??"

Oh well, lesson learned. I'm sure there will be a next time.

Until then, though, have a Merry Merry and Happy Happy!

Mea Culpa - Again

Today I went out after class for a 0 alcohol Corona, which was excellent, but the table ordered two plates of nachos, and I'm really not into eating from shared platters of finger food, and I wasn't comfortable ordering a separate item for myself, so I didn't eat.

I realized later I'm not comfortable eating out with a group of people, but I want to be able to do it, so after I got home - and I got a ride, which was awesome - I studied the menu of the place we go to and picked out some sides to order next time.

It's crazy the hangups I've overlooked since forever, but I'm having breakthroughs all the time now. I've been expecting too much of myself, too, so am taking the time now to better prepare, ask questions, give myself the option of leaving if a social situation becomes too much.

A friend asked if my sociability is a performance and yes, yes it is. It doesn't make it any less real, or sincere, I don't think, it's just how I interact out in the world. Maybe you do, too. I hadn't thought of it that way until she asked, but yup, it's a performance.

Anyway, I called this piece "Mea Culpa - Again" because I wasn't going to blog about politics anymore and yet I did. Oh well, nothing for it now but to start over. So that's what I'm going to do. It's so tempting to bleat on about the choices of others but it's not productive or healthy and really just amplifies negativity at a time when we need to take pause, accept how it is, figure out where to go from here.

Stay hopeful, be proactive, make a better world happen however, wherever we can.

I want to be one of the helpers Mr. Rogers tells kids to look for in a crisis, not sitting in a corner shaking my head in hopeless despair at the choices other people make, and that's what I've been doing.

And dragging you down with me, so no, no more of that. We need to lift each other up, or at least help each other to stay standing.

This too shall pass.

One of the classes I'm taking I enrolled in because the very thought of it terrified me. And it was the exact right thing to do, not just because I'm tired of being afraid of everything, but because the challenge of it has turned out to be exhilarating, life affirming, fun.

But a couple of weeks ago, the instructor came to class with a long face and said something about the election, how upsetting it was, yadda yadda blah blah. One of the students (we're all 55+), a military guy, cut him off with a remark about not bringing it to class in a way that made me think he was sensitive to criticism of Trump. But later I realized, no, he just didn't want Trump invading any more of his life than he already does because he's everywhere and has been for a decade now.

We must protect our peace. Trump is where madness lies. Leave it to the politicians who signed up for it.

So, to protect my peace, because it's crucial, I'm way too sensitive to be taking this on - I'm only just learning how to order a side to eat in a group setting, ffs - I'm going to restart my pledge to not blog about politics.

And as of tomorrow I'm not posting about it on my Facebook page either.

Instead, I've got an important project to complete, which I'm going to do on my blog. It's turning my book into a one hour play, and since I need an audience to spur on my writing, I decided, hey, why not blog the process. I'll make it fun, don't worry. You'll like it. You'll laugh, you'll cry, your emotions will run the gamut.

Bonus, it'll be Trump-free.

Anyway, that's the plan, Stan, so stay tuned, and do what you can to stay positive, guard your energy, protect your peace.

Reframe It

This is really hard, isn't it, the thing with the neighbours, knowing we're next.

We are. The fix has been in since Stephen Harper was installed leader of a newly created Conservative Party of Canada, with help from the now bankrupt and Russian mob funded American NRA. He's an adherent of the same Christo-Fascism that's re-installed Donald Trump POTUS so his oligarchic mob can enact their white male Christian supremacist Project 2025.

I know I sound like a broken record, but Harper's groomed and radicalized disciple, Pierre Poilievre, very publicly showed his allegiance to the Freedom Convoy's occupation of downtown Ottawa, Canada's January 6th, during which he declared his run for "PM" and Putin readied to invade Ukraine.

Republicans there are Conservatives here and if you still want to pretend there's any daylight between them, well, fill your leaky boots. Trump, Musk, all the sexual perverts and con artists, Republican and Conservative alike, thumbs upped the Freedom Convoy, a Neo-Nazi attack on civilians and insurrection attempt all rolled into one.

Or, as its propagandists at Postmedia put it, a fun fair. Because that happened, too, gaslighting by coast to coast Canadian media owned by an American hedge fund.

I think I despise Postmedia propagandists most of all. As Bette Davis said, "You should only say good things of the dead. Joan Crawford is dead. Good."

Rex Murphy is dead. Good.

No wonder Pierre Poilievre wants to eliminate CBC. It's owned by Canadian taxpayers, not an American hedge fund. He's a fascist, you know. Your vote for your local Conservative candidate is a vote for fascism. Don't pretend not to know it. You don't have to hold your nose to vote Liberal, either, so stop pretending you're a hero for doing it. You can see as well as I can, there's only one name on the Freedom Convoy's Neo-Nazi hate flags, and it may as well be mine.

Or yours, stupid.

Oh alright, thank you for your service, sir. You voted Liberal. Help yourself to a Purple Heart.

On that note, though, it's pretty hard coming to terms with the fact the Democrats did nothing to prevent Trump from running for re-election, even after his very public leading of the January 6th insurrection from his bunker, filmed for our viewing pleasure, but don't believe your lying eyes.

I thought for a while, after the Mueller investigation came to naught during his first term, the Democratic Party's strategy was to let democracy play out instead, Trump's loss being the justice Americans needed to effect for themselves, and that once they were re-elected to the presidency, they'd act to bring about justice by any means necessary to do it.

Boy was I wrong. And there was a woman consistently warning of this on Twitter, back when I was on it. Her name is Cheri Jacobus and she was attacked by pretty much everybody, accused of being a Republican Party operative, Debbie Downer, Merrick Garland hater, even while she dutifully read the entire Mueller report aloud.

But she was right. There was never going to be justice. Everybody and his Uncle Sam is too compromised by Donald Trump for there to be any. It's all been an elaborate show of smoke and mirrors. I used to think it came down to protecting Bill Clinton, a frequent flier on Jeffrey Epstein's Lolita Express, serial compromiser of liberal Feminists, and ongoing saboteur of wife Hillary's political ambitions, but clearly it's much deeper and wider than just one rogue.

Forget Matt Gaetz, human trafficker, as Attorney General. Just re-install Merrick Garland.

And if you don't despise Merrick Garland by now, you really should.

By way of self care and social engagement I've joined a community centre. I'm taking acting classes - one of which is really an acting out class.

Very fun.

And I'm cooking, baking, sewing.

Oh and I'm back on our housing committee.

Being on our housing committee again is the opposite of fun but my acting out class is helping me deal better with the personal dynamics involved in this sort of grassroots volunteerism. Tricky when personal finances are involved, but also when the stakes are so small, inviting an inverse proportion of emotional investment.

But being on it is my way of acting local. Community engagement is community engagement, and I'm good at this type of thing.

One of our number is a Freedom Convoy groupie, an anti-vaxxer, and believer in all sorts of garbage, an honest to goodness angry nutcase with a chip on her shoulder the size of the empire state building. It's tricky for the rest of us, because she votes according to her feelings, not the facts, but she's just one of five.

As president, I finally confronted her, privately, over what she calls "personal boundary setting", but which is actually just attacking other committee members during meetings for imagined slights that have nothing to do with the agenda - or anything based in reality - and it went down really well because she responded by refusing to attend the next meeting.

We'd been tiptoeing around her random mid-meeting mood swings, but she likes going door-to-door to collect proxies for annual general meetings, so we focus on that, her usefulness in getting quorum, and put up with the rest.

It takes all kinds to make a world. She was appointed, not elected, and a neighbour recently said, "Oh well, she won't get elected so it should be over after the annual general meeting in a few weeks."

I reminded her of the recent re-election of Donald Trump, although she likely won't actually run, so yay. Nor will I for that matter. Time for fresh sacrifice.

But I called this entry "Reframe It" because that's what I'm doing to relationships past and present. I'm reframing them. They don't fail, we free each other up to form other ones. It's a play on learning to say no to some people to allow us to say yes to others, including ourselves.

I always told my kids, about their parents, it's not the people, it's the relationship. It's not about who's right or wrong, it's about compatibility. It's not about loving and caring, it's about not being on the same page anymore.

It's about saying no to one relationship so you can say yes to another, even if that other relationship is just to yourself.

One more time: Nobody leaves a happy relationship.

On the flip side: If someone wants to free themself from a relationship, let them.

The upcoming government of the United States is a kakistocracy, government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state, and it won''t really be a government at all. At least one of the appointees, Tulsi Gabbard, is an operative for Putin's Russia, and was at one time much beloved by (what I call) the revolutionary Left.

She'll be in charge of national security.

Pierre Poilievre, who is on the side of the Neo-Nazi insurrectionists of Freedom Convoy fame, should get along well with her, although he'd be more comfortable with a male traitor, given his very obvious dislike of women. I think the wife's a beard, but it's just my suspicion. I also think she's why he can't get a security clearance, but that's just my suspicion, too.

By the way, Matt Gaetz is supposedly resigning because everybody and her Aunt Louise knows about his sex with teenage girls, but what about the human trafficking and young man he brought into the US whom he claimed later was his son? I figure that's the real reason for his resignation. Americans are fine with old men having sex with teenage girls, never mind middle-aged men.

Cripes, Trump was sexually assaulting pre-teen girls at Jeffrey Epstein's blackmail orgies, which Republicans knew all about, and they nominated him for President anyway.

He likely sexually assaulted his own daughter when she was a pre-teen. Rape AND incest. Republicans don't care. Nor do Conservatives. Vic Toews had a sexual affair with his children's teenaged babysitter, later impregnating and marrying her. Stephen Harper appointed him Attorney General.

The Clintons invited Donald Trump to daughter Chelsea's wedding. Why? Why did anybody have anything to do with Donald Trump? He's only ever been depraved, a serial rapist and conman, a financial fraud, and whatever blackmail Putin has on him you can be sure the CIA and FBI have worse. So who are all these men in power protecting? Each other? What if video was shown to Americans of Trump sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl (a 12-year-old girl who then disappeared, by the way)? Would it matter?

Putin, the public face of the Christo-Fascist death cult intent on destroying Western liberal democracy, prefers little boys to little girls, sexually, I mean. He's a pedophile but George W. Bush looked into his soul and saw a mate. From what I read, Putin and his entourage behaved like barbarians on that same trip, drinking themselves stupid and trashing the landscape wherever they went.

Now Putin is the leader of both the Christo-Fascist world and the so-called free one.

Oh well maybe Pierre Poilievre will talk tougher to him than Stephen Harper did.

It's Not the Economy, Stupid - Part 2

I know I'd blogged about planning to move away from blogging about politics, but couldn't help myself after a Facebook friend posted: "It's not the economy, stupid".

So... Part 2. And then I'm moving on...

Because it's not. The economy isn't why Americans re-elected Donald Trump and it isn't why Canadians will elect Pierre Poilievre Prime Minister.

Democracy activists die in its prisons but Russia is openly gloating about Trump's win because, of course, Russia won, too. Ukraine will be destroyed, more Ukrainians will be murdered.

Likely NATO is over. Cue the celebration from some even in our own families and circle of friends.

Do we need more proof that former Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, works for Vladimir Putin? Why? Everything else about him has proven to be a lie. He's not modest, humble, disinterested in money, travel. Why believe his self-serving lie he ever talked tough to Putin? Just don't expect our media to say a word by way of contradicting him, though.

We're supposed to take the traitor's word for it, not look at what's he actually does. Donald Trump is Putin's Puppet. Stephen Harper helped re-elect him President of the United States. That makes Stephen Harper Putin's Puppet, too.

And Canadians will vote for his successor, the odious creep, Pierre Poilievre, and there's just not a whole lot any of us supporters of liberal democracy can do about it because there's no reasoning with the unreasonable. The US is the wealthiest multicultural democracy in the world and they just voted to re-elect Donald Trump, a fascist, president.

So what are you going to do to stay sane? I'm taking a couple of courses within the arts community, so surrounding myself with like-minds twice a week, and joining a community center to partake in all its many offerings to stay fit AND support my local community.

Also, I'm finally going to try my hand at some of the Great Canadian Baking Show challenges. I could feel it later, the last time I had to really pay attention to what I was doing in the kitchen, a shift had taken place in my body/mind. It's the concentrating on the doing. And I keep it all pretty manual because that's part of the process for me.

Don't worry. Although I've whipped cream by hand, I use an electric gadget now.

We have a new bakery in the neighbourhood and while I'm a regular for their bread I'm also trying out their other offerings visit by visit. I want to do more puff and filo pastry delights, custards, fancy desserts.

Thanks to the courses I'm taking I have a better idea of how to adapt my book to a play format. I have the parameters I didn't know I needed, but also a place for it to be performed once finished.

The creative universe is working out so that's where I'm going to put my focus while the political universe goes down the toilet.

We need to hold fast to each other, those of us of like-mind. We all have family and/or friends we just can't square that circle with, politically, and it's not nothing. For some of us it might even be everything. We've been told all our lives we have to stick with our original people, but no, we don't. I've seen the light on Bernie Sanders. I can even confess to having always known Hillary Clinton was a mistake. Joe Biden's insistence on "standing by" Israel while US and Israeli citizens alike demonstrated against its murderous retribution against Palestinian families for October 7 was catastrophic for democracy world over and helped re-elect Putin's Puppet, Donald Trump.

But not Ukraine. Our standing by Ukraine is not a mistake, it's vital. I can't argue with people who disagree on that. I won't. And if they insist, well, I have to protect my peace.

Even family and/or friends who think it doesn't matter, or worse, welcome the re-election of Donald Trump - whether because they believe Russia was in the right to invade Ukraine, or the Democratic Party is in the wrong for this or that, or Kamala Harris is just a younger Hillary Clinton because she's a liberal Feminist and not the firebrand on the Left we really needed - I don't know that I want a relationship with them at all.

How do we break bread with friends and family on the other side of WWIII?

I don't really know why I was suffering nausea attacks but it's been a while since I've experienced one. Maybe it's just accepting people as they are, but maybe it's recognizing my first responsibility is to me, and speaking up for myself. I wasn't ready to go out, celebrate, on Mother's Day in 2022, after which I had my first attack. I'm far too sensitive for that.

I'm no less sensitive now but I'm smarter about looking after myself.

Be smarter about looking after yourself, too. Don't waste your time and effort and sanity arguing about politics online or off. Leave Twitter to its fascist owner. Change the subject if a family member or friend tries to suck you in to their nonsense. Leave the scene if you want.

Most importantly, protect your peace. This is hard. And don't let anybody tell you different.

It's Not the Economy, Stupid

A Facebook friend and artist posted this morning: "It's not the economy, stupid."

She's right, you know, and don't let the finger-waggers tell you any different.

Americans live in the wealthiest multicultural democracy in the world and they just voted for fascism.

Some say Joe Biden's record in office following Donald Trump's garbage run rivals that of FDR, and that's with the opposition party being chock-a-block with insurrectionist traitors trying to destroy government from within.

Remember Bob the Steelworker here in good ol' Canada? He makes good money in a unionized job at the heavily government subsidized plant in Sault Ste. Marie, my hometown, and he hijacked a federal government announcement of yet more subsidization in Algoma Steel, this time via an electric furnace to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, to boohoo about his personal economy.

Oh and call out a female neighbour for "not working" but now getting government subsidized dental care.

It was billionaires backing Donald Trump. Millionaires voting for him. Wealthy suburbanites, profitable business owners, new immigrants, old immigrants, neo-Nazis, soccer moms, social conservatives, atheists, Christians, college students, retirees, the list goes on and on.

Stop trying to make sense of it, is my advice, because it doesn't make any.

Two Cents

Well that's a gut punch.

But does it feel as bad as his win did in 2016?

I say no. I think we knew, deep down, this was going to happen. Our societies are not doing well and the time for centrist politics is long past.

Gord help me the Bernie Bros were right. No, Bernie wouldn't have won, either, but he would've at least taken the fight to where it needed to be fought.

Opportunity lost but lesson hopefully learned.

Go Left, go Left, go Left.

I didn't watch any of the coverage last night because I'd seen enough on CBC Ottawa local evening news, with reporters on assignment interviewing Americans living in border towns, to realize my hope that surely Americans wouldn't be reckless enough to re-elect Donald Trump was just more wishful thinking.

Did I always know he'd be back? Back? He never went away. So tell me, please - whatever was the point of Merrick Garland? What about Joe Biden? President for 4 years and didn't alter the Supreme Court one iota to protect women from its rapist judges Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni is a January 6th insurrectionist, ffs.

And will Joe Biden continue to stand by genocidal war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu now he's lost the White House to him?

Will Kamala Harris?

Robert Mueller, Jack Smith, the list of supposed saviours of democracy goes on and on.

Was it all just smoke and mirrors?

It's sad. I'm sad. And I'm more than a little scared.

Because in spite of what normal politicians will say, part of their job being to calm the waters, this is not good, not good at all.

Looking for Normal

"The peace comes when it doesn't depend on the other person."

That's advice Gabor Mate gave to a mother of an estranged adult child. I've blogged it before but wanted to put it out there again, this time as a sort of general "to thine own self be true" bit of advice.

I've been told all my life I shouldn't care what other people think, but it's really just another way of telling me I'm living my life all wrong. So I'm going with "to thine own self be true".

Is inner peace even possible in a world at war with itself?

Last night we watched famous people grappling with what other people think of them on Netflix. First up was Ellen "the meanest person in show business" DeGeneres in "For Your Approval". She's hilarious, of course, but it's her openness about what was an awful time in her life that makes her latest standup so brilliant. Because, of course, caring what other people think is part of the human condition. Certainly it's part of the female human condition. And being Ellen, she knows how to bring the funny to everybody thinking she was the worst.

Next up was "Will and Harper", a documentary of Will Ferrell and his friend, Harper Steele, a former SNL writer transitioning at 61 to womanhood, taking a road trip across America to visit Harper's old haunts. It's such a moving film, and it's their vulnerability, Will's as much as Harper's, that makes it so. Watching them both try to be who they want to be, and are, is inspiring but also really sad because it's so unnecessarily hard. Will sees it as his job to protect Harper from the America she loves, the dive bars and lonely places, and at one point he cries, worried he's let her down, let himself down.

As for Harper, there's a scene where she confesses how difficult make-up is. She wants to be pretty but as she says, it's so hard with her masculine face. I wanted to tell her it's age, make-up and being pretty gets tricky with age, but I've had a lifetime of living as a woman and making myself pretty with make-up to get to this age where I don't wear make-up at all anymore. She's playing catch-up in her 60s.

And, of course, there's social media, where basic human decency goes to die. 

I finally read "The Myth of Normal", referenced in so many of the interviews I've watched of Gabor Mate on YouTube. It's basically a 500 page indictment of how we've been made to live, particularly in the US and Canada, and what our priorities have become, thanks to social constructs like patriarchy, capitalism, gender, and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc, still going strong.

For instance, Dr. Mate argues normal is communal and cooperative, how we lived for thousands and thousands of years, not individualistic and competitive. And I particularly like his take on addiction, although addiction isn't the right word for our various behavioural disorders, I don't think. Distractions? His method is one of compassionate inquiry. Why do we behave the way we do? What problem is our behaviour solving for us? What childhood wounds are we soothing with happy hour?

I have to admit, I really had to park my biases to fairly consider his take on our world. And although he claims none of this is about blame or judgement, as a parent who used the sleep program to put her toddlers to bed, it does feel a little personal. But maybe he isn't referring to the sleep program of the 90s, intentional, reassuring and re-settling of toddlers with minimal interaction, but rather of the 50s and 60s, when we were left to cry ourselves to sleep.

I just read an article on CBC's website about the sleep deficit too many strung out parents are experiencing, too, along with their toddlers keeping them up all night. For my own part, I doubt our third child would've been conceived if I hadn't done the sleep program with the first two.

Also, I couldn't help but notice he doesn't extend his no blame or judgement, because we're all experiencing generational trauma, to Liberal politicians, and his singling out of Justin Trudeau and Hilary Clinton, alongside Stephen Harper and Donald Trump, struck me as both unfair and problematic. He name drops, too, and some off-putting ones like Russell Brand and Marianne Williamson, which, in my opinion, he needn't and shouldn't do. It only takes away from the rest of his teachings, backed up by study after study after study, and makes him appear infatuated with celebrities who flatter his political leanings.

There are way too many studies cited, because Dr. Mate is nothing if not thorough in his research, and I diligently skipped over every single one.

But I still came away from "The Myth of Normal" more enlightened than when I went in, and realizing how wrong it is our round bodies are being made to fit into the square holes of an economy that not only doesn't work in our best interests, and never really did, but is actively hurting our health and well-being while destroying our collective habitat.

I forget if he mentions WWIII, I don't think so, but I have friends now at odds on social media over which is worse, Russia committing genocide in Ukraine or Israel committing genocide in Gaza, with some even pitting Ukrainian refugees to Canada against Palestinians trapped in Gaza, so now a real life get together with people who used to be up for one is no longer in the cards. For my part though I want to expand my social circle, do more connecting in real life, more breaking of bread, starting with Facebook friends in Ottawa.

My plan is to eventually hit the road to meet and greet beyond our capital city.

Anyway, that's where I'm at right now. I hope you find yourself in a good place, too. We really are all in this together.