Pay Now or Pay Later

So I've been thinking about the recurrence of nausea the other day, after my sojourn downtown, which is depressing as hell and not at all normal or how it always was and while the poor may always be with us they needn't be drug poisoned zombies, and how I've tied it all in with the Freedom Convoy's attack on civil society two years in to the pandemic, when I did the math and realized I'd broken my wrist a few months prior.

I remember the 14 hours overnight surprisingly well, too, sitting in a chair, cracked patella and badly broken wrist, masked, commiserating with the other broken people in need of healthcare, witnessing the abject failure of our social safety net, all while reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt (author of The Goldfinch). My Blond Companion, who could not be with me due to the pandemic, had smuggled in an umbrella to use as a cane, an apple, some nuts, cheese, a bottle of water. I wasn't hungry but I drank the water.

He was upset, which helped me be braver about it all, but it also made me more conscious than ever of our age difference, and how falling and breaking a bone was pretty stereotypical old lady of me.

And there's nothing like being in hospital in your 60s to have that "and so it begins" feeling you never expected to have even though I guess it happens to most everybody who lives long enough.

But then there's nothing like finally getting the care you need and being sent home with a knee brace and temporary cast, surgery scheduled for a week later, to have that "this is the first day of the rest of your life" feeling, too. Oh and that sick leave covered month off work, devoted to rest and recovery, in spite of the pain, is a cosy memory I make a point of visiting every now and again.

When I first fell the pain was so bad I wanted to crawl out into traffic and let a car run over my head. Just end it. Done.

A Facebook friend recently said of the followers of Queen Romana Didulo, who I'm pretty sure is in drag, but so what if she is, I guess, they've been "failed by society" to think they don't have to pay their bills and follow the rules like the rest of us.

But aren't they just taking the political ideology that preaches taxes are bad to its logical conclusion?

I remember paying healthcare premiums when I was an office temp in Toronto. It was annoying, $60 a year (I think?) because I didn't have any benefits, wasn't in a union, so no coverage otherwise. Premiums were phased out not long after but they seem to be making a comeback with these nurse practitioner clinics popping up.

Middle-class parents will sign up in droves, I think, willing to pay an annual fee of a few hundred dollars to belong to a clinic they can access whenever the need arises, while emergency rooms remain for the rest of us. And maybe it'll alleviate some of the pressure on the system as it is now, and maybe it won't, but whether it's through taxes or fees, healthcare was never free, and if taxes aren't going to be raised then fees will have to be paid.

What's important is to keep insurance companies out of it, those money grubbing merchants of fear who never pay out as promised. Ever. We know - we know - from our American cousins where insurance companies in healthcare lead - to unconscionable suffering and death. No, whatever we do, we have to say no to insurance companies being involved in our healthcare system any more than they already are, scamming old people and just generally scavenging around the edges.

So sure, let middle-class parents be shareholders of nurse practitioner clinics. They can afford it or they wouldn't be voting Conservative. And if they can't afford it, well they can just cancel hockey for one of the kids, or the family vacation to Disneyland, or give up one of the two cars and take public transit. 

Setback

I'm just putting this out there in case it helps somebody else, although it helps me, too, to recap.

I had a setback yesterday, after having lunch downtown with a friend. After being home for a bit I experienced nausea and was eventually sick to my stomach. It lasted a couple of hours, mostly because I wanted to allow it to happen, not force it, but was fighting it, too. So from about 5 until 7:00 p.m. Then I took Gravol with a glass of cold water and went to bed.

I'm still tired but otherwise fine.

Lunch was at a vegetarian restaurant on Rideau, and I only mention that because I had a sandwich made with tempeh bacon, something I don't normally eat. But I knew even before I ordered I wasn't comfortable and should just get on a bus and go home. But I didn't want to make it awkward, either, so I forged ahead.

Rideau Street is in a very sad state. I have a hard time squaring lunch out with homelessness and addiction. The drugs people are taking are so powerful and dangerous. It's Russian Roulette. It felt all wrong to me, windows looking out on the human misery and despair, eating a $35 lunch.

My friend had been advised to sit away from the front, too, but she told me about the server asking a fellow to move along who'd positioned himself in the window where a couple of women were having lunch. He kept miming a request for money at them.

In Florida he'd be sent to one of its private prisons. I don't know what she said to get him to move along but the servers all seem decent enough and used to their surroundings so I imagine it was done politely. When I worked at the store in the Rideau Centre I had occasion after an evening shift to witness the goings on at the McDonald's, now closed, and wondered if the staff had MAs in Social Work.

I told my friend a story at lunch about something I'd seen on a CBC nature show Sunday evening. I don't usually watch nature shows but TVO had something involved on and I was working on curtains for our bedroom so just had the tv on for a bit of company. Anyway, at one point I turned to see a herd of wildebeest getting set to cross a fast flowing river filled with hungry alligators. Almost to the other side a baby wildebeest got caught in the current. Its mother tried her damnedest to save it but eventually she had to let it go to save herself. The baby drowned and was eaten by an alligator. The mother, safe on the other side, looked back at the river, but her baby was gone. Then she turned away to rejoin with the herd.

It broke my heart seeing it, broke my heart telling the story at lunch, is breaking my heart typing it out now. So I remind myself, mother alligators have to eat too. Perhaps the mother wildebeest will go on to have another baby, that one older and stronger when it comes time to cross the river again.

My mother always thought I was upsetting myself on purpose by caring about the world. She didn't concern herself with it and so didn't understand why I did. I get her point of view, sometimes I wish I had it myself, but she honestly, I think, didn't get mine. It wouldn't have made any sense to her, empathizing with a mother wildebeest.

Maybe a therapist would say it's not really about the wildebeest.

I don't think I'm being unfair to my mother here. I wonder if there aren't a lot of people who grew up as she did who don't concern themselves with the world outside their chosen parameters. Certainly I grew up in very different circumstances than she did, part of a post-war baby boom of relative affluence, challenging authority, breaking down barriers to create a more egalitarian society.

Maybe we just have more caring to spare.

For years I could run on empty, trust my body to tough it out. Now my body says no, the title of a now famous book by Gabor Mate, "When the Body Says No", which is really an indictment of our society and how we're being made to live in it, as is, "The Myth of Normal".

Anyway, this all started after the Freedom Convoy took over our downtown, the nausea and vomiting, and I think it's connected but I don't know. I'm certainly feeling the effects of Russia's destruction of Ukraine and Israel's destruction of Gaza, where civil order has broken down. I almost want the Freedom Convoy to come back and try again so I can show up to physically fight back, see if that slays this dragon.

Thanks for reading.

Spring Forward

It's been an unsettling winter here in Ottawa. Half as much snow as last year. Mild. Grey skies.

Yesterday, Saturday, we had cold rain.

The winter haters love it, but I've missed the cold and the snow. It's really messed with my identity as a Canadian. Thrown me off my timeline, too. I feel like I only just stopped riding my bike to the pond for a swim. And I'm already stressed about the coming forest fire season out West. And East. And Central. And North. Last summer there were a couple of days I didn't even ride my bike to the pond, the air quality was so bad here in Ottawa. Other days I did, anyway.

I was in Las Vegas in August once and I couldn't believe people actually live there. I could feel the moisture being sucked out of my body every time I stepped outside, like walking around a 400 degree oven. Inside was worse. Dank and moldy. I got dysentery in Las Vegas, like I got dysentery in Mexico, like I got dysentery in Venezuela.

Americans terrify me. So in love with the afterlife they ignore the real one.

But I'm working on live and let live, putting aside ego when I catch it getting in my way, reminding myself over and over and over again: It's not all up to me. And if Poilievre is elected Prime Minister and tries to steal the Canada Pension Plan I'll take it to the mat then.

She's a complete fucking loon but we should thank Danielle Smith for giving us all a heads up because the only reason Pierre Poilievre is pretending not to support Alberta taking its cut now is because his fascist sugar daddies expect him to deliver the whole enchilada to them later.

Not your gramps' Conservatives.

Girdin' Me Loins

I was feeling too responsible again yesterday, the fate of the country resting on my shoulders because there was a federal by-election in the 905, and I'd seen on CBC who was getting out the vote.

The Conservatives won it in a landslide, 57% of 27% of eligible voters.

Taxes and tradition in the year of our Lord 2024.

Even accounting for the vote split between New Democrats, Liberals and Greens the Conservatives won.

I decided to not let it get me down, even though that odious little creep, Pierre Poilievre, will likely be elected Prime Minister in 2025.

He doesn't care about anybody or anything, so we'll all pay the price when he is, but that's democracy. He also wants to exact revenge on women, as lots of men do these days it seems, so it'll be a war on us, but there's always protesting in the streets.

I wonder if he'll just have us gunned down by his private police force?

Public police force?

The police have been dying to take the Freedom Convoy's public humiliation of them out on us and no doubt look back fondly on Stephen Harper's G20 when they could kettle and jail liberals like me for being in our public streets.

Journalists will be at risk unless they work for Post Media. Of course, CBC will be destroyed so I guess we'll have to depend on journalists from outside Canada to report on our government.

It's like a friend has always said, we're ten years behind the states in our politics, so welcome to our 2015 in 2025, sister and brother Canadians.

Of course, if Donald Trump is elected President again, we'll be right up to date with Poilievre in power here, won't we.

Americans could vote Donald Trump into the Presidency again even if he had to do his bloviating from a jail cell.

Andrew Scheer will vote for him, regardless. He loves Donald Trump.

Is it better or worse that Poilievre and not Scheer will be Prime Minister? What a hard choice that would be, eh?

Satan's Choice.

Anyway, I've given up on strategic voting advice. Who am I to advise someone else on how to vote, even whether to vote. The NDP doesn't want to win, and so won't, but it's hard to tell these days if the Liberals do or not, either. I don't really blame them, to tell you the truth. Politics is tiring. People are selfish and stupid.

Listening to their reasons for voting Conservative in yesterday's by-election they sounded exactly like Trump supporters.

Oh well, I expect the country's big enough to survive another round of Conservative hatred of liberal democracy, but I guess we'll see.

Today in Facing the Facts

So basically, US support for Ukraine in its defence of democracy against Russia's imperialist terrorism has stalled, but its support for Israel, while it slaughters Palestinians trapped under its occupation in Gaza, continues unabated.

Money Over Matter

My young middle-aged neighbours who have jobs in the federal public service didn't want to go on strike last year or whenever the most recent PSAC strike was. They did, of course, but they were embarrassed by it. My suspicion as well is, even the employees who did want to strike were doing it not over pay but for the right to work from home.

And I doubt the union made much of a push for that because it isn't in its interests to have members working from home.

My last job was a term, so I was paid the going rate of a CR-04.

Let me put it this way, I was pleasantly surprised by the pay, and it's the lowest level job I've ever had in the government.

I just read a defence of a current teachers' strike in Saskatchewan and it lines up with my thinking, because it's not about money, it's about working conditions.

Amen, brother.

Sister?

Burnout isn't about pay, ffs, it's about working conditions.

I talked to the teachers at my kids' elementary school during Rae Days. Every one of their female teachers confided in me they had no quarrel with the Social Contract. Every. Single. One.

Time over money worked out for them just fine, thanks, Premier Rae. Ask a man his opinion of the Social Contract, though, and watch his face turn purple with rage.

I've always thought it stupid, the public service union focus on ever more money instead of a four day work week, shorter day, more employees to divvy up work in an increasingly complex world. Here in Ottawa we have bus drivers and police officers regularly making the Sunshine list.

Meanwhile, where's a bus or a cop when you need one?

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

So I was in the grocery store a few days ago, after cashing a cheque at the banking machine nearby, when I noticed a young man approaching female shoppers.

He was carrying a package of ground beef.

Instead of trying to avoid him, I stayed my course and made eye contact. When he asked for money so he could buy the beef, I unzipped my thrift shop purse and was about to give him a $10 when I decided on the $20 that practically fell out instead.

He thanked me and we both went on our way, him no doubt to return the ground beef at $8.68 and buy a couple of pre-made roast beef sandwiches, but I lost sight of him and don't know.

Maybe he went to the beer store across the street.

For a while I worried whether he would even know how to cook the ground beef, if he had anything to go with it, and on and on. Then I reminded myself everything's not my responsibility, and did my best to have faith he could look after the ground beef details himself.

It's crazy but ever since I began paying attention to my ego, I catch myself trying to take responsibility for other people and situations that are none of my business ALL THE TIME.

I'd blame motherhood but I think I might always have been like this. Everything's up to me.

When I told My Blond Companion about it later, he figured the guy probably stole the ground beef and left the grocery store $20 richer.

I realized as soon as he said it, that's exactly what I hope he did. Steal what you need and keep the change.

I have no experience living in poverty. My Blond Companion has some. I've never not been able to afford to live decently, not had money for rent and food, not been able to go out on the town, outfit myself in fashionable finds. All this even though I've only ever been an office temp and was a dozen years out of the workforce.

Divorce was a hard knock but I worked my way back again.

Born middle-class, I've had the privilege of a middle-class Canadian life. There's nothing I want I can't afford and yet I have nowhere near the assets most middle-class Canadians my age do.

The other evening on CBC Ottawa CBC news, Omar (double barrelled last name with more syllables than Vanoldenbarneveld) was in Belleville interviewing various and sundry involved in a growing number of people relying on Bridge Street United Church, which used to have a drop-in for mothers at home with babies and toddlers, for a place to be. They take dangerous drugs to numb themselves, often overdosing, and require the deployment of healthcare and policing resources, already stretched, as a result.

It's the same everywhere, people with no resources living and dying in our public streets while other people complain about having to pay taxes, as if they aren't sitting on more assets than they could possibly use up were they to live to 150.

People have a hard time quitting smoking, giving up alcohol, I have no idea how people addicted to fentanyl can be expected to get clean. And even when they do what about the brain damage they've incurred, the assault on their bodies, the family they must leave behind on the streets.

We have to start sharing the wealth.