Bernie, 2009?10?-2026

I don't know which of us decided it was time but back in October 2011 My Blond Companion (MBC) and I went to the Humane Society planning, hoping, to adopt a dog.

Never mind. It was probably me who decided it was time. My surefire way of locking in the relationship, even though it was already several years in - adopt a dog.

So off we went, our friend John driving us there, to "just look". Well "just look" until we wandered by Bernie's crate and he jumped up to greet MBC like he was his long lost best friend who had suddenly showed up to take him home to his place where they would live happily ever after.

Together forever and ever and ever.

There are protocols first, of course, and so Bernie was trotted out to a play area where he and MBC continued to bond, Bernie, a hound/lab/beagle/? mix, leaping in the air to catch a ball, a rumoured 18 month old medium large stray (I suspect he was more likely a return) so full of joie de vivre it was, well, delightful to MBC, terrifying to me.

Bernie was a lot of dog. A lot. Santa's Little Helper from the Simpson's come to life.

So while they played, already best friends, I looked on warily, glancing surreptitiously over at the family of little kids plastered up against the glass, desperately wanting this dog for themselves, and growing increasingly alarmed that, oh my god, we're going to adopt this leaping fun fest of a beast (although very handsome I must say) into our little home that was seeming littler by the second.

The plan, mine, anyway, had been a middle-aged, well-mannered, sedately-paced small medium-sized lady dog. No training required.

I would name her Corah. Or Edna.

Aunt Bea?

I snuck another look over at the family. No, I thought. You think you want this dog but you'll be returning him in no time. He's too much. Look at him ffs! No WE are taking this wild and crazy goofball home with US. I'm sure there's a nice sedate middle-aged lady dog back in there you'd be much better off adopting.

For sure your parents would.

Also anyone with eyes could see Bernie was already MBC's dog. I doubt two beings were ever more destined to be together, a situation which, by the way, led to years of me questioning who was really the third wheel in this triad. Bernie?

Or me?

Anyway it was pretty much an "oh my god what the hell am I about to do" adoption for me, an ungainly exuberant hound who never met a piece of garbage he wouldn't try to eat, person he didn't want to jump on and lick their face (in case they had food on it?), dog he didn't want to meet and greet whether they wanted him to or not, always showing belly if it came to it, a lover, not a fighter.

This changed in his middle age, by the way, when he became more selective, much to our amusement, our garbage snatching third wheel deciding he might be too good after all for some of the other dogs in the 'hood.

It was Halloween, 2011, the day we adopted Bernie, and late afternoon when we got him home. That night I took him for a walk while MBC stayed behind to hand out candy. It was ass backwards but I must have been determined to have Bernie tamp down my fears, fears I'd just made a huge mistake, by dragging me around the neighbourhood, excited beyond belief by the kids out and about trick or treating, my panic mounting about this life changing commitment I'd just made and could not undue because by the time we reached our friend's car back at the Humane Society he and MBC were rock solid pals.

Bros. The best of. Each other's ride or die.

Meanwhile, a couple of hours earlier, I'd watched in horror while Bernie drank water from the bowl we put down almost as soon as we walked in the door. Oh. My. God. Water splashing everywhere. Later, when we put down food, we barely had time to step back before it was gone.

But that first walk was something else altogether.

The first night, though, he was on our bed, between us, settled down like he'd always been there.

Then a big furry panting baby stomping on us and ready to eat breakfast at 5:00 a.m. the next morning.

Okay. Training school. That'll do the trick.

Well, kind of. Ish. More like he was class clown and teacher's pet, everybody's favourite D student, his goofball personality too irresistible to waste everyone's time trying to impart much discipline.

MBC's friend (and Bernie's second love - I was in a separate category of love, it seemed) meanwhile, diagnosed him with a high EQ. And it tracked. He could read the room.  And his prescription was always right on. Everybody needed more loving hound in it.

We, on the other hand, learned enough to buy a special dog walking haltie and leash.

It was miraculous to me, too, but over time, because it does go on, doesn't it, and living where we do, eventually MBC could actually let Bernie off his leash and never once did we have to worry he'd take off or go too far or bother other people out with their dogs. He was bonded to us and that was that.

It was pure joy in motion when MBC would detach the leash and Bernie would run, leap through the air with the greatest of ease, and catch his orange ball in his mouth. Over and over and over again until his tongue hung out sideways and we'd have to call it a day and head home.

Such a good boy.

Training, schmaining.

As I said, he slept with us from day one, our third wheel, and as the years went on he would decide around 9:00 p.m. it was time to go up to bed, and he'd sit on the stairs, looking at us through the rails, waiting for us to get the hint.

Hilarious.

This is what we'll miss so much, besides just his presence, the laughs we had, all thanks to Bernie. And the comfort, because he really did have a high EQ. It wasn't his fault his flailing paws weren't hands and 65 pounds of pure chaos isn't lap friendly, such that often his caring hurt, and he would have to be ordered off the couch.

I'll always have the plate in my wrist to remind me of how not in sync we were with each other. Also memories of watching tv with a chaperone insisting on wedging himself between us.

Equal love?

Or just had to be the one beside MBC?

Up until a few months ago we'd get our exercise, too, chasing him around our littler and littler house with his three things in his mouth, a ball and two antlers. He loved being chased and could sucker visitors into the game before they realized they were playing it, his three things in his mouth.

He could even sucker visiting dogs into the game.

"Chase me!"

Everybody fell for it.

Then it was just two things, the three being too much, so one antler was disappeared, MBC and I having tired of hearing it crash to the floor.

Eventually there was just one thing, the orange ball, but he didn't always remember the game, and sometimes he'd quit playing before it started.

Finally the orange ball mostly stayed in his crate with him, the chase left behind with the long walks and joyful leaps through the air. I never knew if he particularly cared if the orange ball was with him in his crate or not. That's the thing with dogs and humans. We can't always know what each other wants.

Just the same, every night I made sure it was there.

But I knew what he wanted. He wanted to go. And for us to be alright without him.

Fifteen years we lived together, the three of us, a few of them my son with us, too.

But mostly it was just us three.

A couple, or maybe it was a few, years ago, Bernie started turning around to go home partway through the walk. And again, it was just so funny to us. But also a little sad. A pattern starting, the funny, but also the sad. It was far enough, he was telling us. Too far. He wanted to go home now and have his bone.

Then came the evening he stumbled trying to go upstairs, as he had been doing on his own for a few years, going up alone, no longer staring through the railings telling us to come up too, always around 9:00 p.m.

Well, truth be told, for a few years before that night we'd been going up to give him a boost on the bed, too, a boost only MBC could manage after a while, while Bernie would passively place his front paws on its edge.

And so that night we coaxed him into his crate, locking him in, knowing if we didn't he'd try the stairs again and hurt himself.

After a week, though, we didn't have to lock him in. He'd settled into the new normal. Moving with the changing times while we lamented them. He slept in his crate. We went upstairs to bed. I never saw him try the stairs again.

There were accidents, changes to diets, probiotics, joint supplements, CBD oil, one attempt with a prescribed medication that didn't work out for any of us. Last summer was particularly hard with some sort off hellish digestive issue. But we got through it all together, in pretty good form, and really, at remarkably little expense.

Because that's the thing, too, isn't it, the expense. There was the time he ate a puffball or piece of moldy bread, something he snatched on the walk, me seeing a puff of smoke as he did it, that was really the only big expense, and not nearly as big as it could have been. I thought that was it, Bernie would go out tripping on whatever it was, seemingly terrified, but the charcoal or whatever treatment they gave him worked, his overnight stay at the emergency clinic (because of course this happened on a Sunday of a holiday weekend) whittled down to a mere $1000 because he'd mostly recovered by 8:00 p.m.

An hour before bedtime at home. Coincidence? I think not.

Did he learn anything from the experience?

No, of course not.

Isn't it nice, though, to have the money. The Humane Society takes donations I believe for families who don't. So we can spread our love with money at least. Because it kills me so many people who want to care for a pet, and are otherwise capable of it, just can't afford the expense. 

Anyway, if you have or have had a dog you know all about the short puppyhood, medium middle age, and short senior years, that this is how it goes, you will outlive them, your heart will break, and that's life. Love and loss. It's so true what the song says, love hurts, and I don't blame anyone for avoiding it. I don't blame them at all. This is so hard. I didn't anticipate it being this hard. But living together as long as we did, Bernie became part of us, he really did, and it turns out we're not sure who we are without him.

We shared a life together and now he's gone.

Whoever could have thought animals don't have souls? Crazy. Just look into those soft brown eyes.

Soulful.

This past year has been one of palliative care, really, most of it falling on MBC as Bernie was too heavy for me to get up from sitting, carry down the back steps to do his business, even hold up his back end while he finished breakfasts and dinners.

We, and by we I mean me, did ease up and start giving him a couple of corn chips at lunch. MBC was always a little more here today, gone tomorrow. But for a part hound/lab garbage snatcher Bernie had a delicate constitution so I was quite strict about his diet. It worked out, MBC more easy going, other people even more so with their butcher bones and the like.

The couple of corn chips didn't seem to do any harm so they became part of his final year diet, a lunch of two corn chips, while we had our black bean taco salad.

I think now MBC may have missed his true calling. His devotion to Bernie was total. Right down to getting up in the middle of the night, sometimes twice, my keen hearing picking up the sound of the tags on Bernie's collar when he'd shake his head, to take him outside to pee. We didn't realize we were doing palliative care until we did. We'd just been adapting to Bernie's increasing needs. But once you realize, oh, this is palliative care, as was pointed out to us by the vet, then comes the thinking about how and when to make that tough decision, when to call it, the hardest part of pet love, helping your best friend, the one with unconditional love, die, their body having given out, their loving hound heart still pumping.

Who are you doing all this for?

Bernie?

Or yourselves?

So last week MBC made the toughest decision we've faced in a long while, maybe ever, because that's what it feels like right now, of seeing our third wheel out, sending him on to doggie heaven, where there is always a new butt to sniff, ball to chase and an endless row of treats.

Yesterday a mobile vet service came to our home, two lovely young women, so kind, caring, understanding how hard it is to say goodbye to the best dog ever. And while he lay on the couch being fed treats, they administered first a sedative, then a drug to stop that big old loving hound heart.

MAiD. But up to you, not the patient.

And just for your information, it cost $1200. But that's with cremation and return of ashes, an option we wanted, otherwise it's less. Lucky us, we can afford it.

They do shave off a bit of fur and put it in a pouch, which may be all some people need or want, as part of the basic service.

All dogs are the best dogs, aren't they. But Bernie really was the bestest. And although we think we'll never love another dog again, not like that, it's not possible, we can't, we will.

One day.

We're here to love, after all.

Rest in peace, Bernie, our loving hound, the bestest dog there ever was.💗

Puck Hockey

I grew up in the Sault, home of the Sault Greyhounds, a minor league team for which Wayne Gretzky once played. I never went to a game, although I did go to Memorial Gardens once with a friend who had a crush on a player. He had a bit of a Bobby Clarke thing going on I guess, but hockey players were not in my league in those days.

My crushes tended to be grander. Like Bob Dylan grander.

A few, or maybe several, years later I was at the Sault airport for a flight back to Toronto after a Christmas visit home. Phil Esposito, high scoring forward, was there in a full length fur coat catching a flight to somewhere in the US where he lived. Entirely unselfconsciously, too, swanning about the Sault airport like it was a fashion runway. Eyes were rolling in the aisles, but contrary me almost wondered if maybe I should check the local snark a bit and ask him mid-strut for an autograph.

It must stick in his craw that brother Tony, a goalie, ffs, is the hometown favourite.

I don't recall my mother being a big hockey fan but every Saturday night Hockey Night in Canada was on. I hated it. Even if Gram went to watch it in her room, and unless my mother went out, Hockey Night in Canada it was every godddamned Saturday night until finally my mother ceded a bit of territory over the tv.

Also, cable.

But when the Canada-Russia hockey series happened in 1972 competitive patriotic Canadian me was all in. It had nothing to do with hockey. It was all about winning. We had to be the best at SOMETHING. And even though I was in love with Tretiak, the Russian goalie, we still had to win.

And thank Gord we did or whatever would have become of us? Whatever would have become of me?

Paul Henderson could have turned out to be a cannibal and been excused by Canadians for it.

Madness. It's always been madness. We have to win at hockey or... what? What would've happened if we'd lost to the Russians? How different would our country be? Worse? Or, Gord forbid, better.

But we didn't and I went back to hating hockey again.

When I lived in Toronto, which I did from 1977-1991, I watched Hockey Night in Canada because my recently deceased former husband did. I recall being into it a bit because it was the Leafs, and I had crushes on a couple of the players.

I guess my standards had dropped.

Also beer, friends, so it was a party, not just watching hockey.

Prior to this I had a boyfriend who was a huge hockey fan, although we didn't live together, and I don't recall watching much hockey with him. What I did was parrot back stuff he said about different players, Ricky Vaive was a suck, Mike Palmeteer underrated, impressing him mightily with my deep knowledge of the game.

Are all men so easy to fool? Or just hockey fans...

Later, living in Ottawa, it was all about the Senators. The kids and their dad, who was well into fantasy sports leagues by then, would watch the games. One year the city had an outdoor showing at city hall of the Senators in a playoff game. It was a big deal and my son, who was a pre-teen at the time, went off to watch it. All I did was worry they'd lose and I'd have to deal with the fallout. Also pubs on Elgin Street downtown took to calling it "Senators' Mile" like their businesses depended on them making the playoffs and then lasting right through to a Stanley Cup win.

The pressure to win has only ever gotten worse.

But it was this latest Olympic round when it finally twigged, it's not about hockey, not for me, not for Canadians as a whole, it's about having to be the best at hockey, winning, all the stakes in for gold.

A few Olympics ago my ex told a story about going to lunch with his colleagues after a gold medal win against the Americans, and how every day for a few weeks afterward, someone would pipe up, "Let's talk about how we beat the Americans again."

I thought it was hilarious, too, but when we lost last week to the American team the first thing I said to my oldest (having not watched the game myself), "Well at least your Dad isn't alive to witness this tragedy."

She agreed, having a hard enough time herself, this young woman of impeccable progressive credentials but also a hard case of Olympic fever.

The loss got me to thinking about how I can't stand to watch these do or die hockey games and never could. And while I was blaming other people for being so wrapped up in their team winning I couldn't bear to live with their disappointment, it's me, too. At least other people enjoy watching the actual sport. I just need us to win.

I'm embarrassed to admit, this came to me as quite the revelation. Of course I hate hockey. I have no appreciation for the skills involved, the actual sport, how it's played. For me it's just hockey, hockey, hockey, shoved down my throat via our public airwaves from fall through to summer now, a national bully, win internationally or bust.

Oh and never mind the racism, the misogyny, the sexual assaults, players both victims and perpetrators, the homophobia, the gambling, the brain damage.

The Conservatism.

Because those are nothing to do with hockey, the game, those are all about the people who play, watch, coach, commentate, own, and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.

Anyway, at first I was "argh!" about losing to the Americans, especially after the spectacle of Trump's FBI plant partying with them in their dressing room, followed by Trump himself calling in to capitalize on their win and show off his misogyny at the same time, a twofer, while the dumb dupes guffawed along with it all, no idea he'd just taken them from heroes to zeroes.

From what I've read, too, the Canadian team outplayed the American one, skills-wise, so I imagine there's consolation in that for Canadians who actually appreciate hockey as a sport. I like it, too, though, because it puts into perspective all those wins when the Canadian team wasn't actually the most skilled one on the ice, maybe even including the Russians back in the day, when we had to win because it's not hockey we're so identified with, it's winning at hockey.

And I'm not sure the "Americans may have won the gold in hockey but we still have democracy" is the flex some think it is, either, because it's sure as hell no thanks to the aforementioned people of hockey in Canada that we do.

So yeah, turning that frown upside down, I'm glad we lost, and to the Americans. You should be, too. Hockey's a bully. It needed a good checking. So did we for tying our national identity to winning at it.

The World As It Is

Somebody once replied to a big change in my life I was ascribing to X, that no, if it wasn't X it would have been Y. Or A, B, C, and so on and so forth and more of the same.

And it's so true. I didn't make the change because X, I made it because me.

It took me a while to get here but here I am.

It's been a few months, let me tell you, but when a woman I'd been talking to recently asked, "But are you healing?" my mouth answered, "Yes".

It wasn't really a question but later I thought about it and realized she was right. I am healing. That's the point, not the hurt, the healing.

It's the job of life, isn't it, healing. Healing and letting go. Or maybe it's the letting go that brings the healing. I don't mean letting go of people, even our dearly and not so dearly departed, I mean letting go the stories of who we were then and who we'll be later.

My daily gratitude practice helps me stay focused on what's real, as opposed to made up, so right now.

I had a friend who decided not to care anymore about the world as it is. My mother was the same. Once, in her very old age, she looked at me, that steely look still in her eyes, even though they couldn't see anymore, and said, "I don't understand you". It was a confession, a laying down of a mother's burden, and a relief to us both.

I wish I could say that's when I learned to stop explaining myself but of course it wasn't. I was doing it with the woman I'd been talking to recently. It's why she asked if I was healing.

Ah, breakthrough. No more explanations. I understand me and that's enough.

Thank you, universe, for this addition to my daily gratitude practice.

Anyway, I've been watching a variety of therapy videos over the past few years and I've noticed a couple of therapists, and this is just recently, no longer shy away from the world as it is for fear of offending someone.

Anyone.

It's always bothered me, the careful avoidance of how it is in the world by therapists, as if it has nothing to do with our grief, fear, anxiety.

Substance use disorders.

Every time a friend gets sober I grow wings.

One therapist is even pointing out now of other therapists that they're not doing their job if they're ignoring how it is in the world, because it's WHY so many of us have trouble healing. It's not crazy to care, it's crazy-making to be told we'd heal faster if only we didn't, as if the world as it is has nothing to do with us, with anybody, it's just... how it is.

There's a scene in The Sound of Music, I've never forgotten, where Max wants Maria to tell Captain Von Trapp to try and get along (with the Nazis), and she says, "I can't ask him to be less than he is".

We're not being asked, we're being told.

I can name at least three people of my close acquaintance who died prematurely, recently, due to decisions made by successive governments in Ontario to reduce the quality of healthcare available to us, even though we're collectively wealthier than at any time in our history.

Meanwhile it's tax breaks and means testing because we really only take the world as it is when it suits us.

Doug Ford's a demonstrable crook, an ignorant bully, and he's Premier of Ontario because people don't care enough.

The last thing we need is people caring less.

My mother used to say I was upsetting myself. My friend used to put it similarly of others, they did it to themselves. It took me a minute to realize she meant me, too, because what am I to her if not an other.

There's that old line, I say you're driving me crazy, you say it's a short drive.

So here's what I think, and yes, I'm aware of the daily threats of takeover by our fascist neighbours - who were never not fascist in one way or another so let's not kid ourselves all over again - we DON'T have to take the world as it is. We're just being told we do by our latest Prime Minister, who views himself, and so the country he was elected to lead, as somehow apart from, or maybe even above, it, the world. But we're not above it, and we are a part of it, and, as such, we're responsible for why the world as it is.

OUR world.

We change our behaviour, we change our world.

It's funny. I didn't see it until I did, and it was a personal experience with our much ballyhooed dental care program that opened my eyes, but if we didn't already have universal healthcare in Canada (and I use the word universal loosely) our government today would be telling us we must take the world as it is, and no, we can't have universal healthcare, it's too expensive.

There is no way in hell a government of Canada would bring in universal healthcare now and we need to be asking ourselves why that is, not shrugging our shoulders and saying, oh well, it is what it is.

I don't think I've ever written my Member of Parliament before but I decided now is the time. I can deal with it, too, so I'll take it to the wall. It's not really about dental care anymore for me, although I'll be out not a bit of money. Fortunately, I realized a while back, I have enough.

As Peter Gzowski once said of the healthcare he received after a heart attack, "It's nice to not have to worry about money". But of course he had the resources to afford the recovery. It's not the same for a retail clerk heading up a family and renting an apartment.

I just mean we're not as good as we could be and never have been. A lot of what we believe about ourselves is, well, kind of made up.

All the concern by our government right now about this industry or that, cars, oil, canola, while Canadians are dying on gurneys in hospital hallways, or living on the streets playing Russian roulette with addictive pain killers, or just finding ourselves unable to go a day without crying because taking the world as it is hurts our hearts too much to bear.

Because we're a middle power I guess is what we're supposed to buy now.

Don't get me wrong. I voted Liberal. Because whether Canadians are ready to face it down or not the choice is Liberal or the Neo-Nazi Separatist Bitcoin Anti-Vax Freedom Convoy Plus Michael Chong Party.

I mean, can we not be real, ever? Stephen Harper's been Chair of the IDU for a decade now, an international laundromat for the dark money funding the rise of fascism all over the world, including Canada and next door where the regime he helped elect is executing democracy activists in the street.

He was a Prime Minister of Canada ffs.

So no, I don't accept taking the world as it is, not when no one who can is calling out the fascism we can do something about right here at home.

We have an entire media chain that's been nothing more than fascist propaganda for years, kept alive by government funded bailouts as if it's good for democracy. It's even free online, and has been for years, while decent media is paywalled. And we wonder why so many people have been radicalized into believing fascism is freedom.

Postmedia alright. Postdemocracy too.

No, I don't agree with Mark Carney we have to take the world as it is. It's a choice. It's always been a choice. LAVs for Saudi Arabia because $$$ for Canadians. And it wouldn't be so bad if it was a choice that isn't also taking us ever further from the promise of a society that measures itself by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. But it is. What has changed since the pandemic that resulted in reservists ending up with PTSD from the conditions they encountered in nursing homes?

I always think of something a friend entirely dependent on social assistance, so poor, said back when we were in one of our financial crises, "It's times like this when I can take a bit of a breather from worrying about not having any money in the bank."

Anyway, it's no one government's fault, and certainly not Mark Carney's, but I'm not going along to get along anymore either. We don't HAVE to take the world as it is, we CHOOSE to, as we've been choosing to do for decades, and to no one's benefit.

You can't care too much and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.❤

To You

Several months ago I referenced an experience in a piece I later deleted (the reference to the experience, not the piece) because shortly after I'd put it out there I regretted it, so if you're the hurt party reading this now, please accept my apology.

I'm sorry.

Anyway a reel came up on my Facebook page this morning reminding me we don't start over from mistakes, we move on with the insight gained from them.

"It couldn't have happened any other way because it didn't" so "live and learn".

That's what I'm doing, accepting what happened, and living and learning from it.

When I wrote my book "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!" (serialized in Galaxy Brain) I made myself a character in it. And in the writing I'm doing for the resurrected Galaxy Brain (Michael Murray having left us for the Divine last year) I'm continuing in that vein, pulling from the past, a story I tell myself, wherein I'm a made up character.

It came to me in a flash. I'm not writing memoir. I'm writing fiction.

I always thought I couldn't write fiction, but that's what my writing for Galaxy Brain has been, fiction.

I feel good about it. It's more than enough, Galaxy Brain. It's community.

But blogging isn't the same animal. It's political, so personal, and it's why I've decided to leave off it now.

It's loneliness, the need to write, but it's a particular kind of loneliness that fuels a blog. It's advice I would give to anyone who's lonely, write, and if you're lonely in a particular kind of way, blog. Getting published in the real world is tough, it's a job in itself, and maybe writing isn't your thing. So put photographs on your blog, art, poems, brain farts, whatever helps get you through to the other side, which for me has been recognizing myself in others, in their writing, their photographs, art, poems, brain farts.

Out on our streets live and in person. There go I. Oh and over there. Hm, over there, too.

Good Gord I'm everywhere!

Loneliness is a state of mind, not being, and blogging can help us feel connected to ourselves. I blog therefore I am. For me, for a long time, writing, particularly blogging, was my friend, always there, any time, day or night.

The world wide web my penpal.

But I don't feel lonely anymore. I'm enough for me. And then there's everybody else, as I've come to realize, a whole world of company, too.

Maybe I'll try a blog of a different feather one day, maybe I won't. But whatever comes, I want to thank you for reading, and, to you, again, I'm sorry.

Live long and prosper.

Love, Kathryn

Mother's Day

"It couldn't have happened any other way because it didn't."

That's something a fellow calling himself The Mind Architect, Peter Crone, said in a reel that came up on my Facebook page a while back.

I like it because it's so simple, not that it being simple means it isn't hard.

S says I'm a writer, and I guess I am. But while working on a piece for the resurrected Galaxy Brain, Michael having left us to join the Divine, and having to drag myself back to the past again for the material, the theme being love and monsters, I realized I don't want to go there anymore.

Tough for a writer, S pointed out, when I told him of my dilemma.

So I re-read what I'd written, thinking maybe I should give it another go. The starting point had been me waiting with Bernie, our elderly third wheel of hound/lab/beagle/? heritage, while S returned his empties - we'd had Bernie's toenails trimmed, which he doesn't like - and hearing "Wish You Were Here" waft across the parking lot from a couple's truck radio.

We think they might live in their truck in our not quite urban but not suburban 'hood here in our nation's capitol.

And, of course, it was "Wish You Were Here", which, if you let it in, will just overwhelm you with sadness for it all, everything, everybody here and gone, and regret for all the love we thought we had to let go so we could move on.

It was like a wave of sadness washing over me, then through me, I felt it pool in my heart. Really, I just wanted to lie down in that parking lot and cry until I woke up back somewhere in time so it could all happen differently. But when? There are so many times along the way I didn't do the right thing.

So many mistakes, regrets, love lost.

And because I'm a writer, I decided to mine that sadness for Galaxy Brain, a couple of thousand words of this happening and then that happening and, oh, ah, okay, on a re-reading just generally missing the message, well, let's pretend it was a message, a message Michael sent me from the Divine through the couple in the parking lot.

Wish You Were Here.

I deleted the story.

I've left, and I've been left, and I didn't know until just now, right this second, while I type this, that I had it all wrong.

We don't leave love and love doesn't leave us. Love lights our road ahead.

This little light of mine

I'm gonna let it shine

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Also, I may be a writer, but it isn't at all good for my eyes.

Wartime

"The Courage To Be Disliked", a book I just finished reading, is a bit of a mind bender, in a good way.

Like you, maybe, I'm holding my breath re the upcoming election. It still shocks me how much support there is for Conservative politicians in this country. I don't know how you could be paying any attention at all and want Pierre Poilievre to be Prime Minister.

A party born of guns, the Bible, and white nationalism.

Preston Manning is the Devil.

So "The Courage To Be Disliked". It's a dialogue between a philosopher and a youth. The youth is very negative, dislikes himself, thinks life is a competition, is at odds with his father, doesn't like his job, wants to be special.

Your typical young man, in other words.

The philosopher is a philosopher.

But the good life is about loving ourselves, developing horizontal interpersonal relationships, and contributing to the community in some way so we experience our innate value to it.

I had a United Church minister tell me the same thing years ago when we were living in Belleville, but it's something I have to re-learn. It's the contributing to the community part I think I've finally figured out to take less literally.

There are lots of ways to contribute to the community. It isn't all about making money. That's just one of our "myths of normal".

But the interpersonal relationship part is tricky too because they should be horizontal, not vertical. I think young people today are probably closest to living this way. A little trickier, maybe, the older we are.

No one person is more important than another.

I'm working on it.

I'm coming to terms with estrangement, heeding the advice of a friend.

"It isn't about you."

I play it on repeat in my head.

My older sister was estranged, decades ago now, although she was back in touch, off and on, later. With our mother dead, though, the relationship is in the past.

It's fine with everybody.

It mattered to me so much at the time but now I wonder if it was just everybody getting caught up in the drama of it all. She lashed out at my mother but then at the rest of us. I understood it with my mother, but there was no reason to lash out at the three of us, her siblings.

They didn't get along, my mother and older sister. Never had. No two queen bees in a hive.

Families can be a lot of work. Divorce can make it even trickier trying to keep everybody in the fold. I don't know what it would have been like had my father not died, but I imagine it would have been better.

It was a bit of a combat zone in my original family, I realize now. They were alike, my mother and older sister, but of different generations, with different values. There was a constant clash of wills. It didn't matter that my mother was very modern in her outlook. Growing up poor at a time when people, never mind female people, didn't have the rights we do now is such a far cry from how my siblings and I grew up.

My father didn't grow up poor but he was overseas in WWII fighting the Nazis for King and country.

The Greatest Generation was a study in trauma. The Depression, WWII, the Patriarchy.

No birth control. Women wanting careers being housewives. Men doing jobs they hated so they could provide for their families they didn't necessarily want.

We were all wanted. My kids were all wanted. That's the jackpot right there, isn't it, and yet still it's not enough.

"The war killed your father."

I thought for a long time my mother said that to my older sister who relayed it to me, but my mother might have said it to me, to calm my hypochondria. I might have been pestering her about cancer, which is what my father died from. I was obsessed with fears of cancer. That's where my eating disorder likely came from too. Cancer, cancer, cancer. Pesticides, pesticides, pesticides. Food, food, food.

Anyway, I've watched enough Dr. Gabor Maté's videos, and read his book, "The Myth of Normal", to know what my mother meant by, "The war killed your father".

It's tragic, to think of this tall, thin man, an academic who became a lawyer, fighting in a war.

I hope he at least met a woman, had some tender, loving care.

We're all being terrorized by Israel's slaughter of Palestinians and Russia's slaughter of Ukrainians. I have Facebook friends who no longer have relationships with each other because they believe one is more or less justified than the other.

They'd argue that's an over-simplification but it isn't.

Go argue theories of original sin to the war dead and its traumatized survivors.

Meanwhile, we're being trolled by Donald Trump and the Nazi architects of Project 2025, all of them owned by the Russian and/or Israeli Mobs, threatening us with invasion if we don't roll over, none of it making any sense, nobody important seeming to understand there's no arguing with trolls.

DNFtT. Do Not Feed the Trolls.

Nobody else has pointed it out, I don't think, so let me be the first. Stephen Harper constitutes foreign interference in our election. He's head of the IDU, an international laundromat for global fascism. He interfered in the American election, too, on behalf of Donald Trump.

Seize his bank account(s) someone who can, please, and apply the appropriate sanctions. Enough pretending he isn't a traitor, too, because he is.

Anyway, I don't have any answers for the state of the world these days, but I understand what my mother meant.

The war killed my father. It broke up my family. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be.

And around and around and around we go.

Voting Begins

The Orange Goon doesn't do the rallies anymore and I wonder if MAGA is missing them.

Seems they were a big part of the draw.

I'm going to predict not doing the rallies will prove to be a mistake. I don't think Project 2025 can be sustained without the rallies. And unless it's the Orange Goon doing them MAGA won't be impressed.

Up here it looks like voter turnout this election is going to be really good.

Conservatives tend to benefit from a low turnout so hopefully it'll be a win for decency and the Liberals will win a majority.

Yup. I want a Liberal majority. No more NDP holding the balance of power. They had their chance and threw it away when we were most at risk for a Conservative majority.

I hope Poilievre loses his riding. Odious little shit. He deserves a big fall.

I suspect he'll keep up the rallies though. He's addicted to the attention. The thing is, I'm not sure his followers want him to win as much as he wants to win. Certainly the arrested development cases who follow him online are unlikely to make it to the polls in great numbers. They'd have to do something. And they like being angry, disaffected, complaining blamers mad at the world - especially women.

Do they really want their guy to be Prime Minister?

I doubt it.

And his rally attendees have most likely noticed by now the Orange Goon, now he's President (again), doesn't do the rallies anymore. And they like the rallies, they like the rallies a lot. One woman I saw interviewed in line outside the auditorium where Pierre Poilievre was performing said it was like going to a concert. She was really excited.

My guess is she'd rather Pierre Poilievre lose so he keeps doing his rallies. She knows he's not going to do them if he wins.

She's been left behind before. She doesn't want it happening again.

And Maple MAGA wants to be the 51st state so if Poilievre does win he'll either have to betray them or betray the rest of Canada.

Watching the debate, something I've almost never done, was interesting for me. I was able to actually watch it, for one thing.

I think it's because Mark Carney seems so competent. It's very reassuring, his seeming competence.

I also credit all those therapy reels that come up on my Facebook page. I'm learning to not take everything to heart, as people used to say back in the day.

"Stop taking everything to heart."

Being sensitive was totally asking for it.

I'm reading a book called "The Courage To Be Disliked" by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. I love it. It's based in Adlerian philosophy (I have no idea who Adler was except he wasn't Freud).

You can't change other people but you can change yourself simply by changing your outlook. It's all up to you. Don't like how you are? Be different.

We get in our own way, is the problem we're all having.

I'm working on it. For sure I'm tired of caring what other people think of me. And being anxious and worried and catastrophizing. I'm tired of all that too. And thinking I'm responsible for how other people feel.

Ridiculous.

I'm also intrigued these days by the Swedish death purge, getting your affairs in order so as not to leave a mess for others when you shuffle off this mortal coil.

I hope it's a while away but I've decided to be all about now and looking forward with curiosity as to what comes next.

Hopefully not a Conservative government.