Alberta Unbound

So Premier Loon it is. Again. Until the fascists pulling her strings at the moment decide to dump her and stick another puppet in her place as they've already said they will.👮

Way. To. Go. Albertans. Way. To. Go.❤

But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about - finally - local breweries coming up with good beers for us Sober Sallys to enjoy when out and about in the small town disguised as a medium sized city that is Ottawa.😀

That's right. We went out on the town last night, my first foray out in the evening since I started having random panic attacks once home again, and didn't want to take the risk anymore.😱

Oh, by the way, an inside source told me Ottawans seeking help for panic attacks went way up after the Freedom Convoy's three week attack on us in February 2022. So if you're in the hospitality industry and still voting Conservative, you're a self-sabotaging idiot. Conservative politicians are all in with the international fascists behind the Freedom Convoy and they're hellbent on on destroying our Liberal Feminist society that made your business success, your much ballyhooed entrepreneurship, possible.💃

Good luck keeping it all going when there's no law/order because our publicly funded local police services are either unable or unwilling to uphold it. And take your pick because the fallout's the same for the rest of us. Meanwhile, I can't imagine what it's like for sane police officers working alongside the kind of lunatics in their ranks who support fascism. Heck, Freedom Convoyers don't even need washrooms they're so prepared to live without our Liberal Feminist society's amenities. They just drop their drawers and poop wherever.💩

Now where was I? Oh yes, out for zero alcohol beer (funny how if it's zero alcohol I only ever order the one) and dinner for the first time in months because the medication I'm on now ($51.25 per month, so Big Pharma wins again) seems to be working to lower my baseline anxiety such that I no longer have random evening panic attacks in which I end up having to purge all food and drink from my 5'5"/110 pound body.👵

Talk about lost business profits for you these past many months and forever going forward (from me, anyway) now I only order the one zero alcohol beer with dinner (I keep it small, just in case). But also the savings for me cancelled out by my first ever ongoing prescription since I stopped taking birth control pills many years ago now.💥

Oh yeah, another by the way, the international fascists funding the Freedom Convoy don't give a shit about the forest fires destroying so many communities in Alberta, not to mention our collective habitat. In fact, they want to burn our world down. Who knows? Maybe our first responders do, too. For sure their unions, police unions anyway, have made it clear they've had it up to here with our Liberal Feminist society keeping their white man members down, even though they've only ever gone up, such that they're regulars on the Sunshine List even if they're nowhere to be seen otherwise.👀

Gord help us, eh.😇

Woke in WWIII

Fortunately, I got what I needed from Gabor Mate because I have to let him go now. I know nobody's perfect, so not everybody's politics will align with mine😀, but Russia under Putin is a terrorist state, the Russian army's attack on Ukrainians a war crime, and NATO didn't make anybody do it, fascism did.😠

End of.😷

Politics sometimes comes to the pond, where I swim in the currently very cold water to calm the fevers, and recently another pond person went on an anti-COVID vaccine/anti-Trudeau rant. He's a very loud and opinionated pond person, a doctor of a certain age, so superior to other mortals, and on the occasions we're there at the same time he's often holding forth.💥

He'd been blathering at me earlier but I'd managed to find a bit of common ground in his blah blah, which was specific to the pond, because I've been practicing live and let live with my neighbour and so am almost a saint now.😇

But then a politically naive pond acquaintance😴 joined us and the next thing I knew he'd switched topics and was citing all manner of 💩 at my politically naive pond acquaintance😴 who, I could tell from the panicked look he gave me as I excused myself without a word, realized he wasn't in Kansas anymore.👺

Old me would have taken on the responsibility of rescuing him. New me exited stage right to change out of my bathing suit (there aren't any change rooms at the pond so you have to make do, meaning there's a lot of random nudity everybody ignores for the sake of propriety), got dressed and left, ignoring my politically naive pond acquaintance's😴 frantic attempts to make eye contact👀 in the vain hope I'd act like... his mother?👵 and save him from the quagmire into which he'd waded.😬

Sorry, relegated down from politically naive pond acquaintance😴 to offs-wake-up-you-idiot!👶 - the time for your political naivete was over when the Republican Party nominated Putin's Puppet for POTUS, ffs.👹 We're at war, and we've been at war for some time now. Our own Conservatives are led by a politician who publicly allied with an invading force of anti-COVID vaccine fascists while it terrorized us, ffs. And the good doctor, to whom I will henceforth grace with a mute nod and nothing more (there's zero point in engaging, he's beyond reason) is with the enemy.😠

One more time, there was only one name on the Freedom Convoy's black flags and it may as well have been mine. They had nooses ffs, downtown was lawless, our publicly funded police either unwilling or unable to restore the law. Those are facts. It was terrifying. And all leaders of the Conservative Party, past and present, along with Donald Trump and every other fascist from here to the Kremlin, supported the Freedom Convoy while it terrorized us for three weeks.😱

Long story (again) short, fuck your political naivete and wake the fuck up, please. We're at war. You're either with me defeating the Freedom Convoy and Ukraine defeating Russia, or you're with the Freedom Convoy defeating me and Russia defeating Ukraine.💪

End of.😷

Pundit Pause

I've been reading more and limiting my exposure to the news, and by the news I don't mean the actual news, I mean the political punditry from both politicians and journalists I've been subjecting myself to for decades now.👵

Liane Moriarty has helped in weaning me off the habit. I've read four of her books in rapid succession but just started a Barbara Gowdy for a change of pace. I've got a ton of books I've been stockpiling over the years - in case the Conservatives get into power and burn them all, except Dr. Peterpan's "Twelve Rules for Life" - but I still find my best reading bet is to check one out from the library. Even without a due date, which I believe they've nixed in Ottawa, I want to return it "on time", although I usually read a book in a few days. Liane Moriarty's are real page turners for me, too. She uses that trick of starting with the aftermath of whatever happened to cause all the fallout between the characters - the reader not knowing what it is - and then goes back into what led up to it.🙇

I don't call what I'm about to blog a conspiracy theory, although you might, but this theory - which is actually minus the requisite conspiracy - comes from me just piecing bits and bytes together to make sense of political behaviour that doesn't make it otherwise, not to me, anyway.😎

I think Pierre Poilievre is pretending not to want a security clearance because he knows he wouldn't be able to get one. Not with his beard, I mean, wife, and her family's sketchy background in tow, he wouldn't. And it's not just her family's sketchy background he's got in tow now, either, it's all his publicly known - so just imagine what isn't - associations in his post Harper government days - when I guess he did have security clearance: Diagolon Accelerationists, Men Going Their Own Way incels, Freedom Convoy insurrectionists, Neo-nazi militia wannabes, Bitcoin pyramid-schemers and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc etc.💩

So I can't listen to or read about sundry goings on in politics anymore as if the Conservative Party he won the leadership of in a landslide (of cheating) isn't a freaky fascist man cult.👤

Girls to be included for breeding later.😬

By the way, Conservatives know climate change is real and man-made, they just pretend not to believe it's real and man-made because, unlike normal every day non-freaky-fascist-man-cult people, they welcome it. Climate change is their Liberal Feminist hating God bringing floods and fires to destroy life on Earth for anybody and everybody without the entry fee to their Ark or Spaceship or Immortality Chamber.👻

I'm not crazy. They're crazy.👀

So it was this past weekend that My Blond Companion was telling me about a piece by Andrew Coyne, something about needing a new party, when I realized I was in danger of losing what's left of my mind if I listened to any more of his obnoxious gaslighting.😱

Andrew Coyne's, I mean, not My Blond Companion's.😜

Anyway I quit Twitter because it's absurd but now I'm quitting political punditry because it's even more absurd. Every pundit from coast to coast to coast should be calling bullshit on Pierre Poilievre pretending he doesn't want to be read in on foreign threats to our national security so he can accuse the government of being one, too, when he could be read in and do the same thing.😈

Oh and I don't know how any pundit could turn the elderly Biden's suddenly very audible "loyal?" directed at Poilievre into just a random benign question about Canada's Parliamentary system. As if he was unaware of Poilievre's very public support of the Freedom Convoy thumbs upped by Trump and every other fascist from here to the Kremlin while Putin readied to invade Ukraine. Those fascist freedom fuckers blockaded our borders, ffs, costing our economy billions. They're also why our country isn't being read in on a lot of stuff, I'm sure.😡

Every time I think the dam is about to break and Canadian political punditry will finally stop its aggravating gaslighting, i.e. pretending we're still in Kansas, not Kookoofascistbananasville, along comes Andrew Coyne to suggest what Canada needs is a new political party.🙈🙉🙊

Wake me up if our punditry ever does.💤

Love Thy Neighbour

I think I remember this. Charles Templeton in his break with Billy Graham and organized religion (date yourself much, Kathryn?) said while he couldn't love everybody, he could care about people. I appreciated his sentiment at the time and still do. It's one of those gems I've tucked away to help me navigate our mortal constructs in a divine universe.❤

I had planned to write a book about being president of our housing association, but writers plan to write all sorts of books we never do. It's part of the not writing process. I think I could do it but I'm not sure I should. It's been a few years and I'm finally starting to feel better about people. I'd hate to set myself back writing about a volunteer position that I swear to Gord gave me a kidney stone.😬

It's not just me. You'll never meet anyone who was on a condo or coop board who won't say "never again" once out of office. It's a thankless job even for those who get a gratuity for doing it. People are whiny horrible complainers and care more about somehow magically securing non-existent parking for their second car than they do their neighbours.💩

I'm putting my health before my ambitions now. Until listening to Gabor Mate I thought I had to achieve fame and fortune for people to really care about me. Why? Because I wasn't enough.🙎

Imagine. I have three children and love them entirely for themselves. I know my love is unconditional. Their ambitions have nothing to do with my love for them. So I've been fortunate enough in this life to hit the motherlode of love and yet managed to miss the most important lesson in it. I'm enough. I've always been enough. You're enough. You've always been enough. Ferfuckssake we're all enough already.💗

Maybe I should write about all my temp jobs, most of them in the government, provincial when I lived in Toronto, federal in Ottawa.💁

Boyfriends?👫

Humiliating moments as lived by me personally and/or as told to me by boyfriends, friends, family or colleagues while temping in the government?🙅

So I'm at the living and letting live stage of life with regard to my neighbour, focusing on his positives, and accepting his total disregard for anyone and anything in the way of his routine, which revolves around his postage stamp sized lawn and the perfection thereof.😒

Gord give me strength.🙏

I have to admit, for someone who considers herself an empathetic person, I could stand to put it into practice more often, starting with my neighbour. After all, I'm a control freak, too. Empathy for him is empathy for me. And he at least is knowledgeable about what he's trying to control, if lacking insight into why. He clearly, and I only just now realized this, believes he has to blow dry each individual blade of grass at 8:00 on a Saturday morning to be worthy.❤

He's had a tough life. I've had a privileged one. But his beautiful little lawn gets him what he needs, validation. And in fairness, he does a lot more than I do to maintain order in our "between the tracks" 'hood. He doesn't just maintain order as a hired hand, he helps out for free, too. I keep planning to wear a pair of gardening gloves and take a green garbage bag on our dog walk and pick up litter but have I? No. And yet it offends my need for order every day.😡

All this to say the more I resolve to empathize with my neighbour, instead of being mad at him, and focus on the good he does, instead of how annoying he is, the better I feel about myself and the closer I get to actually putting on those gardening gloves and taking a green garbage bag with me on the dog walk.😍

Mother's Day Revisited

It was Mother's Day last year when I had what I know now was the first? in a series of panic attacks, a warning system of sorts that something was seriously out-of-whack with how I was processing life.😵

I'm fine now but to get the stink off Mother's Day I went out for lunch with my blond companion, my friend and my first born. It went well and I was at my computer writing this later, not lying on the bathroom floor praying for the crabby hand of death to swat me off this mortal coil before the next wave of existential dread and nausea hit me.👻

But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about my middle child calling yesterday to thank me for not giving a shit about Mother's Day. So being a good daughter myself I told her to send up a prayer of thanks to her Grandma, who didn't give a shit about Mother's Day, either. I just carried on in her established tradition.😇

Then I told her, a teacher, and I couldn't be a prouder Mom, about a school wanting to change Mother's Day to Parent Day, in consideration of motherless children. As a fatherless child, the only one in my class growing up in the 60s and even 70s, the school has my sympathies. It was always awkward for teachers, so I would make a Father's Day card for Gram to make them feel better. I believe I told one of my early grade teachers that Gram wore man shoes so same same.👵

I don't care about or celebrate any of our special days now. I'm a counter-culture revolutionary. By the way, Canadians pissing and moaning about new images on our passports include Conservatives who funded a fascist invasion of my city. They're traitors, their Postmedia nothing but a bunch of propagandists for our enemies, and if Russia were to invade us even now they'd be on its side, not mine, not yours. Hear me now, listen to me later, they do not work for us.😠

By the way, and off topic, but how was Michael Chong being intimidated by China if he wasn't aware he was being intimidated? China's evil, for sure, a dystopian nightmare, but if you have to be told you're being intimidated by it, how effective is the intimidation? I'm juss sayin'. And I'm juss sayin' because I didn't notice Michael Chong standing up to Pierre Poilievre or anybody in the Conservative Party for either recruiting from a woman-hating cult or funding and cheering on a fascist invasion of my city. 😉

Anyway, I've decided I'm all in with King Charles III, though, speaking of our culture, because at least he gives an actual shit about climate change. My hope is he breaks with the Queen's tradition of being a matchy matchy Forest Gump - too soon? - and starts offing Conservative heads for ignoring their duty to all of us in favour of further lining the pockets of their friends and families and sabotaging our liberal democracies from within. Because that's what they're doing. The US Republican Party will nominate Putin's Puppet, known mobster, unconscionable bully, unrepentant rapist, flagrant racist and public supporter of the fascist Freedom Convoy that attacked us in February 2022, Donald Trump, again, as its candidate for President of the United States.🙇

Meanwhile, I remain off Twitter but can guess Pierre Poilievre will have tweeted out Mother's Day mush when we know, thanks to the actual journalists he attacks like his apparent mentor, Donald Trump, or any other common fascist, he's been recruiting from a cult of men obsessed with eliminating young women, so mothers and/or the daughters of mothers, from Canadian society for years. And I'm supposed to... what? let it go? Pretend not to know anymore? He publicly allied with my attackers while they were attacking me, ffs. Then he publicly attacked a young female journalist for asking why, an attack for some reason followed up on by Diagolon Accelerationists, he gets away with pretending not to know, threatening her and her family, so her mother, with rape and or death. These are facts. Canadian facts. And he's the Leader of Canada's Official Opposition because he's who Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada elected by a landslide.💁 

But now the Globe and Mail, our national newspaper, is blathering on in its opinion pieces (oh fuck off with your bullshit opinions, you execrable Rosedale Golf and Country Club ass-kisser of ever-increasing irrelevance - Alberta's on fire, ffs, led by an inveterate lying loon who looks and acts like she was parachuted in from Stephen Harper's attic where she's been talking into a mirror for the past decade) about Trudeau destroying our culture by changing the images on our passports from whatever they were before to something else.😱

And Andrew Coyne goes on and interminably on about what an unserious country we are. He should come to Ottawa and take the bus downtown, walk around, step over his co-citizens of lesser means lying on the sidewalk, maybe stay for an ice storm or derecho and the ongoing destruction of our tree canopy and, quite frankly, the lessening appeal of home ownership as our foreign owned insurance companies, those conscienceless merchants of fear, stop paying out for the damages caused by climate change, itself caused by our really very very vapid and increasingly soul destroying culture Conservatives from coast to coast to coast will revere until we're all sinking in our developed wetlands. What was their hero after Ronald Reagan and before Donald Trump, George W. Bush's, antidote to our collective shock at 9/11? Go shopping. Then he destroyed countries not Saudi Arabia and we all know perfectly well had Stephen Harper been Prime Minister we'd have been all in on the quagmire of death and destruction.💔

And off topic, again, but how dare the US, whose fascists funded and cheered on an attack on us last February 2022, costing our economy billions, complain about our financial contributions to NATO. How dare they. And how dare Pierre Poilievre and his Conservative Party of Canada join in on the complaining when they did the same.😡

So down with Mother's Day, I say. It's a Hallmark invention and the last thing I want - really ever - is a card from Shopper's Drug Mart, currently all in with Ford Nation while it loots and pillages our treasury on behalf of its friends and families. Enough, I say. Conservatives want a culture war? I say we give them one and just stop. Stop playing. And reinvent ourselves as responsible global citizens just saying no to a vapid and increasingly soul destroying culture and change it up with actual change.💪

Antifa, Antifa, Where Art Thou, Antifa

Why are we still paying for the pleasure of having teeth yanked out of our heads? Did I not hear we're sending a Canadian to the Moon? Hello? Down here on Earth? Can we step it up please? Day eight and just a spot of blood in my mouth in the morning now after having an eye tooth and whatever the first molar is called pulled but Geez Louise. I am really starting to resent the Moon.😡

But enough about me, I see somebody thought she could interview Donald Trump and not get shit splattered all over her white suit. Figuratively, I mean, not literally, although Noel Casler has been pointing out for years that Donald Trump has no control over his bowels anymore due to rampant drug abuse and wears a diaper. That's why sometimes the people around him will suddenly look vaguely horrified. He's defecated and the stench is swirling around and up into their nostrils through to the back of their throats so they can taste the smell of his shit while he abuses them, all the while pretending not to notice.😬

Hey, nobody's got a gun to anybody's head saying they've got to be anywhere near Donald Trump, so suck it up, suckers. I won't care about you. I can't. His Russian Mob boss is committing genocide in Ukraine, hellbent on expanding his terrorist state into a terrorist empire in reaction to liberal democracies like ours, where we kick more Patriarchal constructs to the curb every day, living life as ourselves, free to be you and me.💃

I'd never paid much (or any, really) attention to Donald Trump because I was out and about having fun in the 80s being cool and trend setting (total lie, I was never cool, nor did I set a trend unless Madonna copied fishnets and messy hair gelled in place from me) and then at home 24/7 with my three children in the 90s because I'm a total control freak and didn't want to let them out of my sight for a second except to go to the little school across the street in which I volunteered so I could turn everybody else's kids into little Liberal Feminists, too, er, I mean, keep them in my sights, too.👀

That's right. I define myself as a Liberal Feminist because we're who the fascists - and everybody else, I guess - hate most.✊

If Donald Trump was around in the 2000s I didn't notice. I basically missed all his tabloid attention whoring until there he was, the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States.😲

Remember how they were all against him until he called them a bunch of pussy whipped weaklings with ugly unfuckable wives and then they were all gaga for him?🙇

But as much as it's been all about Donald Trump ever since (although I've protected myself from getting any of his shit splattered on me by only ever watching Sarah Cooper do Donald Trump) he's just a symptom, not the disease, the disease being fascism, of course.💁

I know, I know, the pedants don't like it when we call fascism, fascism. It belittles other fascism, apparently. Well, too bad. The pedants can go fuck themselves in the ear. Uncomfortable Canadian fact: the leaders of the Conservative Party past, present and future, are all in with it, too. Before I stopped subjecting myself to his data-mining, which is 24/7 on Twitter, I watched Pierre Poilievre "debate" Mark Carney in a clip that came across my feed (imagine, I actually thought I could change fascist hearts and minds) and almost immediately Carney was splattered in Poilievre's shit. Poilievre may as well've called Carney's wife ugly and his father an assassin. It was brutal. A shit show. Everybody a loser.💩

Which brings me once again as to why Trudeau's name is on all the fascist Freedom Convoy's hate flags. And I call the Freedom Convoy fascist because it is. Downtown Ottawa was lawless, the mob in charge. Police either afraid or complicit, humiliated in public like so many Ted Cruzes and Marco Rubios, carrying water (actually gasoline) for their fascist overlords.🙇

But Trudeau's a shit deflector. He didn't pretend, as so many Conservatives wanted him to, there was any percentage in engaging with shit-flinging fascists. Instead he called them out for what they are and invoked Stephen Harper's Emergency Act, an Act no doubt intended to protect fascists against us, you and me. He restored law and order for all of us, while Michael Chong, Scott Aitchison, their gun lobby colleagues, COVID conspiracy kooks, neo-nazi groupies, all voted for the fascists, for fascism.😠

All to say, Antifa is real, but it's Trudeau, not a bunch of masked and black clad rock throwers, who were nowhere to be seen during the very very very fascist Freedom Convoy attack on us last February 2022, an attack very very very publicly 👍 by Donald Trump and every shit splattering fascist from here and through Twitter all the way to Russia.

I'm not sure how much alarm ringing it will take for Canadians to get it, that we're being warred against whether we want to acknowledge it or not, but Donald Trump is the face of fascism and I promise you we won't hear Pierre Poilievre say "boo" against him because he is all in himself. They all are.🙈🙉🙊

Trauma Center

I don't know if it's the medication I'm on or being a Sober Sally or just really listening to people who care about us, me, your and my well-being, but I'm doing better with how I respond to life, thank you very much, universe. And by better I mean relative to becoming so worked up I get a kidney stone.😷

I just watched this hour long interview with Gabor Mate on Trauma and another piece of my own puzzle, but also yours, because we're all living together in this one world, fell into place.💞

The pride of the self-proclaimed? Boomer proclaimed? Greatest Generation is/was sucking it up, holding it all inside, it was The Depression, not a depression. And don't bother me, I'm having a martini. Also my mother's favourite response to childhood woes, "Well you're not exactly a widow with four young children, are you."❤

No but how am I going to get to the Olympics when I just got beat in the 75 yard dash by Marla Cameron, ffs?💔

I don't know how it came up now, something to do with my period, I'm guessing, but when I was in my teens my mother claimed to have gone into menopause when my father died.👵

This never made much sense to me, because my father died of cancer when my mother was 38, so young for menopause. Also, it's not like he was suddenly gunned down in a hail of bullets, a shock so sudden to his grieving widow that it would bring on menopause, either. I didn't think, anyway.💁

But she wouldn't have said it if it didn't happen, she wasn't shy about bodily functions. I just didn't believe her going into menopause was connected to my father's death. Why? Why didn't I believe it? Well because the notion that it did ran counter to my understanding, or rather, lack thereof, of the mind/body connection, the whole of us, and her life story. Did The Greatest Generation even have a childhood or was childhood something they only afforded their children, the much ballyhooed Boomers.😕

(Also, as was the custom of the day in our society, I was given insufficient information and so didn't have a proper appreciation of how traumatic it actually was for her.😦)

Later in life she took to mentioning her initial, perhaps wilful, misunderstanding of the diagnosis, that it was both terminal and his death quite imminent, which was corrected when a concerned nurse advised her as she made plans ignoring it, "Oh, Mrs. McLeod, your husband won't last three months."😬 

I believe it was more like six weeks, too, but I don't know that and it doesn't matter now. Those sorts of details got lost in the flurry of the time, my mother didn't like to talk about it thereafter, and no one's alive now who would know better. What does it matter, anyway, all these details that have nothing to do with who a person was or the life they lived in our world.😔

Of course she went into sudden and early menopause. She was in shock. The love of her life was dead, she had four kids under the age of ten, her homemaker-married-to-a-lawyer life was over and she went back to being a teacher, but also a single working mother determined we all stay in our middle-class life.🙋

Meanwhile, I was four. My father suddenly disappeared and my mother, well, she suddeny disappeared, too.😒

I don't mean to come across as feeling sorry for myself, or self-indulgent, although I suppose I do, because my point really is how good my life is, in spite of this traumatic event I was too young to appreciate at the time, and which my society didn't appreciate at the time, either, thanks to how it is, or maybe how it was.👪

Because it is better now, from where I sit, and I'm not sure why there's nostalgia for a time when there was so much more unfairness around and we were supposed to just suck it up and hold it all inside, it's The Depression, not a depression.😣

Shooting Range

I've noticed recently some Canadians, women, expressing concern we'll become desensitized to American men mass murdering children, as it happens with increasing frequency due to the ease with which American men can buy guns.😖

But I think the opposite is happening and we're becoming increasingly angry, which is maybe what the enemy wants? I don't know. Who is the enemy? Who wants American men mass murdering children?❤

#NotAllMen💂 #NotAllChildren👼

When I was kid I was almost killed by a Canadian man with a gun. My brother and I were adventuring in the woods. Ever since I've been afraid of the woods. Not because the woods are full of bears (this happened in Northern Ontario) but because I might get shot by a man with a gun.👀

I read a comment on a Facebook friend's page (he'd linked to the latest mass murder at a mall in Texas) from a woman who lives among men whose backyards are now shooting ranges. A bullet hit her house. She's okay about the guns, just not getting with getting shot, so she waited until she had the all clear before heading next door to let her neighbour know he should tweak his range a bit so he didn't accidentally shoot her, which he (thankfully?) agreed to do.😲

Such are the rights of people who want to own and shoot guns in the US now. But like I just said, when I was a kid I was almost killed by a man right here in good old Canada. Was he out of season? Was I? Who the fuck cares? I was eight years old and that could've been the end of my awesome life, just like it is for countless American kids in school, at the mall, in their own backyards.😡

Back in my homemaker days I was friends with a woman whose husband, former RCMP, became unhinged (perhaps he always was), apocalyptic, dangerous. She'd managed to get him out, I don't know how, but he wasn't living very far away and still came and went from her place. Anyway, I was sitting in her living room, our kids playing, and I'm looking around at all the religious paraphernalia, when it twigged, "B? Does R have a gun?"

B looked away, then down, "Yes, but don't worry, he wouldn't use it."

And I felt guilty, sad, shitty - but also scared - and there was nothing for it but to gather up my lot and take them home, B and her kids welcome at our place but only as long as R didn't know about our existence.😬

(The "happy" ending is he ended up living with his mother out in Vancouver and not allowed near B or their kids in Ottawa.)

Another time my oldest came home from visiting a friend to say with concern, "C's dad shot a crow."

So, one more time, "Okay well that means C can come here but you're not allowed to go to C's house. I didn't know her dad had a gun or I wouldn't have let you go to her house in the first place. Thanks for telling me."

Sorry not sorry. As a mother of young kids - and we're all mama bears when our kids are young - I could draw a line in the sand - just like that - no man dared cross, zero tolerance, done and done.💪

So never mind the nanny state, these men who want to own guns rag on about, I want the mama bear state. Fuck them and fuck their goddamned guns. They're mass murdering children, ffs.💔

Waiting Out the Day

Walking to the bus late yesterday afternoon, on my way to the dentist, I could appreciate how someone might decide enough already, if this is my future, I'm cutting it short.👻

This is not to say I want to check out, but I increasingly understand how aging can become a bit tedious.💗

Bette Davis: "Old age ain't no place for sissies!" 

Sorry but it's a great quote and I'm a sissy so I can use it. I'm whining on the internet about a trip to the dentist, ffs. Of course, it did involve taking an OC Transpo bus, so there's that in my defence.👅

As you know, I despise the Freedom Convoy, a coalition of neo-nazi narcissists and brainwashed flag hags (I should've patented "flag hags" when I came up with it👿) but being a bit of a Pollyanna Sunshine😇 (just ignore my first paragraph, I'm over it already) I like to look for the silver lining in my co-citizens flinging shit at me at me for three weeks during a pandemic in the middle of winter because they've got cops and politicians on their side for some reason that escapes.💩

But if old age ain't no place for sissies, neither is democracy, and we can't have the army called in to quash every attack on civil society/our country (regardless of it being funded by American fascists and the like) when it's already stretched to the max (thanks a lot, sexual assaulters) our government being called out for not meeting its NATO commitments by every Tom, Dick and Donald Trump, noted supporter of said attack on our country costing us a couple of Bs (for billions).👀

So I took the Mr. Rogers' lesson, which is to look for the helpers, starting with myself when random panic attacks made it clear I was internalizing a lot of problems in the world that are not mine alone to solve, and went to the doctor.😷

I should know as a mother, you always put your own oxygen mask on first, so you live to save your children's lives, which is why I'm a Sober Sally (again) on a low dose of fluoxetine to address a baseline anxiety problem that's really been lifelong, meaning I owe the Freedom Convoy one for upping the ante so I finally addressed it. Also bringing me to the realization that substance abuse is just self-medicating in the absence of professional treatment, so how dare anyone judge us for it.👮

But back to the dentist. I had to have two front side teeth extracted when their coverings and a fake tooth they held in place fell off while I was brushing my teeth. That's why I was walking to the bus late yesterday afternoon, a terrible time to schedule a dental appointment, by the way.😓

Anyway, I now have two long fossil-like teeth I insisted on bringing home, much to my dentist's and her assistant's consternation, in a little plastic bag sitting here beside my laptop. They're there to serve as a reminder to Scottish Presbyterian me (clan motto: work hard, then die) that I've lived through a "thing", not nothing, a "thing". The teeth are 2 centimetres long, 1 centimetre wide, and they were pulled out of my mouth.😬

And as if that wasn't enough for one day, I took an OC Transpo bus home.😀

But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about something my dentist said to me when I commented it must be a long day for her, how does she manage, and why (she's currently on her own with 3 kids, her husband working elsewhere) and she responded, eyes shining above her mask, "I love helping people."💖

And she does, with unfailing kindness and humour. One of our co-citizens living her faith, in her case, Muslim, who reminds me I could stand to be a better person myself. I don't have insurance, nor does my partner, and she's very aware of that and so would no doubt welcome proper dental care for all of us, the most bizarre omission from universal healthcare since eye care, therapy, rehab, etc etc etc. So one wonders who exactly our government thinks it's serving by its failure to provide it lo these many decades now, and just exactly how much needless stress Canadians must put up with before it puts our collective health and well-being first.😖

Because no fair not being either all in with MAiD, so we can at least have a civilized shuffling off this mortal coil, or all in with universal access to ALL our healthcare needs. No, not needs, rights, our healthcare rights. Our banks have been telling us we're richer than we think for years now because we are. So why are we being nickel and dimed to death over our healthcare rights? I'm not getting teeth implants and a bone graft because of the cost. Instead I'm getting a temporary denture. Still expensive but necessary - and not just for looks, which matter, too, dammit! - but to eat and hold my other teeth in place.👹

To paraphrase our handsome Prime Minister, it's 2023, ffs, do better!😠

People Are Funny - Part Eleventy Seven

I don't understand why Canadians who aren't in favour of limping along with fusty ol' King Charles III as our Head of State, are also mad about him defying the Queen's deathbed decree that his long suffering true love, Camilla, just be Queen consort, not Queen.

Of course, even the Queen's beloved and chosen husband cousin, noted philanderer and racist quipper, Philip, only got to be her consort, no fool was the Queen to make a husband King in 1952.

Can you imagine how badly behaved Philip would've been as King? No serving girl safe anywhere in the Kingdom. Serving girls? Heck, the Queen would've been dodging his plots to supplant her with one left, right and centre.

If history proves anything it's never trust a man to love you more than he covets your Crown, or at least resents you for wearing it in public, when it's decreed he walk two paces behind it. So you.😬

Still, Elizabeth II went one better'n her namesake, Elizabeth I, who stayed single because it was the mid-1550s, ffs, and had her man, yes, but kept him firmly in his place, carousing behind her back in his affairs of the heart and away from the affairs of state. Or away from her Crown, anyway.

😎

Meanwhile, fusty ol' King Charles III, says "Pooh pooh to all that, Mummy - Camilla, shall be Queen." And all hell breaks loose. Even from Canadians who want to kibosh the whole thing anyway.

Pick a lane, rabble-rousers.😀

Meanwhile, this loyal subject says, "Bravo, King Chuckles". Because no one deserves to be Queen more than Camilla, in my commoner opinion. No one. Camilla totally earned it, sticking by Charles through their respective marriages all those decades. Imagine how hard it was for her, too:

Diana👸

Camilla👵

Then instead of supplanting ordinary Lady Diana 👰 remarried to Dodi Fayed 👤 (Jackie would've at least gone for his old man, Mohamed Al Fayed❤) she's stuck supplanting St. Diana the Most Beloved Princess since Cinderella:

Diana😇

Camilla👺

Really. Women can't win for losing so why do we try so fucking hard, eh? What will it take for us to wise up? Camilla finally gets her due - thanks to Prince Churlish - and NOW everybody's over the monarchy?😡

Well not on my watch, dammit.💂

Queen Camilla, long may she reign.💪