Fun With Feminism

Kidding.💁

In my yet-to-be-published book, "That Looks Good on You! You Should Buy It!", yet-to-be-published because if I knew how to get it published I'd be a completely different person, I joke in a scene that takes place in "Chestertons" (pseudonym for the ladies clothing store I worked in from 2013-2015) about not knowing what wave of Feminist/Feminism I am/we're in.💃👵👰👸👺

In real life, though, I long ago decided to swim through the waves as a plain old Feminist, thanks.💪

At the end of my first year of university, circa 1978, which I realize now was just a dozen years before my first child was born, I went out to Banff, Alberta, where there were summer jobs for the asking and a much higher minimum wage.👍

While there, I had the terrifying experience of being pinned down in the hallway of the men's section of the staff annex I lived in for a bit by a scrawny guy not much bigger than me. He was sexually assaulting me, other men watching and doing nothing to stop him, when a manager finally decided the show was over and told them to get him off me.💀

Of course I blamed myself for assuming his invitation to come up (men were on the second floor, women on the first) was friendly (we'd hung out for a bit at a street party), as opposed to an easily laid trap. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was a young woman. He was a man. I should have known he was a sexual predator who would try to rape me.👤

Oops. Feminism 101: Rape is about power, not sex.

And so it is. But whereas the Boomer women who transformed our society may have meant "power" more figuratively, I felt it literally, the upper body (particularly) strength differential, a strength differential I would have had to spend 24 hours a day/7 days a week trying to overcome.💪

So the lesson I learned was how easily a scrawny guy not much bigger than me could get me pinned down on the floor, and how hopeless it was trying to free myself and get away.👩

Oh and the other lesson I learned was how indifferent men can be to a woman being sexually assaulted by a man even when it's happening right in front of them and how easily they can put a stop to it as proven when they did so after another man told them to do it.👥

If I told you I'd experienced a similar assault by a man at a university party, while other men sat around and did nothing, you might think it was me.💃

No, it was him. I know because he went on to become a lawyer charged with attempted murder of his girlfriend (he was an amateur boxer). I found that out from the newspaper when another lawyer sued a "win a bachelor contest" and he was her prize.💩

Talk about not winning for losing. It was for charity, too. Ah, but this happened way back in the 90s and I'm sure even lady lawyers are done pretending bachelor auctions are empowering as opposed to quite the joke on them.👮

For my part, I have never assaulted anyone, man, woman, or child, nor have I failed to intervene when witnessing an assault, sexual or otherwise. In fact, while working at "Chestertons" I did many a closing shift, which meant waiting for a bus on Rideau (downtown Ottawa) and intervening in altercations every other night.😇

To be fair to men, it's easy for a middle-aged woman, we're invisible until we're not. Then - SURPRISE!👻

But it isn't unfair to men to point out how little they actually do to make our world safer, not for women, not for children, not even for themselves. And they could, you know. They have the power. If men wanted to, they could change our world from a Patriarchal prison to a Feminist paradise.💅

I heard Dolly Parton tell another one of her outrageous fibs the other day, "Ah luuv mehn." This after casually mentioning the beatin's and whuppin's and backhands from them for lookin' like she looks, the leavin' a couple of boyfriends behind (unsaid, "cuz Ah was tired of 'em tryin' to trap me in the shed"), and determination to get richer'n any of 'em all on her itty bitty lonesome, laughing at their misogyny all the way to the bank.💃

She doesn't "luuv mehn", of course. Women don't love men any more than men love women. And men hate women or we'd be living in... wait for it.... Dollywood! No... wait for it again... Barbieland!

So yes, I saw Barbie the other day. Ignore the naysayers ("it's not Feminist enough!") and "The Angries" ("it's man-hating!") and go see it. It's not just a visual dessert tray, it's the soft serve of existentialism you may not have realized you craved.💭

I left the theatre feeling more connected with other people and our shared human condition than I have in years.💖

Barbie 101: We all die.💘

And there it is. So simple, this life of ours we've made complicated, wasting it jockeying for power over each other, men accepting that women should live in fear of them rather than with love for them, as if we don't hate them for not helping us smash this Patriarchal construct imprisoning us all.👺

I didn't mean to write this, by the way, and it's but a scratch on the surface of the misogyny privileged white middle-class fourth or fifth generation Canadian me has experienced over her 64 years, but there seems to be an ever increasing disconnect out there as to the effect Patriarchy, a death cult, has had on all of us, and continues to have on all of us, as if it doesn't deny all of us the freedom to live as ourselves by its insistence women world over live in fear of men.💣

Also Barbie 101: Life doesn't have to be this way. Choose Feminism. Help make a better world for our children before we die.💞

Hurting in Ottawa - Updated!

Updated: The fellow from Quebec is pleading guilty to charges. He's not yet been convicted. I've changed the piece to reflect this.

The fellow from Quebec who claimed the Global Elite/World Economic Forum/blah blah blah were setting forest fires has been charged with setting forest fires. I personally think Pierre Poilievre should be charged with him for fuelling this life destroying madness, but I guess then we'd have to charge the groomers and radicalizers of Pierre Poilievre, too.

Oh, and while I'm on the topic of Pierre Poilievre's groomers and radicalizers, has Stephen Harper claimed credit, as head of global fascism's laundromat, for the election of another racist misogynist populist, the new President of Argentina, yet?

Sorry, but if the IDU isn't a laundromat for global fascism, I'm Mary Poppins.

I foolishly got into it on Facebook over Pierre Poilievre's lack of a security clearance so he can be read in to national security information - like a normal leader of His Majesty's "Loyal" Opposition. If you're buying it's because he doesn't want one, be careful, lots of scammers out there, not just in our Parliament.

In the meantime, what's wrong with me that I engage with men online but also in real life who'd argue the moon is made of green cheese, they love gaslighting me so much.

What's wrong with me that in spite of the hurt they cause I still need them to like me? Is it being fatherless? Well enough. Grow the fuck up, Kathryn. You've been fatherless for 60 years now. You don't need one to protect you from all the other fathers out there. They're dead, too.

Whoa! Breakthrough!

Grown men, all my life, since I was a little fatherless feminist growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, have gotten a charge out of showing off how little they care if Conservatives are elected to public office. Why? They consistently pooh pooh the threats Conservatives pose to our (women's) health and well-being, as if we're a bunch of hysterics. Why? What's with the smug superiority, the laughing off of our concerns, the pretending the threat isn't real?

Yeah, I'm talking to you, men of the Left. Liberal/Tory same old story. GFY. There are no Tories in Parliament and there haven't been since Stephen Harper created a party in his angry white Christian male feminist-hating image in 2003.

Fact: If Canadian men cared about violence against us, his Christo-Fascist gun lobby wouldn't be enjoying Official Opposition status in our Parliament. His disciple, Pierre Poilievre, would've had to resign in disgrace years ago, not be elected its leader following an attack on us by a bunch of Neo-nazis - including Diagolon Accelerationists, ffs - he, along with Trump and every fascist shithead online and off PUBLICLY supported, and certainly not after being outed secretly handshaking with Men Going Their Own Way, violent misogynists who want to eliminate us from society.

Instead this odious creep is leading in the polls to be Prime Minister of Canada. Wtf, fellas? What's wrong with y'all? Mad at mommy for having sex with daddy? What is it? Why do you want a Christo-Fascist gun lobby to be the Government of Canada?

Anyway, I don't get it. I just know I'm done pretending it doesn't hurt. Because it does.

Remembrance in Ottawa

It's an unpopular opinion, certainly one considered gauche to voice on Remembrance Day, hence linking to it on November 12, but how can we claim to be honouring the sacrifice of the fallen, specifically with regard to WWII in which my own 60-years-dead father fought, giving me the gift of reflected glory, no small inheritance, when so many us are voting, whether intentionally or not, for the latest iteration of fascism brought to us by conservative populists opposed to liberal democracy?

Because lest we forget the more recent past, the Freedom Convoy was a three week white power rally supported by Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, Putin Puppet Donald Trump and his treasonous Republican Party, Vladimir Putin and his Russian Mob/Mafia state, Hell's Angels, Sons of Odin, Diagolon Accelerationists, and so on and so forth and more of the same down to every vile, hateful and treasonous shithead, homophobe and woman-hater online and off all over our endlessly warring world.

Veterans for Freedom, by the way, is not just on the side of it, it's part of it, so Christo-Fascism, as are not just a few of our publicly funded police and armed forces members from coast to coast to coast.

They're my declared enemy, anti-democracy. That makes their number one supporter in my Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, my enemy, too. It's not a right/left thing. It's a Christo-Fascist/Liberal-Democracy thing. Please, I beg of you, stop voting for my enemy. I get it, you don't like Justin Trudeau. Well pretend it's not his name on the Freedom Convoy's hate flags but mine, my daughters' - your daughters'.

Heck, my son's, your son's. Because gender IS a social construct, Patriarchy a death cult.

Pretend those nooses were meant for my neck. Or your own. Because there's nothing democratic about nooses, not in the hands of a mob, which was also what the Freedom Convoy was.

As I keep pointing out, because I do remember, the entire time we were being terrorized by the Freedom Convoy - and make no mistake, we were its target, civilians living in a LPC/ONDP riding in the aptly named Centretown in Ottawa, the capital of Canada - Russia was readying to invade Ukraine, which it did shortly after the Emergency Act was invoked to finally end the occupation and drive the Freedom Convoy mercenaries out of our downtown and back to Alberta from whence most of them came.

Ten million dollars amassed in a few days. Meanwhile they shut down our economy for three weeks. Ordinary people unable to access public services and private businesses. They swarmed us in our grocery stores, ffs, causing them to close, ripped our anti-COVID masks off, polluted our air, assaulted our ears - as everyone in Canada should know since it was all proven, testified to under oath, during a mandatory Public Inquiry into the invocation of the Emergency Act - voted against by the law and order Party, doncha know - as per the legislation governing its use.

They weren't truckers. They were sign-ups once CERB ran out who got really angry when at least one city councillor suggested stopping the flow of funding that kept their engines running and horns honking - not that he, the recently come out mayor, Black police chief, and Liberal/NDP MPs weren't already receiving death threats aplenty.

They went to his house. Not his public office. His private residence.

Oh, and one more time, there were a lot of flags being flown by the Freedom Convoy, including American, Confederate and yes, the swastika, but not one of them was Ukrainian.

Lots of nooses alongside "Fuck Trudeau" flags flown from massive rigs (not to mention a few cranes, just in case we didn't get the violence inherent in the message, which was they they were there to lynch our leaders and take over our government) that may as well've been tanks for all local law enforcement seemed capable of dealing with their drivers.

Please, anybody else would've had their vehicle window smashed, door unlocked, and been dragged off to Ottawa's detention centre at the first parking violation. It's Ottawa, ffs. You can be fined AND have your birdhouse-sized free library ripped out for it being considered too close to the sidewalk for by-law enforcement to turn a blind eye and just let it be.

And just in case you haven't been following along with the trial of the ringleaders here in Ottawa (although from Alberta, ground zero for this latest iteration of fascism, Christo-style) Ottawa Police have likely blown the prosecution's case because, gosh golly gee, a software update deleted all their relevant text messages with the parties on trial.

Meanwhile, a party born in 2003 of guns, the Bible, and white nationalism, Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada, is leading in the polls to form the next government of Canada. This in spite of the fact - the fact - its leader can't even get a national security clearance and publicly supported the Freedom Convoy while it terrorized civilians living and working in downtown Ottawa - later hosting its insurrectionist leaders in OUR Parliament - in the very spot our national Remembrance Day ceremony takes place every year.

Dying for News

I'm not a REAL military strategist, but, if the current Israeli government really wanted to whack Hamas leaders, instead of carpet bombing Gaza and wiping out its captive population of Palestinian families, while we watch helplessly in horror, just as we watch helplessly in horror while Russia's mafia state does the same to Ukrainian families, why isn't it bombing 5-star hotels in Qatar or deploying its world famous assassins to off 'em in their 4000 thread count sheets, instead of pretending it's still David and not Goliath, slaughtering helpless, unarmed, and trapped Palestinian families - just as Hamas did to families in Israel on October 7?

No, please, stop. The facts are quite clear. Netanyahu is a proven unconscionable liar, crook and autocrat who should be in prison, his government openly genocidal in its rhetoric, the settlers homicidal fundamentalist zealots, many of them from Russia, armed to the teeth, who've been terrorizing Palestinian families for months. Years. Israelis themselves, ordinary families like the ones slaughtered by Hamas terrorists, have been in their streets, demonstrating against Netanyahu and his genocidal government for months. Years. They know how dangerous he and his government are and they want him gone. He's their Trump. Period. End of.

And now we know - we know, ffs - he and his government have been deliberately and with intent empowering Hamas for years.

Years? Decades.

The fact is, and it is a fact, not a conspiracy theory, not anti-Israel/pro-Palestine sentiment (which is no such thing, it's pro-citizen sentiment, but whatever, it wouldn't be a pointlessly divisive war of words without incendiary labels, would it) a fact, Netanyahu and his government have been in bed with Hamas leaders for years. Why? Because extremists are always on the same side against civil society, they're against you, me, the Israeli citizens demonstrating against their corrupt government, the Palestinian citizens just trying to survive from day to day without going stark-raving mad as I surely would be by now, that's why.

It makes no sense, no one is safer, and it doesn't matter to the dead children and their bereaved parents which extremist pulled the trigger.

I. Would. Be. Insane. With. Grief. And. Rage.

What about you? Pretend for a minute instead of defending this eye for an eye for an eye and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc on Twitter, slandering and attacking people who don't share your apparent zeal for reactionary slaughter, you're facing down the fact - in real life - that you and your children have no place to be on this Earth anymore, that even this open air prison you've been consigned to is being destroyed, and no one is offering you and your children refuge because the leaders who can are pretending the Goliath bombing you is still David and supplying them with ever more bombs and you with, well, what difference does it make if they send you food or not. There's nowhere to eat it anyway.

Sorry, but there's only one side to be on here, mine, your own, humanity's, and if you think by slandering your co-citizens for pointing out the insanity of responding to a terrorist attack on Israelis by carpet bombing Palestinians trapped in Gaza, which, by the way and in case you haven't bothered to google while you mindlessly rah rah this so-called defence, is 41 km long and 10 km wide, you need to climb down off your virtual hobby horse and get a life.

It's painful watching the news. I still take it as my responsibility, the least I can do, bear witness to news delivered conveniently to my home by journalists, many of whom are killed in the process, targeted for slaughter now by terrorists and governments alike, such is the decreasing daylight between them these days.

Ukraine is defending itself from Russian state terrorism.

Israel isn't defending itself. It's raining death and destruction down on Palestinian families. Families just like yours, mine, and the Israeli ones slaughtered by Hamas terrorists.

And You Are?

So I just finished another Liane Moriarty book. This one was called "What Alice Forgot". It starts off with Alice falling at the gym and hitting her head, whereupon she loses her memory of the past ten years.

At first it kind of freaked me out, in an existential way, but as the novel progressed I started to enjoy the concept. By the end I was transformed into a whole new person.

Kidding. Sort of. Not?

It came to me (via a free library!) on the heels of another book, a Canadian one, "Courage My Love" by Sarah Dearing, which reminded me (a teeny tiny bit) of an Anne Tyler book I read years ago where an unappreciated wife and mother leaves her life in one town to start a new life in another. Although it was an Anne Tyler novel so our protagonist returns to her old family, leaving her new (and better) one somewhat in the lurch (in my opinion).

I always hated that about Anne Tyler. I'd be getting such a vicarious thrill from the protagonist's new tidy life, chock full of appreciation, and then, boo, she goes back to the old messy one, chock full of petty grievances. For a while I even knew a real life wife and mother who left hearth and home to live in a bachelor apartment with no tv, no internet, just library books and a landline. Everybody in her old family was mad at her but she'd left because she had to and it was fascinating to me, her downsizing. Fast forward a couple of years and she was getting married again and moving into a big stupid house to be a wife and stepmother to a bunch of teenagers. I must have looked so disappointed at her news she actually apologized for it, albeit while gushing with happiness.

The Sarah Dearing novel is no Anne Tyler novel, of course. It's grittier, not always comprehensible to me, and takes place in Kensington Market, where I thought I wanted to live once upon a time until I started viewing its available apartments.

During one such viewing the landlord asked me as my head grazed the ceiling, "How tall your boyfriend?"

Ugh. I hated apartment hunting in Toronto in the 80s. It was always a nightmare, you know. Dodgy and over-priced with rent tribunals backed up to the eyeballs. We did win a case, though, against O'Shanter Developments. The judge even came to inspect the non-existent repairs cited in their reason for jacking our rents 10%. In the end I believe they got 2%. And we got a tenant association (until the feisty go-getting woman who organized it moved, and it fell apart, 'natch).

Dearing's novel has a rough (and, in my opinion, rushed) ending that didn't sit well with me in the same way Anne Tyler's return to home and hearth doesn't, either. Although the last Anne Tyler I read ended in divorce and death, so there's that new twist to her plots.

I guess even Anne got tired of wrapping her books up in a family-sized bow.

(The one time owner of "Courage My Love" had a crush on my older sister, if memory serves. I bought a few bits and pieces from there, none of which survived my wash and wear for long, being pretty much exclusively dryclean only.)

A Liane Moriarty novel is no Anne Tyler novel, either (and I've enjoyed them all) but she pulls off a trick in "What Alice Forgot" that got me thinking so much I believe I actually think differently now.

Spoiler Alert!!

Most of "What Alice Forgot" is Alice being puzzled by how much she and everybody around her have changed, and not for the better, in the ten years she can't remember happening. Her memory has left off at her being an easy-going and fun newlywed, happily looking forward to the birth of their first child with her loving, easy-going and fun husband.

Fast forward the ten years she's forgotten and she's a keyed-up and no-nonsense divorcing mother of three, whose relationships with others have changed, too, and not for the better.

Now, as an aside, until I read this book - I guess there's a reason Liane Moriarty is so popular (she's the author of Big Little Lies) - I'd really not appreciated how reading novels expands our horizons, changes us, sometimes in ways so profound it's like we emerge a different being.

I know! How daft is that? But it was like my brain lit up all of a sudden. All those characters, their lives, their stories, they're part of my life, my story. Finally, I get it. Never again will I think of reading as something to do only when everything else is done.

The remains of the day indeed.

But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about letting go of the past and all those petty grievances with each other some of us cling to like grim death, how freeing it would be to just... forget about them, like they never happened, wipe the slate clean and go forth in the grace of innocence.

A couple of nights ago I attended a housing association meeting, our housing association having previously caused me a kidney stone, and it was fine. Better than fine. Reassuring. Maybe even pleasant. I realized the people who've been on the board since I walked out of an annual general meeting a few years ago were much better at this thankless volunteer job than I could ever hope to be. And in spite of my concern there'd be no one naive enough to take on the job after them, there were more people running for election than positions to fill.

A miracle. Quorum. Candidates. The newbies all Millennials as Gord intended. And I had nothing to do with any of it beyond encouraging my neighbour to run, which she did, ignoring all my "I'm running because" advice and getting herself elected anyway.

My Blond Companion and I walked back home from the meeting (we'd gone with our other neighbour who never walks when he can drive and has more gas powered tools for his postage stamp sized lawn than an 18-hole golf course but also knows how to do stuff we don't, so...) and while we walked I thought about "What Alice Forgot" and I could practically feel myself letting go a million and one memories that had been weighing me down for years.

It brought to mind a Macedonian of my acquaintance once upon a time consistently, and accidentally, referring to "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", a topic of conversation in our 80s office, as the incredible lightness of being. That's what I was enjoying feeling, the incredible lightness of being.

The next day I thought more about the whole forgetting thing and how freeing it would be to let it all go, memories of past relationships, as in memories of relationships that are part of the past, not the present, as well as memories of people as they were in the past, not the present, and relationships in the present that I want to put in the past.

Anybody reading the book would find themselves enjoying the life of Alice who'd forgotten the past (bearing in mind she's otherwise perfectly fine) and rooting for her to go on without it. Cripes, even Alice is torn about regaining her memory of it, so fraught does knowledge of it seem to have made everyone else's present.

Are those cosy memories of reading to three little kids tucked up in bed, playing store with buttons as money, and vowing to live, all of us together, forever and ever lifting me up, lightening my mood, freeing me to embrace how it is now? Or are they really just holding me down, dragging me back, stopping me from fully appreciating my life now, who I am now, how it is now.

Anyway, this is all coinciding with my increase in caloric intake, having finally made the connection between eating to soothe the soul (like reading fiction to expand it), weaning myself off the 10mgs of fluoxetine (Prozac) I've been taking the past several months, and getting geared up to go out and about in this world I suddenly appreciate being just another random cog in the wheel of.

And to prove it, I'm just going leave that preposition dangling, like an illiterate slattern, yes I am.😀

Canadian Politics 101

Believe it or not, I try not to get too political with this iteration of my blog, and I'll keep this short, but it strikes me as absurd that Conservatives are getting away with pretending Pierre Poilievre doesn't want a security clearance by claiming it's so he can talk freely about security issues he'd need a security clearance to know anything about.🙈🙉🙊

Never mind all the easily disproven other lies he's been telling for years now, how the hell is he supposed to be Prime Minister without a security clearance?💁

The fact is, he can't get one, knows he can't get one, and everyone else knows he can't get one.💩

So part one of my question is: Why can't Pierre Poilievre get a security clearance? And part two is: How does that fact (because it's a fact) not make him a national security risk?💣

Because the other glaring fact in all this is his public association with and public support from the far Right (we used to call them Neo-Nazis, but whatever) both foreign and domestic, along with the other glaring fact he's been criss-crossing the country raking in money, a lot of it dark, for years now, too.💀

And now we have poll after self-selecting poll predicting this dark money funded phoney bullshitter who can't get a security clearance will be Prime Minister in 2025, a scant ten years after Americans elected Putin, I mean, Trump President?🙅

Hello? Publicly funded Canadian security apparatus? Is anybody home?👿

Moving On - Not

The trial is finally underway for a couple of the Freedom Convoy ringleaders, but I'm mostly ignoring it. They're my kryptonite. Time to leave it to the judge.💪

I continue to ride my bike to the pond every day and have a swim. The other day I had it all to myself. Then a couple of people showed up and we had a pleasant chat about what a great season it's been. But just as I was leaving, two women showed up, one with what sounded like a Russian accent, although I'm not great with eastern European accents, talking at the other about her "practice", how she's helping people heal. The other woman I recognized as a regular, although we've never spoken. She keeps to herself.🙅

Anyway, the one with the accent was aggressively spewing forth all manner of anti-vaxxer garbage, right down to the vaccine infecting us with the virus, sterilizing her "clients", and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc. The other woman was allowing herself to be splattered with it, even volunteering she'd been vaccinated because her doctor suggested she should due to her auto-immune condition, but then got the virus and was sick for a couple of weeks.😷

"See!" shouted the other woman. "The vaccine gave you the virus!"💩

I muttered "oh shut up" when I went by them, but it was involuntary, as I long ago made myself promise to never engage with an anti-vaxxer, having figured out in early days it's what they want, and there's zero percentage in it.🙈🙉🙊

But she just continued on with her proselytizing, anyway, likely not having even heard me, as she was in full spew forth mode by this point.💩

Then, as I was walking towards my bike, my eyes filled with tears. It's so frustrating, the irrationality of it all. No, more than frustrating, terrifying. So many adults, lots of them parents, some of them in positions of power over us, either fervently believing anti-social irrational garbage, or pretending to believe it. And they're everywhere. In our faces. Freedom Convoyers attacked us, in our streets, on our properties, ripping off our masks, tearing down our PRIDE flags, threatening our children. And the people we pay to defend us from attack - the Freedom Convoy may as well have invaded in tanks, ffs - either couldn't or wouldn't.👮

And that's when it hit me, why their unconscionable co-opting of the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust, wearing their yellow stars, claiming persecution and victimhood even while they invade our school board meetings and picket our schools and libel and slander anyone who stands up to them, flipping reality on its head while they attack us, turning truth into lies. It's projection. The fact is, people who believe anti-social irrational garbage cause Holocausts, they don't suffer them. Always in the back of my mind now is what it must've been like to be Jewish in Nazi Germany surrounded by anti-semitic white nationalist Christian mobs believing anti-social irrational garbage about them, how terrifying it must have been, no reasoning with the unreasonable, and nobody who can defending you from them.👮

At its core, anti-vaxism is anti-semitism, the same anti-semitism that's plagued our societies forever, the horrifying facts of it learned when we studied the Holocaust in elementary school. The Freedom Convoy travelled from Alberta, home of the Reform Party, our Bible Belt, and a known hotbed of anti-semitism to punish us, residents of a Liberal riding. Of course I'm having panic attacks. Anne Frank, a girl just like me once-upon-a-time, was murdered because adults in her society believed anti-social irrational garbage.💀

Putin and the Russians who support him have for years now been spewing forth anti-social irrational garbage about Ukrainians. And just like our anti-vaxxers and their Freedom Convoy, he believes, or pretends to believe, the opposite of the truth, telling Russians they're the persecuted ones, even while he deliberately murders Ukrainian children with his indiscriminate bombing of their homes.💀

It's all so crazy-making. Trump, Trump, Trump. Canadian Conservatives wanting Pierre Poilievre to be Prime Minister. Why? He publicly supported the Freedom Convoy while it attacked us, ffs, Canadians. He's a fellow traveller of Jordan Peterson, a certifiable nutcase and supporter of Putin's genocidal war on Ukraine. According to our pollsters, if a federal election were held today, Pierre Poilievre would be elected Prime Minister of Canada.💩

In the meantime, instead of being on Twitter, I go to the library and take out books, often based on their cover, and read them, the key for me being the deadline of a due date. Even though it's artificial I still respect it and return the books, read, within three weeks. I also pilfer from free libraries and buy new (almost always used but occasionally new) books to store in my glass doored bookcases. I do this because I know not to subject myself, not just to the back and forth between the sane and insane, but to the equivocators.🙈🙉🙊

There's no middle ground here. There's no truth to be found in the anti-vax "movement". It's the same anti-social irrational garbage that resulted in the Holocaust. I witnessed the Freedom Convoy. I know what I saw. It was a white power rally, Christian nationalists who may as well all have been waving swastikas and Confederate flags, and Pierre Poilievre and Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier and Candice Bergen and Randy Hillier and Hell's Angels and Diagolon Accelerationists and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc were all there and cheering it on. And the publicly funded police we pay to protect us from violence, our most ballyhooed and well-funded of all first responders, were either unable or unwilling to do it - even when our healthcare workers and their patients, the sick and dying, were attacked.😡

I want people to like me, it's my achilles heel, and I don't always speak up when I should. So I'm doing this now, screaming into cyber space, while I wait and watch for the next panic attack I hope not to have.😱

Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be my post but here we are anyway. Again, I guess. Thanks for reading.💗

Trauma Ward

So I'd like to wean myself off fluoxetine but maybe not yet. My doctorless Blond Companion suggests making an appointment with the doctor I'm lucky to have, but I don't like to take up his time needed by others with more pressing medical issues. I know he's feeling enormous stress himself, given the shitkicking Ford Nation is giving our healthcare system while it sells off our prime agricultural land to its mobster bosses, one of whom has already flipped their take to China.😷

Not to worry, though. Ford Nation is mad, folks, and gonna buy it back with our money, albeit not for us. At least our mobbed up OPP had the decency to hand off the investigation to our RCMP.💩

Prediction? Ford Nation will get away with it.👮

Unrelated prediction? Donald Trump won't. We don't bring mobsters to justice. The US does.👮

I unfriended a Facebook friend yesterday and will likely unfriend more as time goes on. I don't want condescending men in my life anymore and he had too much of a Richard Dawkins thing going on for my liberal feminist taste.👸

I grow old.👵

The other evening CBC had an item about unhoused citizens coping with trauma by self-medicating in the Byward Market because they have nowhere private to be (my phrasing, not CBC's). And if that isn't bad enough for Byward Market tourism, Xi Jingping is punishing us for calling out his interference in our elections/bullying of our citizens, by ordering his citizens to boycott travel to Canada.👮

Yeah well maybe it's time we did a cost/benefit analysis of the tourism industry, anyway, because it seems to me billions of middle-class bucket lists getting ticked off before billions more of us shuffle off this burning mortal coil, taking entire species and sherpa guides with us, isn't as sustainable as we want to pretend it is.🙅

By the way, there's no such thing as an eco-tourist. Just leave the Galapagos to the turtles, ffs.💔

But that's not what this post is about because this post is about letting go past resentments to make room for new ones.😀

Obviously, I'm kidding (sort of). What I mean is, no more blaming mom. Or you. Or your mom. And especially no more blaming myself. I don't know how to transform a culture of competition and entitlement to one of cooperation and caring but I can work on my own behaviour to be "more good/less bad" as My Blond Companion once put what we all want out of life. And I can ally myself with others already hard at it because Gord knows it takes knowhow I don't have to get there. Cripes, I only just made the connection between eating because hungry and feeling better because full. That's how traumatized it turns out I am and I've had a very privileged middle-class life.👸

I suppose I should thank the Freedom Convoy for amping my emotional dysregulation to 11, resulting in the debilitating panic attacks that led me to medication, therapy and hours spent reading about trauma and its effects on the body. We live in a world created and run by traumatized people who would rather die than show vulnerability. I grew up surrounded by adults numbing themselves in one way or another and labelling kids critical of the unfairness we witnessed day after day after day as overly sensitive pains in the ass.👶

Interesting choice of words, eh? Think about it. Do you know any old people who had therapy? I don't. My mother preferred death to vulnerability, ffs. There was nothing more terrifying to her than being vulnerable. Why? I can only imagine. Grew up poor during the Depression, went through a world war, was widowed with 4 children in the early 60s. I grew up surrounded by The Greatest Generation priding itself on sucking it up and swallowing it down, stiffening upper lips and straightening spines, no pain a good stiff drink couldn't cure and if it couldn't, well, life's tough but guess who cares about your problems more than you? That's right, nobody.💀

And if not these traumatized products of The Greatest Generation calling all our shots it was buggered and buggering bullies mad at mommy, grown up private schoolboys, Boomers and GenXers pretending to have fun burning hundred dollar bills in front of unhoused citizens coping with trauma by self-medicating in public because they have nowhere private to be. Cripes, name a family more fucked up than the Fords. Meanwhile, one brother was mayor of Toronto and the other's Premier of Ontario. Why? The Fords all need therapy, not power.❤

Like the therapists say, it's not our fault, but it is our responsibility, so that's where I'm going to put my energy going forward, which is the only direction we can go, anyway.💁

A Middle-Class Life

I've become pretty good at muting CBC ads targeting gullible seniors, new car/truck suckers and sports gambling addicts but every once in a while I forget, and the other news hour there was one for the lottery, the jackpot at $55 million.👀

For some reason, after decades of not even considering buying a ticket, I suddenly found myself thinking maybe I should. But before doing so I decided to consult with My Blond Companion about it, there being no point in buying a lottery ticket without the expectation of winning, and $55 million is a lot of money.💃

Relationship + money = discussion.💁

Well, no sooner did we start discussing the possibilities, his positive, mine negative, when I realized I didn't want to win $55 million after all, and we resumed watching the news.👵

Imagine living so privileged a life the possibility of winning $55 million isn't worth the price of a ticket. Well, a walk to the convenience store, too, in front of which sits a very unstable resident of our 'hood who can neither be ignored nor greeted without incurring her wrath/my guilt at the wild disparity in our living conditions.💩

I still shop for groceries paying whatever it ends up costing, but I'm shopping for two adults eating a black bean based diet, and cook my own beans.💪

No fair judging me for avoiding the convenience store altogether, either. Just the other day I made the mistake of smiling at a woman I sat beside on a crowded unmasked bus and she immediately began to unload her made-up life story, a wealthy heiress cut off by her family, and so having to travel the country house sitting for strangers.👸

I'm as bad as anybody these days with the ages of others but she mentioned being in her 50s, so who knows how long she's been living this fantasy. It was my own fault. She looked normal.👵

Again, no fair judging me for judging a person by their looks, although you can judge me for smiling on the bus, which is totally asking for it.😇

No fair judging me for anything if you still own a car. Our country's on fire, ffs, and all I see while waiting for a bus is single occupancy fossil fuel burners driving by. Our landscape is littered with cars. The new mayor of Ottawa, a CFRA haircut named Mark Sutcliffe, is currently demanding a roadway given over to cyclists and pedestrians be returned to cars. We could've elected a really good mayor, too. Instead Catherine McKenney is trying to improve Ottawa from outside politics: Fix Your City

Pretty much every day for four months of the year I ride my bike through a prosperous middle-class neighbourhood to get to the pond for a swim. It's the life I wanted when I was 12 so how lucky am I to be living it at 64, eh? The neighbourhood brings to mind the childhood we all wanted, for ourselves and then for our kids, the one we lived in books and television shows and movies.👪

I think it should be a field trip for kids from all over. There's even an elementary school where during the school year I get to see kids playing outside same as they ever did. If I'm riding by at the right time I see parents and caregivers doing a drop off. Tire swings hanging from mature trees, basketball nets, adirondack chairs.🙈🙉🙊

One day I noticed a woman from my 'hood, a Qanon cultist, parked outside one of the houses, getting stuff out of her trunk. I know her to be well down the rabbit hole, and have seen her on tv clips disrupting local school board meetings, the Freedom Convoy she supports having moved on from harassing healthcare workers to harassing educators. It was jarring. But she appeared to be familiar with the house she was visiting so I figured she must be providing a service of some kind. Cleaning, most likely.💭

My mother was widowed with four children under the age of ten in the early 60s and still I grew up with Mrs. S. and when she retired Mrs. B. coming once a week to clean our house (and visit with Gram), that's how middle-class my childhood was, or how determined my mother was to live a middle-class life anyway.💁

Maybe it's all the compassionate inquiry videos I've been watching but, as harmful as the cult this woman is in has been and continues to be, because Christo-fascism is the entire why of it, seeing her in this context, non-threatening, widened that crack to let yet a little more light into my life.😇

Several weeks later I rode my bike down a different street than usual, but in the same 'hood, to avoid tree trimmers taking down some of those beautiful mature trees, necessary in the wake of derechos and ice storms, and I saw a very angry looking man stomping down the street, headed to the elementary school where there was a day camp in operation for the summer. At the same time a young boy exited a house with an upside down Canadian flag hanging from it. The man yelled, "Hurry up!" And the boy ran down the driveway to catch up to the man, I assume his father.👺

Sure enough, the boy was dropped off at the school, while the man stomped back to his house, an upside down Canadian flag defacing his million dollar property in a neighbourhood of my childhood dreams, a neighbourhood it's a privilege just to be able to ride my bike through every day on my way to swim in a fresh body of water he could walk to in a fraction of the time.👶

Well that crack I just mentioned widening to let yet a little more light into my life didn't narrow, but it didn't widen, either. Instead I felt the threat of an angry man, an irrational man, a bully convinced of his victimhood, and peddled away to avoid his street in future.😷

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is our wants seem to be in denial of our needs, such are our middle-class lives, with many of us believing we need more instead of knowing we already have too much (there's a reason the retirement course, i.e. taxes and financial planning around them, is the most popular one in government) while others of us sign up with anti-social cults promoting the violent overthrow of democracy.❤

Recalibrating and Famously Dead

So Tuesday I was all set to take My Blond Companion (MBC) in hand, get on a bus, and see the Barbie movie at a Cineplex.💃

I'd chosen my outfit carefully, complete with pink sweater, knowing it would be cold in the theatre, the usual over doing it with air conditioning, and remembered to put earplugs in my pockets.👸

The sound volume of movies is painful for me, which may be partly why I'm not much of a movie goer. Also where I sit matters. I need perspective on the screen so as not to feel overwhelmed by it.👵

Hey, breakthrough - movies in theatres = sensory overload!😵

I've been watching a lot of videos about anxiety, etc, and Gabor Mate's talk on authenticity made me realize how inauthentic I am. It's due to a fear of abandonment, vulnerability, intimacy. As he also says, it's no one's fault, no one's to blame, but it's our responsibility to ourselves and others to work through it.😷

No more blaming mom.👶

Blame the Patriarchy.💩

Anyway, about an hour or so before we were planning to leave for an early afternoon showing (I don't go out in the evenings these days) MBC mused aloud that I may want to forego the popcorn, due to my temporary (but permanent) denture currently (and forever) disguising my hillbilly smile.👹

I assured him I'd be foregoing all offerings at movie theatres henceforth, thanks but no thanks.👸

People who don't have eating disorders with panic attacks on top really don't appreciate how fraught it all is for people who do, but good grief, I got queasy just hearing the word popcorn. How could I ever have eaten movie theatre food, and in a movie theatre? Well, I'll tell you how, by pretending to be an entirely different person than I am.👻

But speaking of queasy, there I was, one minute looking forward to seeing Barbie (I want to see it more than I've wanted to see any movie ever, save for The French Connection when I was 12) the next minute realizing I'd been slowly but surely starting to feel not so good.😰

I waited a bit, did some breathing exercises, then said to MBC, "We may have to leave, that's all. And we'll have to scout out the washrooms first. Oh and sit by the back near the exit so I can get out in a hurry if need be. Sorry, it may be a waste of time."😰

And he was fine with that, he's witnessed the panic attacks up until the lying on the bathroom floor part, but then I realized I was making myself do a thing I wasn't ready to do after all and called it off entirely.😎

He was fine with that, too, not feeling particularly driven to see the Barbie movie anyway, and I joined him on Bernie's walk, suddenly feeling perfectly fine. Great, actually.💪

MBC suggested I plan to see the Barbie movie every day, then cancel on myself, so I always end up feeling great.😀

Later MBC mentioned having lunch with a friend and his friend pointing out we haven't recovered from the pandemic, we just want to think we have so we can get back to normal, or what Gabor Mate refers to as our "myth of normal".💁

Add in the Freedom Convoy's attack on us here in Ottawa, which for me triggered a fight, flight, freeze response, on top of a problem with emotional dys-regulation, and voila - panic attacks.😷

As I've blogged before, I cried with relief when Angela Hewitt (yes, the concert pianist, the liberal elite, herself) during an interview on CBC Ottawa about the effect the Freedom Convoy was having on her life said, "We're being bullied."😖

I know now it would have triggered too many childhood feels: fear, vulnerability, abandonment, betrayal, not being seen, heard. Injustice was everywhere. It was. We were bullied and we bullied. Parenting wasn't a word, therapy unheard of in spite of the adults around us having lived through a depression, fought in world wars. Corporal punishment was meted out by the same principals and vice-principals - all men - and teachers who may also have been sexually abusing us. That was a fact at the ordinary public elementary school I attended. Public record. And I know for a fact it was worse at the ordinary Catholic elementary school Freddie next door attended because he told me all about it. And every day, dodging its bullies - just other even more terrified children - I thanked our Protestant God I wasn't born Catholic and didn't have to suffer the injustices they did at their school, believing ours paled in comparison.😇

Our grade eight teacher/vice-principal eventually, in the '90s, got sentenced to 12 years for the sexual assault of scores of girls over his 25 year career in the Sault. And 12 only because he refused to show remorse for any of it. This is fact. Also a miracle he was brought to justice at all, thanks only to his victims and no thanks to the many adults who let him get away with it.❤

Imagine, Sinead O'Connor was crucified in much of our media and politics for ripping up a picture at the end of her set on SNL of the CEO of our western world's most famously Patriarchal institution - which it is still - for his deliberate and ongoing complicity in covering up/denying the kidnapping, rape and murder of Irish children by his institution's employees. Why? I mean we know why he covered it up/denied it - $$$ - but what's with our media crucifying her for an entirely non-violent protest?😠

And still it goes on, reality fictionalized to suit Patriarchal ideology, blatant bullying witnessed by millions of us, Russians, with the blessing of their Russian Orthodox Church, spiritual leader of Putin and his Russian Mob, kidnapping, raping and murdering Ukrainian children, while much of our media blames everybody but the perpetrators.😠

It seems like small potatoes now, the Freedom Convoy's violence against us, championed by so much of our media, blatant propagandists for it still employed, churning out their lies, our politicians continuing to fuel the fascist fire it lit in downtown Ottawa a year and a half ago now.👵

But the question should be asked louder than ever - how do we sleep while our beds are burning?💔

Relapse

Before I get into it I want to put down here a comment I made on a Facebook friend's post about thinking young and keeping on dancing as we age:

While I still feel like I'm 12, I'm respectful of being 64.👵

In other words, just because I can doesn't mean I should. Take time. There will be even less of it if I trip on the way. Prioritize sleep. Stay hydrated. Eat when hungry. But keep up with the world and how younger people are faring with it. Look after myself so I can be here for others.😇

We oldsters need to reclaim the commons, stand up for the public good, so get your placards ready.😎

I enjoy reading all the lifestyle change stories of the over 60 crowd, too. My goal is to feel like I've had psychedelic therapy without actually taking psychedelics. Comments welcome.💁

So two weeks ago I was revisited by a panic attack, although I'm not sure panic attack is the right name for what I'm experiencing and have been for over a year now.😱

It's more like a reaction to a buildup of feelings, too many feels, some of them resurrected from  childhood. Gabor Maté would say it's trauma, both bit T and little t. He might also say it's a lack of boundaries.🙅

I over-identified with a little beastie and it tipped me over the edge.😿

TMI alert but putting it down in writing helps me connect dots, and I'm well past privacy after a couple of decades of online dot connecting. It's my public service, an indecency I can perform that decent people would rather not.😇

I said yes instead of the no! no! no! no! no! a thousand times no! I was screaming in my head and the result was having to purge from my stomach every bit of the dinner I enjoyed a few evenings into my people-pleasing yes instead of a people-disappointing no! no! no! no! no! a thousand times no!. On the upside, I didn't have to make myself sick, it came up naturally, and probably only lasted an hour or so, with a shorter lead in as well. I felt less alienated than previously and maintained the awareness throughout the unpleasantness that it would pass, and I would feel better soon. On the downside, I had to make quite the dash to the bathroom.😬

It's no one's fault, but it's my responsibility. So live and learn. "No" is a complete sentence.💪

Also, I am enough, I am enough, I am enough. You, on the other hand, might be too much.👸

It's tricky, feeling like I'm enough - as is - when I no longer work for money (or haven't in a while, anyway) don't drink, smoke pot, eat meat, fish, seafood, poultry - mushrooms. Suffice it to say that going out on the town isn't like it used to be, that's for sure. I'm a day person now, too, and unless it's lunch out, I'd rather be at home, winding it all down. I like going to bed. A lot. My dreams are very revealing, sleep as important to me as fibre.💃

Drinking, inclusion, adulthood are all very intertwined in our culture. It can be an effort to not feel left out the social scene when one doesn't drink (anymore). Seasoned teetotallers would advise finding a new social scene, which is maybe what the pond has become in spring, summer and fall, and something else could be in winter.😎

I'm not sad, or feeling deprived, I'm relieved. Happy, really. But the panic attacks (purging attacks, really) are upsetting my apple cart, an unwelcome, but I guess necessary, reminder all is not well within. Being a Sober Sally is a good re-start (I even enjoy it!) to a process of introspection, that's all.😷

I helped a friend at the pond recently. She's up at night worried about a proposed rent increase. She's been in her home for years, so the landlord is trying to bully her out. But she's feisty and an able researcher so I told her, "don't take it personally, take the personal right out of it, build your case as a civic duty".💁

It's advice I'd have to be a completely different person to follow myself, but she got back to me a few days later, delighted with her new perspective. I couldn't believe the headway she'd made, although I could because, like I said, she's feisty and an able researcher. Also, she doesn't have the internet to distract her from the work of life that needs doing, not opining on to other tweeters.👵

Having left Twitter (and now you have to log in to even read it) I've no longer got the distraction of it and am reading more - whole books! - but still having trouble keeping up with the day-to-day maintenance of life. Decision-making is less fraught but still fraught enough I have trouble sweating even the small stuff. I can decide to leave a marriage (well, after 20 years of having one foot out the door, my ex and I having about as much chemistry as any two people who don't like each other can - love/shmove) but deciding what to make for a non-meat dinner is a challenge every day.😖

Normally Anne Tyler errs on the side of staying married, so read "The Amateur Marriage" for a different take. I devoured it. One of the characters could have been an estranged sibling of mine, a friend's estranged child, maybe even one of my own. We'll see. Reading the book I was struck by how desperately we try to keep our families together, keep everybody in the fold, in spite of some members not wanting to be in it. I left a marriage for good reason but you'd think from the reaction of my family and his I'd run off and joined the circus. Growing up, my older sister and mother were at war with each other, the spoils my dead father, whose tragedy they each wore like a banner. Reading the book I remembered a time when my brother, younger sister and I were at home with Gram, my mother and older sister both away, and how nice it was. And yet later I would try to convince my sister not to cut us off, in spite of her behaviour, which was awful, my mother uncompromising. Why? Why do we want relationships with people who don't want relationships with us? Why does it feel like our failure when a family member chooses to drop us? Why does it feel so personal and yet like collective punishment? Is it ego? Why do we step in, some of us, to take responsibility for the choices of others, while others of us can let that relationship go, move on, oh well, onward and upward.💔

Years ago I decided to try a trick I'd read about and wish an enemy, who was preoccupying my life, well. Sincerely. Wish him success in his endeavours. And it worked. He no longer preoccupied my life. So why haven't I tried that trick with a loved one, never mind just a friend or family member, an actual loved one, wish him well, success in his endeavours?😘

Ah, and there it is, why I blog.😉

Thanks for reading.💗

Life in a Time of Great Stupid🙈🙉🙊

Subtitle: Looking a Gift Horse in the Butt😀

So the other day, home from my daily bike ride and swim in a publicly owned fresh water swimming hole, I realized this is it, I'm living my best life. That thing we're supposed to do? I'm doing it.💃

I basked for a moment. Then, not one to tempt fate, I moved on to worrying about all the bad stuff that could happen, any minute, to snatch my best life living away, like being denied access to said publicly owned fresh water swimming hole.😱

I know, I know. I'm not living my best life if I'm worrying about the future. Also, I'm still regretting the past. Like why did I persist in relationships with men who prefer living alone as evidenced by their decades since of living alone? Women have terrible judgement and are always looking for projects to cram into our bustling lives, making over a man being one of our favourites. If a man wanted a woman he'd have her. One? He could have a dozen.👵

Also, the air quality in Ottawa today is at "try not to breathe" (Quebec's forests on fire, as Western Europe is about to appreciate) so any best life living has to be done indoors.😟

Yesterday, when the air quality in Ottawa was also at "try not to breathe" (we're off the chart used to measure air quality so we can only assume every breath is hazardous now) I organized fabric into "to sew" piles and decided I'm done weeding out clothes. Everything stays. I'm going to start dressing to go out again (once we can safely breathe the air). Live my best life by example in all my best thrift shop scores.💃

Last... week? month? year? I read an article in the NYTs, free for some reason, featuring a middle-class couple, GenXers (not Boomers) with two daughters, 20 and 13, who purchased a vacation property, a "simple cabin" on an island. Alas, the "simple cabin" was sinking, due to lack of a foundation (the cabin, not the island, although that island of garbage the size of Manhattan floating around the Pacific doesn't have a foundation and it's not sinking). And so thousands of dollars later and with the help of friends and rellies, the day was saved, and now this couple owns two properties in which to expand their middle-class living.👪

I'm not envious, nor am I pointing fingers. As I say, I ride my bike to a publicly owned fresh water swimming hole every day, publicly owned bike lanes almost all the way. In terms of keeping it simple, which this couple reportedly wanted to do, it doesn't get much simpler. Although eventually I want access to the much larger privately owned fresh water lake beside the much smaller publicly owned fresh water swimming hole, but I'm good for now, placard at the ready should it be required. Fair warning, City Hall.💪

So yes, I'm not pointing fingers, or picking on anyone in particular, because owning a couple of private properties, especially a waterfront cottage, is middle-class life for a lot of Canadians and has been for decades now. Plus vacations away from those properties, including abroad. Or at least to Disneyland or maybe an island resort. Whatever. We're surrounded by expectations, our own and others.👪

Cripes, if not for our once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, we might never have experienced the relief, ever so briefly, really, of not having to live up to them.😷

I know people who've had to sell their cottage (we call it a camp in Northern Ontario but I've been in southern Ontario and/or Ottawa too long and say cottage now like yooz guys) because they could no longer abide the trespassing by other cottage owners (their property included a tap for the fresh water spring feeding the lake) and their various and sundry contraptions motoring around the lake, a lake that includes a public beach anyway. Also their kids were grown up and maintaining the property became too much work, the expense no longer worth it, and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.👎

Now cottage owners living on land are even having to contend with cottage owners living in the lake, in shipping containers, of all grotesqueries. And since the lake is actually publicly owned? I guess we're all having to contend with it.👎👎

As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, "It's always something."👿

Meanwhile, we publicly owned fresh water swimming hole people live with the threat of it being taken away from us if it gets too popular with we the public to whom it belongs. We're made to feel afraid the wealthy neighbourhood it's in can deny us access at any time, its designation as a conservation area (there's a condo development around it and I hear more lawn mowers, leaf blowers and chain saws there some days than I do in my not urban but not suburban either 'hood, and there's weed spraying pretty much everywhere) used to close it off to us, while the private condo owners around it maintain their private access. So we all adhere to the 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. hours like good little interlopers and do what we can while we're there to keep it clean and quiet.😇

And it works. Everybody who goes there to swim loves it. Some people don't even swim, they just sit on one of the three benches and gaze out over the water for a bit. Or chitchat with strangers who are then no longer strangers. There aren't change rooms or washrooms and only a tiny beach once the water goes down (the city stopped pumping water into it, claiming it wasn't doing anything to keep up the water level all summer) so it's not a place to hang out for any real length of time, although people still try, while us regulars encourage a "swim and go" attitude - by example. Also by grumbling amongst each other about beachgoers. And since us regulars go pretty much every day, we see more of each other (literally!) for at least four months of the year than we do anyone else in our lives.💞

It's the best part of life here in our nation's capital.💘

But because it's publicly owned, and we live in a time of great stupid, so many of us believing we need to protect ourselves (from who? each other? the future? the air?) by owning as much property as we can afford (or not), we live with a knife over our heads, i.e. the threat our publicly owned property can be taken away from us at any time, as we have no indeterminate right of access. Why? Because we live in a culture that prioritizes individual wealth over public health, i.e. a stupid culture.😡

And so it was that just as I realized I'm living my best life I also realized how much better it would be if I wasn't holding my breath all the time (I mean metaphorically, although I'm keeping it shallow these days, even indoors) worried we the public will one day be denied access to our own fresh water swimming hole.😬

I'm tired of it. Because it's not just our swimming hole under constant threat of being privatized in one way or another, it's everything publicly owned. And instead of standing together to protect our publicly owned property from being privatized, like healthcare, we're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to own cabins on islands.💪 

Like I said, life in a time of great stupid.😐

You Say You Want an Evolution

Facebook friends have been posting an article about our evolution, taking us back 4 billion years, past apes and reptiles and what look suspiciously like the silverfish I used to spot in the bathroom of my apartment in downtown Ottawa, to self-replicating mRNA molecules.👾

Kidding, self-replicating RNA molecules. No m.😜

Not kidding, I'm a Creationist now.🙏

The thing is, the article concludes with the prediction of a "Great Averaging", to come at some future date. As in no more diversity, just same/same human beings.😕 

This was confusing to me (hence the confused emoticon) because I assumed we were already there, and have been for quite some time, same/same, diversity a word we use to cover made up stuff like culture, race and gender. Our gang colours, as it were.👥

I mean, sure, we're individuals, but so are my grandcats. We're as "same/same" within our species as they are in theirs.😼

Cripes, ants and bees are more diverse than we are, more diverse even than our grandcats, who can at least be Siamese, British Shorthair, Manx, Snowshoe, Singapura, Bengal and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc. Meanwhile, ants and bees have actual Queens. We just call other same/same humans queens - or kings, so they can pad out our news hours and/or murder us with impunity.👸

But even CBC knows, deep down, King Charles III is the same under his bejewelled crown and ermine robes as Joe Sixpack and Sally Housecoat from Tallahassee, who are the same as Malala and Cher and back around to his cast out son, Prince Harry, and Prince Harry's wicked step-mother Camilla.👺

Also, how many Wallises and Dianas and Meghans, how many Camillas, ffs, will it take for CBC to admit Buckingham Palace is just Coronation Street in drag.💂

Speaking of CBC, last evening's Ottawa newscast, already chock-a-block with ads featuring lone cars/jeeps/trucks racing through empty cities/deserts/wilderness, graced viewers with a several minutes long interview featuring a woman who recently purchased one such vehicle. She advised viewers if we, too, want to purchase a new vehicle, we must go to a dealership and beg a sales associate to let us buy whatever's available on the lot, no matter the price - or - fuhgeddaboudit.🙅

I only wish I was kidding but the interview went on to include a check in with a sales associate at a car dealership who confirmed, yup, what she said - or - fuhgeddaboudit.🙅

I also learned the Stanley Cup was finally won by somebody, somebody else bought the Senators (the hockey team) and somebody something the Raptors.💤

But back to the "Great Averaging"/end of diversity (which I still contend was always here). We used to refer to death as the "Great Leveller", but Twitter long since overtook death and now Artificial Intelligence has overtaken Twitter.👽

Just look at how happy Yoko Ono's John Lennon was to be alive again and singing alongside Linda McCartney's Paul at Glastonbury last year, like Wings and Silly Love Songs never happened.👻

When has a rich man not spent his humanity trying to buy divinity? 

But I'm lucky because I have faith, in spite of having been president of our housing association, and on my way to swim at a pond, I pass an elementary school and see children playing with each other, same as it ever was, running around, making noise, puppies at the dog park. Some of those children transcend their entirely made-up gender, as do some of the pond goers, also same as it ever was. Some are neurodiverse, too. Again, same as it ever was. But because we're well into a time of "Great Averaging", and our individuality is still and always will be the essence of our humanness, we all just want more and ever more recognition of it, the freedom to live well as our unique selves within our entirely made-up, diverse or not, various and sundry gated communities world over.💃

A while ago, before I read the article, I was watching TVO's The Agenda. Steve Paikin was interviewing an expert on gender. Eventually he asked the question, with regard to boy vs girl, how much of this gender stuff is nurture and not nature. Her answer? "All of it."💣

His response?👀

It was mine, too, not because I didn't know it already but because it was so succinctly put. Finally. So forget the "Great Averaging", in spite of having been president of a housing association, I'm putting my faith in our "Great Humanizing".😇

Making Do

I've been watching videos on trauma, trying to piece together why I started having panic attacks last spring, and my takeaway so far is to pay more attention to what I'm doing, and thinking, because thinking leads to reacting, and what I think and how I react is within my control to change.💁

I can think myself into quite a state, I've noticed, now I've started paying attention to this hamster wheel brain of mine. Allowing myself to try out prescription medication to address baseline anxiety was a significant step for me, having always been suspicious of pharmaceuticals, instead aggravating my condition with beer and pot.😜

I was and am as guilty as an anti-vaxxer of believing against all medical evidence to the contrary the health measure to mitigate the effects of the illness is the danger and not the illness.😷

Of course, the first behaviour I changed when I started taking the medication (fluoxetine, as in, Prozac) was to cut out beer and pot, and it's quite possible it's all I needed to do. Self-medicating may work for some, but not me. Your just enough is my too much, which I should know by now, but addiction's a helluva drug.😀

My preferred state isn't even mildly tipsy as it turns out (and this is what every addict wants, none of us want to overdose in an alley) but rather to be engaged in sober reflection while working on a crossword puzzle to take the edge off.💤

Contentment with how it is right now is the state of grace I didn't know I was looking for but here it is.🙇

Also, leaving Twitter, which is a big deal, to read novels has been helpful in "thinking it through", "it" being the stuff of life. Reading makes me think of writing and writing helps me reframe the stories of blame and guilt I tell myself into stories of resilience, thanks to being armed with a sense of humour.💃

Also my mind isn't darting around anymore and I'm better able to think the present through to everything not being my problem alone to solve RIGHT NOW!!👮

In fact, nothing has required my flight, fight or freeze response. Nothing. Not a single goddamned thing has happened since I started thinking it through to require my flight, fight or freeze response. Also, I'm having the most illuminating dreams, which I occasionally post on Facebook where it turns out I'm friends with an illuminating dream analyst.😎

Hell is other people, sure, but also comfort, joy and insight.💕

The other evening I was watching CBC Ottawa news and at the end of his weather report Vikta Paolo smiled, and maybe because I was alone at the time and so more engaged with his animated delivery than I would have been had My Blond Companion been watching with me, I smiled back.😊

I felt an immediate release of tension and a radiating warmth around my heart. It was instant, the fluctuation from one state of being to another, just by smiling in response to another person's smile.💥

(Dear men who tell women to smile: You smile. And stay away from women. Children, too. You know what I'm taking about.😠)

Then, still smiling, I hauled myself out of the chair and made a "Fridge Wars" dinner of this and that, praised by My Blond Companion later for its delicious ingenuity.👍

Somewhere back there I skipped my mother to turn into Gram, who claimed her greatest reward in life was making a good meal out of what she had on hand, especially when we ate it all, no leftovers.👵

(Don't worry. I don't need the affirmation to appreciate my creating the sublime out of making do. I've long been my biggest fan. In fact, I'm so good at it, I decided to make it my retirement plan.👵)

Gram was the source of much fascination in my youth. Her needs so basic, her wants in line with her needs. For years I only ever saw her in one dress, although she had two, and I saw her every day because she lived with us. But like a housekeeper, not a grandmother. It was hard to believe she was my mother's mother. Of course it was hard to believe my mother had a mother at all and wasn't just born being ours, coming home from work to check the mail Gram had put on the mantle before changing from her high school librarian clothes into her casual clothes to have a martini and watch Mike Douglas.💤

It wasn't until I was alone in her seniors residence apartment, during her stint in hospital before the nursing home, going through photo albums of her travels, rescued from the laundry garbage by another resident after she dumped them all there, I realized I didn't know my mother at all. You don't know yours, either, but like another person terminating an unwanted pregnancy or transitioning gender (especially if that person is an adolescent or child) that's none of my business.👤

(One more time: Patriarchs want fascism, not freedom.👺)

Even at the time I heard about the album dump I knew it was likely a reaction to not being able to see the photos anymore, her vision too deteriorated. But the lady across the hall rescued them because, well, I suppose she thought my mother would regret it later. I'm glad they were rescued, though, because when I saw the photo of the stranger who was also my mother, I understood both of us better. I don't know where they are now and I don't care. They really only meant something to her, and it makes perfect sense to me now that she would throw them out once she could no longer make out the images.💔

Anyway, it's with Gram in mind I'm determined to continue reframing the stories I've long, too long, been telling myself, banishing blame and guilt from the narrative, keeping it simple, putting a hilarious slant on all those old stories and sending them out into the world in another book. Later. Because thanks to Barbara Gowdy's "The Romantic" (2003), which I recently read, I've been inspired to write another book about my many office temp jobs. I want to do my part for the historical record, lest future generations think the 80s were all about snorting cocaine through $100 bills in the washroom at Bemelmens (Toronto, where I did not snort cocaine through a $100 bill in the washroom).💪

By the way, if anybody knows how to get in touch with Meredith MacNeill to read my previous and only other book so far "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!" please let me know. She'd be perfect as me in the CBC television series adaptation, which would really help with my Making Do retirement plan.💃

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.💪