Let Your Liberal Freak Flag Fly

I realized something about reading, which is that we can fall out of practice, but it only takes one good book to get us back in the groove again.

Example: I was trying to read Adam Gopnik's latest "A Thousand Small Sanities" (The Moral Adventure of Liberalism) but was having trouble taking it in, in spite of an enthusiastic recommendation by My Blond Companion. Then a hold came in at the liberry for Lori Gottlieb's "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" so I put Gopnik aside to read Gottlieb, whose 412 pages I put away in two sittings. Then I re-started Gopnik and lo and behold it's registering just fine.

I'm glad because I'm the Liberal both the Left and the Right love to hate these days, a neo-Liberal to the Left (well, sorry, comrades, but we've gotta make room for people who just wanna have fun and make lotsa money), a Commie to the Right (yeah, kinda, some days, but I like owning property and so do my friends on the Left, so hypocrites much, comrades?), and I want to better understand and defend why I hold to the politics I do, because I'm not really a middle of the road person otherwise.

Compromise is a hard one for me. Conservatives are stupid and mean. New Democrats are holier'n thou finger pointers who act as if making six figures and owning million dollar piles is barely scraping by in this regulated capitalist hellscape known as Canada.

I can say that because My Blond Companion and I are Plucky Paupers who together barely make five figures. So there. We were also born into the middle-class so we don't spend our days whining about our financial misfortune because we pretty much live like Rockefellers, thank you for asking.

No idea why double income families with their two car garage piles in suburban Ottawa and annual family vacations to Disneyland are having trouble making ends meet, but I see them on CBC news quite frequently, boohooing about how hard it is, the Canadian dream of taking up ever more space getting harder and harder to attain.

All this to say I believe now is the time I need to let my Liberal freak flag fly. The Right, which in Canada is Pierre Poilievre's Conservative Party every bit as much as in the US it's Donald Trump's Republicans, is only too happy to employ violence for the purpose of intimidating Liberals into not expressing our support for Liberal politicians, so it's imperative we do so anyway.

Just ignore the tsk tsking of the Left for your moral failure. It's always something with the Left. Even if/when the NDP wins they'll be accused of governing as Liberals because they can't re-make the country in their socialist image anymore than Stephen Harper could re-make it in his fascist one. Believe me. Just suggest introducing wage parity at the ONDP (Queen's Park - '80s) and you'd think I'd suggested - as a unit member did once at a meeting - not going on strike for more pay when we were already better compensated than both OPCP and OLP staffers put together.

Apoplexy all 'round. I know I'm being mean but I'm tired of the bullshit. I worked in the belly of the beast.

Bob Rae is right.

Also, they weren't allowed to say it out loud but every teacher I talked to (except for the lone male) at my kids' elementary school liked the Social Contract.

By the way, not a single public servant of my acquaintance supported the latest strike, although they did their union duty, anyway. And the ones who did, I can tell you with absolute certainty, did so because they wanted to work from home, a right the union didn't want them to have any more than the government did.

My last job in government was near the bottom of the pay scale and anybody who thinks public servants aren't paid enough is full of it. It was a difficult job, the most challenging I've ever had, and as I argued at the time, under-classified, but for an entry level position it was absolutely well-compensated, as it should have been.

So signs, signs, and more signs people. Great big Liberal red signs. And Pride flags. Put 'em up. And make sure your Pride flag includes all the new colours because that's where us Liberals are at, in direct opposition to the Christo-Fascists driving the Conservative bus these days.

The polls, self-selecting as they are, indicate the irredeemably odious Pierre Poilievre will be elected Prime Minister. He's a phoney, living a lie, as is well known within the small town Ottawa public service, but he's at one with the Sovereign Citizen movement, too, and isn't hiding it even a bit. So if the polls are correct, well, we're not even close to being the country most of us grew up believing ourselves to be.

No Canadian, at this point, should be voting Conservative. That's just a fact. There are reasons Poilievre can't get a security clearance and it's deliberate blindness to pretend he just doesn't want one.

He has gone out of his way, time and time again, to show his allegiance to the most racist and misogynistic elements of our society. Neo-nazis are his people. I witnessed the Freedom Convoy. Mercenaries in the employ of Neo-nazi insurrectionists (convoy leaders actually made the rounds with envelopes of cash). Poilievre not only sat with them, he recruited them, signed them up, later marching in solidarity with its leaders, his handler of the day, Trump's man Paul Alexander, directly behind him the entire time.

He will, without a doubt, weaponize his Neo-nazi supporters against us once he's Prime Minister. He's not faking being one of them. He's all in. As I've pointed out a million and one times, he sat with the Freedom Convoy, mercenaries for Neo-nazi insurrectionists, while they tormented and harassed citizens living and working in downtown Ottawa.

He sicced Diagolon Accelerationists on a young female reporter for Global News just for asking about his publicly witnessed ties to them. They harassed her and her family right down to rape and death threats.

He declared himself our enemy, the enemy of civil society, as no politician in Canada has ever done before.

He's dangerous. Full stop. Shame on Conservatives voters. Shame, shame, shame.

The Freedom Convoy cost us millions of dollars and its victims our mental health and well-being. Poilievre could not give a shit about any of us, either, because he doesn't care about anybody or anything. Trudeau pegged it correctly the other day, Poilievre will say or do anything to win, and once he does win, he'll be working for the Sovereign Citizens he went out of his way to meet with the other day, and putting the screws to Liberals and liberal democracy.

He's a nasty little shit.

Conservative voters, by the way, secretly want this, although they'll pretend they're just voting against Trudeau when they cast a ballot for whichever local candidate is running under the Conservative Party banner.

They all - every single Conservative MP - including those phoney balonies Michael Chong and Scott Aitchison - voted against invoking the Emergency Act to end the illegal occupation by the Freedom Convoy of Centretown, Ottawa - in spite of its ongoing assault on citizens and threats of violent insurrection being bullhorned in our public streets and broadcast all over the internet.

They knew what it was. The Freedom Convoy even attacked LPC and NDP staffers on their way into work. Their own fucking colleagues. They sat in a party led by Andrew Scheer who probably voted for Donald Trump, ffs, and Candice Bergen in her MAGA hat who double-dated the insurrectionist thugs.

But there's no changing the behaviour of other people, never mind their politics, so I'm already thinking ahead to the strategies I'll need to cope with a Canadian government in league with Diagolon Accelerationists.

You should, too, is my advice. Many of us ended up needing therapy, even medication, in the wake of the Freedom Convoy's assault. It was just a glimpse of fascism and believe me it was terrifying enough. Pierre Poilievre owes them bigtime and once he's in power they will be there to collect payment.

Giving It Up

My hobby right now is watching YouTubes of different therapeutic methods for reducing anxiety (etc) and trying out the many practical methods on offer, my favourite being to hum a low "ohmmmmm" while sitting in a comfortable position, hands open and facing up.

The low "ohmmmmm" stimulates the vagus nerve (you're also doing a breathing exercise) and the open hands imply releasing yourself to the universe.

I've also learned we shouldn't label anxiety, guilt (etc) bad, but rather allow ourselves to feel these emotions while recognizing they refer to events in the past, and since we can't change the past, our job is to let it go, stop picking that scab and let the wound heal already, so those emotions will leave us, too.

Dr. Wayne Dwyer describes guilt as a useless emotion, by the way. He also advises we dump our resentments if we really want to lighten our load, stop blaming others, take responsibility for our own behaviour and leave everybody else's up to them.

Crazy the number of ways we need to be told, "You can't change someone else's behaviour but you can change your own."

By the way, no one needs to be told of an aggravating behaviour of their partner, either, as if we must have acquired magical powers over them through sex and can change them to better suit you.

I also just read Lori Gottlieb's book, "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone".

It's so good I read all 412 pages in two sittings.

It's a names and details changed re-telling of her sessions with four patients, as well as her own sessions with another therapist. She's a good writer so it reads like a novel. The insights, thanks to her, but also her patients and therapist, were useful to me, the most useful being an image her therapist presents to her of a person shaking the bars of what appears to be a prison cell, except there aren't any walls.

Been there, done that. But freedom means taking responsibility, too, and sometimes, maybe even a lot of the time, it can be easier to believe we're trapped. Also, as noted, and this was a big one for me, change isn't just hard, it's loss.

I'd never thought of change that way but it explains a lot, doesn't it? I get vicarious thrills when other people make big changes in how they're living but it's because I'm not experiencing any loss when they do. I even get vicarious thrills from imagining changes to my own life but that's pretty safe from loss, too.

In the case of divorce, change doesn't just mean tangible loss, which is hard enough, but also the loss of how we thought our lives and the lives of our children, if we have them, would be. And because those thoughts were only ever imaginings, we never get to experience how unrealistic they were, and so are left believing we robbed ourselves, our children, our families, of the good life, the proper life, the life without regrets and recriminations, a life where everybody and everything turned out perfect.

It doesn't help that the lost life of our dreams was based on happily ever after Hollywood movies, either.

Also, families are secret societies, each of us left to believe we're the only fucked up one, friends showing friends pictures of adorable grandchildren, not their mother's mugshot for a DUI when she was 25 and fresh out of rehab.

I only recently learned of something called Radical Acceptance, so I've been watching videos about it and practicing RAIN - Recognition, Acceptance, Investigation, Nurturing. Compassionate inquiry (Gabor Mate) and self-forgiveness are helping shut up that Nabob of Negativity who pops up in my head on the regular.

I was drawn to the concept of Radical Acceptance, though, because I have a hard time facing the reality that most of life is out of my control.

There's nothing like becoming a mother to really bring out the freak in control freak.

I'm also both a catastrophizer and a magical thinker.

And yes, it's entirely unfair that being a magical thinker doesn't cancel out being a catastrophizer.

One of my favourite finds was a short video about cognitive behaviour therapy, showing a diagram linking thoughts to feelings to behaviour.

The therapist pointed out it's really difficult to change our thoughts, so what we should do is change our behaviour. So exercise, eat well, sleep more, socialize (in my opinion this can mean just smiling at someone in the street, whatever reminds us we're not alone but part of a great big tribe of misfits), cut out alcohol, drugs (Health Canada recommends 0 glasses of anything with alcohol in it) - and this one is for me - GO OFFLINE!

Social media is a helluva drug.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful.

Sorry about the alcohol and drugs, but therapists are pretty much unanimous on that one. And if you're having trouble imagining life without them, well, maybe you should talk to someone.

Sober Sally over and out.

Billionaire Progressive

I listened to this and recommend you do, too. It's Matt Galloway of The Current on CBC radio interviewing Scott Galloway (no relation). 

The only bit I would add is the nightmare of deluded young men addicted to online gaming and crypto currency. There's no talking to them. They've become one with the algorithms fed to them day and night.

Scott Galloway on "Big Dick Energy"

Estrangement

Lately I've been enjoying takes on life by older women, older women for whom it's all about letting go.

They seem happy, these women, so I've decided to be all about letting go now, too.

Say, you know that joke, how many fill-in-the-blank-ethnicity grandmothers does it take to change a lightbulb?

"Oh don't mind me, I'll just sit in the dark."

In fact, that lightbulb would be changed before it could go out, but I guess the joke is about what martyrs grandmothers are, how little they matter to themselves, never mind anybody else. We picture a stolid old woman dressed in black, sitting on a hard backed chair in the dark, the bare bulb long since having burnt out, mourning her dead husband, nothing to live for, her children grown and flown.

Somebody reminded me of it the other day and I realized I don't find it funny anymore.

It got old. The stereotype is dated. All the grandmothers I know are still working, or recently retired - but like recently retired energizer bunnies - married, divorced, children grown.

But not always flown.

Some of their children, grown for some time now, are still living with their mothers, some of whom are grandmothers, too. And it would be fine except they aren't very nice to these caring women I've witnessed love and nurture them all their lives, some even choosing to stay-at-home full-time, not wanting to trade time with them for money... for them.

Committed to the bit, as it were.

Experts and non-experts alike could no doubt point to a million and one reasons for this rudeness, but I only see excuses, now, finally, excuses for why these adults can't finish school, get a job, do much of anything other than play online games all night, sleep all day and blame their mothers for getting it, them, so terribly wrong, causing them so much suffering, that, well, they can't, like, leave home already.

We all tried so hard to get it right. We did. Love, love, love and more love. I don't know any mothers my age who didn't give motherhood their all. Our kids were our choice, 100%, timed to the optimum second of the cycle. All of our children so, so, so wanted. We followed the rules to get pregnant, be pregnant, all to ensure our children had the best possible lives from the get go. Pre-natal classes, post-natal classes, play dates, cooperative games, nourishing meals, reading, reading, and more reading.

No pop! Add twice the amount of water suggested on the can of juice! Cosy routines for happy bedtimes!

We were determined to be the best mothers ever in the history of the world.

No. Stop right there. Don't you dare pile on us, too, with your finger-wagging about our helicoptering or lack of boundaries, our enabling. We're terrified and have been terrified forever and none of us deserve to be treated this way by our adult children. It's inexcusable. Period. End of. Just pity the poor parents who only have one and so might actually believe their only adult child's accusation they ruined their life by being bad parents, no other adult children to point to and ask, "Then why are they doing okay?"

Kidding. Mothers with more than one child would never dream of doing such a thing. Fairness above all. Some children require more of us than others. Never compare apples and oranges, no two snowflakes alike, as an elementary school principal once put it to me.

One day, mother or adult child manages to cause a rip in their shared space/time continuum, and the adult child moves out with a "Thanks for nothin', stupid lady." All largesse forgotten.

Well, we must have owed them those extra years, extra years of living around them in our own home, these non-communicative roommates who paid no rent because, well, it's hard enough to break even online gaming.

I've been reading up on estrangement and what seems common to all the stories is this: none of the parents - or siblings, because they often get lumped in with their sibling's estrangement of their parents - have any idea, really, why it's happened, what they've done to find themselves estranged.

I've decided there's good reason for that, it's because the estranger themself doesn't know why, just that it's all our fault, whatever "it" is, and they no longer wish to suffer our acquaintance.

We are nothing more to them than toxic product.

Well, toxic product after they've exhausted themselves lashing out at us for a few years, sometimes several, while taking advantage of our maternal desperation to keep them in the fold, so worried are we about their mental health, which seems... not good.

Please, please, please do yourself no harm. Love yourself, be kind to yourself, give yourself a hug.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

Stay safe while I wish you all the best in the world, my precious darling child.

Love yourself, dammit!

So there's that, their mental health seeming, well, not good, and we go for therapy because they won't. Please, please, please help us. No, help us help them. We're at our wits end. It's not true, love isn't enough, love just makes them mad. They don't believe us anyway.

They don't love us so they don't believe we love them. They aren't mothers. They have no idea of this one way deal. They don't remember the golden years when mother and child love each other the most.

Alas, we do.

Yes, I know, it's not about us. It's about them. They don't love themselves. And we can't help them. We are each of us alone responsible for loving ourselves.

I understand the need some of us have to leave the fold, a desire to reinvent oneself out in the world away from ties that may bind too tight, the stereotyping of each other family members do. I had a domineering mother who couldn't understand me at all, said as much regularly, found me exasperating.

I don't think I ever did a single thing she wanted me to do.

Hence my sense of humour.

It never occurred to me to cut her off. I cared about her too much. And she me.

Who cuts off their widowed mother who supported them all the way through university and beyond?

Well, my older sister did. Cut us all off, was estranged from us for years. Still is, really.

I was the last to be cut off, accused at the time of all sorts of wrongs against her. Me, six years younger, who'd only ever been in her thrall. And for a long time I believed her, took it to heart, blamed myself, our mother. But she cut off our brother, too, and our sister nine years younger than her.

Whoever said math isn't useful didn't know what they were talking about and neither do many of our modern day estrangers. They don't make sense to the people they're estranging because the lens through which they view their past is completely distorted.

My mother was pretty private about the estrangement, as she was a lot of things, but her friends knew. It felt shameful to her, as it did me, too. At first, anyway. But the more I talked about it, because I didn't want to hide, the more I learned about others living with estrangement of one kind or another.

Maybe they were even the estranger.

It wasn't common, but it happened.

Well, all sorts of families are experiencing it now, except we talk about it even less because it feels even more shameful now than it did then. Why? Well, because we're supposed to be so much better at parenting it's just assumed we must have failed miserably to have a child not want anything to do with us.

Except, if estrangers don't want anything to do with us why don't they just leave once they reach the age of majority, stop communicating with us from elsewhere? What's with the years of lashing out before they finally leave us, blaming us for this, that, and the other, claiming to have only ever suffered in our care, as if they haven't long been adults with all the agency in the world, free to go their own way at any time.

Reading so many of these stories, and granted they're being told by shattered parents and bewildered siblings, it seems to me the aggrieved are the aggressors in every one of them.

My older sister could always talk circles around me and I remember being so desperate she not cut me off like she had everybody else. But nothing I said mattered, no amount of reasoning worked. She had her own version of reality and it made absolutely no sense to me. How could it? From where I sat, six years younger, she'd always seemed to do whatever the hell she wanted, she and my mother dual queens of the hive, frequently at odds and yet having more in common with each other than anybody else, often seeing eye to eye.

I know there's no point in trying to have a relationship with someone who doesn't want one with you, and yet it's hard not to try, anyway. And while I agree with what I've read about keeping an open heart and arms, I don't agree about continuing to listen to their grievances, trying to understand where they're coming from, offering to make amends for our many, many, many failings as mothers.

Enough. There comes a point when there is no point and we're looking for the truth in lies other people tell themselves to avoid facing reality, which is that blaming your mother is no way to go through life. Look in the mirror. Accept responsibility for the person you see there. Put one foot in front of the other. Repeat.

Believe me. I know. Been there, done that, bought the mom-blaming tee-shirt.

My mother hung up the phone when I called to tell her I was pregnant, pretended she had something in the oven (at 3:00 in the afternoon), had to attend to it. Didn't call back, either. I called again later after sharing the happy news with my sister-in-law and knowing she'd have talked with my mother about it. Or talked her down, more like. But it just became a funny story I told at my former mother-in-law's memorial, she being all in from the start. I never brought it up with my mother because, whatever her reaction was all about, I knew it had nothing to do with me.

Well, breakthrough, because that's what I realized this morning, too. The behaviour of adult children has nothing to do with their mothers.

We blame a lot on the pandemic now, too, but no, the pandemic has become just another in a long line of excuses for adult children to behave like toddler judges and juries of their mothers' - and society's - failings, instead of taking responsibility for their own and getting on with it by doing better for the next generation - as the rest of us tried our damnedest to do for them.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Michael & Me

Prepare yourselves, I have very sad news today.

Michael Murray, the founder of GalaxyBrain.ca and publisher of my book "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!" -That Looks Good on You - passed away early this morning.

I know, I know, but Michael would want me to plug my book. It was my turn for him to do it himself, and he was as proud of it as I am.

He'd also want me to plug his, though, so go buy "A Van Full of Girls" if you haven't already. You'll laugh, you'll cry, your emotions will run the gamut.

Michael was just one of the many inspiring characters I've had the good luck to connect with over the internet, but the better luck to connect with in real life, when I attended a reading for his book, A Van Full of Girls, at the Manx here in his hometown of Ottawa, as well as a 50-something birthday party, with he and his beautiful wife, Rachelle.

I bought his book at the launch, fending off his dad who wanted me to buy a dozen more, and baked him a raspberry pie for his birthday.

We had a rollercoaster relationship, Michael and I, pretty much all of it taking place online, whether we were dishing dirt in private messages - he was an epic dirt-disher - or yukking it up in public threads on Facebook.

Michael could keep a thread going forever, and had a particular rapport with our mutual friend, Jane Michelle Wilson, whom we both knew to be the most excellent person on the planet, while Michael would make out like she was really Leona Helmsley or Cruella de Vil (for you youngsters).

He did the same thing with Margaret Atwood, in his many tales of their ongoing feud she knew nothing about, probably the funniest shit I've read on the internet.

His politics, his nostalgia, drove me up the wall, and I would have to remind myself several times a day during our many back and forths that this slip of a man lived with a fucking oxygen tank strapped to his back and never complained about his health.

I was mad enough about it for both of us, I guess, the unfairness of it all, and please don't ever think I don't appreciate the primo hand I was dealt, in spite of all my whining.

Michael Murray I am not.

So yes, we squabbled, a lot, but always made up. He knew of life, did Michael. His short story posts of hospital visits and stays was the most poignant writing I've ever read, and although he promised me the brutal truth in private messages, he never delivered. He didn't want to dwell there any longer than he had to, I guess.

Or maybe he just wanted to spare me.

He was a fan of my writing, a fan of me, and it really was everything. After reading the first two chapters of my book, not easy for Michael, who admitted to having the attention span of a newt, thanks to his social media addiction, "You have a voice!" It was exactly what I needed to hear to keep going, the perfect pitch. When he conceived GalaxyBrain.ca with a view to serializing my book, he gave me the gift of readers, readers who took the time to express their appreciation, and I'll be forever grateful to him and to them, his many, many, many friends.

He was so loved.

It settled me down, GalaxyBrain.ca. Michael had given me what I needed. I wrote more pieces. He edited. I argued. Whole pieces got scrapped, better ones written, both of us so proud of ourselves.

It was fun. We had fun. Calling each other brilliant and geniuses, no superlative too much for us.

We were gods.

Back as mortals, we squabbled over politics. I found him endlessly, frustratingly stubborn, as he would no doubt say of me. Did he? He probably did. Omigawd, he did, didn't he. Dirt-disher. But we wanted the same world, too, a world full of good things for everybody, magic, joy, creativity.

We shared the sentiment that work was drudgery, a waste of our glorious lives, and he urged me over and over and over again to quit whatever government assignment I was on, which was exactly what I wanted to hear, over and over and over again, while I slogged my way through the latest waste of my glorious life.

Oh how I loved complaining to Michael about work. "You should quit! Work is stupid!" he'd write back, and I'd live to work another day. As the legend goes, when Michael got cancer as a young man, he decided he wanted to be a writer, and that was that, no more wasting time watching the hands of a clock go 'round.

In my last message to him I conceded we were fellow travellers and I would miss him. A lot.

And as promised, I do.

The world's light has dimmed a little so let's all who knew Michael light a candle for it this evening.

I'd like to leave off here with my condolences to Michael's beautiful wife, Rachelle (the real Galaxy brain as Michael reveals in his bio, before hilariously snatching all credit back for himself, because he was very, very funny) and their pride and joy, Jones, the snappiest dresser any of us will ever know, his sense of style so clearly handed directly down to him by his loving, dapper, father.

Goodbye, Michael. It was a gas knowing you. And rest assured, my friend, you will forever live on in our hearts.

#ParentFail101

"Kathryn, you don't know how to be married."

I've thought about those words a lot. They came from my former mother-in-law, deceased now, and I miss her. But those words stuck to me like dog shit in a boot tread.

Fair enough, I guess. Hard to learn how to be married growing up with a widowed mother.

But to be fair to me, I think it was more a case of not liking being married. More specifically, not liking being married to her son, not once we had kids, anyway. And while kids are never to blame for their parents' divorce, they're very often why.

But imagine if instead of trying to make a marriage between two incompatible people work (and be honest, husbands, that work is tasked to your wife) we spoke up as soon as we realized we'd married each other's "unfinished business".

Marrying Your Unfinished Business

Of course, a lot of kids wouldn't be born if we did, having kids often being the prime motivating factor for a woman to rope one off from the herd, as it were, that man tending to be the one we happen to be with when the mood strikes.

No worries - we can change him later!

Alas, also thanks to Lewis Howe's podcast, which I only watch in Facebook clips that pop up in my feed, I must cop to sucking at parenting, too.

Shitty wife, incompetent mother, may as well admit it, I was never in any danger of being Employee of the Month, either.

All along I thought trying to make my children happy was where it's at, tricky when you're responsible for separating the family, the saddest development in their young lives, kids just wanting their parents to stay together - whether we want to or not.

So to be fair to parents, it's not like kids give a rat's ass about our happiness.

But it turns out, no, resilience is where it's at, and resilience can only be learned through adversity.

Oh. Okay. Well I guess mine must have learned some then through divorce, even if I did try to jolly them along into believing nothing had changed, when, of course, everything had.

Ugh. Why must everything be so hard?

Anyway, back to resilience, which, duh, can't be learned by mom jumping in whenever her kids are feeling sad/mad/bad, to distract/avoid/deny, and so on and so forth and more of the same "don't worry, be happy" disguising "I'm not comfortable with my own feelings, never mind yours!" and, oh my goodness - breakthrough!

Stop Trying to Make Your Kids Happy

Really, who knew? Well, professional parents, I guess. Social workers and teachers. Unfortunately, a lot of us amateurs are trying to raise kids at the same time we're trying to make marriage with an increasingly incompatible spouse work, while the village that used to be there to support us when we all lived in little hunter/gatherer tribes, is either behind its own closed doors or at work.

Anyway, it's all a crock, the notion we've come a long way, baby, which we only realize once we've been thrown clear in one way or another - usually by aging out.

It's the bloody system. We're still stuck trying to live our best lives within a Patriarchal system that actively works against our own and our children's happiness.

But instead of Smashing the State, parents are now tasked with ensuring our kids develop resilience.

Wtf, man?

Soap Opera Lives

As I've blogged many times, we just get CBC and TVO chez nous. With Netflix, it's more than enough.

I could even live without Netflix. I just don't care that much about any of it anymore. I'll never watch the last season of Breaking Bad, for instance. And I can't even remember now how The Wire ended because I got tired of it, too, and didn't really pay attention.

I stopped watching The Sopranos at some point. Mobsters repulse me. I don't see the humour in their casual violence. It doesn't make me laugh, it makes me sick.

The ongoing pretence they have some kind of moral code is what's laughable.

Whoa, off topic much, Kathryn?

So yeah, don't get me started on mobsters, I despise them.

I watch Coronation Street on CBC unless a storyline is too aggravating for me. If it is, I switch to TVO, and the other night I was about to do that when I decided, no, stay the course.

Stop being such a wuss about dramatic storylines.

An unpopular and somewhat feared character I enjoy was having an affair, not of the heart or mind, really, although she did enjoy their banter, as well as the challenge of seduction, but because she wasn't living the life she wanted.

As she would eventually admit, she really just no longer wanted to be married, not to the man she was, anyway, not anymore.

I was ready to turn away because I knew she was going to get caught, try to deny it all, too late, marriage over, nothing left but a life of regret.

Also vilification for being an ungrateful jezebel by the worst hypocrites who ever walked the face of the Earth, given the sixty year history of Coronation Street, although I'm only acquainted with the last ten.

Well, I'm glad I stayed to see the storyline play out because that's not what happened at all. She got caught, yes, in flagrante delicto no less, by her husband's best friend, too, who ratted her out to her husband when she didn't fess up to him herself.

She meant to, but he intercepted her fessing up with a request to renew their vows, and in true soap opera style she changed the grim expression on her face to one of false sheer delight, saying, "Yes!"

It reminds of the time I said to my boss at the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, where I was on assignment as an administrative assistant to an executive assistant, the worst job in the government, when asked if I was enjoying it, "I love it here!"

In fact, I felt sick every time I entered Place Bell, I hated it so much. When I got my next job, a policy analyst at Environment Canada, I was so happy it didn't even matter that it was deep into Gatineau, a commute involving two bus systems.

Oh he was so righteous with indignation for his pub buddy, the deceived husband's friend, another popular Corrie fellow punching so well above his weight in the romance department, it is to laugh.

Really the only evenly matched pairs on Corrie are gay. Otherwise it's princesses and toads who never turn into princes, not that there's much kissing, thankfully.

But when her outraged husband confronted her, and he's a popular character, a jokey daft fellow in good standing at the pub, beer with his mates solving all manner of ups and downs, she didn't deny it. Instead she copped to it all, adding, if not the former soccer star, it would've been somebody else, lest her husband deflect away from the why of it all, which was their marriage no longer working for her, if indeed it ever really had, and so she didn't want to be in it anymore.

She wasn't mean about it, but she didn't pussyfoot around why, either, refusing to accept all the guilt and blame for their marriage not working out, just because she'd had "a thing" as she called it.

I liked that. A thing. Not an affair, not a fling. A thing. An action to bring about change in circumstance and feeling, not intended as a replacement for a marriage with one man that wasn't working out with marriage to another who mightn't work out, either.

It was hard to watch though, too, because her husband didn't want the marriage to end, in spite of the thing. He didn't feel the way she did about their marriage, although she did point out that he wasn't really happy, either, an opinion with which he disagreed, but you could see the old wheels cranking around, too.

It was enough for him because she made it enough, I guess is how I'd put it, but they were nonetheless undeserving of each other, and you can take that every which way, but only one of them was admitting it.

Out loud, anyway.

No, he wanted to put the thing behind them and carry on. He'd even been trying to up his game of late, show his appreciation more, bring a little romance back to the marriage. But, of course, he was doing too little, too late, and in that same lazy way that had been the problem all along, while she was determinedly having a thing to bring it all to an end.

I don't think I've ever seen a storyline resolve quite like it. Certainly not on a soap opera. And at first I thought there might be a reconciliation and resumption of the status quo, was hoping for it, and tensed up when she not only copped to the thing but followed it up with the real why of it, which was that she didn't want to be in a marriage with him anymore, wishing him the best but we're done here, honey.

It was very cathartic, the scene, and I'm glad I didn't switch to TVO to avoid it. Interestingly, I'd had the same urge with regard to an earlier episode involving teen bullying, but stuck around to see a phenomenal bit of acting by a character not particularly noted for it, when he exploded in anguish at his son for being part of a gang bullying another teen.

Anyway, it did my heart good, the endless dramatic possibilities in vilifying an ungrateful jezebel who decides marriage to a perfectly decent bloke isn't enough for her, foregone in favour of said jezebel very undramatically stating straight up that, yup, marriage to a perfectly decent bloke isn't enough for her.

The myth persists about women, that we exist, really, ultimately, for men and children. Others. A woman's a wife and mother. Sister, daughter, friend. She isn't supposed to want to be the star of our own show once she's married, certainly not after she has kids.

She's supposed to be happy playing a supporting character in her husband's show or her child's show.

The thing is, it's a myth. We do want to be the star of own show. We always did. It just wasn't until recently we could admit it out loud, in this part of the world, anyway, and then go out into the big bad world and do it.

Czech Mate

I'm so sorry Donald Trump is still in all our lives, but I think, in a way, it's our own fault. Maybe not yours, but mine, for sure. Like, right now. Here I am, mentioning him again.

It's awful, though, isn't it. We survived a pandemic. But we're back where we started with Donald Trump.

Or are we?

I thought Donald Trump hadn't been in my life until there he was in 2015 running for the Republican Party nomination. But I was a monthly buyer of Vanity Fair magazine back in the day and at some point Ivana Trump started showing up in it.

It was odd, this tacky throwback from eastern Europe hawking diamonds and furs and showcasing her frat boy husband's gold-plated pile in Manhattan, in an otherwise stylish magazine.

She looked more like his mother than wife to me.

But as Graydon Carter explained to readers in one of his more memorable editorials, an issue thick with fashion ads meant an issue strong in relevant and insightful articles about our world from real journalists and erudite writers.

And just as I wrote the above paragraph it dawned on me what a pile of malarkey it was, this dowdy woman whose son Eric would grow up to be her spitting image, being sold to Vanity Fair readers as the latest super model/urban sophisticate/educated mind gracing its pages.

Anyway I went down a bit of an Ivana Trump rabbit hole after that and lo and behold turns out she lived in Montreal in the 70s with a defector (she herself had permission to come and go from Czechoslovakia, unlike anybody else at the time?) before meeting and marrying Donald Trump in 1977.

Her back story and explanation for the ease with which she could come and go was that she was an Olympic skiing star, likely completely manufactured as no actual record of such could be found in a 1989 search to corroborate her 1972 Olympics claims.

In 1990, after her marriage to Donald Trump was over and at an acrimonious stage, Ivana's 63-year-old father, an informer for Czech intelligence who apparently relayed information from his daughter (uh, say what? about... skiing? modelling? decor?) died suddenly of a heart attack.

Sure. Okay. And there's nothing odd about her falling down stairs to her death during an investigation into Donald Trump, who once raped and ripped out clumps of her hair in a jealous rage at his hair plugs not taking, and about whose treason and corruption she would have known everything, being intricately involved in his businesses, then being buried on his golf course.

It's the Russian way, though, isn't it. Or is it the American way? I mean, why is Donald Trump, blatantly obvious traitor, proven fraud artist, conman, well-documented rapist and best bud of convicted and found dead in his jail cell pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, and leader of a violent insurrection in early 2021 against the US government, the Republican Party's nominee for President, hosting white supremacist rallies all across America, instead of in prison?

But let's go North of the world's longest undefended border.

As I've pointed out many times, what was so terrifying about the Freedom Convoy was the support it had from leaders, past, present and future of our Official Opposition, the Conservative Party of Canada, while it attacked us, you and me, local councillors, MPs and their staff of the New Democrat and Liberal parties, so many Canadians either oblivious it was happening at all or chiming in to support our attackers.

Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, was the blatantly obvious political sponsor of this attack on us, an unlawful occupation and attempted insurrection, after which the Conservatives elected him their party leader.

There were other contenders, too. They didn't have to elect Poilievre leader. They chose him. In a landslide victory complete with eliminating his main rival in case he ended up winning and MP supporters carting boxes of ballots around in public like is never done in legitimate elections, but, oh well.

Since when has an election involving Stephen Harper's Conservative Party not had its irregularities, eh?

Meanwhile, in the world of us ordinary citizens, the Freedom Convoy caused real and lasting harm. People who live and work in downtown Ottawa lost their trust in police, social cohesion already frayed from the pandemic was stressed to the max, our health suffered, some of us requiring medication and therapy due to panic attacks, people lost rent money unable to get to their minimum wage jobs as the city centre was shutdown, and disinformation from social media went from a trickle to a flood out into civil society, a steady stream of chaos inducing propaganda.

The Freedom Convoy and its fallout cost Canadians millions and millions and millions of dollars.

There are many people living in government town Ottawa who believe all the same Qanon nonsense their American cousins do. Pierre Poilievre is their man for Prime Minister. Why?

Why are so many Canadians behind this well-known, well-documented, thoroughly odious creep who has no respect for us, our laws, our democracy?

What's going on? His wife, Anaida, of "Pretty & Smart Co", a supposed online magazine she co-founded in 2019 (I googled, nothing happening on it), first shows up in a Senator's office, then moves into Poilievre MP tenant and best buddy, Michael Cooper's office, and next thing she's married to the woman-repeller (Poilievre, not his best buddy the other woman-repeller, Cooper), they have two spawn, and he has in-laws about whom nobody can get the straight skinny. Oh and surely it's just a coincidence he's also suddenly, blatantly, and obviously, unable to get a security clearance, even though he had one when he was a Cabinet minister in Stephen Harper's government, pushing the blatant and obvious lie that it's because he doesn't want one.

And just like Trump he's getting away with it.

What's with this Soviet-era type shit going on here?

And why is nobody who's anybody pointing at walking talking contradiction, former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, self-proclaimed Putin-hater but blatant and obvious Orban-lover, Orban being, like Trump, blatantly and obviously pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine?

He, like Trump's Republican Party, is actively preventing Ukraine defending itself from Russia's invasion, which is no different from Germany's invasion of Poland, an invasion that led to our eventual involvement in World War II.

On that note, anybody who thinks we aren't in World War III isn't paying attention. We are and we have nowhere near the political and social cohesion we had in World War II. I know what I witnessed in February 2022. Stephen Harper's Conservative Party on the side of the Freedom Convoy and its attack on civil society, Western liberal democracy, sponsored by Russia and Trump's Republican Party.

It was treason, an insurrection, no different from January 2021 in the US except instead of attacking the harder target of Congress, the insurrectionists attacked the softer target of ordinary citizens and civilians.

And speaking of Stephen Harper, if the International Democracy Union, created in 1983 by Vice-President and former CIA director George H.W. Bush, isn't a blatant and obvious laundromat for global fascism, supporting blatant and obvious fascists like Trump and Orban, then what the hell is it? What does it do?

Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Anyway, I'm sorry to go on about it, even sorrier to have gone down a couple of rabbit holes writing this entry, sorrier still it doesn't seem to matter to so many of my co-citizens that they're rallying behind fascism Soviet-style and the politicians who pretending to be against it - even while being blatantly and obviously in lockstep with Vladimir Putin, its greatest proponent, and our greatest enemy.

Crazy-making, but that's the point, isn't it? 

The Secrets We Keep

My mother had a friend, Mary, a slight, quiet woman, very reserved, who visited our house on occasion. I was curious about her because she was always alone, never spoke of a husband or kids, and lived in an apartment.

I was fascinated by people who lived in apartments, as my mother's young teacher friends did, but this woman was my mother's age.

Not being a shy kid I peppered this poor woman with questions, trying to figure out her life. She wasn't offended, and often laughed at my intrusiveness, but never gave up any information.

Pretty soon into the visit my mother would put the run on me. I wonder now why she allowed any of it but maybe she was seeing if I could crack the vault.

One day Mary showed up, very upset. I was getting older, though, so left the scene right after answering the door. Later, I asked my mother what was wrong, and I guess she decided I was old enough to know.

Years before, Mary's son had tried to kill her, stabbing her with a butcher's knife. Her husband was long gone by then. Left. He'd been a brute. Her son had been in prison, but Mary had just been informed he was being released, and she was afraid.

That's all I remember, and maybe all there is to the story.

I think Mary moved after that.

It stayed with me, the back story to this slip of a woman, always in black, or that's how I remember her. I've always pictured her son, who I never met, as a gigantic, oversized monster with unknowing wild eyes, attacking his own mother with a butcher's knife. But I have no idea. Perhaps he wasn't much bigger than his mother. I've been out-muscled by the scrawniest looking of men and I'm athletic.

I grew up knowing about the bad things happening to kids, their moms, behind closed doors. I was friends with a girl up the street whose father beat her mother and older sister, which I only found out about later, after my friend had been killed in a car crash on the notorious Hwy 17 where another friend of my youth was killed.

Her father used to argue politics with me. There was something off about him and no amount of coaxing could get Nancy to veer off course. If she wasn't allowed to do a thing, that was it. If she had to be home or couldn't go out, that was it. She was a cynical kid who found me naive and under-read, who suffered from terrible eczema. Her older sister was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen, and my brother had a crush on her. Her mother, according to Nancy, had a skin condition that made it dark, but I think she was probably of mixed race, although both Nancy and her older sister were fair, like their father.

Her mother worked but I never saw her outside their house. Ever. I think I remember Nancy saying she couldn't go outside. Even then I knew "couldn't" meant wasn't allowed, even though Nancy's father worked shifts at the plant and often wasn't around during the day.

I never liked All in the Family. Archie reminded me of Nancy's father.

I despised him.

The expression "working class" doesn't translate to me like the politicians who use it intend. I'm from the Sault. Lunch pails, hard hats and shift work don't bring to mind good times for families any more than pin striped suits and briefcases do.

It brings to mind angry and bitter men who believed they deserved better than wartime housing and unionized jobs at Algoma Steel, and who took their grievances out on my friends and their mothers.

Kids know this stuff, the violence that happens behind the closed doors of their friends' houses. It's why nightmares. Trapped with a monster, no one coming to the rescue because we're not allowed to tell and even if we did, the monster is king of his castle, and trespass is the sin, not beating up your wife and kids.

No Trespassing! Remember the signs? We lived across from a field owned by the president of Algoma Steel, an awful man, a Mr. Burns of his day. He kept vicious guard dogs. I could've been killed by two of them, if I hadn't had the little kid instinct to trap myself between the storm and inside door, but that's a story for another time.

Being kids we played baseball in the field, anyway, appointing scouts to keep an eye out for the dogs.

It was a field, ffs, in a neighbourhood full of kids, and that asshole had guard dogs he set loose.

His wife was kind and liked little kids. It was her I had gone to visit.

I'm not sure how much has changed for all our public discourse about family violence. It's still kept behind closed doors, a private affair, left to its individual members to live their lives around, protect the perpetrator, themselves, the family name, from the shame and scrutiny of public exposure.

In Russia, Putin, admired by so many men here, took care of that by decreeing family violence to be no longer even a crime.

I lived the good old days male politicians, mostly younger than myself, look back on with nostalgia. I experienced life - as a fatherless girl paying close attention to the fathers of my friends - in working class Northern Ontario in the 60s and 70s, in residence at Victoria College U of T, in various office temp jobs in Toronto, including the ONDP of the 80s, as a married homemaker and mother in suburban Ottawa in the 90s, as a divorced partner of My Blond Companion in the 2000s.

No time is better than now, here, in this part of the world, for women and children, that much I know to be true.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. They may not know they're lying but I do. You do, too.

It would be a sin to let them win.

Living with Rex Chapman

I'm reading a book supposedly by the Dalai Lama, "An Open Heart - Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life".👸

It's not very well written, but no matter. I'm not reading it for its literary merit, but inspiration. I want to strengthen my connection to the divine. I was raised in the here and now by my secular mother, but my father was a religious man, and I share his genes, too.🙏

Years ago, I started to wish an enemy well. I forget now where I got the idea but I decided to try it. And it worked. His behaviour didn't change, it just didn't affect me anymore. Wishing him well, sincerely wishing him well, freed me up from the bad feelings I'd not realized were the real problem.💃

Anyway, I'll need ongoing refreshers in letting go if I'm to get through this life in one piece.💪

Sunday morning on CBC radio I heard an interview with Piya Chattopadhyay and Rex Chapman. I only know Rex Chapman as a Twitter wit, I didn't realize he's a famous basketball player, but the interview was about his book, "It's Hard for Me to Live with Me: A Memoir".😎

He stole my title.🙇

My Blond Companion's would be: It's Hard for Me to Live with Her".😃

Anyway, I didn't know much about Rex Chapman except he's hilarious and biting and just an excellent all-round Twitter personality. But he also had an opioid addiction AND a gambling addiction and spoke of both during the interview. He's so eloquent I finally understood just how terrifying the opioid addiction crisis really is.😱

He describes how he felt when he took the first pill, prescribed for an injury in the later stages of his basketball career, all his anxiety melting away, feeling like he was a better person, even, kinder, more sociable, able to connect with strangers in a way he couldn't before. And I could imagine what that must have felt like for him. Not for me, not now, anyway, but for him, then, the way he'd described himself as a young man.😬

I have never felt so lucky to feel good naturally, in spite of issues I've blogged about many times, because I do, I feel good naturally. I wrote my regrets in one column, my values in another, and how to live now in a third. It all added up to more than just sober but sober is certainly the magic decoder ring. Like I said, I'm lucky, and for that, I'm grateful. 💖

Eventually Rex Chapman was up to 40 pills a day, bankrupt, charged with shoplifting, because, of course, to keep feeling good required increased amounts of opioid. He says he's just lucky he got out of it before he got into injecting heroin.😷

It's a stunning story, and yes, he had a long hard fall from grace, but it sounds to me like everybody who gets addicted to opioids ends up at the same bottom.💩

Gabor Mate describes addiction as a coping mechanism for trauma. And while Rex Chapman doesn't talk about trauma, he does talk about privilege, and how he was let off the hook so often, knew why and felt guilty about it. He also talks about having a black girlfriend at one time, and the relationship not being approved of, particularly in the American south. He wishes he could go back and tell that young man to stand up for himself, for others, use his platform, his privilege, for better, instead of wasting it as he did.😇

Don't we all, or most of us, fail ourselves, others, in one way or another, but as someone once said, "The best time to plant a tree was forty years ago, the next best time is now". Hence why I'm brushing up with some reading on how to do better.💁

Old Style - Updated

Update: I weighed in on gender, after all. I'm tired of the same old same old double-standard and Feminists being blamed for the problem of Patriarchal violence against the rest of us.

Look, I really want to be able to quote Bette Davis, "Gettin' old ain't for sissies", because I think given our progress on recognizing gender as a patriarchal construct, we should be able to agree that "sissy" just means "lily-livered", and therefore can be applied to anyone with a liver who shrinks from the tough stuff.

Otherwise, I almost never weigh in on the politics of gender because I'm waiting until transmen demand to compete in men's sports.

Or demand anything, now that I've weighed in to make what I think is a fairly salient yet consistently overlooked point about who presents the real danger to transwomen in our society.

Hint: It's not lesbians. And it's certainly not Feminists - of any wave. So sod off with your firings and cancelings, trans activists, and repeat after me: The problem is the Patriarchy and its perpetration of male violence against women. Period. End of.

This morning I read about death cafes and then watched an inspiring video about "Fabulous Fashionistas", a handful of octogenarians - all women, so sorry, fellas - who are keeping fit and current, rockin' cool threads - including thrift shop finds - and just generally making older age seem less daunting to the rest of us.

Not a sissy in the lot, they're pretty much made of the tough stuff, so no shrinking from it for them.

I want to emulate their good example but I've a ways to go I'm afraid. Still, one foot in front of the other. I don't want my adult children dreading getting old - or any younger person dreading getting old - so my goal is to make my own aging look like the adventure it actually is, sucking up the daunting bits, revelling in the bonuses.

I plan to blog a lot, including a book, "Memories of Me", in which I'll jot down this and that along the way. It's a reinvention I'm after, a sloughing off of roles I've outgrown, opinions I want to let go of, an opening up to let the universe in - a third act. I'd like to do it without taking on paid work, which I've never much cared for, but I do want to be a "helper" as Mister Rogers would say.

I guess I can pass a police check?

So we'll see you around these parts. Stay hydrated and take the stairs.

Today in Late Breaking News

So contrary to ongoing complaints from some Canadians that the Liberal government has been supporting Israel in its ongoing war crime against Palestinians, it turns out it's actually been "slow walking" - so not delivering on - requests from Israel for armoured vehicles, night vision goggles, and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.

A class action suit for gross negligence as a result of deaths during the pandemic against six Ontario long term care nursing homes is going ahead. In a ruling last week, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice certified class action suits against Sienna, Revera, Schlegel, Responsive, Extendicare and Chartwell.

Peterborough has housed 50 of its estimated 250 unhoused citizens in individual tiny shipping containers with locks. They come with heating and air conditioning, a small fridge, but no cooking facilities, and no washrooms. On site care is available 24/7, violence isn't tolerated, and residents pay a portion of their income for rent, $500 or so, which should net a citizen a studio at least, but it's better than a tent. 

Pay Now or Pay Later

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Setback

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

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

I'm still tired but otherwise fine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe we just have more caring to spare.

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

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

Thanks for reading.

Spring Forward

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

Yesterday, Saturday, we had cold rain.

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

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

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

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

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

Not your gramps' Conservatives.

Girdin' Me Loins

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

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

Taxes and tradition in the year of our Lord 2024.

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

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

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

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

Public police force?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan's Choice.

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

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

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

Today in Facing the Facts

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

Money Over Matter

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

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

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

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

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

Amen, brother.

Sister?

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

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

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

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

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

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

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

He was carrying a package of ground beef.

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

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

Maybe he went to the beer store across the street.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have to start sharing the wealth.

The Lost Men of Bill Maher's Imagination

So this thing called "Club Random" started showing up on my Facebook page. I checked it out because I'm part magpie, hence all the tiny homes decor porn showing up in my feed now too.

Also, it's with Bill Maher, and I was curious as to what the fat-shaming whinge-bag was up to these days.

The set up in the clip I watched is Bill sitting in an oversized armchair across from a guest in another oversized armchair. Think Big Comfy Couch except instead of Luna the Clown asking: "Who made this big mess?" it's Bill Maher.

Also, there's a liquor, pot, cigars stash beside him.

The message is clear: STAY OUT, MOM!

Anyway, in one clip I saw - and if you've seen one you've seen them all - Bill was complaining that everything's about women, still, when it's men who need help.

Men are lost.

Then, after the clip, Bachelor Bill pops up to tell viewers to subscribe to get the full episode, which I can't imagine anybody who's just watched the clip actually doing, but whatever. To each their own.

It's a whiggly whirld, as my brilliant friend, K, who died of a horrible inherited disease called Creutsfeldt-Jakob, would say to explain the inexplicable.

She married a man so he could stay in Canada. No expectations. He didn't have to be her personal sex worker, maid, nurse in exchange for citizenship. And after a short while they parted ways, no money changing hands.

It stands to reason she described our whirld as whiggly.

Anyway, I'm glad I watched a couple of clips because they got me thinking about why the belief persists among some in our society that men being lost is even a thing, and if it is a thing, that it's new, and if it's new that it's because of Feminism as opposed to the Patriarchy still throwing its crushing weight around.

By the way, gender isn't just a bit of a social construct. It's entirely one. No one is born a girl and no one is born a boy. It's all nurture, baby. Just like no one is born a racist and no one is born a misogynist.

But back to Club Random and Bill Maher's insistence that it's men we should all be helping, not women. Enough about women. Women have it great. Men are falling behind (subtext: because women get to be people now too).

Well, sorry not sorry, Bill Maher, but all it takes is a look around to see men being freer than ever in history, and still dominating in technology, the trades, business, medicine, law, politics, policing and ice time. And yes, women are doing better than ever, too, except all the civil and human rights we had to fight for are in constant threat of being taken away - by men. Femicide and intimate partner violence remain ongoing epidemics.

A man feels perfectly comfortable going for a late night walk, alone, maybe along a secluded trail. Most women can't conceive of doing such a thing. We can't even risk a walk alone at night from a bus stop.

Women don't go out alone at night. That simple pleasure is denied us world over. Because men.

Women are still blamed when men sexually assault us. Pregnancy remains our problem, child and elder care up to us, keeping the family together, putting our man's professional ambitions before our own.

Don't get me started on emotional labour.

Bill Maher lives in a country threatening to become a theocracy ffs and he thinks it's men who have problems.

Men are lost alright. Maybe ask women for directions. We'll tell you where to go.

East Meets West

I'm reading many expressing regret that Navalny left Germany to return to Russia, in spite of knowing what awaited him there, which was death in prison.

But I wonder if it was maybe his point, directed at those of us living in the West, that our sense of safety is based on an illusion, because the East is run by gangsters.

By the way, the Freedom Convoy, a Russian op, is descending on Ottawa again this final weekend of Winterlude, while Canadians remain oblivious as to its ideology, which is the same Christo-Fascism espoused by Navalny's murderers, the US Republican Party and our very own Conservatives led by the most odious politician in our history, Pierre Poilievre.

Remembering Montebello

When I lived in Toronto I attended lots of protests for abortion rights, including eventually with my firstborn. Friends involved in the movement urged me to bring her to protests because it served the cause to have mothers by choice in attendance. But I was too uncomfortable with the vibe of the last one and I left. There was an undertone of violence to it, young men scattered here and there shouting angrily, fists raised, so I left.

Protecting my very much wanted baby came first.

I'm not talking about the bespectacled middle-aged Marxist Leninists who always showed up whenever the NDP would have a rally, so the Toronto Sun could go on about the horrors of Communism to its idiot  readers, but young men I'd never seen before at our rallies. They were there to incite violence.

That was my last protest for quite a while.

Back in 2007 there was a protest in the small resort town of Montebello, Quebec, against the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America pact, and a meeting between then Prime Minister Stephen Harper, American President George W. Bush, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Three agent provocateurs, undercover cops disguised as protestors, incited violence before being handcuffed by other cops providing security against the protestors.

We know this happened. We also know legislators came up with a law against wearing a mask at a protest, except it doesn't ever seem to apply to young men in masks inciting violence at protests.

The Freedom Convoy, which was a three week white power rally supported by many within law enforcement, certainly police unions were all in with it, was chock-a-block with violence against us, civilians, including flooding 911 with prank calls, harassing hospital workers, even storming a palliative care hospital.

Remember during the pandemic when the so-called anti-vax movement (aka Russian op) attacked healthcare workers and patients outside hospitals? Who were those "protestors" really? Were any of them ever arrested? They were causing disturbances and inciting violence outside hospitals during a pandemic, ffs. We'd never witnessed anything like it and apparently neither had police, they were so helpless to do anything about it, requiring the government to come up with Bill C-3.

It absolutely is anti-semitic to target Mount Sinai hospital in Toronto in a protest against Israel. Blatantly so. And anti-semitism is a hate crime, against the law. So we should certainly expect charges against the perpetrators.

At the very least climbing on an awning to wave a flag does come up against Bill C-3. Hospitals are off limits for protests following the Freedom Convoy's harassment and incitement of violence against staff and patients. But also, since anti-semitic and anti-Muslim attacks (the latter have been deadly) are on the rise, zero tolerance for protestors conflating Jews with the actions of Israel and Muslims with Islamic terrorism is wise.

Police have been monitoring protests here against Israel's ongoing slaughter of Palestinian children and their parents since it began, which it did immediately after the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, when Israeli women and peace activists were raped, mutilated, and murdered, all of it filmed for the world to witness, journalists invited for special screenings of details too gruesome for the public, Netanyahu vowing revenge even while many Israelis demonstrated against him, wanting him and his corrupt and racist Likud government gone.

There are many Jews here protesting Israel's ongoing slaughter of Palestinian children and their parents, just as there are many Israeli Jews protesting it. Some of them are even in jail for standing up against their government and Netanyahu, who is so famously corrupt, the man Obama was overheard calling a "liar".

It's terrible what's happening in the world, what's happening to us. I have friends, family, I don't want to talk to anymore. Some of them think we shouldn't help Ukraine defend itself from slaughter by Russia, others think we should help Israel while it slaughters Palestinians. I don't respect either opinion. I can't. I'd have to be a completely different person to do it.

The easiest course to take is avoidance. I don't know how to find common ground with them anymore.

And I'm not over the moon about Justin Trudeau, but I'm not interested in slagging him either. I think he's doing a good job in a very difficult time and in spite of a bunch of *hole premiers who don't give a shit about any of us and a demonstrably treasonous Official Opposition. I had a temp assignment in government during the pandemic. People are burnt out everywhere. It's no one's fault. We've been through a pandemic.

And we've been under attack, not just by a deadly virus, by foreign ops aided and abetted by treason weasels.

And Biden certainly has aged and does appear frail and yes I wish both Trudeau and he would say cease all funding and arms to Israel. Risk the fallout. Maybe the treason weasels won't win. Or maybe they will and democracy will survive them.

Bonus, let Putin show both his hands, funding Hamas AND Netanyahu. And if he defeats Ukraine, well, there's always guerrilla warfare, I guess.

But as I keep pointing out, there was only one name on the Freedom Convoy hate signs - Trudeau's - and it may as well've been mine. So that's who I'm rallying around for as long as he wants to be Prime Minister. And I'll rally around whoever comes after him because New Democrats don't want to win, or they would have done by now, and Conservatives are my enemy. Pierre Poilievre declared himself my enemy during the Freedom Convoy attack on me.

And why is it even a contest between Biden and Trump? That's just nuts. Not only is Biden fine, he has the best running mate in American history. So he has to step down post election and Americans get President Harris. Where is the downside?

Anyway, the other night I just felt so fatigued by it all, seeing the destruction in Gaza - shown nightly on The National, Chris Brown on the ground there - is soul destroying, hence why I don't respect you for supporting Israel and that liar Netanyahu. It's not a war, it's a war crime, and there are Israelis sitting in jail for pointing that out, just as there are many Jews here in Canada who were at the protest in Toronto where some young man climbed the awning outside Mount Sinai hospital and waved the Palestinian flag.

The Freedom Convoy did much worse, and included avowed anti-semites like Diagolon Accelerationists, but at least we have Bill C-3 now to protect hospital workers and patients from harassment.

And targeting Mount Sinai hospital in a protest against Israel is anti-semitic. Fortunately, we have laws against that, too.

Ghosted

Believe it or not I only just realized I have no power over other people, what they think, what they think of me, what they do, what they don't do, and no responsibility at all for how they choose to live their lives.

I was watching an interview of my favourite celebrity, Fran Lebowitz, whose snark has given me great comfort over the years, and she was remarking on her new fanbase, one that came about as a result of the Netflix documentary about her life in New York city. Young people show up to her talks and ask her what they should do with their lives, to which she responds, "I don't care. Do what you want. Look for water."

The advice to look for water is based on something she read about the world being out of water by 2050.

She goes on to tell the interviewer about having no illusions about her power in the world, as she has none. It also doesn't matter to her if people don't like what she thinks. It never did. She cares what her friends think of her as a person, but she doesn't care if her friends don't like what she thinks.

I've seen this interview before but this time, I got it.

Stop taking shit personally.

MAiD in Canada

I understand you naysayers. I do. But you view MAiD with an entirely negative lens. You see it as a threat, mostly to others, but sometimes to yourself.

And I get it. You worry about MAiD, a patient-centric, request driven, add-on to our publicly funded healthcare system, morphing into government officials terminating "undesirables".

Well yes, don't vote Conservative, is my best advice, because MAiD is here to stay.

Whether Parliament is ever able to write legislation to satisfy the courts and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the same Charter used to convict Robert Latimer for killing his severely disabled and in excruciating pain daughter, Tracy, as well it should have done, although I'd have convicted the medical establishment of Saskatchewan along with him) - or not - we won the right to end our lives by appointment, within our healthcare system, doctors trained in the practice of MAiD at our service.

We're not going back to suffering to the bitter end or ending our lives by suicides that leave others traumatized and left to clean up the mess because you're afraid democracy will fail and fascism prevail.

Like I said, don't vote Conservative. Don't vote New Democrat either because New Democrats don't want to win or they would have done so by now and you're just electing Conservatives.

Cripes, even when New Democrats do win other New Democrats just accuse them of turning into Liberals anyway. How about instead of having a party at all New Democrats just run as Liberals, eh? Move the party whichever which way from within.

Like Marc Miller.

To those of you who say MAiD goes against your God's will I say so don't have MAiD.

I would also like to ask how you know this. If God's will, as opposed to doctors' will, Tracy Latimer would likely have died long before the years of invasive and cruel interventions doctors perpetrated to keep her alive and in excruciating pain. But then we wouldn't have the ruling by the Supreme Court and conviction of her loving father for taking her life because he could no longer bear it.

So yay, amirite? Because we do have that ruling. And it came under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, no less, the Charter Conservatives want to abolish (even though the Federal Court just decided invocation of the Emergency Act violated the Charter rights of the Freedom Convoyers too stupid to appreciate the irony).

Robert Latimer, loving father, but loving father who killed his daughter, even though it was to end her pain and suffering, was sentenced to life without parole for ten years.

Would Tracy Latimer have qualified for MAiD? No, not as it stands now, not even if she were to beg for it. And it isn't likely any child in similar pain and suffering ever will, so maybe we could we need to keep a closer eye on doctors who believe in life at any cost?

Certainly she wouldn't qualify if her father begged for it. MAiD doesn't accept requests on behalf of, nor should it. No, Tracy Latimer would still be condemned to her life of excruciating pain and that would be entirely thanks to the medical establishment of Saskatchewan.

Shame you never got to shove that steel rod up her spine or remove her hip or whatever the hell fucked up madness you were empowered for some sick reason to perpetrate upon that poor child.

Robert Latimer has never expressed an ounce of regret and good for him. But good for the Supreme Court too because *no.

*Thank you universe for not putting me in his position. Orange is not my colour.

But speaking of, I've told the story of my mother and MAiD. She was 95. To you who think a person in psychological pain shouldn't qualify for MAiD, well, fuck off, you're wrong.

For years my mother had wanted to die in her sleep. Every time I got a call from first her seniors' residence, and then the nursing home, I hoped it was to tell me that's what had happened. Finally. Oh please oh please oh please let my mother be dead.

Not to make it all about me but my mother wasn't the only one suffering from her being alive.

It was torture. I was so relieved when she qualified for MAiD I did a jig of joy. Oh happy day my mother has an appointment with death.

We all have our fears. My mother's was of being vulnerable. She was terrified by vulnerability. She never wanted to get old, never mind old, blind, deaf, unable to use her hands, balance, eventually being strapped into a wheelchair lest she fall out of it - which she did a few times - suddenly in strange surroundings.

She hated being alive with every fiber of her shrinking being.

I was terrified one of you naysayers would nix her MAiD approval somehow too. I gave one personal support worker the stink eye when she broke down crying over the news my mother would be leaving her care in the morning, news she'd somehow managed to get, even though nursing homes do their best to keep it quiet until the inmate, I mean, patient, is gone.

The private nursing homes probably fight requests tooth and nail, not wanting to part with the money from a sitting duck. Have I told you not to vote Conservative lately? It's insane, you know. They're insane.

They only care about money.

So tread carefully now, I said to myself, while I asked the sobbing woman, calmly as I could, "Oh are you opposed to medical assistance in dying? Because I assure you my mother very much wants it. She's thrilled, in fact. Happy for the first time in years. I hope you're not going to cause her any trouble over her choice"

"No!" she said. "Not at all, I just don't like being left out of the loop. I feel like this is being sprung on me." And there was a bunch more yada yada blah blah and I realized she was just kind of a drama queen/nutcase - but not in a caring way - so I was all "there, there" relieved I wouldn't have to bind, gag, and lock her in the closet 'til the deed was safely done and my mother had gone to her great reward.

That's how my mother always put it, going to her great reward.

Jesus Christ nursing homes are hard places to be if you don't want to be in one. Bravo to all you good sons and daughters visiting mom and dad. And all my respect for you too young to be there but needing the care because you are the eyes and ears for the rest of us, not to mention great comfort to the staff who truly enjoy their jobs or they couldn't do them.

Certainly they're not in it for the money.

And no one wants to be in one but apparently we don't know how to treat each other if we're not doing our bit for... I don't know... the GDP?

Ugh. Some days I really hate us.

Here's the essential part of MAiD, the part you naysayers don't seem to get, which is that the request for MAiD had to come from my mother and be reaffirmed by her ever step of the way including right before the procedure. And she had to qualify. The doctors involved had to determine, at every step of the process, that my mother wanted to end her life because she was in pain and suffering AND SHE WAS 95 AND COMPLETELY INCAPACITATED FFS!!!

It was the steel rod doctors wanted to shove up Tracy Latimer's spine that broke Robert Latimer's back, to put it horribly. So tell me again the only way we should be allowed to die is from natural causes.

Natural causes. Gimme a fucking break.

Another MAiD win? That's what goes on the death certificate. Gotta love it.

No one who stood to benefit in any way from my mother's death could be involved with the process either. So not me. Not any of my siblings. In fact, pity the patients who aren't capable of advocating for it because it IS a process. I don't know how people who don't have people manage.

Look, naysayers, I'm not being cavalier about this. It's an awesome responsibility. But so it goes. With rights come responsibilities. And yes, risks. But your fear of me having the choice - of yourself having the choice? - will not stand in the way of MAiD. The courts have decided in OUR favour. And believe me, it's an important right to have and a real privilege, too much of a privilege and not enough of a right, in my opinion. Now it's up to Parliament to meet the standards of what the courts have decided and yes, it's going to be trial and error but we can't rescind the right to call on our healthcare system for help when we want to end our lives.

So please don't vote Conservative because those assholes don't give a shit about our pain and suffering. They only care about money.

And ask yourself on whose behalf you're afraid of MAiD - mine? Or your own?

Or is it the responsibility that comes with the right because, yes, it's an awesome one, for sure.