Thanks, Trudeau

Whenever anything goes wrong chez nous we make sure to assign blame in the Canadian way 2024.

"Thanks, Trudeau"😡

I'm thinking of having tee-shirts made.

Yesterday we hosted friends for a bbq and I was going on about adult child estrangement and how bewildering it is to those of us experiencing it, when my friend, who doesn't have kids but has taken on the parent role to an adult sibling said, "It's not about you."

Again, tee-shirts.

"It's not about you"😳

The guests were three adults watching what they eat and yet for dessert I not only made strawberry shortcake (tea biscuits, strawberries, whipping cream) but chocolate cake with chocolate icing, the flour to cocoa ratio flipped to make it extra decadent, not to mention caffeinated.😜

The mother role dies hard.

Lying wide awake in bed several hours later, I got to thinking how the apparent epidemic of adult children blaming their parents for their problems coincides with the epidemic of grown ass Conservatives blaming Trudeau for theirs.

I can't claim not to have blamed my own mother for my problems, although it's getting trickier the longer she's dead, but in my defence she wouldn't take it to heart like parents of my generation do, either, knowing it had nothing to do with her and not needing reminders from friends that it didn't.

She also had no idea I was blaming her for my problems because I would never admit such a ridiculous thing.

Also, my mother would no more have blamed her parents, who didn't even raise her, really, living with her father's parents as they all did, not a pot to piss in because it was being used to make moonshine, than not volunteer for WWII duty as soon as she came of age.

(My grandfather, in a rare moment of parenting, made her go to teachers' college first, and she described herself to me as having been quite spoiled because she lived at home until she graduated from it at the ripe old age of 19.)

Later, when both her and her older sister lost their husbands six months apart, each of them with four kids under the age of ten, there was a battle as to which daughter Gram would live with, my grandfather having skipped out on her to father eight more kids with Bunny.

Widows in 1963 and damned if I grew up never hearing either one of them blame all their problems on Diefenbaker or Lester B.

Meanwhile, fast forward to Canada in 2024 and Beardy McDirtbag out West buys a $150,000 truck and blames Trudeau for finally putting a price on the pollution it causes driving around to freedom-from-personal-responsibility rallies being held by one Pierre Poilievre, multi-millionaire real estate magnate and leader of the new-fangled Conservative Party.

Didn't Conservatives used to be all about personal responsibility? Weren't we all supposed to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps - regardless of our circumstances at birth - even in childhood? Wasn't it our fault if we couldn't live within our means? Whatever happened to telling us to tighten our belts instead of letting us pollute for free while better citizens give their lives fighting forest fires due to climate change every spring, summer, fall and soon winter?

The other day I shared a Facebook post about the price of gas coming down, not that I care because I want it to go through the roof, and an in-law complained, "Not out West".

So I said, "Good, people need to drive less."

Because wtf? Waah! We can't pollute for free anymore.

Thanks, Trudeau😡