Canadian Politics 101

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving On - Not

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trauma Ward

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

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

Prediction? Ford Nation will get away with it.👮

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

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

I grow old.👵

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Middle-Class Life

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

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

Relationship + money = discussion.💁

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recalibrating and Famously Dead

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

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

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

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

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

No more blaming mom.👶

Blame the Patriarchy.💩

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relapse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, and there it is, why I blog.😉

Thanks for reading.💗

Life in a Time of Great Stupid🙈🙉🙊

Subtitle: Looking a Gift Horse in the Butt😀

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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