Slippery Slopes and All That Jazz

Just so we're clear, and for the people in the back who may not be keeping up with the evolving language of modern day warfare, we're all human shields now.

You, your pregnant daughter, your newborn grandchild.

Healthcare workers, sales clerks, business owners, school children, their teachers, the principal.

Journalists. Of course, they're not so much human shields as being targeted for murder, aren't they. Murdered by snipers.

Foreign mercenaries? Who knows. Anything goes in war now. Bibi doesn't want to go to prison where he's belonged for at least a decade.

Two? Three? He and his wife are well-documented crooks. Hence why he's trying to over-ride the judiciary, turn Israel into Russia.

I guess the settlers would feel more at home if he did.

Israelis are demonstrating in their streets against his government and the war crime it's perpetrating in Gaza. Why are you supporting it? Because Postmedia tells you to?

It supports the odious bigot and misogynist Pierre Poilievre. Are you an odious bigot and misogynist too?

I wouldn't feel too smug, you know, watching other civilians being slaughtered halfway across the world from the comfort of your suburban Canadian pile, pretending it couldn't happen here. The Freedom Convoy embedded itself in a residential neighbourhood right here in downtown Ottawa, with public support from His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, currently riding high in the polls, while they proceeded to terrorize the local population.

New moms, their newborns, pets, palliative care patients, school children, women shopping for groceries - especially if they were wearing hijabs - anybody wearing a mask to protect each other from the deadly virus the Freedom Convoy actively prolonged, unhoused people - from whom they stole food - minimum wage workers - especially if they were Asian - city councillors - they went to the home of one and threatened his young family - Liberal and New Democrat politicians and their staff.

Civilians. They attacked civilians. Us. Me. You.

It was terrifying. People here have PTSD now. It's a fact. I ended up lying on the bathroom floor for hours, having to purge every bit of food from my body, the result of having lived for three weeks with a fight/fight/freeze response on high alert.

It was all public, not that you'd know what "it" was if you only read Postmedia, its official propagandist. Blatant criminality. No law and order. The Ottawa Police Service either unwilling, due to complicity, or unable, due to being outgunned, to enforce the law. Hell's Angels from Quebec, neo-Nazis from Alberta, Christo-Fascists from coast to coast to coast.

They had cranes and nooses and using megaphones in our public streets, which they had taken over, demanded Justin Trudeau's head, while broadcasting threats of violent insurrection all over the internet.

Like I keep pointing out, the Freedom Convoy waved lots of flags, but not one of them was Ukrainian. And no sooner had the mercenaries - because the lot of them were thugs-for-hire when CERB ran out -  finally been allowed to leave, not a scratch on any of them in spite of three weeks of public, blatant criminality, dumping buckets of their feces on the doorsteps of local aid agencies on their way out, than Putin, their ideological leader, invaded Ukraine.

They love Putin. It's the Christo-Fascism. He speaks their language, the same language spoken by the odious bigot and misogynist Pierre Poilievre they wanted to install as Prime Minister of Canada, once they'd taken out the democratically elected one, and still do. He's their choice. They're neo-Nazis and Christo-Fascists and bikers and Diagolon Accelerationists and Putin-lovers.

And Pierre Poilievre is their pick for PM.

The walls are closing in on Trump, another Putin Puppet and the likely Republican Party nominee for POTUS - again - and we're being sucked into his buddy, Netanyahu's, war against Hamas, the Islamic terrorists he funded and helped elevate to power over the very Palestinian children he's currently slaughtering with a free pass from the rest of us because they're not children, they're human shields.

Gaza is the most densely populated place on earth and Netanyahu is levelling it to stay out of prison.

Just so we're clear on where we're at now in modern warfare.

Same Difference

I have friends and relatives who think we should leave Ukraine to Russia.

They try to argue their opinion at me, but I distract them, change the subject. I know what they're going to argue anyway. I've heard it all my life from from their gurus, old men holding forth on American imperialism all my life.

Some of us even studied under them at university.

But they haven't read Timothy Snyder and I have, so I'm more up on Russian imperialism than they are. I'm also more up on its increasing Christo-Fascism, the same Christo-Fascism embraced by the American Right they pretend not to hope defeats Liberal Feminism.

It took me a while but I finally figured it out. They'd rather Christo-Fascism than Liberal Feminism.

Okay then.

I try to maintain cordial relations but they don't make it easy. I've had them argue at me there's no difference between Liberals, who are pro-choice, and Conservatives, who aren't.

What doesn't matter to them, eh?

Oh the privilege. I can only marvel at the rarefied air they breathe.

And that's just the easiest difference. They'll never admit it but the real reason they hate Trudeau so much is he took away the knife they enjoyed holding over our heads, declared the LPC a pro-choice party, case closed, abortion rights are no longer up for debate in Canada.

You know it, girlfriend.

Russia, the American Right, Canadian Conservatives, these are my enemies, not theirs. If you're voting against Trudeau because blah blah yada yada, thereby electing the odious bigot and misogynist Pierre Poilievre Prime Minister of Canada? Fuck you. Fuck you very much.

Here in Ontario we're going to be buying our health cards and driver licences at Staples because Canadian Conservatives.

Pharmacare? Good luck finding a doctor to do the prescribing.

We need therapy, not drugs. We're drugged to the gills. My friend's mom was on 20 different medications before she finally shuffled off this mortal coil, having never had therapy to deal with the childhood sexual assault so many of her generation experienced.

It wasn't fluoxetine that made me feel better, it was therapy, much needed advice on diet, a renewed commitment to exercise, better boundaries, letting go responsibility for the happiness of others.

Shedding guilt for putting myself first.

I have friends and relatives who think Israel's mass slaughter of Palestinian children and targeted killing of the journalists covering said mass slaughter is fair payback for the October 7 terrorist attack on Israelis by Hamas. I don't know why these people, many of whom didn't support George W. Bush's destruction of Iraq, the death of a million Iraqis, in retaliation for 9/11, support this obscenity being perpetrated by Israel - when so many Israelis don't - but they do.

It's not a war. The Occupier is bombing the Occupied. You raped and murdered our women. We're going to kill all your children.

Insanity piled on insanity.

You think that's crazy? We'll show you crazy!

Arguing semantics at The Hague.

Gord give us strength.

I also have friends and relatives who seem to support Russia, but not Israel, and friends and relatives who support Ukraine, but also Israel.

So this post is a thank you to my friends and relatives who understand two wrongs don't make a right, something I thought we all learned in kindergarten, and who support helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia's ongoing terrorism, but don't support helping Israel in its ongoing slaughter of Palestinian children.

I appreciate you.

Deja Vu Again

I had nausea again yesterday. I'd gone out for lunch with a friend, although I didn't really want to, and by early evening I was abed, where I stayed until this morning.

I seem to be fine now, having a cup of coffee as per usual, although feeling a little bit like life is one step forward, three-quarters of a step back.

Another friend had a distressing Wednesday, involving our healthcare system, and it's possible I over-empathized, making myself sick, but I don't think so. I think it's more likely I should not have gone for lunch when I wasn't gung ho about it.

I feel like I could go to bed and sleep some more. Hours? Days? Weeks? Months?

I wouldn't call it a panic attack. The nausea wasn't so overwhelming I had to purge everything from my body. A couple of Gravol helped, whereas in prior attacks it had no effect.

What good is universal healthcare without enough doctors? Wait times are destroying faith in the system but I know for a fact my 14 hour overnight stay in emergency, sitting in a chair with a badly broken wrist and broken knee until the morning shift arrived for duty, was because there was only one doctor available for a waiting room full of people in need of a diagnosis.

I'm not a REAL expert in healthcare resources but it seems to me the bottleneck is doctors, or a lack thereof. I mean, I and every nurse on duty, many of whom seemed to be waiting with us, knew I had a badly broken wrist and broken knee, so what's with having to wait for a doctor to confirm it?

Sure, I wasn't an emergency, but I wasn't not in extreme pain and distress, either, exacerbated by an overnight wait in a chair in a crowded waiting room. Triage made a bad situation worse, for me, anyway, and I was ahead of a possible ectopic pregnancy.

She had a family doctor, too. She's the one who said she'd rather pay than have to wait. I told her to bite her tongue. Ford Nation would have us paying AND waiting, don't be fooled.

What good will Pharmacare be without enough doctors to prescribe the drugs they love to prescribe so much we've got antibiotic resistant bacteria thriving in our hospitals now? Do we even really want Pharmacare? Aren't we drugged to the gills as it is with Canadians really needing less stress, better diet and more exercise in our lives?

The fluoxetine I was on could've been a placebo and I would've made the changes to my lifestyle that reduced anxiety anyway. And the therapy I was so lucky to get would've helped me see the light regarding my relationship with food. If anything, fluoxetine was suppressing my appetite when what I needed was more calories.

People who think they can afford the privatization of our public healthcare system will vote for it and Conservative politicians and their friends know it. Boomers and GenXers have lots of money, along with healthcare benefits that include drug plans. What they don't have is the access they want as they age. And who can blame them? They paid into the system all their lives with the promise it would be there for them in older age. It's not. And I live in Ottawa, not a small city or rural town.

I know what I saw while I waited 14 hours overnight in an Ottawa hospital emergency room and it was a system that's ceased to function as it should, a society that's not looking after each other, and a racket instead of a government in charge. And I know for a fact, because a nurse apologetically confided to me the next day as I was leaving the premises, there'd only been one doctor on duty overnight, hence the 14 hr wait.

One doctor on duty overnight in an Ottawa hospital. One. Lots of nurses, not seeming to me to be using their skills much beyond handing out painkillers. One doctor.

We're being treated badly by our government, punished for insisting on universal publicly funded healthcare even while it privatizes increasingly large swaths of it for insiders like former premier Mike Harris. We know this. His young wife runs a nurse staffing agency that's sucking our money out of hospitals and nursing homes and into his pocket and yet he continues to get away with it.

Why? Who wants this? How is any of this okay?

Staples? We're going to be renewing the healthcare cards we should never have had to pay for at Staples?

Wtf?

Existential Snow

Finally there's snow in Ottawa and more coming. It's been weird, this brown winter of ours. Very unsettling. I want the snow because it's good for the pond, but also because it's "normal", although every year now I get stressed out about wheelchair users, etc, trying to navigate it in Ottawa.

Why isn't our militia in charge of snow removal? Have the best equipment possible, train everybody how to use it, and when there's a storm call everybody in to man the barricades.

Don't put me in charge in spite of my great ideas. I was president of our housing association already. Today's investors are stupid, selfish and shortsighted.

The other day I was off to my final therapy appointment and while I waited for the bus a couple of women joined me. One of them unloaded her life story, or rather, her messed up daughter's life story, who lives with her, along with her granddaughter. It's the mood swings that get to her. Also the ADD and ADHD.

The other woman talked about her job in a nursing home. She hailed from Africa, where she said older people are treated quite differently. Her problem was with management and it not wanting her to interact so much with the patients.

While she was talking I wondered why we don't have all sorts of people requiring more care than they can get on their own or in their families living in them. One of the problems with the nursing home my mother was in is everybody's so elderly and infirm they can't be of much help to each other, although M., who was certainly experiencing cognitive decline, took to helping her eat. She'd also give me little reports on my mother's mental state, once commenting she didn't seem to know it was Christmas.

"Oh M. Christmas is two weeks away still."

<M. laughing merrily>

"Well that explains it then!"

They sat together for meals. My mother, M., I., and A.

M.I.A. alright. 

There's so much we need to fix. On my way home I met a woman on the bus who cleans houses for a living. She told me she's having trouble finding work now because she doesn't have a car anymore. At her last interview the man said, "I need somebody with a car."

She asked, "Why?" But he didn't answer. Just repeated something about emergencies. She figured he needed somebody with a car because he'd lost his licence and really wanted a cleaner who could run other errands. She said she'd've been perfect for the job but it'd been years since she could afford a car and no longer had an active licence to drive one.

She couldn't imagine doing a driving test now, never mind the expense of a car.

Public transit fares went up in the new year but I see lots of guys who can't afford the fare hop on for free using the side and back doors. Drivers are in a bubble now and other riders are on their phones or elderly. It used to be they'd keep their heads down but not anymore. The streets went feral during the pandemic and we haven't reclaimed them.

It's as if we think we can just paper over all the gaps revealed by the pandemic. Why? Why do we want to paper over people who need help just to get by? If paid meaningful work is so crucial to our collective health, why isn't it a priority of our governments to ensure we all have it.

Where are our publicly funded police with their big fat budgets to restore civil society their unions helped destroy by siding with the fascist Freedom Convoy over the rest of us?

I say smash the union, fire the brotherhood and start over. Only anti anti-vaxxers need apply.

Homemakers should be paid, by the way. That's how we balance the unpaid work burden shouldered primarily by women.

C'mon, men, help us. You're good at getting paid for the work you do. We aren't. Help a sister out.

By the way, if you're still under the delusion the Freedom Convoy wasn't just a bunch of neo-Nazis rolled into downtown Ottawa to bully the locals, on their way out they dumped buckets of their shit on the door step of an aid agency for the homeless.

First they stole their food, then they left them the processed remains.

My therapy file is closed now. 

Eating has changed for me. I'm back to being a pre-teen, so before the eating disorder I hadn't realized was still with me, even in my 60s. I've already gained 5 of the 10 pounds I'm after. Because I'm in my 60s I'm making sure it's muscle, too, running stairs, lifting my 2.5 pound weights (time to move up to 5 pounders) and what My Blond Companion calls "pirate yoga".

It's just stretching. I've cut out the "arrgh, matey!" moves.

What was that crazy need to prove myself worthy of existence by balancing my knees on my elbows?

I'm here therefore I have every right to exist.

Cripes, I even pay my taxes, ffs. No offshore accounts. No fare dodging. Just slowly but surely paying my way as every middle-class Canadian needs to do to make up for everybody else.

We hit the sweet spot of life. Born middle-class in post-WWII Canada. It's the Feminism, girlfriend, you know it.

The other big change in my life is boundaries. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Mothers everywhere, read me now, read me again later - or just ask your adult children - you need more and better boundaries.

Let me put it the way an old AA friend put it to me once upon a time: Your adult child has a higher power and it's not you.

Also, keeping your family together is not up to you alone. Relationships between other family members are not your responsibility to fix.

No one leaves a family that's working out for them. Choices abound in this middle-class Feminist society of our Great White North. Sometimes people will make ones that hurt your heart.

Sometimes you will make choices that hurt theirs.

Keep the faith. It still snows in Ottawa in winter. But ride a bus every once in a while. Cars are isolating and keep us in a bubble. Riding a bus will help you recognize we're all in this together wherever and whoever we are.

Operation Eat More Get Fit Fight Neo-Nazis

So it's been about three? four? eleventy-seven? months now since I weaned myself off the low dose of fluoxetine (Prozac) I'd been on for about a year. It was to tackle anxiety. The doctor I'm oh so privileged to have in Ford Nation figured it was behind the nausea attacks I was experiencing in the wake of the Freedom Convoy's attack on us here in Ottawa in February 2022.

Fortunately the drug prescription was accompanied by free therapy from a young woman who specializes in eating disorders, who, on our first meeting, assured me I wasn't alone in experiencing fallout from Canada's undiagnosed insurrection here in downtown Ottawa by a bunch of neo-Nazis from Alberta.

There otta be a law. A couple of the asshole leaders of it are on trial for mischief, which can carry a sentence of ten years, but everyone's guess is they won't do a day. After all, Pierre Poilievre has done worse and he's not in jail. His boss Stephen Harper is helping destroy democracy world over, on the side of our world's #1 terrorist, Vladimir Putin, sending out fundraising letters on behalf of his protege PP, calling on all "patriotic Canadians" to send $$$, even though his Conservative Party of Canada just voted to abandon Ukraine to Russia.

Please wake up, Conservative Party voters. Or just stop voting. You're helping the terrorists win.

Anyway, most people I know don't care what happens to a couple of assholes from Stephen Harper's Alberta, a couple assholes who commandeered the failed insurrection of February 2022 thumbs upped by Donald Trump, Pierre Poilievre, and every other self-serving egomaniac and neo-Nazi lover from Elon Musk to Russell Brand to Vladimir Putin.

We're over it, no thanks to our sister and brother Canadians, some of whom have managed - still - to not even know about it.

I'm so happy to have quit drinking, quit smoking pot. I wasn't doing what most people who do one or both would consider a lot, but it was still too much, waaaaay too much for me.

Addiction is a helluva drug.

My focus now is food, and I've already gained weight and added muscle to the ol' bod.

Lookin' good, if I do say so myself.

Kate Moss is wrong. Food tastes better than skinny feels. It also soothes the soul and gets the synapses firing in a good way, not just pinging all over the place bashing into each other like self-driving bumper cars.

Also, pro tip, teen girls - pretty sure the 2.5 lb weights I'm exercising with are increasing my bust.

Is the anxiety epidemic afflicting Canadian youth diet related? I think so.

I don't stress eat, I stress starve. I'm also one of those hyper sensitive people you've heard tell about so I experience a lot of feels, some of them even mine.

I saw the Barbie movie, which was a delight, and showing as well is Flowers of the Killer Moon. It may be quite a good film but I won't see it. I'm done with movie depictions of male sexual violence against women. I won't subject myself to it anymore. I'm not in denial, not even a bit. I just don't want to bear witness to depictions of it in Hollywood movies. Enough already. I won't even read it about it anymore.

It's not in the past. It's not fiction. Women and girls live this reality all over the world including here.

Men right here in Canada don't care enough about their own sisters, mothers, daughters, blah blah blah insert-only-reason-men-care-about-women-at-all-here to not vote for the Conservative Party of Canada, even though its leader, Pierre Poilievre, well-documented misogynistic creep-at-large, was caught out recruiting from Men Going Their Own Way, his fellow well-documented misogynistic creeps-at-large who want to eliminate women and girls from society.

I mean, polls can get it wrong, but every one of them?

We've come a long way baby - not.

Anyway, instead of having panic attacks over it all, I'm choosing to eat well and get fit, because one thing's for sure, I won't be bullied by a bunch of neo-Nazi insurrectionists again. Not in this lifetime. Not in my country.

Wake up, Conservatives. Or just stop voting.

Better yet, fuck off to Russia.

Regrets, I've Had a Few

But I got them out of my head by writing them down, taking in as much context as I could recall, some of my regrets being almost three decades old, and then asking myself what I wish I'd done instead of what I did.

They're gone now, making room for new ones.

I had been commenting a fair bit on Facebook with regard to Israel's war on Gaza, but I don't think I will anymore.

My understanding of what happened and is happening now is as below.

Palestinian men raped and killed Israeli women, singling out IDF soldiers for mutilation and torture before killing them.

In retribution, Israeli men are slaughtering Palestinian women and children.

My opinion is as below.

Men don't like feeling emasculated. Women and children will always pay the price men put on our heads when they emasculate the men of other tribes.

I had also been commenting a fair bit on Facebook with regard to Russia's ongoing terrorist attack on Ukraine. I have friends who don't want us sending weapons to Ukraine to prevent it from being annihilated by Russia.

In my opinion, Russia's a Christo-Fascist mafia state, and not only should we send weapons to Ukraine to defeat it, we should join Ukraine in its fight for survival.

Some of these same friends don't want us supporting Israel while it annihilates Gaza.

I don't think in all the years I've been arguing politics online I've changed a single opinion.

A friend commented recently if we got rid of the internet we would be happier.

Maybe. But then what would we do with all our new found time, energy and money?

Fun With Feminism

Kidding.💁

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barbie 101: We all die.💘

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

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

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