Swallows

I stopped on the bridge crossing a shallow river in our city to watch the birds. There used to be hundreds of ducks, crows and my favourite, swallows, hanging around the rocks and shoreline at the bridge.

This year, a smattering of ducks, a few crows and only a dozen or so swallows.

The swallows nest under the bridge, in the trusses. It is a pretty safe place, but the traffic over their heads! I guess they don’t mind, or they wouldn’t be there.

I love the way swallows fly. They put Tom Cruise to shame. These are the top guns of the natural world. It is amazing that they catch insects on the wing, zooming around at mach speed. I could watch them for hours.

At our favourite lake, in the canoe, my boyfriend and I would be in the middle of their acrobatics, mesmerized, as they dove and swooped around us. You could hear their wings slicing the air.

Take that Maverick!

Money

My favourite topic.

Money equals options.

The more money you have, the more options you have in life.

The more money you have, the higher the quality of goods and services you can enjoy.

The more money you have, the more experiences you can have.

Money equals priviledge.

I have been poor. I know that you are a less than nothing when poor and you are treated very badly.

When you have money, life is a lot better.

But having said that, something happens to peoples brains when they get too much money. They become deplorable human beings, on every level.

So there is a sweet spot that keeps you sweet.

The trick is to know when you’ve reached that.

Ha. The next trick is to reach it!

Great Ideas

I really have a bone to pick with our city planners about bike lanes.

Whoever does this brilliant planning has never been a pedestrian, nor rode a bike.

Planners hunker down in their Lexus and leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

Who in their right mind puts a two way bike lane on a one way street? Since implementing this splendid idea, there have been 5 cyclists hit by cars. So far, no pedestrians, but a friend of mine confessed to a near miss from a cyclist coming from the opposite direction. The solution my dear friends, by our brilliant planners, is not to simply do the obvious, like, for instance, make the bike lane one way (hopefully the same way as the traffic, but who knows with these idiots). Oh no! Our great transportation thinkers have decided instead to reduce vehicle speeds and improve visibility of cyclists and pedestrians at a minor cost of about $1.5 million of taxpayers money. Makes sense to me!

Who in their right mind puts a bike lane in front of bus stops? This one is a good one, having been almost killed myself on the way to work at my home bus stop.

Who makes bike lanes vanish at busy intersections? Oh I have bad memories of an intersection where the lane vanished and I was out in the middle of traffic going in many different directions, none of them mine!

Who does this to us on bike and foot? Surely only those who want to kill off as many cyclists and pedestrians as possible.

That’s our transportation planners in action.

Put It Away

Okay, maybe because I am older I am a bit of a prude. But I am so tired of women celebrities wearing next to nothing, or completely sheer dresses.

It is not classy.

And it is not sexy.

When you are young, you think the more you show the sexier it is.

NOT.

Even a man will tell you this is not sexy.

Do you see men doing this? How does a woman feel when she sees a man flaunting himself this way?

I tell you, I would choose a Cary Grant any day over a naked body builder. Mr. Grant has class.

I have nothing against our bodies, what we have is perfectly natural, normal and not shocking.

We are beings with imaginations, intelligence, creativity. We like to dress up and adorn ourselves in things. It is all good and an expression of our complex characters. But especially so for women.

From an early age, most girls are sexualized. We are taught that it is our looks that are the most important part of our being and we are not taught to develop our personalities and strengths and talents, which are WAY more of a turn on for men, especially the type of man who will love you.

If you walk around with your breasts hanging out it is rather rude. I say, put them away, please. Men do not find this arousing, trust me. Doing this puts you into a certain category in their minds. A category I am sure you are not.

I understand this is hard to comprehend. I was young once too and made these mistakes. If you want a high quality man, you need to be a high quality lady.

Yeah, I’m just an old hag now. Sorry.