Author: samandoat

I have said this before, many times.

We do not have a housing problem. We have a HOMELESS problem.

Big difference.

We don’t need big homes built on prime land that no one but the very rich can afford. And they only buy it as a rental property. Rich people have lots of rental properties that they make a fortune from. From people who can barely, if at all, afford that rent!

We have plenty of empty buildings that just need some repairs and upgrading that could be used for those who cannot afford rent.

We take better care of abandoned animals than we do humans.

We rescue dogs and cats and horses and post it all over the internet.

But human beings?

Out on the street people spiral downwards very, very fast. As fast as the dog tied to a tree, or a kitten left in a box. And human beings have a lot more issues than just food and shelter. We have mental health to consider.

If you lose everything, pride and hope soon follow suit, and then you have nothing left to lose. There are huge repercussions from that.

Stop these greedy politicians who make billions devouring our precious lands, giving them to developers to cement over. Keep our green space. Keep our agricultural lands.

How about using what we readily have available to help people.

Yeah. Help people.

What a concept.

In high school my best friend and I befriended a girl who had a mother from hell.

This woman constantly berated this girl for being a girl. Everything about being a girl was a travesty. She was lucky that her mother allowed her to use sanitary pads – only because she didn’t have time to wash rags. Forget tampons!

Imagine being a young woman, a teenager, and not allowed to try makeup, go to dances, participate in sports, and worst of all, not be allowed to shave your legs or armpits.

It was the hairy armpits and legs that caused her the most anguish. Mother told her that if she shaved it off the hair would grow back in like trees and be blacker than coal. Her hair already was thick like a forest and midnight black. It was not going to be worse.

She was so terrified of her mother that we could not persuade her to at least shave. She dared not wear shorts or a swimming suit and donned heavy nylons to cover up the lengthy black hair, practically dying in the summertime from heat stroke.

One day, this beautiful girl shaved her legs herself. We had nothing to do with it. We weren’t there when the deed was done, but we were proud of her!

Her mother screamed at us and banned us from ever seeing this girl again.

What is the matter with people? No, don’t answer that. I already know.

Okay this is the last of my scavenger day rants.

When I was working in retail in a mall, a photography shop there had a contest on to win a free photo portrait. There were no stipulations. I entered and I won.

Everything was great. They treated me like royalty and took a beautiful posed picture of me.

Things fell apart when I went to pick up my photo.

They tried to pressure me to buy multi-packages of my photo for over a hundred dollars, and were angry with me because I refused. I earned minimum wage at my job, a hundred bucks was at least two plus days of work. And what the heck use would I have for a thousand pictures of myself of various sizes?

They practically threw my photo at me and kicked me out of their store.

Naturally, I told people to not go there. They did a great job of my picture, I still have it, but they blew future sales.

Don’t have contests and giveaways and coupons and the like if you’re going to be a bitch about honouring them.

One more tale from my scavenger days.

The local pool hall offered an evening of pool for $20. My boyfriend and I, ever on the lookout for cheap entertainment went in.

Now neither one of us drinks, and even if we did, we could never afford it.

We stayed several hours and had a great time.

We went to the cash to pay and were informed it would be $52 because we did not order any food or drink.

Nowhere did it stipulate that we had to do that as my boyfriend pointed out to the owner. My heart was beating hard. We did not have $52 between us.

He yelled at us and said we should have the decency to buy food and drinks and not just play pool. That his business could not survive on people like us who bilked the system.

We paid the bill, just. I had maybe $2 left in my account afterwards.

Another place we never went back to. He went bankrupt a month later. Boo f’in hoo to him.

I do understand how business works, but false advertising is not the way to stay in business. You have to expect that you are going to attract people who have little to none disposable income and be upfront with them.

And poor people deserve to have some fun too. We were not taking advantage of you. You offered it and we came.

Oh here I go again! A rant about public transportation. It is such a vast subject, with so much to complain about, it is hard to pick just one area.

Today I rant about policing the pay.

First they decided to let seniors ride free on Wednesdays, which is a step in the right direction, but meaningless to us who take the bus every day and use a bus pass.

Now they decide to allow children 12 and under to ride free.

Just how the heck are you going to police that? It’s a bit easier with seniors, we pretty much all have grey hair and glasses. But how do you determine a twelve year old from a thirteen year old, perhaps even a fifteen year old?

And what is the point?

Transpo whines about low ridership. Well now there is an issue. Try providing a service where buses actually come when the schedule says for starters. Sometimes it takes me HOURS to travel a couple of kilometers, having to take two or more buses and do a lot of walking in between.

And how does providing free ridership increase your revenues?

DUH.

We have such a mess with our NO SHOW transpo, that I say; Just make the f’in thing free for everyone and get your revenue to pay your $100K a year salaries from somewhere else.

Be creative and provide a worthwhile service.

Many years ago my boyfriend and I were not very well off, to say the least, and we took advantage of coupons and sales, and always had an eye out for free things to do.

We got a coupon from a Mexican restaurant, buy one meal at $10.99 get a second at $5.99.

Now for us to go and have a sit down meal, in a real restaurant, with servers and table cloths and candlelight, this was really a rare treat.

Neither one of us drank alcohol and we could just afford $20 for a meal, so we might have dessert and share it.

We got exceptional service and food and had the most wonderful romantic evening.

Then the coupons started arriving more frequently. Every month it seemed, so we took advantage of that.

We became regulars at this place. The owner came out and talked to us every time. Introduced us to his chef and told us about himself and wanted to know about us. He knew we didn’t have much money. We felt like family.

But one evening, just after we had ordered, the owner came out and yelled at us. He berated us for always using a coupon, never ordering drinks and sharing a dessert. We were stunned and deeply embarrassed. My boyfriend challenged him, “Why do you keep sending us coupons then?” And he shouted that this is a business, not a charity and we were taking advantage of his good nature.

Needless to say, we never went back, and if anyone asked us about the place we would tell them not to go.

Yes, I do understand the owners point of view, and believe me, if we could have afforded more than their burrito platter we would have had it, and a dessert for each one of us (but never alcohol).

He could have made his point without losing us as customers. And he lost a lot of potential customers also.

It was my birthday.

To celebrate, I decided to repot a poor little plant I had. Some people I guess, get cake and a candle. I’m too practical.

I headed to Zellers and found a nice clay pot for $1.15.

I was fourth or fifth in line at the checkout, but the young clerk never took her eyes off me.

When I got to the cash, she cheerfully tells me I get 20% off because I’m a senior. It looked like some other customers were about to break into applause.

“It’s my birthday. I just became a senior today.” I mumbled, and thought, I’d be happy to just pay the $1.15 and get the heck out of there!

Nope, she insisted I get my 20% off and I slunk away.

It was my first senior discount. A rite of passage, I suppose. Not altogether very pleasant.

I saw a picture of the Empire State Building, once the tallest building I knew, way back when.

My brother gave Mom and I a trip to New York City, which is quite a shock from the no highrise city I grew up in.

It was a neck craning experience, always looking up!

We got a break and were able to look down, from the Empire State Building. It was exhilarating and unforgettable.

I have no desire to go any higher in any building than that in my life.

I was travelling back in time to the late 1970’s, when my then boyfriend and I, just barely 20 something, thought nothing of hopping in the car and driving to Indianapolis or Florida for an NHRA event. We just went. As did many of our hot rod friends.

I watched a video from a 1975 Indianapolis meet and besides making me nostalgic, I saw that my life was much simpler then, much, freer. You could just go. Hop in your car and head to the States. If they didn’t like you at the border, they simply turned you back.

Even in the 1980’s things were not so complicated. I filled out forms and paid money and I was enrolled in University. I showed up at a workplace, had a fifteen minute interview and was hired.

Movement was a lot freer. Perhaps it is just my rose coloured glasses again, but I think it was true.

Todays world is so terrifying. It was not so scary back in the 1970’s, at least, not for me.

In fact, it is only since trump came into power and the pandemic that life has dramatically changed and become so restrictive.

Well, at least I can remember when. With videos.

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!